lives are our own, and that we are more human than they can ever know. Tonight we say enough. Tonight we say no more.”
I felt the ground shake, as hundreds of staffs and axes beat the earth in time with Piper’s final words. No more.
chapter 19
We carried no torches—the darkness was our ally. Piper gave the signal, his sword raised high and then sweeping down. He stood so close to me that I could hear the blade slice the air. The advance began, as quietly as five hundred armed troops could manage, to the northernmost edge of the charred forest. At another signal from Piper, the advance troops slipped from the woods. Surprise was our only advantage, so we held off on the main charge as long as possible. For now, it was just six pairs of assassins, hand-selected by Simon and Piper, loping up the plain toward the town with knives destined for the throats of the patrols circling the city.
The night quickly swallowed the assassins as they moved over the plain in a crouching run. We’d watched the town for long enough to know that there would be three patrols orbiting the walls at any time, but we also knew that the patrols were complacent. The sentries in the four gate towers looked mainly inward, at the captive town itself. If they were expecting any trouble, it wasn’t from outside.
One of the patrols was within our sight, a torch tracing their journey around the town’s southern edge. There would be at least three riders, their leader carrying the torch. When a shout came from further west, the torch swung around—but the noise cut off, stopping so swiftly that I wondered if it had, after all, been just a crow’s hacking call. There was a moment’s stillness, before the torch resumed its route around the wall. Then came another sound, a shorter yell this time, and two clashes of steel. The torch dropped, bounced once, and was extinguished in the snow. I could hear, away to the east, the distant noise of a horse bolting. Silence returned—but this wasn’t ordinary silence. Knowing what was happening on the plain, the silence felt stifling, a blanket thrown over the night.
The next signal came from the assassins: a flash of light at the base of the wall, halfway between the northern and western gates. They had carried oil and matches, to get the fire started quickly. Ideally it would weaken the wall; at least it would be a diversion while we charged from the south.
Once more, Piper’s sword was raised, and then lowered. We began to run. There was the noise of five hundred people’s footsteps, stumbling on the uneven ground. Panting breaths, in lungs tightened by waiting in the cold, and by fear. Scabbards knocking against legs; knives jangling.
The Council’s soldiers hadn’t been forewarned. My journey to meet the Ringmaster hadn’t won his help, but at least he hadn’t betrayed us. There was no ambush, no phalanx of soldiers pouring from the gates to meet us. The first cries of warning came when we were halfway across the open plain between the forest and the town. Shouts and cries spread from gate to gate, and there was a scrambling of lights within the walls as the warning was sounded.
The arrows came first, when we were a few hundred yards from the walls. One landed just to my left, plowing a ditch two feet long in the ground. I kept my shield over my head, but there weren’t enough shields for everyone, and not all our troops had two arms to carry them. Beside me Piper carried only his sword, and so did Zoe, to keep her left arm free for her throwing knives. In the near total darkness, there was no kidding ourselves that we might dodge the arrows—they sprang from the dark above us, as if the night sky itself were suddenly sharpened. The archers made it clear, right away, that the Council soldiers weren’t holding back as they had on the island. If they knew Zach’s twin was part of the attack, it wasn’t stopping them. I wondered if the General ordered that no concessions to Zach’s safety should be made, and if this was a sign of his waning power. But all speculation was ended by the scream that went up behind me, the sound of an arrow finding its mark. I turned, but the fallen man had been overtaken by our oncoming troops, his scream already half