Simon wiped a hand down his face, and gave his head a quick shake. “Killed at the wall, with all his men—though they managed to get some fires started first.” Simon’s sword hand was bruised and swollen, the skin purple and stretched too tightly on the fattened flesh.
“Derek’s squadron didn’t light that,” said Piper, pointing up at the town. From its center, high above the walls, a plume of smoke was unfurling into the sky.
“Something’s going on inside,” said Simon. Despite the streak of blood on his cheek, and his bruised hand, he looked more animated than I’d seen him since the island. “The harvesters must have got the message. They’re joining in.”
“It explains why the Council haven’t unleashed their full numbers out here,” Zoe said. “But the Omegas in there can only do so much. They won’t even have proper weapons.”
She was right. I pictured New Hobart’s residents, armed with pokers or cooking knives, pitted against the broadswords of trained soldiers.
“We need to get in there before they’re all killed,” I said. My voice came out higher than I’d intended.
“What do you think we’re trying to do?” said Zoe.
Piper looked behind him, surveying the plain between the town and the burned forest. Most of our troops had hunkered down now in whatever sparse shelter they could find. Some were huddled behind the bodies of horses or soldiers, peering up at the walled city above us. The Council soldiers, too, had regrouped, drawing back to the gates, though some fighting was still visible near the western gate.
“We need to make a push on the southern gate, while their soldiers are distracted by what’s going on inside the walls. Bring the archers forward to those boulders to cover us.” Piper gestured at a cluster of low boulders on the plain, a little to our west. “Pull back the troops from the eastern wall, too—we’ll need them all.”
This was it, then. The final push. Within the walls, the people of New Hobart would be fighting, and dying. On the plain below us were the broken bodies of our troops, and of the Council soldiers. Their twins, wherever they were, would never wake today. The carrion birds were coming with the dawn.
Under Simon’s and Piper’s directions, our surviving troops began to mass on a small hillock just south of the wall. Some arrows still reached us there, but I’d found that if I concentrated, I could usually sense their approach before we heard the sound, giving us a few extra seconds to scurry aside. Even those troops who had glared at me in the camp obeyed me now when I shouted my warnings.
It took half an hour for our troops to muster for the final assault. A small force of soldiers rode out of the town and tried to cut off one of our squadrons before it could join the main group, but the icy ground was treacherous for the horses and there were four axmen in the squadron who managed to hold them off long enough for the group to reach the shelter of the hill.
“How many of us are left?” I said to Piper.
He scanned the gathered troops. “More than half.”
Neither of us had to say it. Not enough. But we’d fought better than I would have dared to imagine. Already we’d lasted longer than my worst fears had predicted. Perhaps Piper had been right: our troops had needed to believe that winning was possible. It had made a difference. The axmen who I’d just watched, holding ten mounted soldiers at bay, had been different from the downcast troops at the encampment the day before. And those within the town had not only received our message, but they’d answered it and fought with us. It might not be enough to save any of us. But Piper had been right—there was some hope in this day, even among the blood.
We formed into rough lines, and again Piper, Zoe, and I were at the front. When Piper gave the shout to charge, we left the cover of the hillock and ran. Time, which had been running so speedily, now seemed very slow. I had time to hear everything: my own noisy breath. The knives tucked in Piper’s belt striking one another as he ran beside me. The sound of the soft new snow giving way underfoot, and the crunch of the icy layer beneath.
I called out a warning when I felt the arrows coming, but here we had no