shelter, and running as a pack meant there was no room to dodge. A woman to my left went down with an arrow to the face. The sound of the impact wasn’t fleshy—it was a bone crunch, like an ax into wood. There were shouts from behind me, too, as others were struck.
The arrows only relented when the first Council soldiers reached us, a hundred yards from the wall. After the spread-out clashes on the plain, here the fighting was cramped. Twice I had to duck to avoid the swords of our own troops. Piper and Zoe were fighting back-to-back. Between them, there were no spare movements, and nothing casual or accidental. Each sword thrust or elbow jab was precise and intentional. Everything that they touched bled.
“Stay close,” Piper grunted, glancing at me from the corner of his eye while he exchanged blows with a tall soldier.
I stayed as near to Piper and Zoe as I could, striking only when I had a clear chance and wouldn’t get in their way. But after several minutes, one of the Council soldiers had gained on Zoe, pushing her back so that she stumbled into Piper. She landed on her back, and managed to keep her sword in hand, but the soldier made the most of the fall and kicked out, hard, at her jaw. Her head was thrown back with the force of it, her neck exposed. When the soldier drew back his sword, I swung at the back of his head.
I’d traveled too long with hunters to be squeamish. I’d plucked pigeons and skinned rabbits and picked through the carcasses for anything edible, kidneys and liver and all. In the attack on the island I’d seen people killed, and smelled the rich iron whiff of blood. But this was different. I felt the resistance of the skin, and its giving way, and finally the jar of the blade lodging in bone.
I heard three screams: the dying man’s. His twin’s, in my mind. And my own, lasting longer than either of the others.
chapter 20
I pulled back my blade. The man fell as if my sword had been a hook on which his body hung.
Something broke in me. All the visions I’d had over the past few months were knocked loose, to rattle at random through my mind. The blast. Rows of tanks, now full of fire. The island’s crater, full of blood. The blast.
Piper grabbed me, shook me until I had to stop the scream to draw breath.
“Concentrate on staying alive,” he said, then shoved me to the side as another soldier came at him. I staggered back, sword shaking as I held it out before me.
I had already been responsible for more deaths than I knew. But this was new. The swing of my arms and the steel of my sword had put an end to that man. It was final, and absolute, and as intimate as a kiss. It could never be undone. His twin, wherever she was, some Omega somewhere, had died, too, without even knowing why.
“Pull yourself together,” Zoe shouted at me. I looked up. She was standing again, blood running from her mouth where the soldier had kicked her. Her shirt was sprayed with blood. At the collar it had stiffened, standing out from her neck at a strange angle. Even her teeth, as she shouted at me, had flecks of blood on them. Could she taste it? I wondered. What had happened to us? I used to work in the fields and grow things. Now, on this icy plain, I was a harvester of blood.
“Pull yourself together,” she shouted. I breathed out, and in again. Somehow my sword was still in my hands.
I looked up. We were making no progress. The front line of our final charge had already broken, the soldiers driving us farther from the wall. Simon and a cluster of his troops had gained a little ground, but not enough. They were cut off now, and surrounded by Council soldiers. They reminded me of the islands of the Sunken Shore, being gradually swallowed by the hungry tide. Simon fought with two swords, and a knife in his third hand. Nobody got past him. But two of the Omegas next to him had already fallen, and the soldiers were closing ever tighter around him.
Perhaps I felt the riders coming—perhaps that’s what led me to turn east, to the road, just as Piper gave the shout to push forward once again. I almost fell as