ripping wood, the gate was breached, grappling irons hauling the spars from the frame. The Ringmaster’s army had the numbers to keep the Council troops at bay while they prized the gate apart. Already, the new attackers were streaming into the town. There was no way that New Hobart could withstand this onslaught.
The soldiers facing us had realized they were about to be trapped between the Ringmaster’s forces and ours. A squadron of his soldiers had already veered away from the fallen gate and were galloping in formation along the wall toward us. They wore the same red uniform as the Council’s soldiers, but didn’t hesitate to ride them down. There were cries for the Council soldiers on the plain to retreat and regroup. But there was nowhere for them to retreat to. The eastern gate was down, and our forces, though depleted, were still pushing in from the south and west. More of the Ringmaster’s troops were pouring onto the plain from the east. Now that they were closer, I could see that they each wore a strip of black cloth bound around the forehead, to distinguish them from the soldiers they were facing. Everywhere I looked, the black-banded soldiers outnumbered the others.
Once they’d taken the eastern gate, the town fell quickly. More smoke rose from within the walls. The southern gate, closest to us, was forced open from within, and it was the Ringmaster’s troops who stormed their way through the fighting at the base of the watchtower and rushed out of the gate. I heard shouts from within the walls, and imagined the confusion of the townsfolk, faced with these new arrivals who still wore the Council’s red tunics but who were fighting alongside them to free the town.
Something pale swung from the eastern watchtower. At first I thought it might be another body, slumped over the railing. But the wind gusted and the pale object lifted, flapped twice, and then unfurled. I could see the silhouette of a hunchbacked woman, raising the flag to the wind. It was the Omega insignia, painted on a sheet.
The Council had branded it on our foreheads. Now, it hung from the tower, above the smoke and blood. The town had fallen.
Out on the plain, the remaining Council soldiers were fighting with the frenzied energy of those who knew they could not win. Next to me, Zoe struggled hand to hand with a bearded man. Beside her was Piper, holding off a soldier who was already bleeding from a slash to the head. Piper dodged beneath the blow of a second soldier, a woman bearing an ax. When she saw me standing behind him, she came straight at me, ax raised. She looked as scared as I was, her eyes open too wide, white showing all around the pupils, like those of the horse I had killed. Had that been only hours before? Time had slowed until it was something I waded through, like the bloodied snow.
I raised my sword and braced myself. I blocked the first swing. When she came at me again, the impact knocked the sword from my hands. She raised the ax once more. Everything in the frost-tipped morning suddenly seemed very bright. Zach, I thought. What have I done to you? What have you done to us?
chapter 21
My first thought on waking was that I must be back in the deadlands—my vision had the same cloudiness as in those weeks of watering eyes and ash-laden winds. Then I saw that I was indoors, and there was no ash, only a blurriness that pulsed slightly, the room around me sharpening, then slipping back into haze, keeping time with the throbbing lump at the back of my head.
It took a while for me to distinguish between the different pains in my body. The surface pain of the grazes and scrapes on my knuckles and knees. The tightness at the side of my head, the swollen skin amplifying my pulse so that each beat became a wince. And the one pain around which the others orbited: my right forearm.
“She’s awake.” Zoe’s voice.
Piper walked toward me. He was limping heavily.
“You hurt your leg?”
“No.” He gestured at Zoe. She was still sitting, and as my vision began to clear I could make out a bandage around her right thigh. Blood had seeped through it, carving a red smile in the white cloth.
“It’s a clean cut, and it’s been stitched. It’ll heal quickly,” she said.