Page 150 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

Stavros scans the battle with an intensity that hums off him, flicking his gaze every couple of seconds to refocus his damaged vision. Alek and Casimir adjust their positions below us, unable to see much from their lower vantage point.

“How does it look?” Casimir asks in a hushed voice just loud enough to reach us.

I smile. “The Darium soldiers are carving their way through the march, but the Order members are taking down quite a few of them in the process. The scourge sorcerers don’t seem to be able to?—”

Before I can finish that sentence, a sudden wave of energy slams into the Darium soldiers.

As my pulse hitches, the front lines of the Darium troops topple into each other. Blood splatters red across the white-painted patterns on their uniforms.

More magic thrums through the air. I swallow thickly, a cold sweat breaking over my skin. “The scourge sorcerers have rallied. I don’t know how.”

Stavros’s body goes totally rigid. “Rheave, take out that man, the one in green off to the side of the battleground!” He jerks his arm forward to point.

Rheave’s arrow springs from his bow in the same instant. With the sizzle of his energy, it flies true.

The arrow strikes a figure in a green cloak in the side of the head, and he slumps into a heap at the edge of the fray.

Stavros’s knuckles have whitened where he’s gripping the wooden railing alongside me. “I saw—my gift—that sorcerer was going to unleash a blast of power that’d have killed dozens of the soldiers.”

Even as he speaks, more magic streaks through the battle. There are other sorcerers still ramping up their attacks.

The former general pushes away from the railing. “They’re turning the tide. The Darium soldiers haven’t felled enough of the Order members to ensure the march won’t still attack the king. We need to finish them while they’re distracted.”

My stomach flips over. “What are you going to do?”

“Rally reinforcements.” He motions to Rheave with his prosthetic as he grasps the ladder with his other hand. “Come with me. We need to open the fort and get the support of our own soldiers. Casimir, you ride with us too—maybe you can use your knack for diplomacy to convince them not to slaughter us for trapping them first.”

He's already clambered down the ladder before he’s finished speaking. The three men dash into the woods to grab the horses and set off at a gallop.

Uneasiness creeps over my skin. I glance down at Alek. “Do you have any idea how many soldiers would be in that fort?”

He shakes his head. What I can make out of his expression in the darkness looks sickly. “Less than a hundred, I’d imagine.”

“Not necessarily enough to turn the tide if the Darium soldiers can’t.”

“No.”

Julita shudders in my head. I suppose Stavros feels he needs to take every possible chance to destroy the threat here. He’s alerted the king—there could be more royal troops on their way.

Maybe. But will even that be enough against the scourge sorcerers at their full power?

What shook them out of their demoralized state? I couldn’t see anything from up here that explained it…

As I peer at the continuing battle, the currents of magic shift against my skin. My gaze veers to the west.

I could swear a significant waft of that energy is coming not from the battlefield but from farther afield.

Is someone helping them from a distance?

I didn’t notice that current of power before. Has a new arrival come to rally their colleagues?

Squinting through the night, I can’t distinguish any figures or even definite structures on the low hills in that direction. But as I stare, a crow circles beneath the stars and then flies to the southwest with a faint caw.

Julita lets out a ragged laugh. I think your godlen is summoning you.

Whether Kosmel is or not, I have to act. Someone’s supporting the scourge sorcerers from over there, where the sight of death in the form of the Darium soldiers isn’t affecting them.

And my sensitivity to their magic is the only means we have of hunting them down.

---