Page 60 of Heart of Defiance

I lay them out in the shadow of the wagon, pointing at five different angles toward the march. Then I grip my flint.

The Darium soldiers bellow in a wave of threatening war cries. A few enemy arrows careen amid the retreating figures around me, knocking one of my comrades and another into the dirt.

Just another ten paces. Another five. Another one…

I strike the flint and let the sparks catch on the bits of moss protruding from the back of the contraptions. With a hiss, the shifting parts set the pairs of tiny wheels into motion.

My explosive speedy mice hurtle from beneath the wagon into the midst of the marching army.

I scramble backward behind a fragment of a stone wall. There’s a startled bark and a crunch as one of my inventions must be spotted and stomped on.

But only one.

The moss burns hot and fast. I brace myself for disappointment—and the flames hit the mixture in the tiny, oil-drenched pouch at the middle.

The pouches burst in a series of small but fierce booms and spurts of the soil churned up by the impact. The surrounding soldiers yelp, several of them toppling.

And that’s it.

I freeze, dread chilling my gut.

Then the very earth creaks.

The thinned, cracked rock beneath the surface shudders with an expanding groan, the precarious balance overthrown. A smile crosses my face.

Even as shouts of alarm ring out amid the army, the solid ground they were walking on collapses in a brutal crash.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Signy

At the first rumbles of explosive fire, I peek out from behind the crumpled shed I was using for cover. My breath snags in my throat.

Hundreds of Darium soldiers have barged onto the field just outside town, the nearest of them just steps from the buildings. But their rigid lines are falling into disarray.

One clump of dozens of bodies careens down with the collapsing of the earth. Then another and another around the spots where Iko set off his explosive devices.

The effect of the initial collapses shakes the ground all the way to where I’m crouched—and more of the earth opens up, sending the soldiers tumbling. The cave-ins ripple outward as if the grassy plain is a lake with one massive stone dropped in the middle of it.

Skeletal-uniformed figures collide in a jumble amid the jutting stone edges of the underground caves. Some slump, blood seeping through their helms from cracked skulls. Others groan, their limbs splayed at unnatural angles.

They thought they were bringing death to us, but instead it’s come for them. Their uniforms couldn’t look more fitting. It’s as if a pit of corpses long dead and withered to bones lies before us.

I couldn’t have created a more stunning picture with all the paint in the world.

And Ididcreate this tableau. I imagined it and I brought it into being—for the men and women still fighting alongside me, for all of Velduny.

Even as awe sweeps through me, my body tenses, my fingers tightening around the grip of my short sword. The Darium force was too large for us to take outallof them this way.

For every body mangled in the cave-in, at least one other figure is scrambling back from the still crumpling edges of the earth, reaching to offer help to the nearest fallen, or rushing around the edges to deal out vengeance for our trick.

High Commander Livius’s horse stumbles under him, the ground cracking beneath the animal’s feet. As it goes down with a broken leg, he springs away before he can take any wounds of his own.

Seeing him and his ridiculous plumes still uninjured, I grit my teeth. But we have a more immediate problem.

The Darium infantry still standing hurtles around the edges of the pit. Arrows fly from our archers’ bows, some of them launching forward in sets of three from the crossbows Iko doctored.

It’s not enough to have conquered half the army with our scheme. We need to destroy every one of our enemies that we can.

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