Page 28 of A War of Crowns

He turned about and watched in horror as the dead thing the Arathians had just launched past the wall finally crashed down to the ground far below.

The moment the mass connected with the cobblestones, it exploded in a cloud of dark smoke, which buzzed like bees before suddenly dispersing through the air. The smog moved as if it had a mind of its own, as if it wasalive, as it flitted down every side street and alleyway.

And it brought with it that metallic tang Dane now associated with the witches of Arath.

“What is it?” Dane shouted to Sir Conall. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” his commanding knight admitted after a tense moment of silence. “The Lord help us, but I don’t know.”

Another mass sailed over the wall and exploded on impact, bringing with it more of that strange smoke. The higher the smokerose, the more coughing rang out all down the length of the wall—from both their own men and the Arathians alike.

There was something sweet about it, that smoke. But it was thick. And the more of it Dane breathed in, the more the world before him swam and spun. The stars overhead turned to scarlet. The stone ramparts rippled like ocean waves.

“Don’t breathe it in! Cover your mouths!” Sir Conall commanded through his own hacking.

Lightheaded, Dane crouched down and groped until he found the dead Arathian’s face scarf. Yanking it free, he took off his helmet long enough to wind that scarf about his own mouth and nose.

With the scarf, he could breathe easier. But the world all around him was still swiftly shifting into something he barely recognized.

The ramparts seemed to tilt, and Dane tilted along with them. When he crashed into Thorley’s shoulder, his fellow soldier wrapped an arm around him to hold him steady. “Look at the pretty lights, Wilsham.”

Out in the desert, great bonfires sparkled to life, streaked through with all the colors of a rainbow. They were pretty. Terribly pretty.

But for some strange reason, he thought he could now hear men screaming in the distance, beneath the thrumming of the war drums and the crash of bodies still colliding there atop the ramparts.

Chapter seven

Hedley

Angry shouts rattled through the air behind him as he doubled back and flitted through enemy lines. Even disguised in what pieces of Arathian armor he had found that would fit him, Hedley stood out in the worst way in that sea of towering desert dwellers.

He was far too short to pass for a man of Arath.

The screams of men and the bellows of frightened elephants lilted over the dunes. When matched alongside the boom of the war drums, it all made for a rather haunting melody.

No matter what he did, the drums never stopped. Not for a single moment.

Not even when he set fire to their precious siege weapons.

It had taken the Arathians months to gather what wood they could from the forests past the red mountains off to thenortheast. It had taken them more months still to build the contraptions they now used against the walls of Fort Mysai. He had done his best to sabotage them every step of the way.

But he was only one man. One man fighting an entire army.

There was only so much he could do.

The last trebuchet loomed in the near distance, separated from him by row upon row of tidy tents. He had lost his torch—and precious moments—when he took down the third contraption, thanks to the witch who had been waiting for him.

He could still feel it, the heat of her fire, bathing his back when he had fled from her. He’d just have to find a new torch before he made it to the last weapon.

There had to be one around the camp somewhere.

Hedley had learned during his time watching the Arathians that the witches only breathed their fire in battle. They never used it for more mundane tasks like lighting campfires or warming soup. He didn’t understand that. If he could breathe fire, he would have used it for every little thing.

Like setting that whole accursed camp ablaze.

When Hedley dove down the next alleyway provided by the tents, he drew himself up short when he found himself face-to-face with the very witch from which he had just fled. Her strange, golden eyes shone in the darkness, and she smiled at him with all the smugness of a cat that had just cornered a mouse.

Hedley swallowed. His eyes darted between the three Arathian men she had with her. Only one had the glassy-eyed stare of a man he knew he couldn’t kill.

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