Page 27 of A War of Crowns

Dane snatched forth his first arrow. He nocked it. He drew. He aimed for the slit between Arathian shields.

He fired.

One soldier crumpled to the sand. But the rest of the line didn’t so much as falter. They but ran on, drawing closer by the moment.

“Bring them down!” Sir Conall barked again.

At his side, Thorley cursed under his breath as more arrows rained from their fingers. Dane could nearly taste the tension choking the archer ranks. They struggled to make a dent in the enemy’s numbers.

And then the first ladder slammed into place against the ramparts.

Out in the dunes, another horn blast sounded over the never-ending pulse of the drums. Dane could see war elephants incoming, each pulling something large behind it.

He narrowed his eyes against the purple shadows of the evening, trying to make sense of the strange wooden structures. “Are those siege towers or trebuchets, sir?”

“Trebuchets!” Sir Conall called, just as Dane drew the last arrow from his quiver. “Prepare to engage! We hold this wall, men. We hold this wall until our last breath.”

Two of the soldiers in their unit broke rank and hurried toward the nearest ladder. But when they tried to shove it from the wall, the soldier on the right abruptly tumbled from the ramparts and pitched into the night, screaming.

Dane flinched away from the sound.

The first Arathian appeared at the top of the ladder, wielding some sort of strange hooked weapon. Dane leveled his last arrow at the invading soldier and aimed for the slit in the Arathian’s helm. With a twang of his bowstring, he sent the man careening off the top of the wall.

But now he was out of arrows.

And the Arathians kept coming.

The enemy soldiers crawled their way onto the ramparts like so many ants; steel clashed against steel all down the length of the wall as other units engaged. Shouts rang out into the night. Desperation choked the air.

Setting aside his bow, Dane drew his axe and unslung his shield instead. He had never been any good with an axe. He was a hunter, not a soldier.

He should never have let Hedley talk him into enlisting in the army.

The Arathian before him wielded a weapon that reminded him of a sickle. When the man lunged, Dane just barely raised his shield in time to block the blow.

But at least he wasn’t facing the enemy alone.

Thorley stepped in and cracked the Arathian in the face with his own axe, sending the other soldier reeling. The Arathian’s helmet spun straight off his head with the blow. A scarf covered the lower half of his face.

And his pupils were eerily dilated.

The latter made the hairs on the back of Dane’s neck prickle.

A muffled laugh exploded from the Arathian when the enemy soldier lurched forward again, his sickle aiming for Thorley that time. Setting his jaw, Dane threw his entire weight behind smashing his shield into the Arathian’s shoulder. He drove the other off-balance so Thorley could get in another axe swing.

Within those close quarters, Dane’s nose burned with the desert dweller’s strange scent. He smelled bitter and unpleasant—like witchfire.

“Your phantom is quick, but not quick enough,” the Arathian taunted through the fabric of his scarf. And though the man spoke the common tongue, his accent was so thick it took Dane a few moments tounderstand his words.

When he did, Dane’s eyebrows furrowed. “Phantom? What phantom?”

“Incoming!” Sir Conall shouted again, just as some dark shape arced up and over the wall, launched from the closest trebuchet. Whatever it was, it brought with it the sickly sweet stench of death and something else.

Something that smelled just as bitter as the man before him.

“The Lady sends her regards,” the Arathian said in the moment before Thorley brought his axe down over the man’s head again.

The enemy dropped, limp, to their feet and Thorley growled, “You’re welcome, Wilsham.” But Dane had no reply.

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