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He lowered the torch, scrambled down the ladder for the last time, then took off for the fire ring, where
he was met by several other Kalindons. Endrus carried Dravek s torch over the top of the ring while the
rest of them slipped through a tiny hole cut far from the entrance. Everyone dashed across the wide,
moonlit firebreak to the trees beyond.
Dravek hid with Endrus behind a thick arrowwood bush, where he could see the trail if he peered
through a small gap in the leaves. He carefully snuffed his own torch, ensuring that enough heat lay within
its core to resurrect it.
The Descendants came, a dozen soldiers slinking on the trail from the river. They hacked at his fire ring
with hatchets to create a hole wide enough for three or four men to walk abreast.
Dravek saw Daria standing behind a thick-trunked hickory. She gripped her bow as she watched the
Descendants begin their invasion. He knew she was dying to let arrows fly into their flesh. But not a single
Kalindon moved. Though the Ilion soldiers scanned the forest for lookouts, they saw no one. Dravek
hoped it didn t make them suspicious, but rather confirmed their belief that Kalindos was a village of lazy,
foolhardy drunkards.
Once the hole was complete, the Ilions advanced in full force, with no war cry, but trampling the soil so
hard that the ground seemed to quake beneath Dravek s feet. Instead of their usual red-and-yellow
uniforms, they wore dark brown shirts and trousers with no insignia or buttons, and their swords were
sheathed at their sides. No part of them reflected the moonlight shining across the barren firebreak.
The troops kept coming, running in step. Dravek stopped counting the rows of four after he reached two
hundred.
They would all die here.
Finally the entire battalion had passed into Kalindos. Ladek and Drenis were the first out of their hiding
places. They uncovered one of several large wooden pieces of wall that had been buried under leaves
around the fire ring. They carried it across the firebreak and heaved it vertical to block the opening. As
they held it in place, four other Kalindons tied it, sealing the ring.
The Descendants were trapped.
With a silent prayer to Snake, Dravek reignited his torch. It seemed as bright as the sun in the darkness.
Instinctively he wanted to shield it from the eyes of the Ilions, but the Kalindons had thickened the fire
ring so that no one could see through it.
Six Wolves gathered around him. They lit their torches from his, then took off, three in each direction.
Their speed and stamina would place them around the circle in less than five minutes, and their stealthy
footsteps would raise no alarm.
Dravek began to count under his breath, knowing the torch-bearing Wolves were doing the same. When
they reached three hundred, they all would light the ring.
One hundred.
Ladek had predicted that when the order came to retreat, the soldiers would head in the direction from
which they d come, toward the river and their ships, rather than take off on an unfamiliar path. So most
of the archers had been positioned here, near the Descendants original entrance.
Two hundred.
Adrek ran up with his longbow. Dravek lit his extra torch and handed it to the Cougar.  Burn it all.
Adrek sprinted to the deer blind perched in a hemlock tree just outside the firebreak. A cache of arrows
waited for him there, their tips soaked in flammable pine pitch.
Three hundred.
Dravek stepped across the rocky trench and lowered his torch to the wall. The dry wood sparked and
smoked, and just as he d hoped, the wind blew generously. The ring was ablaze.
He jammed the unlit end of the torch between two of the rocks in the trench, then moved back into the
firebreak, where he could feel it all.
Dravek closed his eyes. For the first time in over a year, he stoked a fire with something other than lust.
He wouldn t use thoughts of Sura to vaporize and kill.
Instead he thought of how they d murdered her mate and his parents, set the windows and doors ablaze
so even the children couldn t escape, how they d left Sura with scars inside and out.
Rage made his blood pulse hot through his veins. He turned its rhythm into fire.
His inner vision showed him the arc of Adrek s first arrow. It stopped midtrajectory, caught in a treetop.
Dravek pushed it, and the tree burst as if it had been struck by lightning.
Kalindos was burning. He took a deep breath to counter the crushing feeling in his chest. Better that their [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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