Pirin and Gray circled around above the Featherflight. Pirin, with his mask on, used gnatsnapper Essence to manipulate the currents of wind and keep the airship moving, even as it took a circular route around the valley to approach the wall from the north and keep out of danger.

  The battle hadn’t started yet. The Dominion army was approaching under the midday sun, right in broad daylight, and they’d reach the wall within the hour. Their plume of dust would’ve been visible from the wall for a while, and the soldiers on it should be able to see the approaching army now, too.

  But that didn’t mean Pirin had to throw the Featherflight right into danger.

  Near the top of the valley, hollowed-out caverns hosted bird hangars. They were a half-mile north of the wall itself, too, and scattered across the forested slopes as if somehow, the trees would hide the yawning mouths of stone and wooden landing platforms hanging over the slope.

  Each one of the platforms was large enough to give a regular gnatsnapper enough of a runway to take off. It’d be large enough to hold the Featherflight.

  The Featherflight passed over the mountain peaks at the edge of the pass, and Pirin imagined the ballonets constricting. The entire vessel dipped and circled toward the nearest landing platform. Pirin helped push the ship down, and then helped slow it as it approached the platform. But, when the vessel was close to the surface and any wrong movement could result in destruction, he stopped and let Alyus and Brealtod land normally.

  They hooked the ship to a platform and pulled it down, then tied extra mooring lines to the bollards at the platform’s edge.

  A troop of Sirdian riders ran out the cave opening, wearing their light riding armour and carrying longbows. “What are you doing?” one yelled. “You can’t block this launching strip right before a battle!”

  Pirin circled down and landed Gray in front of them, then jumped out from the saddle. He pushed his hair away from his ears, and hoped they’d know who he was right away.

  The riders all backed away, and after a few seconds, a few bowed.

  “Cut the pleasantries,” Pirin said. “We need this landing platform for the airship. You can launch around it when the time comes.”

  “Y—yes…my lord?” one rider said, tilting his head. A confused expression gripped his face.

  “Where is your commander?” Pirin asked.

  “The Gatemaster will be…making commands from the Fell Tower, sir,” a different rider said. “She ordered us to all prepare for battle.”

  “Do…do you think we can hold them off?” a third rider asked. “You’re a wizard, aren’t you? You can fight them off.”

  Pirin swallowed. “I think we have to try. This is the best chokepoint we’ll ever get, and we have to take as many of them with us as we can.”

  Nomad was the first to step out of the Featherflight’s gondola. As soon as Pirin saw the man, he told the pilots, “Now, I need you to do your part as well. Make your final preparations, and get your squadrons in the best fighting condition possible. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” The group ran back inside their hangar, to the torch-lit chamber of bird-riders and archers.

  Pirin turned to Nomad. “Sir—”

  “Pirin, we need to talk.”

  “Yeah, I was going to say.”

  “I’m not optimistic about our odds at Dremfell, and…if we fail here, if you die, then Sirdia is lost for certain.”

  Pirin rubbed the bridge of his nose. If he’d had his old eyeglasses, he’d have adjusted them and pushed them up, but no more. “What are you suggesting? That we should just abandon the wall and let them into the nation? That…we should sacrifice thousands of lives just for victory? We have to try!”

  “I reckon that’s too cold, no.” Nomad shook his head. “We must evacuate the wall, and prepare the army to retreat.”

  “To where?”

  “Northvel. It’s not a perfect bastion, but it’ll be their next target. There’s room for extra civilians, and it can survive a siege for longer than a simple, straight wall.”

  Pirin nodded. “I’ll speak to this Gatemaster. But even if we retreat to Northvel, I worry it won’t last long against the Unbound.” He exhaled and tightened his fists. It was an impossible bargain, but he knew he had to do something. “We’ll use Dremfell to hold them off long enough to begin an evacuation. Then, once the army is in full and effective retreat, and once we’ve quelled their rockwing squadrons, I’ll leave. I’ll draw the Unbound away.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Leave?”

  “I’ll travel to Kerstel. Northvel needs to hold until I return, though.”

  Nomad nodded. “I appreciate the thought.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  He smiled. “No. I simply…wasn’t sure if I’d see the day where my mistakes were beginning to remedy themselves.”

  “Remedy themselves?” Pirin shook his head. “We’re fixing them. One step at a time. Now…I’m going to the tower. We need to organize the defences and make a plan.”

  “Wait,” Nomad said. He reached out, holding G?ttrur in his hands. The tiny crystal fox was awake, now, and it scampered down Nomad’s arm, then jumped into Pirin’s hands. “You’ll need him if you want to keep the defenses steady.”

  “I…will?”

  “Battle meditation, Pirin. You did it once before, and you can do it again. It might be a larger scale, but they need you. Besides, you’re more powerful now.”

  Pirin tucked G?ttrur into his haversack and left it unbuttoned so the friendly wraith could peer out through the crack.

  He hopped back into Gray’s saddle, then urged her to the edge of the launch platform. With a flutter, she took off, racing toward the Dremfell Wall and the city behind it. Specifically, he targeted the city’s only tower.

  It was a spire of old beige stone just behind the wall, reaching up a few hundred feet over the main wall. Fins of old stone reached out the side of the tower’s angular walls, making it look wider than it actually was, and near the top, they reached up higher than the main structure, giving it the appearance of a crown.

  To get into the tower, Pirin could either land at the surface, but the streets and plazas around the tower’s base had weavelings packed into every inch of them. Instead, he flew to the thin bridge between the wall and the tower, then dismounted and ran inside. Gray would’ve joined him if she could fit through the tower’s door, but as it was, Pirin had to duck to slip through.

  Two guards intercepted him when he was inside—until they saw his armour and hair, and acknowledged him with a “My lord.” They backed away.

  “Where is the Gatemaster?” Pirin asked.

  They pointed up the stairs.

  A spiral staircase ran up the center of the tower, and Pirin took the steps two at a time. He passed small, central rooms. Whenever he passed an outward-facing window, he stared out at the army beyond. The wave of soldiers was getting closer, advancing steadily, but it was almost a snail’s pace. Why couldn’t they just arrive and be done with it, sprint to the wall, and let everything begin.

  Or just turn away. That would be nice, too. But it was never happening.

  When Pirin reached the top of the staircase, he arrived in a small, low-ceilinged room with a table at the center and a lantern hanging from the roof, compensating for the meagre natural light that slipped through the south-facing window slits.

  An elven woman stood behind the table, with a Sirdian marshal and two weaveling middle-marshals around it.

  “Gatemaster?” Pirin asked, turning toward the elven woman. She wore a simple administrator’s robe—white with blue embroidery—and carried a short sword at her hip. “You are the Gatemaster, right?”

  He didn’t have time to inform himself about the term, or its roles, but he assumed she was the commander of this city, the organizer of its defences.

  “My lord,” she said. “I am Gatemaster Nelmay, lord of this city. I’ve defended it before, and I will defend it again—no matter how many conscripts they throw at us. The wall can take it.” Her long brown hair was going gray with age, but her face still held inklings of former, tough pride, and a battle scar left a notch in her chin.

  At least she wasn’t all talk.

  “Right. I see you’ve already prepared the defences.” Pirin walked to the front-facing windows and looked down over the wall and the weaveling army. “Is that everything you have in the city?”

  “It looks like less from up here,” Nelmay said. She rushed closer to him, then whispered, “Is it true that you recruited those weavelings, my lord?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “You don’t have to. I do. They’ll fight for us, because for them, this is just as much about their own existence as ours. If Neria wins, she’ll lord over all the North, and there will be no safe place for her former slave army.”

  “But…how? How’d you recruit them? It must be some trick, some horrid soul contract. You bound yourself to a spirit beast, perhaps, or got some other wizard to help you? Do you have an Aerdian accomplice? An Embercore couldn’t have done this!”

  Pirin scowled, then turned back toward her. There was no point in arguing with her. She wasn’t a wizard, just a mortal noblewoman—battle scarred or not. He didn’t have to justify his strength, and ruling with his power as the only justification wasn’t supposed to be his plan. “If I give you a command, would you accept it, then?”

  Nelmay swallowed, then scowled. She glanced at her marshal, who nodded, then at the two weavelings who remained stoic. Finally, she said, “My lord, you are an Embercore, and with all due respect, your combat experience is best deferred to those who know what they’re doing. All the kings of Khirdia used marshals for smaller engagements, because they couldn’t be everywhere at—”

  “How highly do you value this wall?”

  “Pardon?”

  “If I ordered you to evacuate in the best interests of my people and the army, to regroup at Northvel, and to make our final stand there, would you?” He let his spirit swell, pushed a pulse of pressure through it. The weavelings stared at him, the marshal backed away and bowed.

  Nelmay tried to look up once more in defiance. “This wall has never fallen, and it won’t under my watch! It would be a horrible dishonour.”

  Pirin cycled a full burst of Essence, letting his Blaze power flow through his channels and up the two open Gates in his central channel.

  “Gatemaster, for the good of this nation, and this continent as a whole, I order you to evacuate. The plan is this: you will send your fastest riders across the Sirdian countryside. Stop in every city without a wall, and spread the word: civilians are to evacuate to the nearest foritfied city, and if there is none within a three-days’ walk, they must retreat to Northvel. All cities are to send whatever army they can spare to Northvel.”

  The Sirdian marshal pulled across a sheet of parchment and wrote Pirin’s orders down, but the Gatemaster still stared intently at him. He didn’t want to use the Whisper Hitch, but if he had to make this easier?

  “My lord, if you abandon the wall, your retreating army will get annihilated on the way to Northvel. Their riders will catch us, and without fortifications, we’ll be powerless against them.”

  “That’s why we’re going to use Dremfell to buy time. I’ll lead the squadrons out and annihilate their air-army, and you’ll hold the wall as long as you can. Then, I’ll distract the wizards. At noon tomorrow, retreat with everyone you have left and make for Northvel.”