“Any objections?” Pirin stared directly at the Gatemaster, the marshal, and the two weavelings. “Will you carry out my plan?”

  Gatemaster Nelmay opened her mouth, as if about to argue once more with him, but Pirin quickly said, “This isn’t about honour, my lady. This is about survival. If you give up here, you’ll be dooming the North to an age of submission.”

  “Why should I take orders from an Embercore king?” she snapped. “How do we even know you’re the true king? The throne hasn’t bloomed, and we’re worse off than ever. Now, he asks us to abandon our best fortification…for what? For time? No, we need more men! We need to hold the wall. Weavelings? You were sent here under my command, not his. Detain him!”

  “If you listen to me,” Pirin said to the weaveling middle-marshals in particular, “you’ll have the opportunity to save yourselves and your kind. Your people will live on, too.”

  Neither of the weavelings moved against Pirin.

  “Fine!” the gatemaster exclaimed. She drew her own sword. “An Embercore, huh? This is your last chance.”

  Pirin shook his head, then activated the fracturenet. With three steps, he crossed the room. To Nelmay’s mortal eyes, he would’ve blurred across the room, only to appear behind her. No time to waste. He struck her on the top of the head with the pommel of his sword, and she crumpled, unconscious.

  He turned to the Sirdian marshal. “Are you with me, or with her?”

  Pirin had probably seen the marshal before. Probably met the marshal before, even if he didn’t remember.

  Now, the marshal only gaped, staring at Pirin and the strength Pirin had mustered.

  “I’m with you, my lord,” the marshal said, bowing his head. “I will send out your orders.”

  “Very good.” Pirin nodded. “Alert everyone on the wall to the new plan, but proceed with your defence as planned—until it’s time to retreat.”

  One weaveling raised a hand, then tapped the table and motioned to a sheet of parchment. He was about to write, but Pirin said, “You can speak to me. I…I’ve learned bits of your language as best as I can.”

  The weaveling unleashed a stream of clicks and rustles that roughly translated to: “You’ll need someone to stall the Dominion while the defenders retreat from the wall. There are many of us who…who don’t have anything to do after this war. We are willing to give in order to destroy Lady Neria. There are enough us who hate her enough to sacrifice to see her destroyed. By your word, I would rally them and prepare a rear guard. We will cover your retreat.”

  “I understand,” Pirin said in Low Speech. “Gladly, I accept your sacrifice and your choice.”

  The weavelings both nodded and rose to their feet, and they followed Pirin as he descended down the tower. He ran down the stairs until he reached the entrance, then ran across the bridge to the main wall.

  The ramparts were wide enough to fit four rows of elven archers and footmen front to back. At the front, tall stone merlons protected the soldiers, and raised platforms hosted trebuchets, flak catapults, and repeating crossbows. Shorter, wider towers surrounded the wall’s main gate—a pair of thick wooden doors—and different sections of the wall jutted out, giving archers better angles to fire from.

  Nelmay had been right—partly. It was an excellent fortification. But against the Dominion, what they needed most was time. Maybe if Ivescent had sent all the extra weavelings to Dremfell, they’d have enough to hold the Dominion back for longer, but now, it worked somewhat in their favour.

  As much as it could.

  Pirin walked down a central aisle between the defending soldiers. By now, the approaching army was only a quarter-mile away. Siege towers pushed to the front of the ranks, then travelled the conscript horde, then behind them, trebuchets and heavier siege weaponry of the Dominion. High above, birds whirled about, ready to drop down once the defenders were distracted.

  Everyone on the wall was silent, except for messengers, delivering Pirin’s orders. Banners fluttered in the wind, and chainmail clinked. A pit settled in Pirin’s stomach. This had better work.

  He ran along the wall until he found the nearest Sirdian officer—a low-marshal in charge of a troop of archers. “When are the squadrons supposed to launch?” Pirin asked. Hopefully, the marshal knew.

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  “They’re to swoop in and attack once the rockwings pass the wall,” the elf said. “When the horns blow twice, that’s their signal to advance.” He was young—about the same age as Pirin, if not a year or two younger. “Wait…sir? Pirin…uh, my lord? Is it you?”

  “It’s me, yeah,” Pirin said. “I’m here to help, and if you follow your orders, you’ll have the best chance at making it through this. Now, I have birds to deal with.”

  He ran back along the wall, passing through the central aisle, as a shout rang out along the ramparts and echoed down the line. “Trebuchets!” the low-marshals echoed, raising their arms and pointing out toward the approaching army.

  With a leathery creak, the trebuchet counterweights dropped. Wood groaned and ropes creaked, then, with a thunk, the trebuchets unleashed their payload. They flung boulders and explosive barrels out at the approaching force. As they flew, the runes etched in the sides of the barrels glowed brighter and brighter, until, just above the ground, they detonated, destroying large swaths of the Dominion army. A lucky boulder smashed through a siege tower, scattering its riders and collapsing it.

  Hah! Gray exclaimed inside Pirin’s mind. They’re no match for our artillery! Their feeble towers are sandcastles against our catapults. Or…are those catapults? Or trebuchets? What’s the difference?

  But when the first volley ended, it barely made a dent in the Dominion army.

  Why did they stop? Gray complained. Keep going! You’ll crush them!

  Pirin ran through the aisle of soldiers until he reached the bridge to the gatemaster’s tower, where Gray still waited. “They have to reload, Gray. We don’t have much time, and they’re working as fast as they can.”

  How can the Dominion have so many soldiers? I know we saw the camp, but with them all fielded like this…it’s impressive! Maybe we should’ve joined them. Look at how strong they are!

  Gray was getting worse. He swallowed, then said, “They didn’t give us a choice, even if we wanted to. There are people back there behind that wall that need us, though, and we can’t leave them behind.”

  I…I was joking…mhm, yeah, that’s it!

  Pirin rolled his eyes, then climbed up into the saddle. A shadow passed overhead—a bird-shaped shadow—and charged at the wall. Talons outstretched, it plucked a pair of spearmen off the wall and crushed them, before a flak catapult swivelled toward it and annihilated it with a spattering of gravel.

  So that was how it felt to be on the receiving end of a bird attack.

  More rockwings were coming, swooping down with talons outstretched or bombs ready to deploy. All along the wall, elves blew deep, woody horns—loud enough to make his neck tingle. At the first blast, archers stepped forward to the crenellations and nocked arrows, then drew their bows back, then, at the command of their nearby marshals, fired a volley off into the crowd.

  At the second horn blast, Sirdian riders took off from the distant hangars. Gnatsnappers streamed out the openings in the caves, launching one after another, and formed up into squadrons in the air. They carried light weapons—bows and spears—for dogfighting. Pirin clicked his tongue and signalled for Gray to take flight too.

  She jumped up and lifted off with a flutter. What’s the plan, then?

  “We’re going to attack birds until we catch the eye of an Unbound, then we’re going to lead them off before they breach the wall.”

  What about the Flares? Neria’s army has five hundred flares, right?

  “They might be strong, but they won’t be able to bring down the wall on their own. Not when we have an army of weavelings defending it.”

  He and Gray ascended to a fighting height—just above the treeline and the edge of the valley—then charged. The rest of the Sirdian gnatsnapper pilots were right behind him, urging their mounts to charge in and attack the dive bombers.

  Pirin, without his mask on, prepared a Shattered Palm, then launched it at the nearest rockwing. The Essence of his strike washed over the pilot, sending her tumbling, and fuelling the runes of her bomb.

  In a flash, it detonated, wiping out an entire squadron of birds.

  By his estimate, there were about two hundred rockwings in the sky. He couldn’t say for certain how large the Sirdian air-fleet was, but there were probably only half that many.

  He needed to cut their number down to a manageable amount for the air defenses to destroy before he caught the attention of the Unbound. Alone, that’d be an impossible task. There just wasn’t enough time.

  But he wasn’t alone.

  He looked down at his haversack, where G?ttrur peered out, then ran his hand down the back of the fox’s head. “We’re going to try organizing the pilots. They need to act in perfect unison, and we can help them with that.”

  G?ttrur wasn’t like Gray, though. She couldn’t understand perfectly. But Pirin would also be doing most of the work.

  He flexed his fingers, then leaned closer to Gray. They swerved to avoid a volley of arrows, then ducked under a sweeping bird’s talon’s. “Gray?” Pirin asked. “You think you can keep us in the air while I get the technique going?”

  Of course! Just make sure you don’t fall out of the saddle.

  Good enough.

  Pirin locked his elbows around the saddle’s pommel, keeping himself stable, then slid his mask on. He’d need proper control of his bloodline abilities if he wanted this to work.

  “Swoop past every one of our riders!” Pirin instructed. “I need to lock onto their presences!”

  He’d done this once before, but had only been with three people—and two of them consciously understood what he was doing. Now, there were about fifty riders that he needed to synchronize.

  “Alright, G?ttrur…” Pirin whispered. “I hope you can sort this all…”