The High Faelen’s word of command was a steel vice that gripped Riot’s body. He fought it, his muscles burning with the strain as he slowly regained control of his voice. “Back, get back inside!” he croaked.

  The command broke and the company surged back inside the ruined farmhouse charging through the open doorway and jumping through the empty windows. Ruddle groaned and his eyes rolled in his head as they hauled him bodily inside.

  They were all going to die here. The hedron was too valuable, and if Gerrard Price really did have information to trade, then the rest of them wouldn’t be left alive to tell the story of what happened. There were rules of war and edicts of honor, but in the end, both sides wanted to win, and a group of dirty infantry going missing was too easy to cover up.

  The door slammed closed, just as a shrill whistle pierced the morning, and it hammered open again, banging its hinges.

  “Crossbows to the windows, shoot anything that moves!” Riot yelled.

  Twenty-four men could still hold this place. It didn’t matter if there was a High Faelen out there, they never used whatever power they had, everyone knew that. Too proud or it was beneath them or something.

  Riot took up one of the heavy crossbows and immediately dropped it and clamped his hands to his ears as a sound like a swarm of murderous hornets filled the air.

  “Ye Gods,” Ruddle moaned from the corner, his face a mask of horror.

  The buzzing sound thrummed on the edge of Riot’s hearing. He’d heard it only once, a year ago, when a storm of twisting red light blasted a great rent in the thick city walls of Fallow. That day had been the start of the Mazral war against the Arcanum.

  “Get down!” Riot screamed, diving to the floor as the whole front wall of the farm-house exploded.

  Crumbling stones and rocks pounded down, throwing up a choking cloud of dust. With a groaning and snapping of tortured wood, the roof collapsed and Emerson hit the floor with a sickening thump, the skin of his neck pulled tight as his head pointed almost backwards.

  Weak morning light filtered through the dust as the last of the smaller stones clattered down. Men coughed and groaned, and then cried in pain as Faelen darts flickered in, cracking into stone and flesh.

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  Then the long-ears were among them, and Riot threw up his sword instinctively, catching a blade as it came down on him, kicking the Faelen in between the legs and slicing him wildly across the chest. He darted to his right and stabbed viciously at another red uniform, running the blade through to the hilt, so that they stood face to face as the Faelen’s body jerked like a speared fish.

  To his left, Cox and another man bellowed like crazed animals, driving their blades into their attacker before his allies charged in through the dust and cut them down in turn.

  Riot tried to reach them, but a Faelen dart smacked into the wall next to his head, driving chips of stone into his face. He stumbled sideways into someone and seized a handful of uniform, his sword coming around.

  “Sarge!” the figure yelped.

  Riot checked the wild swing of his blade as he recognised Swan, the man who had beaten the prisoner in the basement. The poor bastard should have run when he had the chance, because now he wore a terrified expression, his hands clutching at the bloody point of a sabre sticking out of his stomach.

  Swan fell down dead and a blow to the head sent Riot reeling into a wall. He slumped down onto his ass, and through his blurred vision he saw the tall Faelen officer, Alar-dal, picking his way over the rubble toward a wounded man, stabbing down even as his quarry held up his hands in desperate surrender.

  The Faelen officer spotted Riot and gave a grim smile as he ducked under a fallen roof beam to reach him.

  Riot’s sword was just out of reach of his searching fingers and he picked up a jagged stone instead.

  See the last man now, he thought. About to die.

  In truth, he felt something akin to relief. No more struggling every day to live up to a legend he never wanted. No more waiting for the day that his luck ran out. There was regret there too—disappointment that he hadn’t managed to lead them any better than men like Mercer. Plenty of anger, against Price and his damned Hedron, and Tarir-dal and his fucking wagon.

  Outside, a sluggish sun picked out the dull landscape under an iron gray sky. Beyond the farmhouse, figures waited on horseback, one of the tall silhouettes would be Gerrard Price.

  There was only one thing left to do. Riot was certain that the hedron would kill Alar-dal but he hoped it would take Price and the High Faelen, too, that would be something at least.

  Alar-dal reached Riot, his grim smile slipping as he noticed the small object in Riot's hand. His eyes grew wild and his sword clattered to the ground as he desperately stumbled backward, tripping on loose rubble and shrieking a warning to his fellows.

  See the last man now as he opens the catch of the hedron with his thumb. The two halves of the small sphere spring apart neatly on the hinge, and everything before him burns in the gray fury of the arcane.