The arrow skew­ers the heel of the sorcerer’s hand.

The sor­cerer screams, jerks his staff upwards—right into his fel­low sorcerer’s arm.

At the same moment, the skew­ered sorcerer’s staff blasts a bolt of light­ing.

The bolt carves a jagged line across the benches and plows right into the row of now-screaming hoplites.

 

“Hold ranks!” screams Nim­rod. “HOLD RANKS!”

The room erupts into a storm of light­ning, flames, and shat­tered stone. A vor­tex of black smoke streams up into the ceil­ing hole.

Glow­ing vio­let streaks criss­cross the smoke cloud.

“Yushas­tra!”

The mys­tic warps across the room in low arcs. He rolls safely behind pil­lar after pil­lar, takes cover, nocks another arrow, warps again.

One of the sor­cer­ers drops from the ceil­ing like a dead bird and crashes against a stone bench, crack­ing it in half.

Jaruna emerges from a pil­lar and takes a shot at Nim­rod. But the satrap has his gravitic scepter raised, and the arrow curves away, deflected in mid­flight. It clat­ters use­lessly against the adobe wall.

The scepter hums and its black astrate gems swal­low up light. Nim­rod waves it again and the mys­tic is lifted off his feet, pulled by unseen gravitic strings. The satrap flour­ishes the scepter and Jaruna floats back­wards towards a wall of flame.

Then Hat­van whirls his weapon, las­sos the scepter, and tugs the satrap off bal­ance. Jaruna falls to the floor like a dropped doll.

A hoplite breaks ranks and slices Hatvan’s rope with his sharp black­stone speartip. His commander’s weapon is freed. A half-second later this hoplite plum­mets to the floor scream­ing and gar­gling, neck pierced with an arrow.

“We have to get out of here!” Kiddu yells.

“How!?”

As if in answer, some­thing explodes so fiercely that my hear­ing is blown out.

 

All those bags of flame­craft in the Temple’s alcove. Their explo­sion col­lapses an entire wall into fiery chaos.

My teeth are rat­tling in my skull but my good eardrum is still intact. Dimly I see Kripa take Ayan by the arm and pull her towards this new open­ing.

Kiddu does the same with me. I cough in the smoke and debris as we race across the rapidly dis­in­te­grat­ing Tem­ple.

Light­ning slices through the black smoke, smashes into a pil­lar, blan­kets us in a layer of burn­ing dust. Fiery chunks of ceil­ing rain down and shat­ter on the floor, spray­ing frag­ments, the impacts only muddy thuds in my buzzing ear—

The open­ing. Flame-lined, shat­tered adobe, smoke and wind pour­ing out—

We leap through and stum­ble onto soft sand.

 

I stand up, gulp in the fresh air. Kiddu is in front of me.

In front of her are Kripa and Ayan.

In front of them is a small pha­lanx of hoplites all lying dazed or dead on the sand. The explo­sion had sent chunks of wall fly­ing into their ranks, bury­ing half of them in flam­ing debris.

A few of the hoplites start to pick them­selves up.

Kripa wastes no time what­so­ever. He takes out a clay can­nis­ter from his robe, throws it up in the air. Then he swings at it with his club.

The can­is­ter con­tains with­er­ing tinc­ture. It shat­ters and sprays all over the stunned sol­diers. Patches of their pearl­stone armor dis­solve onto their skin.

Some of the scream­ing and curs­ing hoplites rip off their melt­ing hel­mets. Kripa’s huge club smashes into their exposed skulls and they are ham­mered into the ground like tent-pegs.

“Come, princess!” Kripa yells. “To the east­ern gate!”

The princess and the big war­rior run and Kiddu and I fol­low right behind. Two thrown spears whis­tle past my head as I turn a cor­ner.

 

Mud hov­els line the twist­ing sand streets of the occu­pied dis­trict. The build­ings blend in with the dusky sky, cropped all around by the zigzag­ging out­line of the Divid­ing Wall. The Wall is omnipresent, hem­ming in this place like the court­yard of an over­sized prison fortress.

I turn around and catch quite a sight—the Sun Tem­ple, the tallest and grand­est struc­ture in the dis­trict by far, spews smoke like an erupt­ing vol­cano. Just as its dome begins to col­lapse in on itself, an arc of vio­let light shoots out from the plume.

It is fol­lowed by a peal of thun­der and a bolt of light­ing.

A lone sor­cerer hov­ers in the smoke-filled air above the Tem­ple. The sor­cerer sends jagged rib­bons of light­ning at Jaruna. The mys­tic avoids them by leapfrog-warping from rooftop to rooftop. The light­ning shat­ters the frag­ile mud build­ings that form the mystic’s footholds, carv­ing a swath of fly­ing dust and flame across the dis­trict.

I saw a sim­i­lar rooftop bat­tle sev­eral nights ago when we freed the lamashu. But this time, the mys­tic is not out­num­bered.

“Gil!” says Kiddu. “Hurry up!”

I turn from the duel above and run after her. The streets are empty but I can hear a crush of foot­steps close by, along with chant­ing:

Death to the Empire! Death to Akkad!
Death to the defilers of our Tem­ple!

I glance behind me again—the con­stant roar of thun­der just stopped, and I see the form of the float­ing sor­cerer drop into the smok­ing wreck of the Tem­ple.

Below this, I see a pha­lanx of hoplites march­ing fast down the street we’re stand­ing on.

“Do not look back!” Ayan yells.

I don’t any­more. We turn a cor­ner. The east­ern gate of the Divid­ing Wall is vis­i­ble now, a giant gravitic slab flanked by two mas­sive pylons, and the four of us race towards it, feet pound­ing into the sand—

 

I stum­ble and fall flat on the ground. The wind gets knocked out of me.

I try to push myself up. How did I even fall in the first place?

I can’t push myself up. My body feels impos­si­bly heavy.

“What the hell?” I hear Kiddu say. “I can’t move!”

I try to turn my head to see what’s hap­pen­ing and my cheek is pulled into the grainy sand. Kiddu, Kripa, and Ayan all lay in front of me, each sprawled help­less on the ground.

A heavy puls­ing hum fills the air. Wohm-wohm-wohm.

“Akka­dian … black … magic!” says Ayan.

The hum­ming gets louder. So does the sound of clank­ing armor.

Some­thing breaks next to my face. A clay can­is­ter. Kripa must have tried throw­ing it. He failed—the jar’s nox­ious con­tents spew out right next to my nose. I’m about to throw up.

HOPLITE SHIN.
BREAK FORMATION.
KILL THE BIG ONE AND
TAKE THE PRINCESS.

Satrap Nimrod’s voice is so loud that my bones shake.

“And the oth­ers?” says the hoplite.

TAKE THEM FOR INTERROGATION.
THEY’VE JOINED THE ENEMY,
THEY ARE BEYOND THE PALE—
AHGYUYUYUYUYUGHYUY!!!

Light­ning erupts from Kiddu’s hand and shakes the satrap’s pearlstone-plated body like a rat­tle.

“Yes!” says Kiddu. “Per­fect shot!”

Nim­rod drops his glow­ing scepter, falls to the ground, spas­ming, vomit spray­ing from his hel­met face­plate. In the same instant the gravitic magic hold­ing us against the ground breaks. I can move again.

Kiddu jumps to her feet, hold­ing a bolt-wand.

“That weapon,” says Ayan. “The trai­tor tried to use it against my brother!”

“I fig­ured it might come in handy.”

Nimrod’s hoplites are no longer dis­tracted by their now-unconscious com­man­der. They advance. Spears held high, ready to throw.

Kripa jumps up, raises his club. Kiddu holds the lit­tle wand out menacingly—pointlessly, since the astrate gem at the tip is dark now.

A hoplite brings his arm back to throw his spear.

 

The hoplite drops his spear as a heavy rock smashes against his shoul­der.

“Left flank!” he calls out. Mov­ing as one the hoplites all turn. Spears and shields coa­lesce into an impreg­nable wall fac­ing the rock-thrower.

They’re just in time. Natives swell towards them from a side street.

DEATH TO THE EMPIRE!
DEATH TO AKKAD!
DEATH TO THE DEFILERS OF OUR TEMPLE!

The natives rush the hastily-formed pha­lanx. They have clubs and makeshift staffs and most of them are skew­ered by the well-armed, well-trained hoplites. They fall in twitch­ing scream­ing heaps on the sand.

Then arrows whis­tle through the air. One hoplite falls. Then another.

Natives stream into the gaps like a wave devour­ing a sand cas­tle. Clubs bat at the hoplites exposed legs and backs.

“Ayan!” Kiddu yells. “Wait for us!” The princess and Kripa dis­ap­pear into the fast-flowing crowd. I spin around—the natives are pour­ing in from all sides.

Jaruna is nowhere in sight. The arrows have stopped whistling down.

Kiddu grabs my arm. Now natives are run­ning past us, clubs raised and yelling death threats.

One of the natives sees me. Skids to a stop. Raises his club.

“Filthy Akka­dian!” he yells.

“No! Wait!” I raise my hands in the air, sur­ren­der­ing as obvi­ously as I can.

It doesn’t stop the native rush­ing towards me.

The last thing I hear is Kiddu’s scream as the club cracks against my head.

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