The first assault would come to the village gate, as he had expected.
Tristan closed his eyes, picturing his father’s map of the Eyrie and surrounding lands. Despite being a religious site for decades, the Eyrie had good natural defenses, thanks to its origins as a training outpost, including its position on high ground and the sheer slopes that rose all around it. It was perched on a jagged outcrop, concealed by other spears of stone and rock and hidden from wider view. To the west the mountain dropped off, leading to a massive gorge situated miles below, and to the north the mountain soared high into the clouds and the upper reaches of Pyrmont. South of the Eyrie was a kind of ravine or ditch, sloping steeply down to the edges of the Field of Feathers and the thick trees that surrounded it. The way station and switchback stairs were to the east—the only way to approach the Eyrie on foot.
Since their attackers were coming from the east, up the stairs and through the village was their only plausible point of attack.
The wide double doors at the gate had been reinforced with wood beams and stacked barrels of grain, and Tristan’s best soldiers remained behind them in case the attackers broke through. Archers were stationed along the village wall, but it was lower and narrower than the wall that enclosed the stronghold, putting them in vulnerable positions. Still, if they could hold the soldiers at the gate, the inexperienced apprentices, villagers, and servants that manned the stronghold might never see any action at all.
Tristan watched closely as the soldiers split their forces: Half approached the gate with ax and fire, and the rest shot arrows into the sky to clear the wall’s defenders. Tristan redid his count. There were closer to two hundred soldiers that he could see in the open, plus maybe two dozen more crouched in the darkness at the edge of the field. They were still well short of what Sev had claimed, and even what the most recent scout had reported.
The soldiers at the edge of the field were busy unhooking large, round objects from their backs, lining them up in a row. Were they weapons, or supplies? As another round object landed on the ground, Tristan’s mouth went dry.
It was a battering ram.
It would be impossible to carry a heavy assault weapon like that up the narrow steps from the way station, but they had found a way to create one that broke down for easy transportation. They must have been planning this attack from the moment they made contact with Elliot almost a year ago.
A barrage of arrows flew from the village walls, and several of the attackers dropped. Since the stronghold doors were already locked tight, Tristan sent a runner through the concealed postern gate behind the stables, relaying the information about the ram in case Captain Flynn hadn’t seen it. If they could eliminate that threat, their defense would hold.
Or so Tristan thought.
His confidence shattered when the first grappling hook soared through the sky and landed with a clatter onto the stone walkway not five feet away from him.
The villagers nearby jumped at the sudden appearance of the three-pronged metal object attached to a thick coil of rope. It scraped along the ground and then flew up against the wall with a sudden, violent jerk, taking the weight of the climber on the other end.
Two more hooks flew over the wall, their resounding clanks driving fear deep into Tristan’s heart. They were coming from the south, from the steep ravine between the thrust of stone on which the Eyrie and the stronghold perched and the surrounding rocky landscape.
Surely these were the remaining soldiers from Sev’s count.
The battle outside the village was yet another diversion, an attempt to draw soldiers and resources away from the stronghold, where the inexperienced Riders and their phoenixes would be together, relatively unprotected. They’d managed to divide the Phoenix Riders’ already limited numbers into three smaller, less threatening groups—the patrols that had already flown out, the guards at the village gate, and their remaining forces at the stronghold.
Swallowing a sour lump in his throat, Tristan lurched toward the nearest hook and withdrew his belt knife. He hacked savagely at the rope, but it was treated with some kind of wax or resin, the woven thread almost impossible to get through, even with Ferronese steel.
“A serrated knife,” Veronyka said, coming to stand next to him.
Tristan continued to hack and gouge, ruining his blade as he hit metal and stone, the words taking several seconds to penetrate his frustration.
He took a deep, steadying breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Calm as the mountain.
When he opened them, he nodded at Veronyka and thrust his knife back into his belt. He turned to the nearest runner crouched at the bottom of the stairs, a small girl with wide eyes and—unless he was seeing things—a sparrow in her hair.
“Go to the kitchens and ask Morra for every serrated knife she has.”
The girl ran off as several more hooks flew over the wall. Tristan wanted to thank Veronyka for keeping a cool head when he could not, but to admit that weakness would be his undoing. Instead he shoved the moment of panic out of his mind and tried to regroup. Climbing onto a crate, Tristan looked over the edge of the wall.
It was a sheer drop, disappearing into darkness that Tristan knew was filled with shifting gravel, gnarled trees, and tangling vines. No one would dare attempt to climb these steep slopes unless they knew exactly what lay hidden within the labyrinthine walls of rock. And these soldiers did, thanks to Elliot.
The climbers were courageous to attempt to scale such a high wall with so many jagged stones below them, but Tristan didn’t have time to admire their bravery. Five hooks had made contact now, their climbers emerging from the trees at least a hundred feet below. They’d soon reach the top of the walls, and the angle was too steep and awkward for their archers to hit.
Rocks, Tristan thought. He sent another runner to ask for any kind of heavy objects they could throw down on the climbers, just as the first runner returned. She was helped by several kitchen hands, and serrated knives of all shapes and sizes were handed out along the wall. Tristan shouted instructions, his mind clearing as adrenaline kicked in. While some of their number worked hard to saw at the ropes, others moved to strategic points along the wall that gave them better angles to shoot the climbers with arrows or to drop the newly delivered stones, pottery, and scrap metal onto their unsuspecting heads.