Thousands of feeders bounded through their midst, gimlet-eyed and hungry for what was about to happen.
“Keep coming,” Angel whispered to herself, ignoring the feeders, concentrating on the once-men, her teeth clenched, the black staff gripped tightly. But there are so many! Too many for us to stop!
The front ranks reached the perimeter of the defensive lines, and the hidden explosives detonated, shredding hundreds of once-men. Screams mingled with clouds of smoke, and body parts flew everywhere. But the assault continued, fresh waves of attackers replacing those that had been decimated. A second set of charges went off, and again the attackers vanished in smoke and screams. This time the assault slowed, and the once-men, fragmented and scattered, struggled to mass anew.
Angel glanced over her shoulder at the dam. The last of the children were crossing, and now the adults who had helped them were beginning to file over as well.
“Fall back!” she shouted to the closest of the defenders, and then started down the line, drawing the attention of the rest. “Get back! Get across the dam!”
They began to withdraw in ones and twos, a too-slow response to her order. Frustrated, she stepped out into the open as the now fully regrouped once-men threw themselves at the defensive lines, and she sent the Word’s fire exploding out of her black staff into the attackers. The front ranks collapsed, but more kept coming. Skrails were diving at her from out of the sky, tearing at her with their claws, trying to distract or disable her. She ignored them, sweeping the fire across the flats and into the enemy hordes that filled them.
But there were too many to hold, even for her, and she screamed at the last of the defenders to run for the dam. Some did not make it. Some were caught from behind and dragged down. She tried to cover the retreat, but the once-men were coming at her from all sides, the feeders on their heels, invisible shadows. A pair of defenders wheeled back and cleared out those closest to her with their Parkhan Sprays, bravely standing their ground even as they were overrun. She raced for the dam, engulfed by the screams of those who sought to reach her, fighting through smoke and ash from the explosives and fires.
She had just reached the gorge embankment and was scrambling for the relative safety of the far side when a makeshift arrow drove deep into her shoulder and spun her about. She righted herself and kept going, but another caught her in the leg. Then a third buried itself deep in her side, and she felt a wave of shock and nausea wash through her. Her strength failing, she scrambled forward, bleeding heavily now, and then she was on the embankment crest, the dam wall just below her, and she saw someone standing not a dozen feet away, fully exposed as he faced the rush of the oncoming hordes . . .
Hawk!
She could hardly believe what she was seeing. The boy somehow had managed to stay behind instead of crossing over as he should have, and now he was just standing there, alone and unprotected.
Then suddenly the boy knelt and placed both palms against the earth, and she realized this was exactly where she had seen him kneeling earlier, when she had come up from examining the dam with Kirisin. His head was bent as before, and his eyes were closed. He might have been alone in the world for all the difference the ranks of attackers coming at him made. Steel-tipped arrows and spears and automatic weapons fire flew all around him, but he never moved.
Angel, crouching not twenty feet from him, wheeled back and sprayed the closest of the attackers with the black staff’s deadly fire. It wasn’t enough. The rush barely slowed. The feeders had outpaced the once-men and were almost on top of Angel and Hawk. They were both going to die. Why hadn’t the boy run, as he was supposed to? Why hadn’t he saved himself, when so much depended on it?
As if in answer, a massive tremor shook the earth, followed by a series of shudders that rippled outward from the embankment into the plains beyond, throwing the once-men to their knees. The attack stalled as bodies tumbled everywhere. The feeders broke off their rush to reach her, suddenly confused. The tremors continued, rough-edged and powerful, generated from somewhere deep underground.
But it wasn’t an earthquake that was causing them, Angel realized. It was Hawk.