“Lila!” he gasped in a whisper.
She held a short sword in her left hand and a full-length sword in her right. It was Sturdy! She had retrieved it somehow. “Come, boy. I’ll get you out of here.”
He wiggled the board and uprooted it like a rotten tooth. He called over his shoulder to the other two, “Come on, we’ve got to go now.”
“You are insane, farm boy,” said Jed.
Brock lunged to his feet. “I’m going to run.”
Lila helped pull the board away and set it aside. Bannon thrust his shoulder into the opening, scraping his chest as he wriggled through the narrow gap. She grabbed his arm, and as he emerged, she handed him the sword. “I found this in the debris outside the camp. I thought you might want it back.”
He gripped the leather-wrapped hilt with a shiver of excitement. “Thank you.”
Brock worked his way through the gap, making the boards groan with his stockier chest. At his side, Jed pulled on the board, and with a loud snap the wood split, creating a greater opening. The sound, though, attracted attention.
“Now!” Lila whispered, tugging Bannon’s arm. “We have to go.”
Jed stumbled after Brock, and they were all outside the shack. The morazeth was already sprinting away, and Bannon followed her, calling to his companions, “Faster!” He could barely see the flickers of Lila beneath her special shadowy cloak. The other two ran after, heaving great breaths.
Then shouts resounded through the ancient army. “Prisoners escaping!” Soldiers ran to the fires, grabbed their weapons and firebrands. Their heavy footfalls thundered louder than their shouts. Three enemy warriors came in from different directions to cut off the escape.
Lila sprang forward with a hard kick, planting her foot in the center of one soldier’s chest, knocking him back. More shouts erupted in the night. Torches came closer as warriors hurried to intercept the captives.
Jed and Brock saw the oncoming soldiers and panicked. “They’ll catch us again,” Brock said. “Split up! We’ve got to get away.”
“No, we can all fight together,” Bannon shouted. “Follow Lila.”
The other two tore off in different directions, dodging the soldiers. Bannon kept up with the morazeth, ready with Sturdy to do as much damage as possible. The sword’s edge was dulled and notched from his fighting during the nighttime battle. He couldn’t remember his blood frenzy, but knew he must have killed dozens of Utros’s soldiers. He would have to do that again tonight.
Hardened warriors closed in from opposite directions, and Bannon’s heart sank. Lila threw off her cloak for greater freedom of movement. “At my side, Bannon. Show me how I taught you to fight.”
“But Jed and Brock…” he said.
“They’re lost. For now this is my fight and yours.”
Two soldiers blocked Lila, and more came from other directions. He and the morazeth would have to battle their way through, but Bannon feared he would be captured again, and this time they’d have Lila, too.
A feline blur crashed into the soldiers from the side, knocking two of them flat. Mrra raked her claws across the face of an ancient warrior, tearing the man’s jaw loose, then sprang away from him to attack another soldier.
Lila took advantage of the surprise and pounced on the next fighter, stabbing and hacking with such force that she killed him. Bannon saw his chance, too, and chopped down on the hard armor and stony skin of a fourth opponent. Their unexpected fury cleared a gap.
“Run, boy!” Lila sprang between the fallen soldiers as Mrra continued to attack. The morazeth raced into the shadows toward the charred hills, and Bannon fled after her, burning all the energy he had left, running for his very life. Mrra knocked down another pursuing soldier and crushed his throat in her jaws. Bannon and Lila ran without looking back, although the young man could think only of Jed and Brock still trapped. Maybe they had gotten away. Maybe …
Lila’s voice was rough and raw. “To the wall. There’s a low side door we can use to get back in.”
Bannon didn’t waste breath answering her, just kept up.
Because they were fleet and the half-petrified army was sluggish, they put distance between themselves and the rallying enemy forces. When they were safe, Mrra bounded off on her own, heading into the hills, where she could hide. When Lila slowed her frantic pace to a trot, she flashed Bannon a smile. “I am pleased to see that you survived, boy. It would have been a disappointment to me if you had been killed.”
“To me as well.” Bannon felt a rush of relief as they ran toward the high walls under the moonlight. He didn’t even criticize her for not using his name.
After the clamor died down, General Utros learned that one of the three prisoners had escaped, although the other two—the weak ones—were recaptured. He was disappointed to lose the young swordsman who had so impressed him with his fighting abilities.
First Commander Enoch reported, “They had assistance, General. Someone slipped in and helped them break free.”
“And there was a sand panther,” reported another soldier. His armor had been mangled, and one gray-white arm showed raked furrows from where the claws had injured him. “One of the combat animals from the Ildakar arenas.”
Utros was not impressed. “And we had hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who somehow couldn’t stop them.”
He ordered the two prisoners to be brought forward among the ranks. The young men, both bloodied, were dragged closer, weeping. Their wrists had been broken, intentionally, and they moaned in pain. Their bloodstained silken robes were tattered, and both reeked of urine from soaked patches on their pantaloons. Helpless, they looked at their broken wrists, lifting up their arms in disbelief to see their hands flop uselessly.
“We surrendered,” said Brock. “We won’t try to get away again.”
“The problem is, you are worthless to me,” Utros said, “and we have no food for captives.”
The two young men stood shivering as Utros paced before them. “But you can serve another purpose. You can pay for the damage you did, the malicious harm you inflicted upon my army when we were helpless.”
The captives looked up in pain-fogged confusion.
Utros said, “You were so brave when we could not move to defend ourselves or see who was attacking us. Do you even think about the horrors you have done? Do you understand the conditions in which you left some of my loyal soldiers? What you did was … evil.”
Utros issued a command, and shuffling figures were led forward, some of them guided by soldiers, others carried on blankets. The two captives, swimming in a sea of their own pain, looked up in horror as the mutilated ones came to face them. One man’s face was a slab of pounded meat, without a nose or eyes, just ripped skin and a smashed mouth. Others had limbs broken off completely, ears torn away, fingers snapped off to leave only chalky, meaty stumps. Several had no faces at all, and they made wet sucking sounds when they inhaled through holes in the battered ruins of their heads.
“No!” cried Jed.
“Behold what you did. These are the mangled ones, but they are my soldiers. They still want to fight the enemy.” He glanced from one whimpering captive to the other. The second boy pissed himself again. “You are both helpless now, just as they were helpless. You mutilated them when they could not fight back. Now, I will give them the same opportunity.” Utros turned to the mangled soldiers. “You can have them.”
The intact warriors stood in a great circle, crowding closer to watch while the two young men wept and wailed for mercy.