Bo threw his hand up in a warding gesture. A second later a canister shot went off right above their heads, the echo of the blast ringing through the bastion. Bo's shields flashed red as the bullets clattered off them, then fell harmlessly to the ground. Canisters exploded over the entire length of the bastion, the sound deafening. The wall at Taniel's back shook with the impact of cannonballs. He glanced at Ka-poel. Her eyes were dark. She hadn't even flinched.

"They must be firing every damned artillery they have!" Taniel said above the din. Bo ignored him. His face was strained, his hands flashing at an incredible speed as he worked sorcery to shield the air above the bastion.

The bombardment was withering. Bo's eyes began to water, veins standing out on his forehead. Fire flashed above them, and Taniel knew that sorcery was backing up the Kez artillery.

Watchers rushed beneath Bo's shields, flinching at the explosions above, carrying sacks and torches. One Watcher set a sack gently beside Taniel and was off for another after a quick glance at Bo and a muttered prayer. Taniel looked inside the sack. It was full of clay balls as large as a man's fist. Grenados. They expected the Kez to get close today indeed.

"Fix bayonets!" Gavril's bellow rose above the concussion of artillery. Taniel felt his heart beat faster. He pulled his ring bayonet from its leather case in his pack and slid it over the end of his rifle. With a twist it locked into place.

"Ready!" Gavril yelled.

Taniel checked his rifle-already loaded. He glanced at Bo. The Privileged was doing all he could do to stay standing while his fingers flashed commands to unseen elements. His shields were beginning to break down. On the other end of the bulwark a canister shot went off within the shield. Men screamed and fell, and a cannon lost its crew.

Taniel peeked over the edge of the bulwark as a trumpet sounded. The mountainside suddenly swarmed with Kez soldiers. They rushed up the road, they climbed the steep rocks. Every inch of mountainside was covered. Where had they been hiding all of these men so close to the fortress?

"Aim!"

Taniel picked out an officer near the front. The man's white feather wriggled in the air as he ran up the road at the head of his men, waving his sword in the air. The Kez troops plowed on behind him, bayonets fixed on their muskets. A black coat among all the red and gold caught his eye and he changed targets. His heart beat loudly in his ears. Wardens. Lots of them, scattered among the troops. They carried big knives in their teeth like sailors as they scrambled over the rocks on the mountainside, heading straight for the slanted walls of the bulwark.

"Fire!"

Taniel pulled the trigger. He burned a little powder, giving extra oomph to the ball. A cloud of spent gunpowder burst into the air, obscuring his vision for a moment. It cleared, and yells of dismay echoed through the bastion.

Only one man fell from the volley: the Warden Taniel had shot right between the eyes with a redstripe. Bullets and grapeshot burst into sparks and fell harmlessly to the ground a few feet in front of the first ranks. The Kez charge didn't even falter.

"They have Privileged in their ranks!" Taniel yelled.

"Fire at will!" came the order.

He snatched for his purse of redstripes and opened his third eye. A wave of nausea came over him, which he pushed away as he reloaded. He didn't have time for powder. He simply dropped a redstripe down his muzzle and rammed cotton swabbing in after it. He sighted down the rifle, opened his third eye.

Pastel colors from the third sight made his head spin. The invisible shield the Kez Privileged were using became a translucent, yellow sheen partially obscuring all behind it. He struggled to pick through the colors beyond. Wardens glowed, and so did Knacked among the Kez troops. Taniel looked for the brightest colors-the Privileged. He picked one out and pulled the trigger. The man jerked and dropped, and Taniel loaded another redstripe.

He managed two more before the Kez reached the walls. The thunder of artillery suddenly dropped off.

Gavril's voice shouted, "Hold!"

Taniel heard Bo wheeze. He spun in time to catch Bo under one arm and lower him to the ground. Bo shook his head. "Keep going!" he coughed. "You're weakening them." His eyes grew wide and he lurched to his feet. "They're dropping the shield!"

"Fire!" Gavril roared.

Another cloud of powder swirled up around them as the line fired away. A dead silence briefly touched the bulwark, and then men were scrambling to reload as artillery captains barked orders.

The smoke cleared.

The volley of shots had torn through the first few ranks. Men dropped by the score. Wounded tossed themselves to the side, trying not to be trampled by those behind. They could not get out of the way. There were too many soldiers. Adran cannons fired grapeshot, the sound pounding away at Taniel's ears.

Only Wardens remained standing after the grapeshot. They pushed onward, wet stains on their black coats betraying blood loss, yet seemingly no worse for the wear. They bellowed in defiance, shook their knives in the air, and waved to the ranks behind them. The dead were trodden underfoot.

"Grenados!"

The clay balls were lit on torches along the wall and tossed over. Explosions bit into the Kez numbers. A few Wardens were blasted to pieces.

Kez swarmed the base of the bulwark like angry hornets. Ladders were put in place, and grappling hooks thrown. Taniel snatched for a hatchet as a hook landed beside him. He cut the rope with one chop and jumped up, firing at a Privileged at the bottom of the wall.

Wardens scrambled up the slanted walls of the bastion as if they were light inclines. They made it up the wall in moments, and a half dozen jumped down among the Watchers.

"To bayonets!" Gavril yelled. "Keep up the cannon fire!"

One great, ugly head poked over the bulwark right in front of Ka-poel. Taniel swung his rifle toward the Warden, but Ka-poel was faster. Her hand jabbed forward, revealing a long needle that had been hidden in her sleeve. It went through the Warden's eye and into his brain. The creature let go his handholds and fell.

Taniel stabbed a Kez soldier in the shoulder as he scrambled over the wall. He cracked the next man with the butt of his rifle and tried to load another redstripe. The Kez were coming too fast. He took a quick snort of powder and gripped his rifle in both hands, sure he wouldn't get off another shot. He readied himself for the next wave-they'd find a trance-taken powder mage ready for them.

A Warden came over the wall with one hand on the brick, the other clutching a knife big enough to cut Taniel in two. Ka-poel leapt for him, but was batted away like a doll. Taniel yelled, thrusting his bayonet. The Warden reached long arms over the rifle, ignoring fourteen inches of steel through his middle, and backhanded Taniel. Taniel stumbled. The blow had rattled him even in a powder trance.

The Warden spotted Bo on the ground and pushed himself off Taniel's bayonet. Bo raised his hands, trying to manage some defense, but the Warden leapt upon him in a moment, knife raised.

Taniel reached the Warden as he was about to stab Bo. He thrust his bayonet, spitting the creature like a hog. The Warden's head turned, surprised that Taniel had regained his feet so quickly. The Warden tried to use his weight and strength as leverage to throw Taniel's grip on his rifle.

Taniel would have none of it. He could feel the barrel of his rifle strain as he shoved the Warden back against the bastion wall. He set his feet and lifted, dumping the Warden over the edge. He hoped the creature's wounds would prevent it from climbing the bastion again.

He paused for just a moment to help Ka-poel to her feet. She was rattled, but unhurt.

Gavril appeared by his side. "Get back to shooting," he snarled as he grabbed a Kez soldier by the throat. He lifted the man, one-handed, and tossed him over the wall. "Kill the Privileged!"

Suddenly Fesnik was there with Gavril, a small sword in one hand, a long pole in the other, pushing away the ladders. Under their cover, Taniel grabbed his bag of redstripes. He dropped two balls in, rammed down the cotton, and took aim.

Angle floating, powder mages called it-when you fire a bullet and push it in one sharp direction, around a wall or even around a person. Taniel had seen his father do it on many occasions-it was said Tamas was the very best.

Taniel generally had a hard time with angle floating, and often failed to make the angle sharp enough. It took precision timing and a damned huge amount of concentration. Taniel couldn't manage that concentration. A failed angle floater made his head feel like it had been pounded by a hammer. A successful one hurt more.

What Taniel could do was nudge bullets. Nudging a bullet was no more than burning some powder to correct your aim while the bullet was in flight-much like floating itself. It took little more than a sharp eye, yet he'd never seen anyone shoot farther nor more accurately than he could. And he could do it with two bullets.

Ka-poel pointed out a pair of Privileged about ten paces from each other. They stood down beside the easy cover of the redoubts, some hundred paces away and protected by their personal shields. Taniel lined up the shot and pulled the trigger.

Both men dropped, taking the separate bullets to the chest. A third Privileged saw them fall. Taniel ducked behind the wall.

He signaled to Ka-poel to stay down. The Privileged would be watching for him now. He couldn't stop shooting. He took a few deep breaths and loaded one bullet and pictured that third Privileged in his mind's eye. Less than a second to aim and shoot. He crawled, rifle in hand, changing his position on the wall by five paces. A few quick breaths and he sprang up.

The Privileged had his hands up, fingers twitching. An arch of lightning sprang from the air above him as Taniel pulled the trigger. The lightning slammed into the spot Taniel had been a few moments before, the force of the impact powerful enough to knock Taniel, Gavril, Ka-poel, Fesnik, and a dozen Kez soldiers off their feet.

The bullet drifted high and ripped through the Privileged's throat. He went down in a spray of blood.

Taniel breathed a sigh of relief.

A horn resounded across the mountainside. The sound of fighting tapered off as the Kez soldiers retreated back down the mountain.

Gavril pushed away a soldier he'd been grappling with. He held a fist above his head. "Cease fire!" The cannons silenced. Kez soldiers within the bulwark threw down their weapons. Gavril scowled at them. "We're not taking prisoners," he said. "Surrender your weapons and gear, and then down the mountain with you."

Word passed throughout the bastion. Kez climbed back over the walls after being relieved of their muskets and powder, and began the long walk among their dead. Gavril found a Kez officer among the wounded and took him by the shoulder while Taniel watched.

"Tell Field Marshal Tine that he can send some unarmed soldiers up to collect your dead. And I suggest we all take a few days to tend to the wounded." Gavril repeated the order in Kez to be sure he was understood.

The officer nodded wearily and, with the help of a Kez soldier, headed over the wall and down the mountain.

Taniel dropped down beside Bo.

"You OK?"

Bo gave him a long look.

"I'll take that as a no."

"To the pit with all this," Bo managed.

Katerine, Rina, and Alasin appeared as if from nowhere. All three of Bo's women. They surrounded Bo, alternately scolding and fussing, and Bo was carried off toward the town.

Taniel and Gavril watched them go.

"I need to get me one of those," Taniel said.

"What?" Gavril asked. "A harem?"

"Yeah," Taniel said. Ka-poel punched him in the arm.

"I've tried juggling more than one woman at once," Gavril said. "It's a pain in the ass. Don't know how Privileged do it."

"They treat 'em like shit," Taniel said.

"Bo doesn't," Gavril said. "I guess I should say, 'I don't know how Bo does it.'"

They turned and watched the retreating Kez in silence for a moment.

"You really saved our asses there," Gavril said.

Taniel gave Gavril a surprised look. "Huh?"

"You didn't know?"

Gavril slapped his knee and gave a loud guffaw. Watchers, tending to the dead and wounded, paused to give Gavril odd looks. "You mean you don't know who you shot?"

"A Privileged?" He bent over, picked up a discarded bottle of St. Adom's Festival wine. Somehow it had gone unbroken through all of this. He took a swig. After a moment's hesitation he handed it to Ka-poel. She drank once and gave it back.

"At a hundred yards even I recognized him," Gavril said. "That last one, the one that hit us with a lightning bolt hard enough to knock through the wards on the bastion. That was Brajon the Callous."

Taniel choked on a mouthful of wine. "The head of the Kez Cabal?"

"The same," Gavril said.

Taniel felt his knees weaken beneath him. He put a hand on the bastion wall for support. "I would never have stood up if I had known it was him. Brajon was in Fatrasta at the beginning of the war. He almost ended it himself. Wiped out an entire Fatrastan army-singlehandedly. The war would have ended there if he hadn't been called back to Kez by Ipille himself."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't know," Gavril said. "They almost had us there. Their Privileged were dressed in infantry colors and hiding their gloves. Blended right in. Bo was too busy tending his shields to notice."

And Taniel hadn't had his third eye open until it was too late. He scolded himself. Stupid. He'd almost gotten them all killed. Taniel watched as Gavril took stock of the damage to the bastion. "You know," Taniel said, "we could have kept firing after they sounded the retreat. Would have wiped out thousands on the mountainside. The Kez did that to us in Fatrasta a few times."

Gavril snorted angrily. "War has to have some decorum. Otherwise it's back to the Bleakening for all of us, and Kresimir be damned."

Gavril left him then. Taniel looked over the edge of the bastion. He thought to open his third eye to track their Privileged, but decided it would just give him a headache.

A thought troubled him. If that was their big push, then where was Julene? He searched the hillside for the entrance to the sapper tunnels. There was some movement there, and he thought he saw a man empty a wheelbarrow of dirt.

Tamas stared up at the ceiling of a small room, his vision blurry. There wasn't much to see even had his eyes been clear. He could make out the slanted logs of a roof, plain wood with mud in the cracks to seal them against the weather. It was light, barely. His body told him it was dawn. The light was gloomy, indicative of a stormy day ahead. He heard the crow of a rooster, and the sound of hoofbeats, followed by a muffled conversation. The men outside spoke Kez.

He couldn't feel his right leg. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, and combined with his blurry vision Tamas had to fight rising panic. Without a leg or good vision, what hope did he have of escape? He breathed deeply, calming himself, and assessed the rest of his body for wounds.

Both of his hands and arms still seemed to work. They moved when prompted. He could feel the stab of a straw mattress beneath him. His chest hurt when he took too deep a breath, but not enough for a broken rib. His side was tender, perhaps from a cut or a bruise. He touched it gently. A bruise, he decided. He was in short undergarments and nothing else, and years of instinct told him he was not alone in the room.

Tamas struggled to push himself into a sitting position. He'd been provided with neither blanket nor pillow, and lay upon a filthy straw mattress on a wooden frame. There was a window on his left, and stairs going down at the end of the bed. He rubbed his eyes, which improved his vision slightly. A Warden sat in the corner, his muscled, malformed body easy to recognize, though Tamas could not make out much more than the outline of the body.

"Where am I?" Tamas said.

The blurry mountain of flesh seemed to regard him for a moment, then mumbled something unintelligible in Kez.

"Where am I?" Tamas repeated.

The Warden left the room.

"Where am I," Tamas shouted after the Warden. He pushed himself up farther. "Monster. Beast!" He lay back down, what little strength he had now gone. His head had begun to throb when he moved. He felt along the wrapping gingerly, grimacing. The slightest touch brought a jolt of pain, and he eventually left it alone. He'd been treated. They'd covered his wounds in strips of dirty linen. His leg was wrapped tight, but there was still circulation. He wouldn't be walking on it any time soon. He heard steps from below, and two pairs of boots upon the stairs. The Warden returned, with him a smaller man.

"Field Marshal," a voice said in accented Adran. Tamas felt his hackles rise at the sound of the voice.

"Nikslaus," he spat. "I thought I threw you in the Adsea."

The duke's voice was genial. "My Wardens fished me out. How is your leg?"

"It's fantastic," Tamas said. "I'm going to dance a jig. Where am I?"

Nikslaus took the Warden's seat in the corner of the room, while the Warden stood at the foot of the bed. "Deep in the King's Wood," he said. "Now, my surgeon said you'd hit your head hard when you fell. Are you having any problems with your vision?"

"No," Tamas lied.

"Of course you are," Nikslaus said. "I can tell that your eyes aren't focusing. I'll have the surgeon take a look at you before we go."

Tamas did his best to glare at Nikslaus, but found it hard when he could barely see him. "Why the pit am I still alive? Where are we going?"

"To Kez," Nikslaus said. "I advised against it, but after that first Warden didn't kill you, Ipille decided that we should send a message. If everything goes as scheduled, you'll face the guillotine beneath my king's gaze on the final day of Saint Adom's Festival."

"You've planned this for a long time," Tamas said.