(Author’s commentary): Hey, I need a favor. If you are the parent of a teenage girl… simmer down… let me finish… above the age of 16… or maybe a really mature 14… can you get them to click the link button in the top bar of my blog page and read some of this novel? I really need some feedback, I need to decide on the target audience. It is not overly violent, and there are no overtly objectionable parts… especially when you compare it to… say… The Hunger Games, where children are forced to fight to the death.

Also, I bet you didn’t see the end to this chapter coming, did you, Paul?

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The Seven Kingdoms

Chapter Twenty Seven

She knelt there for a moment, and put her hand on the boy’s pale cheek. He had come so far from his home to die in this place. He had felt protective of her, felt that her life was a life that needed to be preserved more than his own. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. Then she heard the screams.

Only three people she knew could make those piercing shrieks. Her eyes lifted and there they were. The triplets, standing in a line under a nearby tree. They looked so tiny and frail, three little girls in white tunics, each in the same posture, standing stiffly, feet planted slightly apart. They all had their hands over their mouths.

She got up and ran to them. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, realizing she had forgotten her promise to Zar to send them to safety.

“He is such a nice boy!” wailed Tam Tam.

“Is he going to be alright?” Andita asked plaintively.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” cried Miri.

“Yes, he is,” said Hildy harshly. “I have a battle to fight. You three need to go back to the castle. Now!”

“Oh no!” Miri exclaimed.

Hildy thought she was arguing with her, and her eyes snapped to the girl in anger, but Miri wasn’t looking at her. She was looking over her shoulder. Hildy whirled around.

She saw some of her men running towards her, dodging around trees and rocks and brush. She suddenly realized that some of the screams and yells she was now hearing weren’t coming up from the valley below, but from further down the ridge top. They were close and coming closer. The first man ran right past her without saying a word. He never looked at her or the triplets.

The next two men shouted at her, but they didn’t stop either. “The Skulls are coming!” one yelled as he ran by. The other man just screamed, “run!”

Three more men came towards them. Two of them dragged the third man between them, a man whose uniform shirt was sodden with blood. She stepped in front of them. They stopped. The wounded man lifted his head and looked at her.

“Get him to safety, but yell for the rest of the men on the ridge to join me here as you pass them,” she said in her most commanding voice. “And come back when your friend is safe.”

All three men nodded wordlessly, and she stepped out of their way to let them pass.

“Form a line here, on me,” she shouted to any of her men who could hear her. More men came running through the woods. She held up her hands and shouted for them to stop and form a line. One man ran past, but the others stopped. When more men came out of the woods, they saw the line forming and also stopped to join it. Some of them didn’t have a staff or spear, but they stopped anyway.

More men were coming her way, but these men were moving backwards. Some held staves or spears, pointing back the way the way they had come, and some were slinging stones in that direction. Then the first Skull troops came into view. They were trying to march in ranks. The trees and underbrush were slowing them more than her own men were. She looked around her. There were maybe one hundred men in her line, with more trickling in from behind her as word reached them. How many men had she lost?

The men doing the fighting retreat fell into line also. There might be more that she couldn’t see through the trees, further over on the ridge top. That was her hope, that and those that were still coming up from behind. She looked behind her to see if more were coming, and she saw the triplets still standing there. She was about to scream for them to run, but realized that word might cause panicked flight among her troops. And then it was too late.

“Here they come!” she heard one of her men shout. She turned and yelled at her men to use their slings, but they were already doing that. A solid volley stopped the enemy momentarily, but they came on, spears lowered. Another volley dropped a good number of them. It was hard to tell how many of them there were, how many more were coming up behind them. Another volley of stones slammed into them. They reformed into a firmer line and moved forward again. To Hildy, it looked as if they already outnumbered her men by nearly three to one. At least they didn’t seem to have any slingers with them.

The flames came out of nowhere. At first, it was just a small ribbon of fire, reaching about the height of a man’s knee, and about as wide as it was tall. It sprang up out of the ground all at once, half way between her troops and the advancing Skulls. The Skulls stopped dead in their tracks. Within moments, the line of fire grew until it was almost as tall as a man.

Hildy had no idea what was going on, where these miraculous flames had come from, but she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. “Keep those stones flying!” she screamed.

She could see the faces of the enemy soldiers over the wall of fire. They were confused and scared. They looked at one another, and she heard shouted orders, but a man will not run into the flames, no matter what his officers are yelling at him. The stones her troops were throwing kept raining into the packed lines of Skull soldiers. At this range, the stones were moving fast and hard, and it was hard to miss them. Hildy could actually hear the stones pounding into the enemy amidst the screams and shouting. It dawned on her that the fire wasn’t making any noise at all.

She moved closer to the flames and held out a hand. She moved it closer and closer to the fire. There was no heat at all. She touched the flames. They were the same temperature as the air. She was unnerved. She turned back to encourage her men and she happened to glance beyond them to where the triplets stood. They were still in a line. They were holding hands and swaying back and forth. Their eyes were closed, and they seemed to be mumbling to themselves.

Behind her, she heard the screams and the shouting begin to recede, and she turned again. Over the wall of fire she saw the enemy retreating back the way the had come. The fire still burned brightly.

Hildy ran over to the girls. She said each of their names. The girls didn’t respond. They just stood there, eyes closed, holding hands and swaying side to side. They were still muttering sounds in voices too low for her to make out any distinct words. She reached down and pulled Tam Tam and Miri’s hands apart. Tam Tam, now separated from the other two, opened her eyes and looked around in confusion. Hildy stepped over and pulled Miri’s hand from Andita’s. They too opened their eyes and looked at her as if they had no idea where they were.

“We were so frightened,” said Miri quietly.

“The Skulls were going to kill us all,” added Tam Tam with a quaver in her voice.

“We had to stop them,” Andita told her, but her voice was uncertain.

“So you did make the fire, didn’t you?” asked Hildy, still not sure what had happened. She thought back to the day she had first met Sanara, and the story the farm girl had told them about the Skull wizard and the shadowclaw. The way the wizard had been muttering to himself and making strange gestures, that was how Sanara had described it. How he had conjured up a fearsome beast that wasn’t really there at all.

“What fire?” asked Miri, sounding more confused than Hildy was.

“Where did the Skulls go?” Andita demanded.

“My head hurts,” Tam Tam complained.

Hildy looked back to where her men still stood in that thin line, talking excitedly amongst themselves. The wall of fire was gone as if it had never been. The leaves and grass weren’t scorched. No smoke hung in the air. “I don’t have time to figure this out right now,” Hildy snapped. “Follow me.”

She led them to the thin line of soldiers. “Half of you stay here and watch for the Skulls to come back,” she shouted. “Every other man, come with me. We still have a battle to win!”

She led off, trailed by the triplets. The men had a few moments of confusion over figuring out where the counting off should begin, but they sorted it. It didn’t take long for Hildy to reach the edge of the valley. She looked down and her heart sank. Her army was gone, and so was the Skull army. Had her lines been overrun? Bodies littered the ground Was the battle lost? She looked towards the top of the valley, off to her right, and her worst fears were realized. There was a fight going on at the upper end of the valley. Her forces had been pushed back.

Her men were in a thin and ragged line angled across the entrance to the valley, and Skull troops were forming for another attack. There were only a few hundred of her troops left, as near as she could tell, and they were outnumbered heavily by the Skull soldiers. So few of her brave men left alive! Hildy felt it like a blow to the chest. Her heart turned cold, but instantly, the cold was replaced by a glowing, molten rage. They could still turn the tide. Or they could at least die with the rest of her army.