My body freezes as it never has in battle, my foolish heart taking control.
Helene shouts, spins, kills, defends, while I stand there. Then it’s too late to fight, because a jut-jawed brute with arms like tree trunks tackles me.
“Veturius!” Helene says. “More soldiers coming from the north!”
“Mrffggg.” The big aux has my face smashed against the side of the watchtower, his hand so tight around my skull that I’m sure he means to crush it.
He uses his knee to pin me, and I can’t budge an inch.
For a moment, I admire his technique. He recognizes that he can’t counter my fighting skills and has instead used surprise and his colossal bulk to best me.
My admiration fizzles as stars burst before my eyes. Cunning! You have to use cunning! But the time for cunning is past. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. I should have run a scim through the aux’s chest before he ever got to me.
Helene darts away from her attackers to help me, pulling on my belt as if to yank me away from the giant soldier, but he pushes her away.
The legionnaire slides me along the wall to a niche in the battlements and shoves me through, holding me by my neck above the dunes like a child with a rag doll. Six hundred feet of hungry air grasps at my legs. Behind the aux, a sea of legionnaires tries to pull Helene down, barely keeping a hold on her as she twists and spits, a cat in a net.
Always victorious. Grandfather’s voice echoes in my head. Always victorious.
I dig my fingers into the tendons of the brute’s arms, trying to work myself free.
“I bet ten marks on you.” The aux appears genuinely pained. “But orders are orders.”
Then he opens his hand and lets me fall.
The fall lasts an eternity and no time at all. My heart shoots into my throat, my stomach plunges, and then, with a jerk that rattles my skull, I’m not falling anymore. But I’m not dead, either. My body dangles, tethered by a rope hooked to my belt.
Helene had yanked on my belt—she must have attached the rope then.
Which means she is on the other end. Which means if the soldiers throw her over and I’m still dangling like a comatose spider, we’ll both fall hard and fast to the hereafter.
I swing toward the cliff face and scrabble for a handhold. The rope is thirty feet long, and this close to the base of the watchtower, the cliffs aren’t as sheer. A granite shelf juts out from a fissure a few feet away. I wedge myself in tightly and only just in time.
A shriek echoes from above me followed by a tumble of blonde and silver. I brace my legs and pull in the rope as fast as I can, but I am still nearly yanked off the rock shelf by the force of Helene’s weight.
“I’ve got you, Hel,” I shout, knowing how terrified she must be hanging hundreds of feet in the air like this. “Hold on.”
When I pull her into the fissure, she is wild-eyed and shaking. There is hardly room for both of us on the shelf, and she grabs my shoulders to anchor herself.
“It’s all right, Hel.” I tap the ledge with a boot. “See? Solid rock beneath us.” She nods into my shoulder, clinging to me in a most un-Helene-like way.
Even through our armor, I feel her curves, and my stomach leaps strangely.
She fidgets, which really doesn’t help things, seemingly as aware as I of the closeness of our bodies. My face grows hot at the sudden tension between us.
Focus, Elias.
I pull away from her as an arrow thunks into the rock beside us—we’ve been spotted.
“We’re easy pickings on this ledge,” I say. “Here.” I unknot the cord from my belt and hers, and stuff it into her hands. “Tie this to an arrow. Make it tight.”
She does as I ask while I grab a bow from my back and scan the cliffs for a harness. One dangles fifteen feet away. It’s a shot I could make with my eyes closed—except that the legionnaires are hauling the harness back up the cliff face and into the tower.
Helene hands me the arrow, and before more missiles come hurtling from above, I lift my bow, notch the arrow, shoot.
And miss.
“Damn it!” The legionnaires pull the harness just out of range. They yank up the other harnesses along the cliff, strap themselves in, and begin rappelling down.
“Elias—” Helene nearly flings herself off the ledge trying to avoid an arrow, grabbing on to my arm. “We have to get out of here.”
“I figured that out, thanks.” I barely dodge an arrow myself. “If you’ve got a genius plan, I’m open to ideas.”
Helene grabs the bow from me, takes aim with the corded arrow, and a second later, one of the legionnaires rappelling down goes limp. She pulls the body over and unbuckles him from the harness. I try to ignore the distant thump of the soldier’s body hitting the dunes. Hel frees the cord while I grab the harness and strap myself in—I’ll have to carry her down.
“Elias,” she whispers when she realizes what we have to do. “I—I can’t—”
“You can. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
I test the harness anchor with a sharp yank, hoping it will hold the weight of two fully armed Masks.
“Climb onto my back.” I take her chin and force her to meet my eyes.
“Rope us together like before. Wrap your legs around my waist. Don’t let go until we hit the sand.”
She does as I ask and ducks her head into my neck as I leap off the edge, her breath coming short and fast.
“Don’t fall, don’t fall,” I hear her muttering. “Don’t fall, don’t—”