Chapter 17: The Wall

We ran.

Ronan took the east stair three steps at a time with his coat flying.

I came behind him with my skirts in both fists.

When we reached the top of the outer wall, the world was on fire.

The east battery sat on the cliff above the road.

Its great bows were firing silver-headed bolts, each as long as a man, down at the wolf camp.

Down on the ridge, the wolves were running.

Some ran from the bolts, and some ran at the wall.

A section of the stone below us had already come apart, and through the gap I could see black shapes pouring over the rubble.

"Sister!" Ronan shouted, and the wind took it.

A bolt hit the parapet beside him and burst the stone into splinters.

He flinched, and a second bolt grazed his arm.

I smelled it before I saw it, the cold, bright smell of silver on a wolf's skin, and the burned meat under it.

He went down on one knee with his teeth bared.

"Ronan!"

"It's nothing," he gasped. "Go."

I stood up.

I did not decide to.

My power came up out of the stones under my feet and out of the sea below.

It was bigger than the wall.

I put out both hands and the air stopped.

Every bolt in the sky hung where it was, a hundred of them, glittering over the road.

I felt them.

I closed my hand.

Silver ran.

A hundred bolts went soft, then bright, then fell as a rain of molten drops that never reached the ground.

On the cliff, the gunners of the battery dropped their winches and fled.

Then I put my palms toward the broken wall and lifted.

The stones rose out of the rubble, one by one.

They hung there a long moment, and then they slid back into the gap and closed it with a groan.

The wolves skidded to a halt on the road.

A hundred green and yellow eyes turned up to the wall.

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