A bullet pinged off my helm. It barely hurt me, but it filled me with fear. More came—two, then three—like a rainstorm beginning to erupt. Soon it would be thousands. The odds were what scared me.

  Any one of them probably couldn’t harm me. My armor could deflect them. My SHIELD could repel them. But when they were legion, the chance of a round penetrating, finding that vital spot, became more and more likely. There were endless stories of Griidlords devouring thousands of men with their bloodthirsty weapons. But there were many, too, of Griidlords dying from a single gunshot, a single spear.

  I swept my sword in a wide horizontal arc, the fire of CUT roaring from the blade, felling five men like wheat before the scythe. It was horrible how this brutality grew easier with repetition. Five more men died screaming as the bullets of their own comrades tore into them. They would sacrifice lives to bring me down, though, or to drive me off.

  The rapid drum of the gunfire hammered off the shell of my suit. SHIELD grew weary. I dove forward like a maniac, carving a path through the enemy, surrounding myself with them like rows of corn.

  The Orb glowed in the space beyond them.

  The ground shook under the beat of horses. The vibrations traveled through my legs, filling my ears like endless thunder. The New York soldiers all around me grew distracted, fearful. Should they face the single demon among them, or the rumbling wall of death that charged?

  Faces of men—normal people, as innocent and guilty as I was, no more, no less—filled my vision. My sword was an endless machine of death. Swords flashed against me. I dodged their thrusts mostly, but not entirely. None of the weapons glowed like power weapons. My sword carved a ragged crimson path through the faces and bodies of four more men in a single cleave. Four more kills. Four more widows. How many fatherless children?

  The cavalry charge struck like a tidal wave. I gave myself to AGILITY, leaping over the wedge of horsemen as they struck the scattered infantry. I could kill so many so easily, but hundreds of horses and hundreds of lances were terribly effective as well. Bodies flew through the air, bones crunched, and men screamed under the hooves of trained warhorses. More scattered and fled, their backs inviting the swords and spears of the horsemen.

  As the Boston cavalry surged forward, breaking the infantry line, I looked up. The ORB rested on the side of a rise above us. Viktor Taurus, the Sword of South New York, stood near the Orb. He was channeling boosts to his comrades on the field. But he was disoriented. He hadn’t expected such complete abandon from us. We had gambled hard. Still, it felt like it wasn’t worth it. Hundreds, maybe thousands, would die on the field, and victory was far from certain.

  ***

  Not that long before the battle, we had arrayed ourselves before the Orb. After Chowwick had spotted it, we had determined that an Orb of that size would draw attention, and the notion of the three of us trying to siphon it alone would be pointless. We had retrieved the rest of our forces, and Alya and Tara.

  Staring across the field, seeing that New York would reach the Orb before us, Alya had shaken her head wearily. “It’s not worth it. This is not a battle we can win.”

  I heard her. I truly heard her. I hungered for the key fragments in the Orb, but she had lived a long time, and I trusted her judgment.

  Chowwick said, “They’ve barely a step on us. We can get there.”

  Alya said, “That’s New York over there! Their Griidlords are powerful. Stronger than ours.”

  Chowwick said, “Not stronger than you.”

  Alya said, “I’m a Scepter. I can only do so much… we risk too much even being here. We’ve had the greatest Falling Boston has seen in years. We don’t need to take chances with our resources, with the lives of our men.”

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  Chowwick said, “We could have more, though, lass. You can’t live in your fears. I’ll bet they’ve had a season just as good if not better. Probably a lot better. They’ll have no more reason to risk themselves than we will. We can push ’em back. But we have to go hard.”

  Alya said, “Going hard costs lives, Pembleton.”

  Chowwick turned to me. He said, “This might be the last chance we get, lad. There are fragments in that Orb, the last ones we need. We mightn’t see another Orb with the fragments. These last weeks have been some of the best of our lives. And that Orb’s a 25er if ever I saw one. But we need to go now, lad, and hard. They’ve got power, aye, but there’s four of them and five of us.”

  It all weighed on me. They all waited for me to choose. I was barely more than a child, but I would decide the fates of many. Lives would be lost, the future of the city altered, by what I chose.

  Balthazar was right. The thought came to me again: he was right. These traditions were madness.

  But it was down to me. And it gave me the power to choose. To choose safety, to preserve the lives of those who followed me, to conserve the strength of our Griidlords for another day, to avoid disaster. Or, the choice to surge forward, risk it all, and win the glory that would show them all that I was the right choice to be Sword of Boston.

  I turned to Darkwater, who waited nervously nearby on his warhorse. I spoke sharply, “Darkwater, skirt the field with your horses. Use your judgment. Find the right time to strike. We’ll take the center and hold them. You will need to break them.”

  Darkwater looked disbelievingly at me. “Lord Bloodsword, you can’t be serious, the risks—”

  Chowwick’s helm blazed with the light of POWER. “You heard the lad, Darkwater. Time is of the essence. Go!”

  Darkwater looked from one of us to the other. His eyes rested on Alya for a moment, as though pleading for her to intervene. But no intervention came.

  I spoke quickly, “Alya can win the battle. They have a large force, more than we do, but they’re mostly green. If we can force a rout, then their Griidlords will have to contend with us and ten thousand men. That can make the difference here. We need to rout them, and we need to do it fast.”

  ***

  Viktor’s head snapped left and right. He could see the hordes of his men falling back on both wings of the battle. I could imagine the thoughts that were running through his head: the consideration to yield and end the slaughter, to conserve what he could of his army.

  Alya’s BEAM lashed the battlefield. She had concentrated her fire on the other wing. It was devastatingly demoralizing to watch your comrades die from spears of light that touched you from so far away. Her BEAM alone had nearly broken them. The spear of our hardened infantry, the charge of our elite knights, had set them reeling.

  New York’s best troops held the center line. Some power weapons glowed there. New York’s best were finer than ours, but on the whole, our average was better than theirs. Even the elite ranks in the center must have been growing nervous as they watched the wings of their forces fold.

  The New York Griidlords hunted ours. They flashed across the battlefield, trying to find a Boston Griidlord to engage. But they evaded them. Tara flashed across the field, as quick as thought, lashing the ranks of the enemy, streaking away before she could be cornered by one of their suits. Chowwick marched with the men, using his skill to protect them from the gunfire of the New York troops near the Orb. At times he would rush forward, his Shield battering dozens of men to pulp. But when threatened by the New York Arrow, he would retreat to the ranks of our soldiers, where she would not risk pursuing.

  Magneblade played his own game of cat and mouse. He had levelled twice since I gained Synergy. I still had not used Assess on him, still did not know his level, but the man swelled with confidence. I couldn’t see him on the field, but I knew somewhere he was giving mothers a cause to weep for their sons.

  Viktor seemed to make a sudden decision. He stood at his vantage point so that he could boost his comrades and personally protect the riflemen close to the Orb. But there was little point in boosting Griidlords who could not engage. He could see the tide of the battle changing. He could see Alya’s BEAM sweeping across the battlefield. She alone was winning the fight.

  His decision should have been obvious to me. In my eagerness to win the fight, I had failed to account for Alya. She was vulnerable. Her suit was the weakest of all. And she was a valuable target in that moment.

  Viktor took hold of the light of Footfield and streaked toward her.

  My breath stopped in my chest.

  I had made a terrible mistake. In an instant, he could slay her. We would lose the most powerful Griidlord in Boston. And the battle would turn against us without the power of her BEAM.

  I turned to chase after him but suddenly found myself face to face with Karen Mornsteel, the Axe of South New York.