Marcus dashed up the stairs leading to the top of the wall where the cannons stood in a row, facing the enemy. Men fell back to get out of his way. Marcus shoved aside those who didn’t move fast enough. Finding the sling around his injured arm impeded his progress, he tore it off. Fear and adrenaline ate up his pain. He could see at a glance that the dragon warriors were in range. The order to fire would be given at any moment.

Edward stood some distance from him, but Marcus could see clearly his father’s lip moving, starting to form the word that would cause the gunners to touch the match to the portfire. He could see the gunners starting to react, anticipating the command.

And he could see, as well, the image in the dragon’s mind. He saw the tendrils of magic wound like rope around the bases of the cannons. Stretched from one to the other, the magic wrapped around the muzzles, draped over the wheels, extended along the floor to the stone bunker where the gunpowder was stored. Marcus saw the flame leap from the cannon to the tendrils that snaked past it. The tendrils blazed with a dazzling blue-white light that arced from one cannon to the next until the entire, magical web flamed in Marcus’s vision.

Then the blast, white-hot as the sun, the magic of the dragon strengthening the explosion until it was hundreds of times more powerful than a spark setting off a thousand kegs of gunpowder. Cannons, people, stone walls vaporized. Not a trace of them left. The blast expanded outward, blowing apart the castle walls, lifting gigantic blocks of granite high into the air, boring deep into the earth, spreading to the city where buildings crumbled and walls shattered.

Time slowed for Marcus, though it seemed to have speeded up for everyone around him. He could hear nothing for the roaring of blood in his ears. He could not even hear his own voice.

The stairs he climbed seemed to grow in number, so that he would never reach the end, and then, suddenly, with a great bound, he was at his father’s side, clutching him and gasping, breathless, “Don’t fire the cannons!”

Edward stared at his son, speechless.

“If you do”—Marcus sucked in a huge breath—”we’ll all die!”

“Hold, there!” Edward shouted.

“Hold!” cried the captains and most of the men obeyed.

One, however, heard the king’s voice, but not the king’s words. This gunner had listened many times over to the terrifying tales of the demon warriors—how they could burn a man alive with a single look from their fiery red eyes. He’d been watching the enemy’s inexorable advance with growing terror, and he was so panicked that he lowered the lighted portfire to the vent.