“Very well then,” Kyra said.  We shall ride together. There is strength in numbers. Let us go!”

Kyra went over and snatched a sword from a dead soldier and handed it to one of the girls, and one at a time, the other girls did the same, canvassing the battlefield for weapons.

Kyra severed the ropes of the Pandesian horses bound to the carriages and mounted one, thrilled to have a ride again. The other girls rushed forward, each mounting a horse; there were so many of them they had to ride two or three to a horse, yet somehow, crammed as they were, they all fit, all of them armed, mounted, and ready to go.

Kyra kicked her new horse and the others joined in, all of them taking off at a gallop, down the road, back in the other direction, finally, toward Ur. The wind in her hair, a horse beneath her, companions beside her, Kyra finally knew that the home stretch was before her, and nothing in the world would stop her now.

The Tower of Ur was her next stop.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Duncan lowered his head to the wind as he hiked up the steep mountainside of Kos, the wind whipping his face with a fresh, driving snow, wondering how much worse conditions could become. The sky, so clear but hours ago, had turned a dark, angry gray, snow and wind driving them back, this mountain as unpredictable as it was famed to be. They had been hiking for hours, but now the elevation had become rapidly steeper.

Duncan, hiking beside Seavig, Anvin and Arthfael, glanced back over his shoulder to check on his men. They all hiked with heads down, side-by-side two men wide in the narrow trail, all of them snaking their way up the mountain like a long line of ants. The wind and snow had worsened enough so that Duncan could no longer see all of his men, and he felt a pang of anxiety. He was for all of them, and a part of him felt that this was madness, marching them all straight up a mountain of ice and snow. There was a reason the Pandesians had never tried to ascend and take Kos: it was folly.

Duncan ascended through a narrow stretch of rock and as he emerged, he looked up and his stomach dropped: the trail disappeared in a wall of ice. From here on in, it was a climb—straight up. He and his men would have to switch from walking to climbing by ice and pick. And they were still hardly halfway up the mountain.

“Can we climb it?” Anvin asked, fear in his voice.