What Cade did know was that this would be the greatest enemy they had ever faced. Certainly their numbers dwarfed those of the vipers, all that time ago. But these insectile beings were not flesh and blood, but carapace and ichor. Would a blade, stuck through a thorax, stop them as it would a man?

00:00:10

00:00:09

00:00:08

“Get ready, men!” Marius screamed, mounting the ramparts and pointing a gladius down the field. “One last battle. One more, and we’re free of this cursed place!”

The legion roared and rattled their blades upon their shields. Cade felt a surge of pride. This was for humanity. And he was honored to fight for it.

00:00:03

00:00:02

00:00:01

The force field disappeared, its blue glow washing away. Yet to Cade’s surprise, the ants did not move. They continued milling about as if they had not been waiting for battle at all.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” Scott whispered.

Cade leaned forward, taking a closer look at the creatures now that the opaque force field no longer blocked his view.

They were strange things. Like red-black upright ants, true, but there was more to them than that. Their upper arms were like those of a crustacean, with two claws, one larger than the other. The carapaces were not dissimilar from a crab’s either, with spines and jagged spikes covering their torsos.

As for their lower set of arms, these reminded him more of a mantis’s, with two fingerlike appendages at the ends, clearly what they used to manipulate the world around them. That and the giant mandibles upon their heads, which emitted a stream of clicks and whistles, drifting across the fields toward them.

“What do we—” Scott began.

A new timer had appeared, counting down the hour.

00:59:59

00:59:58

00:59:57

At the same time, Cade felt a strange sprinkle of liquid, like a fine mist sprayed from above.

“What the hell is that?” Scott hissed.

“Pheromones,” Cade said, near gagging at the stench of it. “To get them to attack.”

He cursed under his breath. Had he triggered the EMP, the ants might never have attacked at all. But it was too late to think about that now.

The ants seemed to turn as one, their antennae twitching. Mandibles chattered, the sound setting Cade’s teeth on edge.

And then, as if by some hidden signal … they came.

The creatures were fast, swarming toward the keep in a wave of red-black bodies, running upright in a bowlegged sprint, their claws outstretched.

Yet as the frontrunners passed into the bone fields, the force field appeared again. One ant, caught halfway, was sliced in two, black ichor spurting as its momentum hurled its front half forward.

“Hold!” Marius called as the first sling stones were hurled toward the enemy. “Hold!”

The stones pattered short, and the overeager men rushed to reload their slings. On the ants came, and now Cade could see the black pits of their insectile eyes. There were over a hundred in this first wave, more than one for every legionary.