“The eyes!” Cade yelled. “Go for the eyes! Oculi, oculi!”

To his right, a legionary stabbed with his blade, only for the sword to be clasped within a pincer and yanked from his grip. He panicked, lashing out with a foot, and the ant took the man’s boot in its mandibles, dangling its weight to pull him down. Cade swung his blade and cut it off at the head.

But it was too late, for as the ant fell away, the man teetered over the edge, Cade’s snatched handful of cloth slipping from his fingers as the legionary tumbled to the ground.

Cade heard a single, short scream before he disappeared into the mass of seething insects.

Another appeared beneath Cade, chattering its mandibles, a claw snapping in front of it in anticipation of his blade. But as Cade stabbed, the ground shifted beneath his feet, throwing his blow wide.

“Get off the wall!” Yoshi screamed.

The wall to Cade’s right was swaying now, and Romans scrambled for the stairs, some leaping from halfway down the steps as the wall collapsed around them. The entire facade was buckling inward on itself, rocks falling loose from ancient mortar.

Many soldiers were not so lucky, and as Cade ran for it himself, he saw men disappear into the mass of falling stone, tumbling down in an avalanche of rubble.

Cade jostled and pushed through a frantic mess of running soldiers, men who were retreating into the courtyard and forming a makeshift shield wall. With no shield, Cade hung at the back, his heart near bursting with relief as his friends, one by one, came to join him.

The entire wall swayed before beginning the same slow collapse. Ants appeared on the ramparts, seemingly unaware of the swaying wall.

Then, in a sudden chain reaction, the wall collapsed in a great wave. Dust erupted in a haze, caustic in Cade’s nose and mouth. Men dragged themselves, bloodied and broken, from the wreckage of the western wall, while the braver of the soldiers left the safety of the wall to gather the injured.

“Marius!” a man called in Latin. “What do we do?”

CHAPTER

59

Cade looked at the timer, feeling sick.

00:40:12

00:40:11

00:40:10

“We can’t hold the keep,” Cade coughed, trying to clear the dust from his throat. “They’ll punch through it in minutes.”

“And a shield wall will be better?” Amber demanded.

Cade rubbed his gritty eyes, staring into the rubble.

A handful of ants crawled along its top, pincering their claws into dead and dying men. Beyond that, there didn’t seem to be any ants alive at all.

“They killed themselves,” Cade whispered. “The wall took them out completely.”

“Why would they do that?” Scott asked.

“Because they’re a hive mind,” Cade said. “They’re not individuals. More like appendages of a greater intelligence.”

Marius bellowed with fury. He was screaming orders, pushing men into line. But as the pair of ants on the walls skewered a crawling man’s back, he raised his sword.