“Warriors,” Cade breathed.

“Ours?” Yoshi asked.

“Who can say?” Cade said. “But they’re wearing armor. That’s a good sign.”

He was in awe that his plan had worked. In truth, he had not expected it to.

“We need to get ready,” Amber said. “That means putting on your own armor, Cade. If they’re allies, at the very least we ought to look the part.”

“How long until they reach us?” Scott asked.

“One hour,” Quintus said. “Possible it is less.”

“And if they aren’t friendly?” Grace said. “Do we just lie down and die?”

Cade scratched his head. They should have prepared for this earlier.

“The only way into the fort is through those gates,” he said, pointing at the ground. “There’s another gate on the other side of the fort, but that one is intact. So this is the entry point.”

“It’s fifty feet across,” Grace groaned. “Eight people can’t hold that.”

“Not if we get the gates back up,” Amber said.

“And how would we keep them up?” Bea asked. “There’s nothing to attach them to.”

“We have half an hour to figure that out,” Cade said. “Then we have to make other plans. Let’s go take a look at them.”

The gates lay in the sand, so rusted and barnacled that Cade suspected they had steeped in the salt waters of the Baltic Sea for many years before Abaddon had taken the fort to Acies. The gateway still had the great hinges embedded in its walls, but the twin gates’ connecting brackets on either side had broken, likely rusting through and then snapping under the gates’ weight.

Cade stood at the edge of the grasslands, staring at the strange vegetation. Standing so close to it, he could see an iridescent blue to the grass’s edges. They came as high as his waist, and he knew that beneath, like the placid surface of a lagoon … predators might lurk there.

He heard a grunt of anger, only to see Yoshi attempting to lever up one of the gates’ edges. The structure didn’t move an inch.

“Ropes,” Quintus called.

The quick-thinking legionary had already brought their sackcloth ropes from their sleds, and now he tossed a rolled length of it to Cade and Amber, then proceeded to tie the end to the gate’s tip.

“Leverage,” Cade breathed. “Of course.”

The plan was swiftly explained, with the aid of a diagram drawn in the salt-crusted sand. Quintus had Bea and Trix holding the bottom of one of the gates in place beneath the arch; Grace, Scott, and Yoshi levering up the top end; and he, Amber, and Quintus hauling on the ropes as soon as the gate was lifted enough that their pulling would make a difference.

It was a brutal tug-of-war, and it was only with a monumental effort from Grace, standing on her tiptoes, that the gate lifted high enough for Cade’s crew to find some momentum. Then it was a case of rushing forward and holding the gate straight as it teetered back toward them.