“We thank you for your leadership,” Marius said, this time loudly for the benefit of the others. “But if there is a chance to leave this place, we will listen.”

His words met with approval from the legionaries, who clapped and nodded their heads.

Marius turned to Cade and motioned for him to rise.

“Speak, Cade,” Marius said. “Tell us how we will end this.”

CHAPTER

23

The legion crowded close as Cade stood beside the crater that had once been the fire, while Atticus stared silently.

Men watched him with hungry, hope-filled eyes. And despite the truth he knew he would speak now, he felt a surge of guilt. He had lied to these men about the Codex. About the imaginary leader of theirs waiting back at the keep.

Now, he would ask them to risk their lives on a half-baked plan.

“The substance that I threw into the fire is called ‘gunpowder,’” Cade called out, sweeping his hand at the blackened sand. “It is an … invention … from my time.”

He struggled to form the words, his fuddled mind forgetting his rudimentary Latin.

“At your … old home … there were metal weapons called ‘cannons,’” Cade said, and the murmuring and nodding of the men told him Marius had shared what Louis Le Prince had spoken of before he died.

“Gunpowder is what makes them work,” Cade went on, each word seeming to scrape his battered throat as it came out. “We know how to make it.”

A man stepped forward, his eyes flicking to Marius as if asking permission to speak. Marius inclined his head.

“Will it destroy the doors to their fortress?” he asked.

Cade nodded. His response elicited a cheer, and he felt the back of his neck burn with shame.

But these men needed confidence in him. He could not sow seeds of doubt—not when they were mutinying for his cause.

“If we are to make this work,” Cade said, his words silencing the crowd as they listened eagerly for more, “I will need your help. Some will need to bring the cannons here. Others must help make…”

He struggled for the word for charcoal, then plowed on.

“… the powder. But have no doubt. Tomorrow, we march to war.”

His final words were said breathlessly, trailing off as he lost his confidence, yet another cheer rocked the dry harbor and hands clapped him on the back. He grinned, and felt Marius’s arm about his shoulders.

But when Cade turned to him, Marius did not look at him with joy, or friendship in his eyes. There was a warning there, and the first green shoots of hope in Cade’s chest shriveled at the sight.

Marius steered Cade toward the other contenders, beckoning them to follow as they walked beside the sleds. Marius paused, then bent down.

“Tonight, we have meat!” Marius bellowed, lifting a sack of sauropod jerky from the sleds.

More cheers followed, and Marius tossed the sack to one of his men. Famished hands reached in, and Marius took one sack, then another, throwing them to the grasping fingers of the legionaries crowding forward.