“The catapults are positioned midfield,” the huntsman said. “I don’t think they have the range to reach that far. But if they push us back enough to move them—”

“They won’t,” Selena said. “Go now. We have work to do.”

When the huntsman rode away, Selena pointed to the stretch of rise right in front of them. “You have to get up there and pull our men off that piece of the rise.”

“If we open up a hole, the enemy will pour through it,” Ashk protested.

“No, they won’t. Because I’ll be there to meet them.”

Selena’s hair fluttered, as if caught by a light breeze. Dust stirred around Mistrunner’s hooves. The Huntress looked at her with cold, cold eyes, and the face was a perfect mask that held no hint of the woman Ashk was coming to know.

Saying nothing, Ashk urged her horse into a canter and headed up the rise. She stopped a few lengths from the top and went the rest of the way on foot, pulling an arrow from her quiver and nocking her bow as she got her first look at the field and the enemy.

The huntsman was right. There were hundreds of men marching toward the rise. Longbowmen marched at the back of each company, pausing long enough to aim and fire, then marching on again while they nocked another arrow. Men worked the catapults in midfield, sending their deadly balls over the rise. The road, barely visible from where she stood, had become a cloud of dust, stirred by the feet of men who clashed and maimed and killed.

It would take hours for all the Clans and human companies to reach this place, Ashk thought with despair. The camps were spread out all around Willowsbrook while the enemy must have come up in one mass hidden by the trees at the other end of the field.

She shook her head. Time to get on with the task at hand.

“Huntsmen,” she said, pausing a moment to draw her bow, aim, and fire. “Move the line to either side of this position. Stagger the archers in a double line.”

“But…Hunter,” one of them protested, “we can’t—”

Ashk looked over her shoulder and saw what was coming up the rise at the speed of a cantering horse. “Move!” she shouted, shoving the man on her left. “Move, move, move!”

The men looked back, cried out in fear, and scrambled away from that part of the rise.

Ashk ran a few steps to the left, then flung herself to the ground, pressing herself into it while it quivered beneath her.

Shouts of triumph from the enemy as they surged forward. Screams of fear as that funnel of earth and wind topped the rise and went down the other side, straight into the men who had been rushing up to break through the opening.