All those men—! The boys—!

Staccato with urgency, interminable heartbeats passed.

Flisk barely glimpsed the second lightning-strike. It seemed to stop his pulse.

Forguile.

But the Commander was not hit. The terraces on the south were not. In the instant of its attack, the sorcery burst into bright mist. The winds blew it away.

Some lightning-wielder on the rim of the cliff must have seen what was happening; recognized the threat. A Decimate had dismissed the bolt.

There would be another. Or more than one. Even Magister Brighten could not banish every blast the black ships might hurl.

Flisk snatched a breath to scream again, then caught himself. None of the surviving gunners needed his orders. They were already running for the road and the ropes.

All of them except Commander Forguile in the south.

His team must have loaded his cannon even while theurgy ravaged the northern emplacements. Then he must have sent his men away. He was alone with his gun. As if he were calm, he adjusted the cannon’s elevation, sighted along the barrel. Without hurry, he lit the fuse.

His gun roared. It slammed back against the ropes that stopped its recoil. Flisk did not see where the shot went.

Brighten or other Magisters shielded the southward terraces from a second bolt. They were not quick enough to stop a third. Directly behind Forguile, the third terrace went up in an appalling howl of lightning and gunpowder, flame and iron and wrecked stone.

The Commander seemed to vanish. The blast left Flisk blind as well as deaf. For long moments, he knew nothing. Then his senses began to recover, and he heard the rapid cracking of rifle-fire.

The nearest ships were still within reach of bullets. Every soldier atop the cliff was shooting as fast as he could. If Flisk had been able to focus his eyes, he might have seen slugs shredding the men on the decks, tearing the planks under them.

He might have seen gunners hauling themselves up the ropes to escape more lightning.

But there was no more lightning. It was not needed. If any of the siege guns on the fifth terrace remained intact, they were unmanned. The ships were free to resume clearing the bay’s floor.

The Captain had foreseen none of this. Neither had King Bifalt. They had not known enough about Rile’s power to imagine what his servants could do. Or how many sorcerers the enemy had.

Rubbing his eyes with his free hand, Flisk struggled to clear his sight.

After a moment, he managed to discern blurred shapes on the ropes. The cannoneers were little more than shadows in the moonlight and lightning, too dim to be counted, but some of them had reached the crest of the road. Others were close. The treacherous surface snatched at their feet. They gripped the ropes for their lives. Floundering, they struggled upward.

Flisk stayed where he was. He felt unaccountably exhausted. He had lost his friend. Without Ennis Forguile’s encouragement, he could not move. The bay’s defenses had failed.