Behind him, a horse screamed in pain, and Gaborn glanced back to see it stumble, an arrow in its neck. Iome’s Days rode the mount, her thin mouth an O of surprise. She somersaulted over the horse’s head, a black arrow in her back as she fell headlong into the charred field.

Half a dozen bowmen had let fly, the arrows sailing toward Gaborn in a long arc. Gaborn shouted, “Right, ho!” As one, all three remaining chargers veered, dodging from beneath the arrows’ trajectory.

“Bowmen, cease fire!” Raj Ahten raged. His fool archers were going to kill his Dedicates.

Five dozen knights raced over blackened fields, pocked with dead nomen and frowth, toward the near hills where burned trees raised twisted limbs. If the knights did not catch the Prince before he entered the woods, Raj Ahten suspected Gaborn would find safety among King Orden’s troops.

As if to confirm Raj Ahten’s suspicions, a lone war horn sounded from the woods—a high, lonely cry—from the peak of the first hill. A signal for Orden’s men to charge.

Who knew how many knights lurked there?

Beside Raj Ahten, two flameweavers ran to the top of the wall. The hairless men leapt beside him, the heat of their bodies rising fierce as an inferno.

Raj Ahten merely pointed. He could not see the boy’s face. Even when Gaborn turned, for some reason he could not focus on the boy’s face. But he knew the back, the form. “Rahjim, see the young man who is falling behind, preparing to fight? Burn him.”

A satisfied light shone from the flameweaver’s dark eyes. Rahjim exhaled nervously; smoke issued from his nostrils. “Yes, O Great One.”

Rahjim drew a rune of fiery power in the air with his finger, then raised a hand high, grasped for half a second toward the sun shining high in the sky. The heavens suddenly darkened as he gathered sunlight into fibers, threads like molten silk, and brought them all twisting down in ropes of energy, to focus in his hand—until his palm filled with molten flames.

Rahjim held the fire for a portion of a second—long enough to gather a proper focus. He threw with his might.

Gaborn fell forward as a blast of wind and energy smashed his back, felt a sudden burning. He wondered if an arrow had hit him, realized that his surcoat was afire.

One of Raj Ahten’s knights raced his horse beside Iome, trying to grab her reins.

Gaborn ripped the dirty, rotting cloth that covered him, tossed the blazing thing in the air just in time to watch the rag burst into flame. He fancied that only the mud on the cloak had kept him from burning in that precious half-second. The garment fell over the face of Iome’s pursuer’s warhorse, catching on the horse’s helm. It almost looked to be a magician’s trick.