Startled, I whipped my head around to look, and sobs racked my shoulders as my eyes told my brain what I was seeing.

Chariots. At least thirty of them.

Thundering through the gates toward me. Toward the melee.

All being driven by a band of female warriors too fierce, too powerful, to even believe. And they were led by Commander Ummi and Higal, who both wore vicious determination about their shoulders like they were born for exactly this kind of revenge.

THE WARRIORS, COPPER helmets gleaming in the sun, mouths wide open in battle cry, would not stop coming through the gates with chariots and whips. Riding panting horses. Swinging battle-axes and firing arrows and throwing spears. Assata thundered by me astride a gleaming chestnut mare, a broken arm holding the reins. She swung a sicklesword into the guardsman advancing on me as she raced into the fray. He fell to his knees, blood spurting from his throat. I scrambled away, to the side of the Pit, fear, relief, choking me. The heavy trader’s tunic was sweltering, and I ripped it over my head and kicked it off, freeing my healing satchel. Terrified, I pressed myself against the Pit’s wall.

The warriors clanged battle-axes, bloodying the sands with shrieking men. An arrow thunked into the shoulder of the man fighting Dagan, and Dagan swung his sicklesword and finished him with one jagged slice. His face was grim. Resolute. He spun around to help Nasu with another attack.

And at once, my hair prickled on my neck. A whisper at first.

Then a roar.

A mighty rush of frigid wind descended on me as if I were caught up in a great storm, and from the center of the battle, over the horses kicking up sand, the warriors’ twisted, ruthless faces, a figure rose.

The Boatman, casting stark light from his eyes, his mouth, his hands, ascended from the sand in his ragged cloak. He opened his cavernous mouth wide in dreadful terror and threw his hood from his head. As he raised his bony arms to the skies and shrieked, one word echoed through my head again, and again, and again.

Beware!

The same one I’d heard when I’d envisioned Dagan throwing his dagger at me!

The sensation of spiders crawling down my arms made me shudder as he continued to scream above the warriors, his bony jaw opened wide. No one else stopped to stare. He must only be showing himself to me.

The healer.

Dread wrapped its long fingers around my throat, and I began to choke.

But after a second, I realized that the fingers were real.

Someone is choking me!

Peeling brittle fingers away, I wrenched around to see the damp, sickly face of Uruku. He must have come down the ladder during the fracas! At once, he was on me again, choking me, thumbs pressing into my windpipe as his eyes bulged.

“You have done all this! You! You stupid girl!” Spittle flew into my face as he raged.