Nightrise

they'd beaten us, but they were wrong. And now we're going to show them. We're going to show them the power of Five."
    "Five!" The single word blasted out all around. Banners flew, swords were raised, and from somewhere came the thunder of drums and a great fanfare. Jamie looked up and saw the musicians, three small boys, none of them older than ten, perched high up on one of the aqueducts. Their horns glittered in the daylight as they saluted the crowd below. Scar's horse had been led forward, and she leaped onto it. The gray horse had been brought out for Jamie, and he did the same. This time he didn't need help. A moment later, they were riding forward with Finn, Erin, and Corian, leading their cheering army between the two pagodas and along the mosaic path that led to the city walls. There were people riding singly, others two to a horse or pulling wagons. A few ran behind. With so many of them, it took several minutes simply to pass through the gate.
    As they left the city and emerged onto the plain, Jamie turned to Scar. "That was quite a speech," he said.
    "You have to make a speech before a battle," Scar said. She looked down guiltily, then back up again.
    "Actually, if you must know, Finn wrote it for me. He made me learn it last night."
    "Well, I think it worked."
    "I hope so."
    They were circling the City of Canals, traveling in the opposite direction to Scathack Hill. Ahead of them, the landscape was flat and open, a tabletop covered with wild grass and a few flowers. But the flowers were strange, unnatural colors and the grass was sharp and leathery. They rode under the branches of a fruit tree and Jamie reached up to pick what looked like a mauve-colored peach with a hard, prickly skin. Scar stopped him.
    "Don't!" she called out. "It's poisonous."
    They continued into the fields, and for the first time, Jamie saw animals — or their remains. A herd of cows had died here. They were lying, bloated and stiff, their tongues lolling out, their eye sockets buzzing with black flies. As he rode past, Jamie smelled the sweet, decaying flesh and felt his stomach churn. He was glad that he hadn't been offered breakfast.
    Ahead of them, less than a mile away, the ground rose up, with a wood that became thicker the farther it went. The trees looked like pines with branches that were so straight they could have been artificial.
    They were covered in dark green needles like splinters of broken glass. Jamie could hear something now, a strange, unnerving sound. It was a rhythmic hammering of metal against metal. Boom, boom…
    boom.
    Boom, boom…
    boom.
    Each time the third beat was the loudest. It was as if there were some kind of huge machine still out of sight on the other side of the hill.
    Scar was moving ahead of him, so he urged his own horse on. He didn't need to kick it or snap with the reins. Somehow, the horse seemed to understand him. He jolted forward and caught up. They reached the first of the trees and began to weave their way through the trunks, climbing steeply toward the top of the hill. Jamie felt a growing nervousness in the pit of his stomach. Just a few weeks ago, he had been walking onto the stage at the Reno Playhouse to perform a magic act with newspapers and playing cards.
    And here he was now, riding to war.
    He should have been terrified. He should have been hollowed out by the horror of it all. But the strange thing was that he felt nothing but a sense of elation. They were still scrambling up the slope, surrounded by the soaring, hostile trees and he knew that there could be no going back. This was it. The drumbeat was still calling to him. Boom, boom…
    boom.
    Boom, boom…
    boom.
    And he was being carried forward willingly with the soft thunder of hooves all around and the smell of the horses' sweat in his nostrils. He had discovered the secret of war, the moment when soldiers cast aside their fear and become part of a machine that is so much bigger than themselves. For only then are they prepared to die.
    They were moving faster and faster. As they arrived at the last reaches of the hill, the trees thinned out and the riders broke into a gallop. But then Scar raised a hand and they slowed down to a stop. They had arrived. The fighters who had hitched a lift with the riders were dismounting and preparing their weapons. The wagons were emptying and Jamie saw children as young as eleven and twelve, flexing their bows, their faces set in grim concentration.
    "How are you feeling?" Scar