Nightrise

asked.
    It took Jamie a moment to realize that she was talking to him. He nodded. "I'm all right."
    "It'll be over very quickly," she said.
    "How do you know?"
    "Matt has a plan."

    "Do you know what it is?"
    Scar smiled. "He told me last night."
    To his surprise, Jamie felt a little annoyed. Matt must have spoken to Scar in her dreams. Why had he been excluded? But there was no point in arguing about it now. "Are you scared?" he asked.
    Scar shook her head. "Not really. What's the worst that can happen?"
    Jamie could think of all sorts of things but decided not to answer.
    Scar looked behind her. The rest of her forces had finally assembled and were looking upward, awaiting her command. Finn was leaning forward on his horse as if he were listening for something. He looked even older than he had that morning, and Jamie saw that he was close to exhaustion. Not just tired after a bad night's sleep but worn out from years of fighting. "Finn is scared," Scar muttered, making sure that Finn couldn't hear her. "He's trying not to show it but he always is. He's scared for me."
    ''You mean a lot to him."
    "I suppose so. I'm the daughter he never had, although he tells me he has nine sons." She turned to Jamie. "I've been hard on you, and I'm sorry. I'll try to be kinder if either of us survives."
    Jamie didn't know what to say, but it didn't matter because Scar didn't give him a chance. She signaled, and at once they began to move forward, covering the last few yards to the top of the hill. They were very quiet now. Jamie could just hear the horses' hooves as they padded through the carpet of dead needles — otherwise, the animals made no sound. The rest of the attackers, tiptoeing with their weapons and shields, barely seemed to breathe. At the very top, a last line of trees provided shelter. Once again they stopped, and at last Jamie saw what was awaiting him on the other side.
    The battleground.
    It was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was more terrible than anything he could have imagined.
    He was standing above a strip of very dark, almost black grass about a quarter of mile wide that flowed like a river between the hills on one side and a dense forest on the other. Below and in front of him, the last great army of humanity had been assembled, two thousand strong, united under the blue five-pointed star that he himself carried on his sword. It was on their banners and on their shields. It flew from the tents that slanted out of the bottom of the hill, tall and triangular, like the sails of a ship caught in the breeze. Had there been more light, it would have shone out, but the sky was gray and threatening and the shadow of imminent death was stretched across the entire scene.
    The army was advancing in three blocks — a central phalanx and two wings — each one made up of so many people that, for Jamie high up on the hill, it was impossible to separate them. The horsemen were at the front, hundreds of them, leading the charge. Then came the foot soldiers. Behind them, a long line of men and women stood waiting, each one holding on to what looked like a length of copper pipe, almost the same height as themselves. Then came the archers and finally, just in front of the tents, a row of cannons with two soldiers kneeling beside each. Jamie was puzzled by the variety of weapons, for they seemed to belong to different times and different continents. But he realized there was nothing uniform about the people either. They had assembled here having traveled from all over the world.
    Two boys were preparing't(J> lead them into battle. Jamie saw them at the very front, both of them riding on dappled gray horses. He didn't need to be told who they were. They were only fourteen years old and they commanded all these people. They had brought them here. Their strategy would either win or lose the day. Jamie couldn't see their faces, since they were looking at Matt and Flint, and he wished that they would turn around, if only for a moment. He wanted to look at their faces. He wanted to see his brother, Scott.
    But the two of them were continuing forward and it was only when he looked past them and across to the other side of the field that Jamie understood the full horror of what they were about to face. The army of the blue star was hopelessly outnumbered. It was facing certain death. For every one of them, there were ten of the enemy. Human and nonhuman, they went on for as far as the eye could see.
    Sometimes it was hard