Then a cannon boomed from the central ranks. A second cannon.

The world became too loud for Arin to understand anything he heard, too fast for him to understand more than what his body did, and did again.

Blood was in his mouth. His hands were slippery. His muscles were loose and alive.

A cannonball thudded into the hillside not far below the gunners. Kestrel felt the impact’s tremor in the earth. It vibrated the soles of her boots. It trembled the thin, gummy twigs of sirrin trees.

“Again,” she told the gunners.

But despite the gunfire, despite an attack on three fronts, the Valorian army didn’t collapse or panic. The rearguard countered Roshar’s attack. The Valorian army, thousands strong, segmented into three: front, middle, and rear ranks. But Arin’s company, from what Kestrel saw, couldn’t drive through the vanguard to reach the center. The rearguard’s defenses were better than she’d hoped. Roshar made little headway.

Even divided, the Valorians would overcome their attacks. The only way to cripple Kestrel’s enemy for the long term was to destroy the supplies. But the guns, deadly though they were, weren’t precise enough in their aim. They couldn’t open a path for either Arin’s or Roshar’s company to reach the supply wagons.

Anxiety clawed her belly. Roshar, she thought, would have the good sense to retreat if he must. She wasn’t so sure about Arin. She thought that if she couldn’t drag a victory out of this battle, he’d struggle against the vanguard until it overwhelmed him.

The solution is simple, her father whispered inside her. Kestrel didn’t know whether it was a memory or her imagination. If you can do it.

She looked at the sirrin trees. Their sap oozed.

She heard the plunk of an iron ball dropped into its chamber. The dry pour of black powder. As the gunners reloaded their guns, Kestrel shakily tucked her braid into her leather helmet. She could do nothing about the obvious Valorian style of her armor. She remembered how she’d been uncertain whether she wanted her father to see her. A shudder ran through her.

No. Not seen. Never. What ever happened, she didn’t want to be recognized. She scooped a handful of forest earth and scrubbed it onto her face.

Kestrel became aware that the small sounds of reloading guns had stopped, giving way to the dull roar of the battle below. The gunners, crouched low like she was, regarded her.

She stood. “Which of you is truly brave?”

The Valorian vanguard changed tactics. They moved forward now, pressing Arin’s company back.

A hand caught Arin’s arm, pulled him from the path of a charging horse. He turned.

No one.

Bodies and blood. And then . . . an eerie energy in his veins. A sharp zing that made his gut tighten and his guard go up right before a tiny Valorian dagger flew into his vision, spiking through the air, straight for his throat.

As the gunners fired, Kestrel sliced her dagger through the shreds of rope left tied to the stakes in the ground. She scavenged the forest floor for smooth, dry sticks of birch. Hands wrapped in broad leaves, she broke sappy twigs from the sirrin tree. Careful to keep her skin from contact with the flammable sap, she bunched the twigs together, holding them around a birch stick and one end of the rope. With a free hand, she wound the rope around the twigs and the birch stick. Then she held the makeshift torch beneath the dripping sirrin tree, letting drops of sap coat the rope and glue it down to the twigs.

“Exactly like that,” she told the four soldiers who’d agreed to join her. When they each had a torch and had taken a box of matches from the gunners, Kestrel said, “Don’t hold the stick upright until you must. The sap will run. If it gets on your skin, you might burn, too.” She told the gunners to fire two more volleys and then stop.

She and the four soldiers began to run down the hill.

Arin dodged the small dagger. A Needle. He knew that weapon. Needles were a set of six little knives.

He caught the next one in his arm, flung up to block the dagger from his face. It bit into the exposed underside of his forearm where his armor buckled.

Then either his assailant had grown impatient with targeting from afar, or a new opponent had entered the game. As pain flared up Arin’s arm, somebody’s sword crashed into his and knocked his weapon to the ground.

Kestrel followed the scars made by the fallen trees in the forest. She skidded down the steep incline, the four soldiers following. A volley of gunfire shattered the air. A Valorian cannon boomed back. The cannonball crashed into the trees. They cracked. Broken branches hurtled through the air.

A chunk of flying wood nearly hit Kestrel. Startled, she lost her balance and stumbled, getting sap from her torch on her chest armor. But she shouted Run. They were nearly to the road.