He hadn’t run away. He was running toward the wagons laden with black powder, mag torch in hand.

Figures illumined only by that bobbing star flashed and shifted as the two camps fought, shadows in a night made darker by the contrast. The sprinting wight wasn’t thirty paces from the wagons.

Kip had only a little superviolet and yellow left. Still lying on the ground, he shot out the yellow as hard as he could. The molten yellow twisted in the air, connected to Kip’s will by trailing tendrils of superviolet.

In midair, it solidified and curved.

The projectile connected with the blue wight’s head—but it hadn’t totally solidified. A failure. It splashed into light.

But Kip was already up and running after the wight.

The wight had fallen. Being hit from behind while running, even by a fist of water, had been enough to knock him off his stride.

The blue wight staggered to his feet and picked up the burning mag torch, mere steps from the wagon.

A Cwn y Wawr soldier ran in from the darkness and clubbed him with the butt of his blunderbuss.

But it was a glancing blow to a shoulder, and the hit spun the wight between the soldier and the wagon loaded with black powder. The Cwn y Wawr soldier lifted his blunderbuss.

“No! Don’t shoot!” Kip shouted, running. “Oof!” he tripped over a body in the darkness.

The soldier looked back, whether he understood what Kip had said or simply thought it was another attack.

He squinted against the darkness, unable to see Kip, and died as the wight’s blue spikes rammed through his neck.

The wight released the spikes back to dust, and switched the mag torch from his wounded left hand to his right. He lofted the torch—

—and jerked forward several paces as Cruxer’s giant elk rammed its antler through his back. The giant elk lifted the wight high in the air, but even then the wight didn’t drop his torch.

Cruxer’s first stab missed as the giant elk’s animal instincts took over and it tried to shake the wight off its antlers. Then it paused and lowered its head, about to buck the wight up and off the tines of its antlers.

The wight threw the torch.

But Cruxer threw himself backward so he was lying on the giant elk and, upside down, swung his spear, slapping the torch off to one side.

His momentum carried him and he flipped off the giant elk’s back just as the animal flicked its head upward. The wight flew into the air and somehow Cruxer flowed into position, his spear butt planted on the ground.

The wight landed, his momentum impaling him on Cruxer’s spear. Cruxer took his hand out of the way at the last moment, casually releasing the haft of the spear and then taking it back as the wight thudded to the ground. He spun the spear, its blade slashing the wight’s throat, and stepped out of range, eyes already looking for any other threats.

He gave a command to the giant elk, and it charged off.

Kip kicked dirt over the torch and walked to join Cruxer in guarding the wagons.

The Cwn y Wawr soldier was dying nearby, holding his throat, gurgling, his eyes on Kip accusing him of betrayal.

“You were going to shoot a blunderbuss toward a wagon full of black powder,” Kip told him. “You would have killed us all.”

But the soldier was beyond hearing.

Moments later, the rest of the Mighty swept in and surrounded Kip.

“What are you doing?” Big Leo shouted. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Why isn’t Tallach with you?” Ben-hadad asked.

“How did we manage to lose him again, Mighty?” Cruxer demanded.

“It’s a trap,” Kip said, over labored breaths, still trying to yawn away his one deafened ear from the musket blast. “Was. Was a trap. Fire. Wagons. Black powder.”

Conn Arthur, animating Tallach, must have realized that coming to help Kip keep the wagons from blowing up when Tallach was utterly soaked in pyrejelly was not the best idea. He’d gone elsewhere.

The other possibility, that he had run away, was simply impossible.

“These are rigged?” Ben-hadad asked from atop his night mare. “Then what the fuck are you doing right next to them?”

But for the next minutes, they kept everyone away from the wagons. Not that any of their foes had any interest. Most of the men had no idea they’d been bait for a trap. The camp had been broken now.

It left Kip with a few minutes. His officers knew their work and didn’t need him interfering, and he was too valuable to risk himself at this stage when the battle had already been won. He looked at the Mighty. They’d sharpened in these last months, and all of them had their halos at least half-full. Ben-hadad had crafted some device to move his crippled knee, and spent hours a day wincing, tears sometimes silently streaming down his face, regaining a range of motion. Big Leo had grown a heavy beard and picked out his hair to a large dark halo. He wore spiked gloves and carried a heavy chain into battle now. He’d joined Conn Arthur in his exercises and tried to eat only what the conn ate, envious of the man’s ridiculously muscular upper body. Ferkudi had picked up a scar exactly where he parted his hair, from the top of his head down to one eyebrow. It was the only goofy scar Kip had ever seen.

Only Winsen seemed unaffected by all the fighting they’d done and death they’d seen. He’d saved countless friendly lives with his marksmanship, but had taken two. He’d reported those himself, but seemed unburdened by it. ‘He dodged left for no reason. Arrow was already in the air.’ His bow had been shattered during an engagement where he’d apparently saved many Cwn y Wawr lives, and they’d given him a new one in thanks. Or, more appropriately, an ancient one. It had a sea demon bone worked into the spine of the bow, and its mammoth tension could be strung only by will-casting. Winsen was able to learn enough of that art for the bow, and his eyes lit with real joy when he tested the draw for the first time. Ben-hadad had, of course, wanted to study it immediately.

Six months, Kip thought. Halfway through our halos in six months.

That meant they had six more months at the most, fighting this way.

Orholam’s balls, just at the time they reach their full capacities as warriors, I’m going to have to take all these guys off the front lines completely.

The other options were of course impossible: tell drafters fighting for their lives not to draft, or let them draft all they wanted and then just kill them when they broke the halo.