“Ambush!” Rosslyn shouted.

Thinking quickly, she mentally calculated the distance that she and her party had traveled.

We are closer to the fortress than to the city, right? She shook her head. Either way, we need to risk it.

She made a snap decision, conjured a burst of fire, and shot it high into the air. Any scout on either side of the border could not fail to miss that. But hopefully it would bring the attention of the soldiers from Fort Alistair. She did not know how many opponents they faced, but if the force was considered sufficient to ambush them, she expected the enemy’s judgment of the numbers required would be accurate.

Then the whole forest sprang to life around them.

Dim shapes that had stood at the distant edge of Rosslyn’s ability to see now moved from their positions. She had assumed they were trees.

That is some impressive stealth, she thought. These must be elite assassins. Soldiers could not have remained so well hidden.

Rosslyn sensed as more of the fast-moving metal projectiles entered the air around her, and she batted them away with quick back and forth movements of her sword. With three quick pings, the metal objects darted away.

She risked a glance down, where one of them had embedded itself in the soil. It did not resemble weapons she had ever trained with, but she found the shape vaguely familiar.

A dart?

Then she had to deflect more projectiles. One, two, three, four, five this time.

The enemy were becoming more aggressive now that they had broken stealth.

Rosslyn almost lost her balance as she was shoved from behind, and she rounded on the person who had pushed her, only to see it was Carolien.

A dart thudded into the tree between them.

“Ah. Thank you,” Rosslyn said.

Carolien nodded and turned to deflect a pair of projectiles aimed at her blind spot. Rosslyn turned around and backed into Carolien, who almost jumped at her touch.

“Just me,” Rosslyn said quietly, batting away more projectiles.

“Just you,” Carolien repeated, slightly breathless. “Great.”

“How are the others doing?” Rosslyn asked, continuing to defend as she spoke.

“When I turned to look at them, there were already a half-dozen down with those things sticking out of their necks or faces. Whoever is using them has magic. They penetrate deeper than they should.”

Rosslyn nodded, then realized her stepmother could not see the gesture.

“Yes,” she said. “I would assume they are poisoned as well. Elite assassins. Courtesy of our dear Lord Baranack.”

Carolien tensed slightly at the name, and then Rosslyn felt as her stepmother moved her sword to block more darts aimed at her unprotected lower legs.

“This is easier now that we are together,” Rosslyn added.

She could feel the difference in difficulty now that the zone she needed to defend had decreased.

“We might get through this yet,” Carolien replied. “The soldiers who are not incapacitated are using trees for cover, though we seem to be surrounded, so I do not know how useful that will be.”

Then the dialogue ceased. Rosslyn could think of nothing to say that would improve their situation. The next half hour was spent intensely focused on blocking projectiles that seemed to come from all directions except the earth and sky.

“This is becoming frustrating,” Carolien said at last.

“I can see the shapes of them in the distance,” Rosslyn said, “but we cannot do anything about them unless they close the distance or run out of projectiles.”

They had found little room for movement over the minutes they had defended each other’s backs. Besides maneuvering to use a tree for cover on one side, they had just stayed close to each other. To do anything else was to increase the likelihood of suffering a fatal wound.

In the last half hour, another three of their soldiers had fallen. The remaining group were bunched together now in a loose huddle near the royals they were there to protect, having adopted a strategy like Rosslyn and Carolien’s. Now that they were defending each other’s blind spots, fewer and fewer darts got near their targets.

Those projectiles that made it through the defensive line tended to bounce off armor rather than penetrate, which suggested to Rosslyn that the killers might be starting to run low on Mana.

There was a sudden stillness in the air, and Rosslyn realized the hail of missiles had fallen silent.

“Now is our chance,” she said quietly, intending to be heard only by her allies. “If they have run out of darts, they will have to try and fight face to face like real warriors. Wait until they get close, and then strike hard and fast. I know they will not be able to stand up to Claustrian valor.”

She could feel the effect that hearing this had on the men and women around her. Soldiers who had adopted slumped, defeated postures stood a little straighter. Tired expressions morphed into looks of resolve and a few grim smiles.

Yes. These were her countrymen. The warriors who had kept Claustria independent and free for over a thousand years. They were ready to defeat these cowardly assassins and send the demons to the afterlife, where they belonged.

Rosslyn was surprised when she saw the first assassin’s face appear from behind a tree.

Human, she thought. It was surprising. For a moment, she wondered if she had misunderstood what was happening. Is some other country trying to have me assassinated?

As more of the assassins stepped into view in a tightening ring around her party, she began to understand. Their faces had a similar quality to them. It was hard to pin down when she only saw one man, but with so many examples, it was impossible to ignore.

These men went through some distorted form of puberty, she thought. Or none at all. She remembered rumors she had heard, of magically gifted humans kept captive and bred for war by the Empire. Rumors that every royal on the continent had probably heard.

The stories were discussed almost as fables, and perhaps not everyone believed them to be true. There was always a moral to the tale. “If you let the Empire take you prisoner, our family secrets must die with you,” or “If we lose this war, your children’s children will be slaves to those heathens.” Most succinctly, “Better to die than to be made a prisoner.”

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Apparently they were not rumors.

“Throw down your weapons and valuables,” the first man said, twisting his pale moon face in an ugly smile. “No one needs to die here tonight.”

He was pretending to be a brigand for some reason. Rosslyn did not bother with a reply.

“Attack!” she yelled instead.

She felt and heard as the soldiers all around her sprang into life. The looks on the assassins’ faces, at least those Rosslyn could see, seemed gratifyingly surprised for a moment, as if they had not expected such swiftness of action.

Then she was engaged in combat with the leader, and Rosslyn’s attention turned entirely to him.

Their drawn swords danced in the shadows of the forest. She felt him push, then give; parry, probe for weaknesses, and then defend as she went for his throat.

Two of his fellows leaped in to help him at that point, and she was forced to divide her attention.

But in the brief exchange, she felt the differences between the lead assassin and herself.

He is not my superior in strength or skill, she assessed. I should be able to win this, if I can just get rid of these two.

The four of them engaged in a furious duel that felt frustratingly balanced for long minutes. Rosslyn channeled vast quantities of Mana into her arms, legs, eyes, and ears and dimmed the light from her sword in an effort to get an advantage, but it was all she could do to keep ahead of the blades that hemmed her in on every side.

Occasionally, another assassin would try to jump in, and the tide would seem to turn as they forced her back against a tree trunk. But each time that happened, one of the soldiers or Carolien managed to intervene and keep her from being overwhelmed.

Overall, Rosslyn thought she was keeping up with the three assassins facing her well. The one who had spoken earlier was the leader, she imagined, and the other two might be his most trusted lieutenants. Since she was the highest priority target, that would be how she would have organized the attack if she was in command.

Lock her in a stalemate, and they might simply wear her down while the rest of their squad defeated her bodyguards. Then they could overwhelm her with sheer numbers. That would be the rational thing to do if they had no other advantages.

If that was right, then she had hope. She believed that if these three were the best of the assassins, her soldiers would hold out against the rest of their band. And she felt confident that she would kill one of her assailants and gain the upper hand soon. She only needed them to make a single mistake.

They were relying on her tiring, but she was optimistic that at least one of them would weaken first.

And then one of the killers made a mistake.

Rosslyn dodged a sword blow, and she heard the specific sound of a blade burying itself firmly into dense wood.

He will not be able to quickly remove it, she decided. In an instant, she poured a fresh torrent of Mana into her sword, using a different technique.

Divine Sword, Sixth Form, Edge of Light.

Her blade whipped forward, slicing through the air and then the arms of the assassin trying to recover his sword from the thick, gnarled tree trunk. The blade continued on to sever the front of the man’s throat. It sliced swiftly through everything it touched, like a hot knife through butter.

The killer tumbled to the ground, and a moment later, blood began pouring from the wounds. Rosslyn stepped over his body and walked after the other two assassins, who had begun retreating carefully backward into the trees.

Afraid of me? she thought. The sweaty smell in the air told her that she was right. For a moment, she savored the taste of their fear. Then she reminded herself that she could not maintain this technique forever, and she accelerated after the assassins. Cannot let them separate me from the group. This may be a strategic retreat rather than simply trying to avoid immediate death.

She managed to turn her head back for a fraction of a second to check on her group. They were locked in combat with the rest of the assassins, who had them outnumbered. More than a dozen of her soldiers’ bodies littered the ground, but they had killed almost as many of the assassins. And she saw that Carolien was following after her.

Thank the Goddess, she thought. With her help—

Suddenly she saw something that made her breath catch in her throat.

“Watch out behind you!” Rosslyn yelled.

Carolien managed to dip forward and spin to the side, but the slash downward that should have severed her head still managed to chop into Queen’s armor. Rosslyn could not see how serious the injury was, as Carolien’s back was to her now, but she heard the groan of pain and took a step toward her stepmother.

The sound of the blade cutting air alerted her to the attack coming from behind her, and Rosslyn barely managed to dodge, throwing herself flat to the ground.

Right, no honor, attacks from behind are their preferred method, she thought bitterly.

She rolled to avoid the next downward stabs aimed at her as both of the assassins she had engaged earlier tried to reclaim their advantage.

She hit a tree and stopped, then pushed off the ground with the three limbs that were not holding her sword. She felt a blade barely touch her armor, and then she was above the assassins.

Rosslyn took her sword in both hands and slashed downward at their necks.

The leader managed to react in time, while the other man’s head tumbled away from his body.

She let go of the sword with her right hand and reached out to grab the tree. The thick branch she took hold of held her for a moment. Then she pushed off of it with her feet, leaping toward her stepmother, who was now isolated, fighting two assassins of her own.

Rosslyn soared through the air using the momentum from her kick. The assassins noticed her when she was already within striking range. She held her sword tightly, refreshing the glow of light around it.

The nearest assassin raised his sword to meet hers. There was a ring of metal as the blades clashed, then a sound of scraping as her sword chopped through his and sliced his head off above the lower jaw. His forehead and nose fell in one direction, and his tongue and body fell in the other.

Distantly, as she set her feet on the ground, Rosslyn heard the sounds of more people arriving. Warriors in armor, from the sounds of their heavy footsteps.

Reinforcements? she wondered briefly.

But she had no time to worry about that. There was a loud whistle from behind her—the leader, she imagined—and suddenly, the whole body of assassins seemed to abandon engaging with the soldiers, almost all of whom were dead or bleeding from numerous wounds by this point.

They had killed more than their number of assassins, but the remaining dozen now swarmed all around Rosslyn and Carolien. The two women were forced into fighting back to back once more. This time, it seemed impossible that they would make it out alive.

Rosslyn took cuts now that she would have previously been able to avoid, as did Carolien, unable to muster the same power as earlier after hours of walking and an hour of Mana-fueled combat. The light around her sword sliced through a few enemies one by one and then weakened and faded, as the strain of the long battle began to take its toll.

“To the Princess! For Claustria!”

She heard a shout from behind her and realized the loud footsteps she had heard were not reinforcements for the assassins. It was the troops from Fort Alistair.

She felt like cheering, but instead, she forced her exhausted brain to keep its intense focus on the fight she was currently in. There were only a handful of killers left, but these were the most furious and determined.

They no longer bothered to dodge her attacks, only attacked furiously until the moment they were struck down. Every strike they aimed was meant to be a death blow, no parries or attempts to wound either woman.

Twice Rosslyn saved Carolien from death at the edges of their blades, and Carolien returned the favor three times. The assassins were more consumed with killing Rosslyn than with trying to kill her stepmother.

But at last, after what felt like a long wait, Rosslyn could see the soldiers of Fort Alistair coming through the trees, in the gap between the assassins’ shoulders.

The last four assassins were still fighting, and as the joy showed on her face, they moved more furiously.

Four swords swung down at her from four different directions.

Carolien parried one. A soldier tackled one of the assassins to the ground.

Rosslyn managed to dodge one.

We did it, she thought. We survived the night.

For those last minutes, it had seemed impossible.

Then the last blade slashed through her blind spot, and as she turned her head, a searing pain ripped through her right eye.