Fearless (Nameless #3)(87)

Twenty yards. The army still turned. More Ram came.

Out of time. Out of room. Please let this work!

With only fifteen yards separating them, Gryphon stepped out of hiding with hands raised in surrender.

“You!” Barnabas nearly fell over in surprise.

“We need to talk,” said Gryphon.

Barnabas’s wicked laugh rose to a hysterical level. “It’s like you want to die, boy!”

“I’ve come to offer the Ram a chance to turn around.”

Barnabas’s joy dissolved quickly into rage. “You are in no position to bargain.”

“A chance to do the right thing,” Gryphon continued, raising his voice so he could be heard by the entire Ram army. “The people whose homes you intend to steal do not have to be your enemy. You’ve seen plenty of fertile, unclaimed land for the Ram in your travels. You don’t need to fight. There is no honor in killing the innocent!”

Barnabas’s face turned three shades redder. His many chins wobbled and he literally shook with fury. “How dare you.”

Then someone deep within the ranks of the Ram shouted, “Speak your proposal!”

Barnabas whipped around, searching the throng of soldiers to see who had spoken. Had word of Barnabas’s mistreatment of Gryphon’s mess reached to the other men?

“If you will walk away from this valley, forsake your chief, and release your Nameless, I offer you a life outside of war, free of beatings and hunger, where your families hold higher rank than your mess. More to the point, I offer you a chance to leave this canyon alive.”

No one moved to retreat. Gryphon hadn’t expected they would. Still, these were his people. He had to give them a chance. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “You are not fighting for the security of your families, Ram! You are fighting for bloodlust and pride. Put down your weapons and leave with your lives, knowing there is fertile land to be had outside the walls of Ram’s Gate.”

Silence descended over the large group of warriors. Metal clinked as men shifted their weight from one restless foot to the other. Murmuring broke out through the ranks. Arguments. Anger. Doubt.

Barnabas drew his sword. “You, the son of a dead traitor, threaten our lives? Offering mercy as if you were the captain of our fate. How will you enforce your righteous threat? You have no family. No clan. Your pathetic army has failed you. You’re nothing!”

Gryphon cast his eyes to the ground. It was time to give the signal. His people had had their chance—something he had demanded from the Allied leaders when he first devised this plan. It was time to end this. But Gryphon didn’t move.

He couldn’t do it.

Barnabas growled and ran at Gryphon with sword raised. Gryphon deftly blocked the blow and grabbed the chief by the neck. His long fingers squeezed Barnabas’s throat. “This is for my father,” he whispered. He lifted his hand and saluted his old chief, touching two fingers to his brow—the signal his men had been waiting for.

Hundreds of Raven arrows cut through the concentrated mass of the Ram army. Waves of men fell, unprepared for the attack. Those without an arrow sticking from their chests tried to create a shield hedge for protection. Too many bodies lined the narrow trail that they couldn’t form solid links.

Barnabas wrenched Gryphon’s arm away from his neck and slammed him against the mountain. Gryphon stumbled and rolled away from Barnabas’s desperate blade.

“You once told me the Ram would never fall,” Gryphon yelled over the chaos surrounding them. He dodged an attack and almost lost his grip on the blade while blocking another.

Gryphon whistled his signal and a wave of Wolf warriors rushed past to join in the fight. “You were wrong, Chief.”

Barnabas fumbled backward as Gryphon advanced, swinging his sword with all the anger in his heart. He sliced an arm, his chest, and then his back as the chief retreated to the side of the mountain.

Gryphon approached the panting leader slowly, as a cat stalks its prey.

Barnabas sank to his knees. His sword clattered to the rocky soil as he gulped air. “Mercy.”

“Mercy?” Rage burned the edges of Gryphon’s vision. Sweat ran into his eyes. “I’m surprised you know the meaning of the word.”

Barnabas cowered lower, his pleading gaze fixed on Gryphon. “I can still call my men off,” he said.

Gryphon looked at the ongoing battle. The mess units not inside the pass during the ambush were entering. Strong and certain. Spears flew. Shields locked. The Ram were… regrouping. The advantage shifted. Blood spilled as the Ram pushed farther and farther though the canyon.

No! Gryphon wanted to cry out.

Then he heard it. A new kind of thunder filled the pass, so loud and terrifying that it seeped into Gryphon’s bones and rattled his heart.

“Impossible,” said Barnabas.

Beyond the battle, flooding into the canyon like a sea of giant devils, the Kodiak army charged into the fray. Murtog, easy to spot at the head, wielded a large staff with ruthless precision. Others fought with axes and some charged forward with only their bare hands. The Wolf lines rallied as the Kodiak advanced, sandwiching the remains of the Ram army.

Barnabas shifted and Gryphon turned back to him, pressing the tip of his blade into the chieftain’s chest. “Spare their lives,” he panted. “Call surrender.” There was no sense in killing these Ram. The Allies had won. The conflict was over.