Rain falls in heavy sheets over us, running down my face as a thick, icy layer that plasters my hair to my head, weighs on my chain mail shirt like a sodden blanket. Arcadia’s storm, which she called a week ago today, hasn’t abated for even one moment. Today it appears to have built to its crescendo. Beneath my post upon the wall, the empty town of Kellheim stretches out before me, flooded. There’s a rumble of thunder, and it isn’t in the distance. It’s right over our heads.

Closer to where I’m standing, above the gate house, I see two of those tall iron rods stuck in the ground, one on each side of the gate. More of them spread out from there, a field of spines poking out from the surface of the dark water.

“Four cohorts,” says Jarl Ragna, her eyes fixed on the Ecean forces forming up in the distance. “Two thousand soldiers. We’re outnumbered four to one.”

Raindrops plink against her silvery, winged helmet, and put a shine on her dark cloak as they roll down her shoulders. Her gaze is as impassive as when she studied their figurines on the battle map.

I grin at her. “I’m worth at least four legionnaires,” I say. “Likely more.”

Her eyes shift in my direction for a moment, and she gives me a thin smile.

I’m worth far more than four, but boasting to a stranger doesn’t feel right. And besides, I have a feeling Arcadia and Irvin are going to outshine us all today.

Arcadia waits within the keep, for the proper moment to spring their trap. Irvin is with Ragna and I. At the moment he’s making some last minute adjustments to his weapon, one of those repeating crossbows he’d fastened to the side of that flying chariot. He’s spent his free time this week salvaging it, and we’re about to find out if he’s been successful.

As long as it isn’t pointed at me again, there won’t be an issue.

Irvin lifts his contraption, sets the business end of it on the edge of the wall and grasps the handle of its metal crank. I glance at him and he frowns, looking ashamed of himself.

“You’re doing what you have to do,” I say. “To survive, and protect your loved ones.”

“I don’t think I could have imagined winding up in a situation like this,” he says.

That makes me smirk. “You’re not alone there.”

He really isn’t. If someone asked me a month ago where I’d be, I wouldn’t have ever said I’d be standing on the wall of a Norgardian keep, prepared to defend it against an invading Ecean army. I wouldn’t have said Arcadia is with me, free to be her true self at long last, and that we’ve fallen deeply in love with each other. And I certainly wouldn’t have been able to predict we’d be in the company of a lizard man, a young pirate-turned-merchant, a witch hunter engineer, and an old man with a thing for books and a magic amulet that lets him comprehend any language.

Life is strange, isn’t it.

These thoughts leave me feeling a little surreal, even as I watch the Fifth Legion assuming their formations and beginning the march. They have a battering ram for us, and I see siege ladders as well. They protect their tools with upraised, interlocked shields, well-trained legionnaires marching forward in measured strides, so as not to leave any gaps in their defenses. It looks as though they’re committing about half their forces to this first assault. Perhaps they feel it’s all they need. Under normal circumstances they’d be right, but we have a Sorceress on our side.

Ragna takes up her bow, and I do so as well. I select an arrow from the basket between us, nock it, keep it lowered for now. While we wait, I glance over at the warhammer I took from the armory earlier, a mean looking thing with a six foot haft. There is a long steel spike above its broad hammerhead, with rows of little pyramid-shaped tenderizers across its face. I’m itching to use it.

But I’ve been told to wait. We all have. Arcadia explained her plan to the Jarl, and the Jarl conveyed the order to everyone else. We are not to engage the Eceans in melee, or even be standing on the ground level at all, until after the extraordinary moment.

The shell of Ecean shields advances through the muddy water. They pass the first of Irvin’s iron rods, and the percussion of arrows striking shields joins the sound of the pounding rain. I loose an arrow at the men bearing the battering ram. Then another, and another. On my right, Jarl Ragna takes her time, choosing her targets with care, her arrows seeking even the slightest gaps between the Ecean shield wall. On my left, Irvin begins to turn the crank of his repeating crossbow, and quarrels come pelting out of it with a tick tick tick sound I immediately recognize.

My arrows slam through Ecean shields. Ragna’s slip between the gaps, no matter how small. Irvin blankets them in a hail of projectiles. We are joined by the rest of Ragna’s warriors, all of them sending arrows arcing through the rain. But the wall holds. Every now and then a legionnaire falls, but there’s always another to rush in and take up the burden. Despite our best efforts, they begin to hoist siege ladders up onto the walls of Kellheim, and the battering ram moves inexorably toward the gate beneath me.

There is one special arrow in our basket, an alcohol-soaked strip of cloth wrapped around its shaft. We’re keeping as dry as we can in the rain, because when the Eceans are satisfactorily massed up around the walls and the gate, we’re supposed to light it and fire it as a signal to Arcadia.

I see one of those ladders coming up on my right side, so I direct my fire to the men hoisting it. I get lucky, my arrow striking through the unprotected neck of a legionnaire, but his comrades are quick to shore up the opening. Arrow after arrow thunks into upraised shields as more archers notice what’s happening and join my attack, but the Eceans aren’t deterred. The ladder slams against our wall, soldiers clambering upward through the hail of arrows as quickly as they can.

I get to use this hammer. Oh yes.

The two handed warhammer is a heavy weapon, but in my hands it’s a willow switch. I swing it with deadly velocity, striking the nearest legionnaire squarely in the gut, sending him hurtling through the air to land with a splash in the murky water below. But there are many more where he came from. I strike again, and again, advancing with every blow, crumpling soldiers beneath me or sending them sailing off the walls.

One legionnaire has the sense to rush in and jam my reach, grabbing the haft of my warhammer in both hands, a desperate scowl on his rain-soaked face. He pushes, and I push back, making him backpedal all the way to the ladder he just climbed. Then I raise the haft of my weapon and drive a knee into his gut.

I smell the stink of his breath gusting at me as I knock the wind out of him. Another shove frees my weapon, lets me step back and swing, and off the wall he goes. The floor shakes under my feet, and I realize it’s because the battering ram just smashed against our gate. More legionnaires climb the ladder in front of me, and a glance to either side tells me this is happening elsewhere on the wall as well.

I drop my weapon, grab the top rungs of the ladder and heave with all my strength. It’s heavy enough by itself, but it has the added weight of all the soldiers who happen to be climbing it at the moment. I clench my teeth and flex everything, my feet planted as hard on the slippery ground as they possibly can.

It isn’t going to work. I’m stronger than any man, but not this strong. Just as the realization hits me, I feel another pair of hands join mine on the ladder. Scaly ones, with curved talons for fingernails. Hook squawks loudly and heaves, and I join him. Together we send a dozen screaming Eceans, and their damned ladder, crashing down into the muck.

I turn to grin at the lizard man, and he answers by pumping his fist in the air and squawking again. Beyond him I see other ladders coming up, a few being cast down again, but there are more rising to take their places.

It’s time.

“Ragna!” I call out. “The signal!”

She hears me, half-turns to nod in my direction. I see her bend over to shelter the arrow basket from the rain, managing to light the signal arrow and nock it. Then she turns her back to the wall, aims high, draws… And lets it loose.

A mote of orange light goes sizzling up into the dark sky, before guttering and arcing back to the earth. I turn to see if Arcadia saw the signal. She did. She’s up on the top of the keep, a few hundred yards away from us and high above everything. When she sees the burning arrow she steps forward, raises her arms to the sky. I can’t hear her from this far away, but she looks like she’s chanting loudly.

And as she does, the sky darkens. The clouds thicken, thunder rumbling threateningly above our heads. At first nothing happens, the battle continuing all around us. But everything stops when the dark gives way to sudden, blinding light.

Lightning strikes a massive tree near the walls, a loud crack of thunder along with it. The tree now leans to either side, having been split neatly in two, and its center glows orange in the dark. A few soldiers on either side pause to glance at it, but apart from that the fighting carries on.

Then another bolt of lightning smites a stable inside the walls, setting the building aflame. It sends a little thrill of panic through me, makes me wonder what Arcadia is trying to do. Is she guiding this? Trying to command a storm?

There’s no time to ponder the questions. Eceans are up on the wall now, and I have a weapon in my hands and I’m running to protect the archers. Hook is with me, and together we fight our way toward the closest ladder we can get to.

Then the dark becomes light. Right next to me.

I have a brief glimpse of it. A pillar of forking, incandescent light, that exists only for an instant before it’s gone but still leaves me seeing stars. It hits one of Irvin’s iron rods, sends glowing light spidering outward across the water in all directions. Every legionnaire unfortunate enough to be standing in the muck seizes up, a few going rigid, others spasming and convulsing. But they all fall.

The thunder comes with it, deafening. A second rod is struck by lightning, and a third. Many are hit simultaneously, the bolts forking out to touch as many rods as they can, and then I can’t count them anymore. The battlefield alternates between pure darkness and blinding light, the only constant being the furious cacophony of thunderclaps. Eceans drop in clusters, struck all at once by the lightning coursing through the water. Irvin’s iron rods become a field of steaming, red-glowing spikes with corpses lying all around them.

Everyone, Norgardian and Ecean alike, stops and stares in terrified fascination. In the distance I hear the commanders of the remaining Ecean force calling out, most likely sounding a retreat. The few survivors are the ones who made it up their siege ladders, but now they’re woefully outnumbered. The ones who don’t surrender are swiftly cut down.

Cries of triumph begin to erupt around me, and I join in, my weapon raised high. Jarl Ragna, however, does not appear to share in her warband’s elation. She is standing in the same spot I left her, watching the remaining Eceans withdraw, a slight frown on her face. This might be the quickest battle I’ve ever been in, or even heard of. But the Jarl knows the worst is yet to come.

I know it too. But, damn, that was a sight to behold.

That’s my Arcadia.