Chapter 41: 12.1 Sky Fire

  The predawn light sets the horizon on fire as the yellows and reds give chase to the night’s sky. Distant battle sounds fill the air as Sarah sits up to see Jack crouched at the plateau’s edge and looking below. She hurries over while brushing her mouth with the back of her hand, passing a dead body on her way to Jack.

  “Where’d this guy come from?” Sarah asks in a hushed tone.

  “A scout,” Jack says, turning back to her. “He was probably checking out our fire.”

  Sarah turns back to see Wolf about to extinguish the flames. “Wolf, leave it.”

  “Won’t it draw more attention?” Wolf asks.

  “It’ll be fine. We don’t care about them seeing up here, and it’ll make it easier to light the other fires.”

  They look back down to the mountain path and see darkness cloaking the entire valley. There aren’t many gaps in the treetop canopy along the trail, but the existing few show a continuous line of torches marching across the valley from right to left.

  “Fighting in the dark is going to be tricky,” Jack says.

  “Nah, we can make it work,” Sarah replies, turning back to the burn piles. “Let’s go ahead and set our ‘Plan B’ on fire. We’ll use it to make the clearing visible.”

  “All of them?” Wolf asks.

  “Yeah, I’m going to fix our lighting problem.”

  Sarah pulls her scabbard free and compresses the gap, drawing a dark-blue blade and sending a wave above one of the burn piles. The entrance portal opens but isn’t visible as the exit opens in darkness.

  Wolf stops and watches her with a burning stick in hand. “What did you just do?”

  “Just light them. It’ll make sense when you’re done.”

  Wolf nods and sets the flame into the first log cabin, igniting some of the internal materials before moving to the other piles.

  Sarah opens two other dark-bladed portals, having to re-sheathe each time. She watches as the wood catches, then beckons Wolf back over to the cliff side. They look down towards their clearing, and it’s as if someone had just began turning up the dimmer switch on some recessed chandeliers. The three exit portals begin to glow over the clearing’s center and on each end, soon lighting the entire area.

  Jack nods. “Nice, Sarah. That should take care of the visibility.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll monitor the fires. If they begin to burn too low or if we get pushed back across the clearing---”

  “Plan B,” Jack says.

  “Yeah, Plan B for whichever comes first. If we get pushed into the clearing, don’t fight in the open. It’ll give them a chance to get behind you. If they try to flank, just fall back to the trail on the opposite side of the clearing.”

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  Sarah sees the two of them nod, so she turns to open a portal to the clearing but stops. She looks back at Wolf, then opens the portal over the ground as opposed to over the edge, like she was about to.

  Wolf glances between her gaze and the portal, then nods. “I appreciate that,” he says with a smile.

  “Of course,” Sarah replies as she checks the ammo in her magazine, then sets it back into the pistol and actions the slide. “Besides, I need you fighting like a proud wolf instead of an unnerved scaredy cat.”

  Wolf’s smile fades as Sarah looks back through the portal. The fires are upside down in the sky, and their flames occasionally flit across the opening. Smoke is leaving the exits, then plateau, briefly spreading horizontally like a ceiling before curling skyward again. Several soldiers run into the clearing wearing simple cloaks with leather harnesses and shields strapped to their backs. Many of them collapse as they look up to the fires, adopting terrified expressions.

  “Do we go?” Jack asks.

  “No,” Sarah says, extending her arm as a barricade. “Those are fleeing Greeks. We’re not picking a fight with them.”

  The fighters express different versions of panic on seeing the fires, some of them mumbling about Hephaestus or Helios before running faster. Some fall to their backside and scuttle backwards without looking away. One fighter collapses and drops his torch, abandoning it as he gets back up to continue running.

  Sarah rushes out and scoops up the torch, then stamps out the grass as Jack and Wolf follow. Two more soldiers run past them, barely acknowledging the three of them once they see the fires above.

  “That’s turning out to be quite the distraction,” Wolf says as another runner completely ignores him.

  Sarah takes the torch back over to the plateau-portal and tosses it towards the burn piles. “I’m going to pretend that was part of the plan, but we don’t want these clowns setting the place on fire.”

  “Yeah,” Wolf agrees. “Bunch of scaredy cats, am I right?”

  Sarah turns to face him, her stare flat.

  Another Greek runs past them and his chest suddenly arches forward as an arrow strikes him in his shieldless back. His legs grow heavier as if marching into a knee-high current. He elbow raises up next to his ear as he reaches towards the wound. He stumbles and collapses to his chest.

  The three of them turn to look down a darkened trail as more torches march towards them, grouped and deliberate.

  Sarah points to the soldier. “Grab him and get out of the trail’s line of sight so they can’t fire on us.”

  Jack grabs the fighter by his ankle and drags him as the three of them run to the right of the trail exit and closer to the treeline. They shelter against the upper curve of the bean-shaped clearing. The soldier continues to groan, and Jack looks at Sarah as she kneels ahead of them. “What are we doing with him?” he asks. “Do we need to patch him up?”

  “What?” Sarah asks, looking back around, then down. “No, I just want him out of the way, so we don’t trip over him. Forget him; he’s irrelevant.”

  “That’s cold,” Wolf replies.

  “No, cold is wishing he would die quieter---which he’s not doing.”

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