Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

Arriving back at the stone steps above the middle clearing, Prue was surprised to see that Brendan had left his prior position on the stairs. Momentarily panicked that he’d been struck down, she crouched low and crawled to the head of the steps and looked out over the tumult of the warring armies in the wide square. She could see Alexandra in the center of the crowded melee, her sword making wide arcs over the heads of her embattled soldiers. Mac’s face, flushed and distorted in a terrified fit of crying, peered out from the horse’s saddlebag. A tight ring of protective coyote grunts had made a circle around Alexandra as she slowly attempted to wade her way through the crowd. Occasionally, a squadron of crows would dive-bomb into the chaotic multitude and return to the air, a farmer’s pitchfork or a bandit’s saber clutched in their talons. Suddenly, Prue caught sight of Brendan’s crown of vines in the midst of the crowd; he’d forced his way closer to Alexandra and her guard of soldiers.

“Brendan!” Prue shouted.

It was impossible to raise her voice above the deafening clamor of the battle.

“BRENDAN!” she hollered again.

She saw him hesitate in his violent slog through the crowd. He searched the air for the source of the voice. She stood up and waved her arms in the air.

“CANNONS!” she shouted, pointing to the place where the ground sloped away to the basilica’s first clearing. “THEY’RE MOVING IN CANNONS!”

He furrowed his brow, confused.

She pointed again to the far slope, this time with as much animation as she could muster. He looked where she pointed in time to see the great black muzzles of the dozen cannon crest the ridge. His face dropped.

Curtis was the first to see the cannons, their four-coyote artillery teams laboring to push the massive guns up the slope of the hill. There must have more than ten of them, all lined up along the lip of the clearing, and he was disturbed to see the artillery crews, once they’d set the cannons in position, swivel them to point at the line of archers and fusiliers who manned the ridge he currently stood on.

“Samuel!” he screamed, not taking his eyes from the line of cannon.

“What?” called Samuel, his musket raised to his eye as he took aim at the crowd in the middle of the clearing.

“Cannons!” said Curtis, pointing to the artillery.

Samuel dropped his musket to his side and stared. He gulped. “Hold your line, boys.”

“Are you kidding me?” asked Curtis.

“Hold the line,” repeated Samuel as he hefted the musket back to his shoulder, this time aiming at the artillery teams as they began to load the cannons. “Let’s see if we can’t take some of ’em out before they get a shot.”

The line of archers and fusiliers turned and aimed into the row of coyote artillery and fired, the ridge exploding with gun smoke and rifle fire. Curtis looked to see several coyote artillery officers fall, only to be replaced by reinforcements from the slope behind them. While the Irregulars reloaded, shoving muskets full of powder or pulling arrows from their quivers, the coyote artillery completed their task and let fire the cannons.

The world erupted around Curtis.

The explosion instantly silenced the noise of the warring armies, and Curtis’s hearing was reduced to a single high-pitched whine. The ground below his feet seemed to fall away, and he was showered in a wild spray of earth as he fell back, tumbling into a seemingly endless, bottomless void.

Prue screamed to see the cannon fire rip into the ridge of archers and riflemen, knowing that Curtis had been positioned there. Th

e ridge had practically disintegrated under the awesome power of the artillery, leaving a wide slope of craters where the leafy hillside had once been. The displaced soil from the barrage rained down on the warring armies in the square. What was left of the ridge was empty of its prior occupants.

In the middle of the tumultuous crowd of fighters, Prue saw Brendan, his saber swinging in a wild circle around his head. Having witnessed the dizzying spectacle and the devastation that the line of cannon had wrought, he gave a long, defiant whoop before diving back into battle.

As the coyote artillery team prepped their guns for another fusillade, a fresh wave of coyote infantry came roaring up the slope from the lower tier. Prue watched in despair, understanding the implication of this new assault: that Cormac’s unit had been unable to hold back the reinforcements. Like a basin overfilled with water, the bowl of the clearing could not contain the amount of bodies it was now carrying, and the fighting was forced up onto the adjacent hillsides as the vastly dominant coyote army began their systematic routing of the Wildwood Irregulars.

Curtis emerged from unconsciousness to the thunderous sound of a million pounding footsteps all around his ears. His hearing was still impaired; the world sounded as if it were veiled in a thick fog. He was half-buried in earth and, as he took in his surroundings, he realized that he had awoken some twenty feet away from where he’d initially lost consciousness. The footsteps, he quickly gauged, were of the conjoined forces of the coyotes and the Irregular infantry, the fighting having been forced over the cannonball-cratered ridge. Curtis, gaining his bearings, covered his head with his arm in an effort to avoid being trampled. Protecting himself thus, he began crawling away from the throng of fighters, toward a little thicket of plum trees.

He’d no sooner arrived in the safety of the trees than he heard a click behind him, the distinctive noise of a pistol’s hammer being engaged. He turned slowly, still on his hands and knees, to see a coyote sergeant, his uniform stained with dirt and blood, standing over him, his pistol cocked and at the ready.

“Hello there, turncoat,” said the coyote, immediately recognizing Curtis from his time in the warren. “This is a pleasant surprise.” He grinned, his face carved from jowl to jowl by a string of long yellow teeth. He held the pistol jauntily in his paw, prolonging the moment. “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy this very much.” He paused and scratched his snout with the muzzle of the gun. “Might be a promotion in it for me—I’ll be a decorated war hero. Sergei, turncoat slayer. That’s what they’ll call me.”

“Please,” said Curtis, backing up against the trunk of a tree. “Let’s talk this through. You don’t need to do this.”

“Oh, but I do,” corrected the sergeant. “I really, really do.” He held the pistol at arm’s length, carefully taking aim at Curtis.

Curtis squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the shot.

Plonk.

The noise came suddenly, and Curtis quickly opened his eyes. Another plonk. The coyote, his pistol still outstretched, was being assaulted from above by plums.