Still of Night (Dead of Night 3)

Dahlia went up anyway, though she kept low and only took tiny, brief looks over the wall. On the third try a shot chipped out a piece of masonry four inches from her head. A single shot.

She closed her eyes and tried to replay what she’d seen in those brief glances. Trees, a slope. People running. Heading to the western side of town. That’s where Church was. Dahlia came down and sent a runner to warn him.

“Aren’t we going, too?” asked Jumper.

“No,” she said. “It won’t be here.”

“What won’t?”

“The real attack. This isn’t where they’re going to come over the wall. There’s not enough room for them. The hill’s too close. And I don’t think it’s going to be the west wall either.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re letting us see them carrying ladders that way.”

Without another word, she wheeled around and ran along the wall, heading east.

***

I stopped Rachael and Baskerville at the edge of the woods on the east side of the town, and it’s a damn good thing I did. The forest beyond where we stood ran up and over a rocky ridge. There were several Rovers on our side of the ridge and no one out in the field, but there was a weird vibe to the air. Call it a sense of expectant dread. Whatever. Or maybe it was a case of the willies.

“What is it?” asked Rachael as we hunkered down behind a boulder.

“Listen,” I said, pulling off the white hood.

She glanced at me for a moment, then did the same. She cocked her head toward the west. At first she frowned and shook her head, then she went still and I saw it on her face. She heard it, too.

“People,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “A lot of them.”

“Yeah.”

Rachael looked over her shoulder the way we’d come. “No orcs over here.”

“Nope.”

I studied the open space and saw something else. I touched her arm and pointed.

“What . . . ?”

I handed her my binoculars. “See the grass there? Right there, at the base of the wall? Tell me if it looks right to you.”

She used the glasses to study where I’d indicated. Another frown. “The grass looks torn up. Kind of clumped.”

“Uh huh. Want to take a guess what’s under those clumps?”

She thought about it, glancing back to the ridge a few times.

“If that’s where most of the Rovers are,” she said slowly, “and if all that stuff going on out front is a big distraction, then . . . ”

“Keep going,” I said, “you’re doing good.”

“Then how are they going to get over the wall here?”

“How indeed?”

She lowered the glasses. “You think they have ladders hidden under the grass?”

“I’d actually be kind of disappointed if they didn’t. All things considered it’s a pretty snazzy plan. Good chance it’s going to work, too.”