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With the front line now at the base of the cliff, she doubted it would be long before they had to pull back to the wall.

The armored bears fought with the soldiers, perhaps trying to balance out the destruction the war caused. Iryana wished Mhakiza had tasked her dragons with defending them and not just hunting the metal-badgers.

Iryana had made a unit out of the Kleesold guardians who had stayed behind: Uncle Dinhal, Levek, Edvar, Tonhald, Misha, and herself. They stood at the top of the cliff, the very edge of the hanging valley, between the easiest path up the cliff and the gate.

Another wave of dakii tore through the trees, and the sounds of battle rose. Snarls and growls, the thud of blades sinking into muscle, the visceral tear of teeth ripping into flesh, the thump of bowstrings and the whoosh of arrows zipping through the air. Everything stank of sweat and blood and death.

It was harder to shoot from so high, but archery had become her clan’s specialty in the last decade. Edvar and Tonhald shot from their air bows and Iryana from her metal-forged one. But Uncle Dinhal, Misha, and Levek used their wooden bows with expert precision.

Iryana fired her forged arrows as quickly as she could, the movement so rehearsed now that it was almost second nature. The rest of her clan shot more slowly, making every arrow count; they only had so many left.

No matter how many arrows they shot, the fight raged below. The dakii were relentless with their rapid attacks. Like their only mission was wiping out every drop of Noshtiz’s magic they could find. Iryana knew exactly where everyone she cared about fought. When her eyes had a moment, they flicked to her friends, making sure they still stood. Pepha was on the wall behind her, Mezhimar shooting from one of the ledges below, but the others were in the thick of the fighting.

“We need to take them down faster,” Iryana gritted out.

“We can’t waste arrows,” Tonhald said, breathless and exhausted.

“There’s just too many,” Uncle Dinhal said harshly. “We can only take them down so fast.”

Iryana’s arms burned; the muscles in her back and shoulders throbbed. Her insides were on fire from the use of her magic, but at least it wasn’t progressing as quickly as it had before Voordiza had helped. Her eyes were dry and tense from staring so intently as she aimed. But it wasn’t enough.

“The ground forces don’t look like they can keep them off much longer,” Iryana cried between shots.

She begged them to hold on. The spike wall was covered in the bodies of impaled beasts, the soldiers no longer having breaks to push them off. The dakii just crawled over their fallen brethren, leaping onto the soldiers. So many soldiers were falling.

Two dakii made it past the soldiers, started tearing up the path toward the archers. They barely took them down in time. More dakii started making it past. One by one, the armored bears fell.

“Retreat!” Pyetar called from below, the command rolling through the forces like a wave.

Iryana let herself shudder, and then she wiped aside her fear and kept firing, covering the soldiers as they fell back, dragging the injured as best they could.

Iryana watched with gritted teeth and a lump in her stomach.

They’d prepared for this. The cliff was speckled with downward-pointing spikes to deter or at least slow climbing beasts. Piles of large boulders waited at every turn of the narrow switchback path that the soldiers knocked down onto the pursuing dakii as they passed. More large rocks waited along the uppermost ledge. As the soldiers reached the last stretch of pathway, one of the earth-forged with a great moss-green hammer slammed his forging down onto the dirt path. It crumbled before him. It was all working as intended.

Still, it was nerve-wracking.

The gate opened one last time to let the other soldiers on the ledge inside. The pitch trench in front of the wall was lit, fires blazing all along the cliff edge. It reduced the way across to the narrow path that Iryana and her family stood on, where they had the advantage of fighting as dakii climbed up.

“Ready to hold the wall!” Iryana ordered her clan. “We can’t let it fall!”

It was their post. The wall that her clan had been tasked with holding. Had been dying for since they arrived many years ago. It was right that they make this final stand.

Misha stood right at the edge, firing her last arrows into pitch-black eyes, slipping behind the others if a dakya grew too close. Edvar used his air-forged javelin to dislodge the beasts as they got too close to the left, Tonhald using a wood and iron spear to do the same on the other side. Uncle Dinhal formed his metal longsword, Levek his sword spear. They covered the center and near sides. Iryana stood in the middle, lodging her beast spear into the shoulders of the dakii and pushing them, and her spear, off the cliff. Then she’d release and reform it in her hands before another dakya could take its place.

The archers from the wall slowed down the dakii where they could.

For hours they fought that way—the wall behind them, fire to their sides, and a never-ending stream of dakii in front of them. But they all held.

They just had to hope there would be a break in the beasts, long enough to regroup. They had to hold out that long.

But she was flagging, and the others were too. Levek stumbled at her side, and Iryana grabbed him before he could tip forward. He shot her an exhausted but grateful glance. They were barely shoving the dakii back in time. They weren’t able to kill most of them, merely injuring and sending them tumbling over the cliff. They just began the climb again from the bottom.

“Iryana!” Misha gasped.

She didn’t have time to look, grunting as she shoved her spear down and twisted. “What is it?”

“The trench fire—it’s starting to go out.”