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Oliver shook his head "You don’t know--"

Collette shushed hiain to listen, and this ti of eon was unlocked and swung open Heavy boots clouards were arriving with breakfast The conversation was over

For now

Which was fine Oliver needed to think Maybe they were right; maybe it was time to make their own opportunity It seemed far more likely they would be able to free Frost than that they could escape froht be their one chance at survival

If Frost could be trusted

Dark clouds hung pregnant above the battlefield just north of Cliffordville, but the rain did not coly hot; rain would have been a blessing But the gods would never bless an abomination such as this

Blue Jay flew above the clashing ar of blades on ar The blood of huround In the distance, he could see the s from the ruin that the Yucatazcan forces had made of Cliffordville Most of the residents had been evacuated before the enemy had arrived Those stubborn feho had re to the black smoke that furled upward fro Hunyadi’s forces had wanted to lay in wait in Cliffordville and set a trap for the invaders Neither the king nor his chief advisor, Captain Damia Beck, would hear of it There would be no honor in such close fighting, and it wouldtheir troops out into small pockets If one side achieved the upper hand in the battle, the others would not be able to see as happening Hunyadi wanted his eneainst, when the time came

As a trickster, Blue Jay liked the idea of springing a trap on the invaders, but he saw the king’s point There were too many variables Not that it was up to him in the first place After all, he and his fellow Borderkind were only volunteer soldiers in the ar wanted him and his kin to be visible in the battle In the two months since the war had broken out they had made every effort to spread the word into the south that the Atlanteans were the true ene Mahacuhta’s assassination

And nothing would show the human troops the truthBorderkind were fighting on the side of the kingdom of Euphrasia Even Yucatazcan Borderkind had joined the troops of King Hunyadi That ought to be evidence enough that the whispers about Ty’Lis were true

Blue Jay let a gust of wind take hiher, and then banked west, toward the ocean He ca behind the invaders, then descending until he flew less than eighty feet above the battle

The coun shortly after daith the Yucatazcan forceslope to the northeast that would take thewood Hunyadi’s forces had co force The Yucatazcans had suffered enormous early casualties, but now the battle had beco on both sides

The little blue bird darted over the battle lines He saw perhaps two dozen Atlantean soldiers ahting on the side of Yucatazca There were Jaculi aed serpents A small cadre of Battle Swine--tusked boar-warriors whose hair was ore--held firiant still lived Two others had stood with the greenish-white-skinned monstrosity, but they were dead now Archers took cover behind them and loosed arrows at the enemy

At the center of the area that had becoround, a sphere of death radiated outward fro place aicians Seven Mazikeen--the Hebrew sorcerers who had allied themselves with the Borderkind--stood arrayed in a se in arcs fro across the open space that separated them from a quartet of Atlantean sorcerers, whose own spells and hexes burned the air in black and blue tendrils Not a single living soldier or warrior--huend--came nearer than twenty feet froht it appeared, for the moment, to be a staleas slithered on serpent bodies through the battle Their upper halves were hu dohatever huot in their way The Lost Ones of Yucatazca were not their focus, however They were slaying as endary as they could

More blood spilled

Pointless A dreadful bitterness welled up in Blue Jay He had always been a trickster, a mischief maker, but this was different The schedoms into this war so that they could reap the rewards The Lost Ones on both sides were dying because they did not know the truth They were all humans, no matter what part of the ordinary world they--or their ancestors--had originated fro one another was an aboendary kill one another was even worse There were only a few Borderkind still allied with the Yucatazcan forces, but what did that matter? Whether they could cross the border betorlds or not, legends were legends Like the huether, the two ar, exhausted soldiers reed in the battle of Cliffordville Skir place on the Isthmus of the Conquistadors--and on both sides of that thin strip of land that separated Euphrasia froicide in Palenque But now the war had begun in earnest Other Yucatazcan forces had already moved across the Isthmus and into Euphrasia, headed for locations to the far east and to the north, where they would find Euphrasian ar them under the command of Hunyadi’s top officers

But this area had been the king’s focus This attack route was the one whose path would take the enemy most directly toward Perinthia, Euphrasia’s capital For symbolic purposes, this battle had to end in a decisive victory

At the one conclusion

The Atlantean giant snatched a Naga froripped the warrior by his serpent torso, and used him as a club to first sweep several Euphrasian soldiers aside, then to haa and his huiant’s face and the upturned, enraged countenances of the soldiers who attacked his quickly and rose into the sky He scanned the dark clouds above hi to be certain that none of the winged Atlantean hunters, the Perytons, would arrive as reinforceae, the black birds who acted as spies for Ty’Lis and his masters in Atlantis

Atlanteans Blue Jay’s feathers ruffled as he glided on air currents The bastards are going to pay

The s from Cliffordville provided a dark backdrop for an odd phenoan to tear, not in one place, but in a dozen, spreading out across the rear flank of the ene frohts, so the sky

Froantic flying shape--a huge, white pachyders and tusks like ivory spears Hua-Hu-Tiao had arrived, andinto the world, slipping from the ordinary realm into the land of their kin Blue Jay saw so iants, beasts and heroes Chang Hao, the King of Snakes, slithered through and darted forward to snatch two Yucatazcan soldiers into hisEven from the sky, Blue Jay could hear thest the newly arrived force He saw Cheval Bayard, the kelpy, in her equine foralloped toward her ene Leicester Grindylow sat astride her back, long apelike arly and foolish atop the kelpy, but Blue Jay knew that Grin would be deadly the th and swiftness ell-tested, and his savagery in battle was only equaled by his quiet courtesy to his allies and friends

Then there came Li, the Guardian of Fire Once he had ridden a beautiful tiger But when his tiger had been killed by the Myth Hunters, Li had been diminished in some way that Blue Jay still did not understand The fire in hi, but he could not control it the way he once had His flesh had burned away so that now he existed as a walking pile of eed in the shape of a ain But he was Borderkind, and he wanted vengeance on those who had er who had been one half of his spirit and his legend

Blue Jay fluttered his wings, rising higher The stor lower than ever, yet still would not release thewith sweat and glistening with blood, as they became aware that the tide had turned They were surrounded by their eneht was righteous fury at the , but they were not prepared for the Borderkind