The Tree of Story by Thomas Wharton

ducked with the others as the arrows whizzed around them. One of the shafts plucked at his sleeve as it shot past him. This was the reason the Nightbane had fallen back, he realized. This time they were starting with a barrage of arrows, to pin the defenders down and thin out their numbers before the second onslaught arrived. And it would arrive all too soon. The defenders could hear the shrieks and metal clamour of the Nightbane horde as it charged back up the slope toward the gap. They would be here any moment.
    The remaining shield-bearers were forming another phalanx. Finn fell in behind it, but he stood closer this time to the front line, because there were fewer Stormriders at the breach now and no more reinforcements had appeared.
    He gripped his sword hilt and felt a tremor in his hand that he couldn’t master. He was exhausted, he knew, and still dazed from the blow to his head. But there was no choice and nowhere else to take refuge. If the defence gave way here, the fortress would be wide open to the enemy.
    Then the second assault was upon them. As many Nightbane as before, their numbers seemingly endless, bounded and shrieked through the gap and down the heap of fallen stones.
    They crashed against the shield wall, and the shock rippled through the tightly packed defenders. Finn felt it strike him this time as if the blow had fallen directly on his ownarmour. He felt the strain as the shield-bearers were pushed back, and he lowered his head and pushed forward with all the strength he had left. For what felt a long time that was all he knew: the sight of men’s iron-shod feet, slipping and bracing themselves again in the bloody muck, the grunts and growls of effort, the dull bite and ringing of metal on metal, the stench of sweat and fear and death heavy around him.
    Then he felt the phalanx straining, buckling, and he looked up again to see Nightbane spearpoints thrusting into the gaps between the densely packed bodies of the defenders ahead of him. One barbed point made right for him and he lopped it away with his sword. He spotted another spearhead jutting from the back of the shield-bearer ahead of him, heard the man’s gasp of shock, saw him fall.
    Finn darted forward, grabbed the shield as it slipped from the dead man’s grasp and lifted it before him. A mordog’s axe-blade glanced across it with a clang and Finn staggered back. For an instant he lost his footing, then regained it and pressed ahead between the shield-bearers on either side of him.
    The Nightbane before him were like another wall, a seething wall that bristled with sharp metal.
    Then a barbed blade thrust out from that wall and drove in under his shoulder. He felt it bite and tear at his flesh. Something crashed into him and he fell.
    He found himself on his back in the dust and rubble, looking up at a patch of pale blue sky through the breach. He could hear the clash of metal and the roars and screams, but they seemed to be coming from far away. He tried to rise, but something was holding him down. He lifted his head. Someone had fallen on top of him. Another Stormrider, with an arrow in his neck.
    Finn struggled and heaved, and the dead man slid off him. He caught a glimpse of the Stormrider’s dust-caked faceunder a shock of dark hair. He was young. Not much older than Will Lightfoot.
    Finn knew he had been wounded, but the pain throbbing in the pit of his arm seemed as far off as the noise of battle. He struggled to his knees, searching for his sword. His arms and legs were shaking and he began to retch. He knew that the fear he had forced down at the start of the battle had broken loose and was taking him over and he could do nothing to stop it. Once he regained his feet he would run. He would flee this place of death in blind panic. All his training as a knight of the Errantry, his oath to protect and defend, none of it would matter. Nothing could hold back this fear.
    Then Finn saw the leather pouch hanging from the belt of the