Crammed hard into a jumble of broken rocks, Lorenzo gave a sudden yelp as a crossbow bolt rebounded from a boulder mere inches from his face. "Miliana! Do something! What spells did you memorize this morning?"

"Um…" Miliana bit her lip. "Feather fall. I'm getting good at it."

"Feather fall?" Lorenzo felt himself slowly going mad. "You took feather fall spells into a fight?"

"Well I can throw it twice a day now. I'm getting better."

The inventor wearily put his face in his hands. Incensed, Miliana rolled up her long sleeves, set her pointy hat to an aggressive tilt and found the largest boulder on the mountainside. She hissed out her spell, threw a puff of Tekoriikii's feathers up into the air, and hoisted the titanic rock over her head and hurtled it up into the sky.

The boulder sailed over the Svarezi position, shuddered, and regained normal gravity once again. The enemy infantry stared at it for one long, fragile moment, then screamed and flung themselves downhill. The rock smashed their little fort to pieces and duly chased them all off toward the valley floor.

Lorenzo frowned and wiped a dirty hand across his nose.

"Have you ever had those spell scrolls of yours checked? I read up on feather fall spells-and that isn't what you're casting!"

Miliana poked a nasty tongue out at Lorenzo and made a rapid climb straight up the hill. Muttering to himself, the inventor spurred off in hot pursuit, dragging out his rapier as he climbed in her wake.

"Tekoriikii? Tekoriikii-where are you?"

Miliana topped the cliff face, searching wildly for her friend the firebird. "Tekoriikii-don't do anything stupid! Wait for me!"

The princess stopped as though she had run into a wall of rock and stared aghast at the hillcrest above.

Tekoriikii lay tangled with a skinny black hippogriff, splayed helpless before the Sun Cannon's maw. Ugo Svarezi-ragged, bloody, and half-crazed with hate-kicked the valve releases to fire the deadly light beam straight into the bird.

"Bastard!"

Miliana snatched up a rock and hurtled the makeshift weapon with all her might. Her broken spectacles made her miss Svarezi by a country mile. The would-be emperor flicked a glance in her direction, gave an ill-tempered snarl, and kicked the Sun Cannon's firing controls.

His eyes had left his two helpless feathery victims for only the merest beat of a heart. Moving with viper's speed, Shaatra snapped up from the ground, lunged beneath the Sun Cannon's barrel and rammed her back against the firing tube. The weapon raised, and an instant later the deadly light beam stabbed into the grass a dozen feet behind Tekoriikii's tail. Scorched and wounded by the barrel's heat, the hippogriff fell down to its belly and began to weakly try to drag herself away.

With a start, Tekoriikii realized that his tail had caught on fire; the bird frantically beat his backside against the grass and gave a frightened wail of dismay.

Seeing Miliana, Svarezi's eyes lit up in recognition. He sprang down from the Sun Cannon's firing platform and stalked toward her.

"So. My little Sumbrian bride." The warlord flexed black gauntlets like a vulture testing its claws. "It seems we can share a wedding bower at last…"

Miliana stared, felt a thrill of fear, and tried to back herself away, falling over backward as the rubble tripped her heels. Svarezi moved forward, only to check as a slim figure emerged from the rocks at his side.

Lorenzo held a bared rapier in his hand as he placed himself between Miliana and their enemy. Svarezi gave the boy a contemptuous glance, then ripped his short cat-gutter sword from its sheath.

"You want to fight me, boy, with your toy sword?" The Colletran tyrant made a swift arc of his brutal blade to free any stiffness in his wrist. "You want to fight me for your scrawny princess?"

Lorenzo flickered forward in a short, sharp fencer's step.

"Miliana! Get up and run!"

"No! Stay!" Svarezi began an arrogant, graceless advance upon the boy. "Stay and watch your sweetheart's guts spill to the ground!"

Without a word, Lorenzo skipped forward, launching across an impossible distance to spear at Svarezi with his blade. The Colletran grunted a vicious oath of shock and somehow swatted the rapier point aside.

A blinding spark leapt between the blades-the last dregs of Lorenzo's lightning bottle. Svarezi reeled, stunned and blinking as he fought away the shock. Furiously stumbling back, Svarezi blindly beat aside a frenzy of attacks; he snarled as Lorenzo's point scored a strip of velvet from his helm, lodged against his mail gauntlet without piercing home, and whipped, blurring, past his mouth to rip a cut across his skin.

Svarezi shook his head, trying to regain his wits; the lightning charge had left lights dancing past his eyes. Bleeding from a facial wound, the warlord roared and hammered Lorenzo's sword aside, missed a brutal cut with his blade, and crashed his hilt into Lorenzo's chest with all the power at his command. The slim inventor was flung back by the blow, clawing desperately to his feet to present his blade and keep the circling enemy at bay.

Lorenzo risked a brief glance across the cliff summit and felt one source of panic fly away; Miliana had scrabbled clear and hidden herself behind one wheel of the Sun Cannon. The girl crept closer to Tekoriikii and the fallen hippogriff and stared in terror at Svarezi's blade.

"Lorenzo, run! Run back down the hill!"

"I can't! He still has reserves." Lorenzo's breath shuddered with fatigue; he used one ripped sleeve to wipe sweat back from his eyes. "He can lead them around the army and crush us like an egg!"

On the roadside nearby, Svarezi lifted the back of his hand to his mouth, flicking a glance down at the resulting smear of blood.

"He's right, girl! Did you hear him? At the base of this hill, there lies enough manpower to grind Lomatra to a pulp." The black-armored nobleman rubbed his own blood between his fingertips. "Once we've killed this Lomatran puppy, we'll see to the destruction of your sad adopted home!"

He lunged forward, trying to crash past Lorenzo's guard and rip him open with an upward thrust of the short, brutal sword. The blade point scythed a line past Lorenzo's waist, bringing a flicker of blood across his shirt.

"Lorenzo!"

Miliana surged forward in panic as rapier and short sword clashed. She stumbled to a halt just short of the fight, helpless to intervene as the blades howled and slithered in a blur of rage.

Moving in a nearly senseless panic, Lorenzo somehow held his own, punching his sword hilt across Svarezi's helm to drive him back away. Tekoriikii tried to thrash forward and bring his beak into the fight-exposing himself to Svarezi's blade, Miliana wrenched at the chassis of the Sun Cannon, trying to rip free a strip of wood to make a quarterstaff or club.

Tekoriikii snapped his beak; Svarezi swore, whirled, and whipped back his weapon to finish off the bird once and for all-baring his arm to a desperate, sobbing lunge from Lorenzo's sword.

The stiff rapier pierced through velvet, mail, and silk to stab clean through the inner elbow of Svarezi's weapon arm. With a roar of rage, Svarezi spun aside. Blood sheeted from his forearm, spilling to the ground. His sword hung from nerveless fingers as he staggered blindly out of range.

Lorenzo moved forward; Svarezi spun, blurred out his free hand to snatch Miliana by the hair, and dragged her shrieking to his side.

"Enough! Throw the blade away or the she-witch dies!"

Svarezi wrenched his captive tight against his chest. Even so sorely wounded, he could have snapped Miliana's neck like a stick. The girl froze as he wound tight his grip, fear bulging out her eyes.

"Stop!" Lorenzo held out his sword, his face draining white. He came a step closer to Svarezi, his eyes only on Miliana's face. "Don't hurt her! I'll drop it. Just leave the girl alone."