Vermilion-Hound’s face twisted into an ugly, mottled purple sneer.
“Flatten them,” the prince shrieked, dropping his ceremonial blade toward the river. “Ride over the harlot and burn that barge to the waterline.”
The front ranks of twenty thousand imperial vanguard troops surged forward with a deafening roar.
Their iron boots churned the marsh silt into black foam as repeating spirit-arbalests snapped in unison.
A black cloud of five thousand corpse-poison bolts whistled through the morning mist, blanketing the reed bed.
Mina Vance did not blink.
She took a single step into the shallows, planting her bare palms flat against the muddy water.
A dull, bone-cracking groan rippled through the riverbank.
