Edge of Destiny Read Free Page B

their glinting black armor, scuttling along the base of the canyon.
    Up close, though, charr were huge. Five-hundred-pound brutes. Muscle and fur and fang. They had faces like lions and horns like bulls, barrel bodies and bowlegs, clawed hands and feet. Ravenous. They’d already stolen all of Ascalon—all except for Ebonhawke—and they were determined to take that fortress, as well. They were marching to intercept a supply caravan from Divinity’s Reach, but they hadn’t figured on Logan and his scouts.
    “Got to stop them.” The stone shelf underneath Logan was crisscrossed with fractures. “A little more weight, and this would shatter like an egg.” He glanced back up the boulder-strewn slope. “The right lever beneath the right stone at the right time . . .”
    This was exactly the kind of job Logan loved—moving fast, striking hard, vanishing. His brother would call him a mercenary, but Logan preferred leather armor to polished steel.
    Staying low, Logan drew back from the cliff’s edge and motioned for his team to follow. They picked their way up the boulder-strewn slope. At last, near the peak, Logan found what he sought—a great round stone poised on a lip above the rest and hidden from the canyon by a fir tree.
    In its shelter, he gathered his team. “Ready to strike a blow for humankind?”
    Twelve pairs of eyes returned a look of eager resolve.
    “We’ll need a lever—a sapling, stripped of branches. And we’ll need a fulcrum, flat on the bottom and angled on top. This stone, here, will start the rockslide.”
    “Close off the gap,” said Wescott, “before the charr can march through.”
    “Exactly. We’ve got little time. Wescott, take Perkins and Fielding and get us a lever. Bring the tree down quietly, out of sight from the canyon. Everlee, work with Dawson and Tippett to position the fulcrum. Castor, take the rest of them to scout an escape over that ridge to the west. When we bring this rockslide down, this hill will be swarming with charr.”
    “We’ve never faced charr,” said Everlee. “We’re not Vanguard or Seraph.”
    “Thank the gods you’re not. You’d be in a hundred pounds of plate mail.” Logan grinned. “No, we’re scouts—fast on our feet. Now, get going.”
    The young scouts went swiftly and silently.
    While his teams worked, Logan climbed to a lookout point. He surveyed the scene—the keystone boulder, the rockslide slope, the choke point that would soon become a wall, the canyon . . .
    From it rose a streaming banner of dust, kicked up by hundreds of claws on the march. Logan watched the ribbon of dust rise and stretch and coil, approaching the choke point. “Almost time.” He withdrew, rejoining his team beside the trigger stone.
    Already, they had a long bole poised atop a fulcrum, and the team had positioned themselves on either side of the lever.
    “Hold,” Logan said, lifting his hand. He peered down the slope to see the snake of dust approach the choke point. “Now!” The scouts heaved on the lever. It strained against the fulcrum, hoisting the great boulder. The huge rock creaked forward, tilted up on the lip of stone, and tottered. The scouts climbed onto the lever, and Logan put his hands on the rock: “Push, you sods!”
    The boulder teetered beyond the lip and began to roll. It bounced once against the slope and bashed another boulder. The second rock rumbled down as well. These two struck more, setting off a chain reaction. Giant rocks leaped into motion, and the hillside became a thundering herd of stone.
    The ground shook.
    Logan and his comrades stared in awe.
    The rockslide reached the cliff and poured over it, breaking loose more stone. Massive blocks hurled themselves into the canyon and funneled in to fill the gap. Dust and debris plumed above the cleft while more boulders cascaded down. They piled atop the charr, forming an impassable wall. “We’ve done it!” Logan called to his team, pounding Wescott’s shoulder.
    The last of