Chapter 36 - The Battle Begins

The outlaw camp was silent, the earth studded with smoking torches and raw 153 nerves; a flutter was the echo of horse-whinnies in the distance and the electric pulse of the darkness when midnight fell like a pall upon the valley. All the air we took into our lungs was heavy with it: The crushed pile of pine needles under our boots, the sting of acrid smoke curling up from a hastily made fire. The fear was thick—knotted in the lungs of the rogues, squeezed between the convulsing fingers of the Silverclaws who'd been our enemy and were now our ally, if only because they had to be.