Matthew exchanged some whispered words with the darker-skinned woman standing behind him. Then he shouted back toward the stone bird where Kiva had sensed another Stranger hiding. After a few moments, a figure came out: another boy, taller and broader than Matthew but with the same pale skin. He crept out cautiously, one step at a time.
He held a weapon, the fire-breathing stick Kiva had seen in her vision.
Matthew and the woman began to yell at the boy. Kiva couldn’t understand the woman’s words, but Matthew’s echoed loudly in her ears.
“Sam, put it down!”
The boy grunted something back and moved slowly forward. The weapon was cradled in his arms, one end propped against his shoulder, the other searching the landscape for a target.
“Vagra,” said a fearful voice. It was Thruss.
Kiva raised her arm.
Shouts echoed through the air. The words were in an alien language, but even without knowing their meaning, Po could hear the tone of fear and anger.
His fingers clenched around the place where he’d notched the arrow in his bow.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
Quint squinted, peering over the low rise of the hill, her lips pulled into a thin line.
“There’s a third. Another boy. He has a weapon. Kiva’s about to give the signal.”
“Which one?” Po demanded. “Which signal?”
Quint shook her head. “Wait. Just wait.”
The shouting got louder. Po recognized Kiva’s voice, though he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He imagined that the next sound he heard would be of Kiva wailing as she died. Still lying on the ground, he began to pull back the bow, the notched arrow wedged tightly between his two knuckles.
He looked to the two Forsaken men at his side.
“Follow my lead,” he said. “Don’t attack until I do.”
“What are you doing?” Quint asked over the sound of more shouting. “She hasn’t given the signal yet.”
Po pushed himself to a crouch, then rose to his feet, his legs unbending beneath him as he raised his taut bow, the arrow’s fletching brushing against his cheek, his eyes finding at once the boy whose own weapon was tracking across the hill to aim toward where Po stood.
“Sam, put it down! Don’t be a fool!”
Matthew had turned completely away from the three girls and was moving toward Sam, his arm outstretched as if approaching a spooked animal.
“Not on your life,” Sam growled.
“This isn’t making things better,” Dunne said, her voice firm but not shouting. “Matthew had found a way to communicate. We were getting somewhere.”
“Oh, really?” Sam shouted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “What did they say?”
Matthew lowered his voice, tried to speak calmly. “They understand that the thing with the kids was just a mistake. A misunderstanding. They want to trust us. But first you’ll have to put the gun down.”
“Yeah? And what if it’s a trap?” Sam’s eyes darted back and forth, scanning the empty hilltops.
The voice of the girl, pitched to a shout, echoed foreign again in Matthew’s ears and exploded into meaning in his mind.
“You have to control him!” she yelled. “If he doesn’t put down his weapon, I can’t protect you!”
“Sam, it’s not a trap!” Matthew shouted. “There’s no one there!”
But at that moment, Sam’s gun stopped, moved up to aim at a single spot on the horizon. Matthew glanced up and saw a figure rising over the swell of the hill. His arms were raised and he appeared to have something in his hands.
“Sam, don’t,” Matthew growled, but he knew that his words were of no use anymore.
His feet began to move.
The gun yelped, and a ball of ionized energy screamed out of the barrel. Sam’s aim, again, was wide, and the energy hurtled harmlessly over the figure’s head.
Moments after Sam fired, Matthew ran at him and rammed him with his shoulder. Sam staggered but kept his feet.
Matthew’s hands closed around the hot metal of the gun, and he clenched them tight. Sam’s eyes, inches from Matthew’s own, flashed with fury. He grunted as he tried to wrest the gun back from Matthew’s grip. Matthew felt Sam’s breath hot and foul against his face.
Then, suddenly, Matthew felt a small, sharp twinge of pain low in his rib cage. He opened his mouth to gasp but found that he couldn’t draw a breath. The pain bloomed red, spreading fire through his torso. Across the gun barrel, Sam’s eyes fluttered down and grew wide.
Matthew looked down.
There was an arrow buried in his chest.