Free Raven Rise by D.J. MacHale Page A

stake. The future of Halla was at stake. He had to go into battle once again. He picked up the long wooden stave that was the weapon of choice for Bedoowan knights, spun it once, and held it close to his side. He was on familiar turf. He left the trees and headed for the village, prepared to destroy all that was left of his former life.
    He wished Pendragon were with him.

DENDURON
    (CONTINUED)
    The first part of Alder’s plan was simple. He had to make his way into the new tak mine. He had no doubt there would be guards. Guards didn’t worry him. He had the element of surprise on his side. They wouldn’t expect an attack to come from a Bedoowan knight.
    The second part of his plan wasn’t as simple. He had to destroy the mine. Igniting the tak wouldn’t be the problem. Being somewhere else when it erupted would. He didn’t have much time. That fact was made all too clear when he moved past the rows of knights who were listening to King Rellin’s speech. Now that he was closer, he heard some of what Rellin was saying. Rellin was pontificating, using words like “glorious victory,” “spreading the empire,” and “triumph of the superior tribe.”
    Empire? When did the little world of the Milago and the Bedoowan become an empire? It chilled Alder to hear how the power of tak had completely corrupted Rellin. He was once a good man. He had fought for his people and against injustice. Now he was about to fight for power and glory.
    Alder shuddered when he realized that Saint Dane’s prophecy was about to come true: The first domino of Halla to fall would be Denduron, just as he had predicted several years before. It may not have played out exactly as Saint Dane wanted, but what did that matter? Or maybe this was exactly what Saint Dane wanted. Maybe this was how he’d planned for his grand scheme to unfold all along, and the Travelers were only going along for the ride. There was no way to know. There was only the mission. Alder had to stop the war. To do that, he needed to destroy the tak.
    As he hurried past the assembled knights, he could feel tension radiating from the masses. They had their game faces on. They were ready for battle. He knew the feeling. It was bloodlust. This wasn’t an exercise. They were about to march on the Lowsee. From what Alder remembered, he guessed it would take the rest of the day and into the night to move the army of knights up and over the mountain and into attack position. Just moving the cannons would take most of the night. His guess was that they would take up positions under cover of night and attack at first light. Alder knew he didn’t have much time. If he was going to stop this war, he would have to destroy the tak before the army left. He not only had to seal the mines, he had to find a way to destroy whatever they had already dug out of the ground.
    Alder’s journey brought him through the Milago village, past farmland and toward the field where the Bedoowan knights were training with tak. He wanted to see how they were using the explosive. What he saw didn’t calm his fears.
    He peered over a tall berm of dirt built up to contain flying shrapnel. It was definitely needed, because there was a lot of shrapnel flying around. Alder saw several cannons to his right. Each were manned by three Bedoowan knights. They seemed to be practicing. One knight packed a small amount of the red-clay tak and gently lowered it into the muzzle of the six-foot-long black cannon barrel. The second knight loaded a round cannonball on top of that. The third knight aimed the cannon. Their target was a wall of hay bales set up nearly fifty yards in front of them. At least, it used to be a wall of hay bales. It was now a mass of burning debris, surrounded by huge crater holes from the cannonballs. The tak was very effective.
    Once all was ready, the third knight scratched a small metal device that Alder realized was making a spark. The