The battle raged for 20 minutes, a chaotic swirl of noise and death. The soldiers, realizing they were trapped in a kill box, fought with the desperation of rats in a barrel. They dismounted, using their dead horses for cover, pouring disciplined fire into the cliff faces. Bullets whined off the rocks near Luke's head, stinging his face with stone splinters. He kept moving, firing, relocating, firing again.
He was a ghost on the ridge, suppressing the soldiers' attempts to organize. Then, he saw it through the drifting smoke. He spotted movement to his right. A squad of five soldiers, led by a calm, bearded lieutenant, had slipped away from the main fight. They were scrambling up the steep goat trail Luke had warned about.
They were moving fast, hand over hand, heading toward the upper shelf, the shelf where the children were hidden. Luke looked across the canyon. Ayanna was pinned down by heavy fire, unable to see the flank. Nalin was shouting orders, her attention focused on the center. There was no one else.
Luke abandoned his cover. He scrambled down from his perch, sliding on the loose shale, hitting the canyon floor at a dead run. He had to cross 50 yd of open ground to reach the base of the goat trail. He sprinted. "Hey! " a soldier shouted from the main group.
"There! " Bullets kicked up geysers of dust around his boots. Zip. Crack. Zip. Luke did not slow down.
He pumped his arms, his lungs burning. He reached the base of the trail just as the first soldier in the flanking squad pulled himself over the lip of the ridge. Luke raised his rifle. "Drop it! " Luke roared. The lieutenant turned, startled to see a white man in the midst of the Apache.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. That hesitation saved the children. Luke fired. The lieutenant took the round in the chest and fell backward, knocking the man behind him off balance. But the other three soldiers opened fire.
Luke felt a sledgehammer hit his left shoulder. The impact spun him around, knocking the rifle from his hand. He hit the ground hard, the world dissolving into a haze of white light and agony. He groaned, trying to reach for his pistol, but his left arm was useless, a dead weight of fire. The remaining soldiers were scrambling up, weapons raised to finish him.
Then, a shadow fell over him. Ayanna slid into the dust beside him, her bow singing. Thwip. The lead soldier gasped, an arrow sprouting from his throat. Thwip.
The second soldier took an arrow in the thigh and tumbled down the slope, screaming. The last man, seeing the ferocity of the defense, turned and scrambled back down the rocks, fleeing into the smoke. Ayanna dropped her bow and grabbed Luke's collar, dragging him behind a boulder just as a volley of carbine fire chewed up the ground where he had been lying. "You fool! " Ayanna screamed at him, her face streaked with soot and tears. "You reckless white fool! " Luke looked up at her, his vision swimming.