A Forge of Valor by Morgan Rice Page A

him the person that he was, had shaped his character. And each choice mattered as much as the next one.
    It was a choice to go on. Or a choice to retreat, to die here, to fail.
    Anvin gripped his sword, clenched his teeth, and stepped forward, one foot a time. He had made his choice. He would survive, regardless of what life had thrown at him. He was stronger than hardship. Stronger than suffering.
    And he would not stop until he had killed them all.
     

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
     
    Dierdre cried out as she fell, plummeting down into the blackness, somewhere beneath the streets of Ur. She held tight to Marco’s hand as they both descended, expecting the fall to kill her. She could not think of a more awful way to die.
    Finally, she landed with a splash in a pool of water, up to her waist, immersed in freezing water. Marco landed with a splash beside her, and Dierdre, breathing hard, wiped water from her eyes and gasped for air, marveling that she was alive. Heart slamming, she looked around and saw that they had, at least, sealed themselves in underground, had spared themselves from a certain death above. Yet where were they?
    She looked around in the dim light, getting her bearings, while Marco took her arm and helped her up. These tunnels were lit only by small shafts of sunlight coming in from somewhere high above, allowing just enough light for Dierdre to see water dripping from the rotting stone walls, the pools of water beneath her. Marco began to walk and she walked with him, still smarting from the fall and from the shock of how close she had come to dying up there.
    Dierdre heard, high above, the thunder of the Pandesians storming the city, spreading out across Ur, killing all her people. She could hear the muffled screams even from way down here, screams of her fellow countrymen being killed, rising up with the echo of cannon fire, of buildings collapsing. She felt as if the world had come to an end.
    Her heart banged with fear as directly above, she heard the sound of halberds pounding metal; clearly the Pandesians were trying to smash the hatch and pursue them down here.
    “We must keep moving!” Marco urged, yanking her along.
    Dierdre let him guide her, and they hurried through the tunnels, water splashing beneath their feet. She closed her eyes as she went, seeing flashes of her father’s dead body back there on the beach, and trying to shake it away. It was almost too much to go on.
    Marco, knowing these tunnels well, soon led her to a passage. They turned down another tunnel, echoing as they ran, then down another, until finally Marco led them to a small set of stone stairs, leading up. They ascended and Dierdre found herself in another tunnel, this one with a dry floor, closer to the surface, a bit brighter in here.
    Marco suddenly pulled Dierdre into a corner and put his hand on her lips to quiet her. She stood beside him, barely breathing, and as Marco pointed to a shaft of sunlight high above, she looked up. Dierdre saw, through slats in the iron, Pandesian soldiers rushing back and forth; she saw people getting stabbed, falling everywhere, while others tried to flee. She looked over as Marco pointed, and on the far side of the tunnel saw a ladder leading up.
    Dierdre felt a rush of outrage.
    “We must save them!” Dierdre urged. “We cannot let them die!”
    Marco’s face was grim.
    “To go up there would mean our death,” he replied.
    She frowned.
    “Better to die helping those people than stay down here and die like cowards,” she retorted.
    Without thinking, Dierdre rushed to the ladder and climbed two rungs at a time until she reached the top, determined to save them. She immediately heard Marco behind her, climbing the ladder too, and as she reached the last rung, unable to pull back the heavy iron, she expected him to try to stop her, to pull her back down.
    But to her surprise, Marco reached up and unlocked it. He hung there beside her, so close, and he stared back at her, love and