Emrael, Worren, Timan, and Jaina rode their horses just behind the lead ranks of Ire Legion as they marched into the outskirts of Trylla, where the dense forest worked to reclaim the outermost reaches of the ruined city. A hot summer sun just at its zenith beat down on them as soon as they left the trees, instantly causing Emrael to start sweating beneath his armor. He took a swig from his water can before offering it to Jaina, who waved him off.
“You’ll go weak from the heat,” he said with a smile.
Jaina glanced up at the sky, then frowned at him. “This is not heat, Ire. The Westlands are so hot in places, people travel only at night because an hour in the sun will cook you alive. Besides, you will have to piss every mile we travel. No thank you.”
Emrael shrugged and took another swig and went back to watching the empty buildings around them.
Darmon and his five battalions of Watchers rode vanguard ahead of the Iraeans, leading the way through the abandoned streets. So far the intelligence he had provided had been good. They hadn’t run into any Malithii or Watchers, not even scouts or sentries. Darmon claimed he had cleared this portion of the city of such sentries on his way out of the city.
Despite word of Emrael’s attacks in the north having reached the Malithii and Watcher leaders here, Darmon said that the Malithii had insisted on taking Trylla, depriving Emrael of his only real base of operations.
The Watcher attack hadn’t gone quite as planned, however. The infusori-fueled blast Emrael had seen earlier in the day had in fact come from the Ire forces inside the fortifications. Darmon said that thousands of Watchers had likely died.
And so Emrael and his forces had left their supplies in the forest with a mere company to guard them and now rode straight to where the Malithii had made their camp in the northern portion of the city. Troops from the Malithii’s native lands and the soulbound they had brought with them were still being held in reserve, apparently too precious to risk on a first assault. Darmon was confident that he could convince more of the Watchers to desert the dark priests and join them if the Malithii’s loyal troops from their homeland—and the terrifying soulbound, of course—were killed.
Emrael felt a chill run through him as they moved through the abandoned streets. It felt too easy, and trusting Darmon Corrande felt wrong. Worse than wrong. It felt suicidal, and worse, nearly ten thousand of his men would die with him if he was leading them into a trap.
But truth be told, Darmon’s information had only confirmed what Emrael, Worren, and Jaina had already decided to do. Attacking while the Malithii and Watcher forces were divided offered their only real chance at victory, and they had no choice but to act immediately.
Darmon had sent squads of Watchers out into the city to intercept any scouts the Malithii had posted around their encampment, but so far this part of the vast city was quiet. Broken stone buildings loomed over the dirt-and-rubble-strewn streets, timeworn skeletons of a city that had once been the hub of the western world. Their army could probably traverse the entire city without catching a glimpse of the Watcher and Malithii forces, if they wanted to.
As they marched through the eerily quiet streets, Emrael’s Observer pendant began making noise from where he always wore it around his neck. At first, it was so quiet that he hardly heard it over the clopping of the horses’ hooves and the quiet jangle of thousands of men marching in leather and steel armor. When he finally realized what he was hearing, he frantically grasped the pendant, holding it to his ear. At first, he could only hear more of the same crackling noise he had heard back at the hill outside the city where they had met Darmon and his Watchers.
Slowly, however, he accustomed to the noise and was able to pick out a distinct voice.
“Crafter command, this is Durcan. I mean, this is overwatch three. Watchers are marching through sector seven. Probably a full battalion. Maybe. They’re moving away from the fort, sir.”
Emrael tried using his own Observer to respond, as his was Ban’s original design that could both receive and transmit, unlike those given to the scouts that had been sent to monitor Watcher movements. Both Craftings stayed silent no matter how many times he tried to contact his brother.
He growled in frustration, then furrowed his brows as he considered what he had heard. Someone had obviously been using another of Ban’s Observer Craftings to scout out the attacking Watchers, though Emrael had no clue where sector seven was. The Iraean scout Darmon had handed over only knew that his own sector had been number twelve and that Ban and Garrus planned to bombard the Watchers using the information gleaned.
Watchers marching north away from the fortifications could be a problem for Emrael and his army, however.
He turned quickly to Worren, holding up the Observer. “I think whatever men the Watchers had committed to attacking the fortifications are headed back this way. We need to attack quickly or come up with a new plan.”
Worren grimaced as he gave the Crafting an appraising glance. “If they are regrouping, we could try to make our way across one of the river bridges to hold the fort with Garrus and your brother.”
Emrael shook his head. “I don’t think we could get our supply wagons and sneak across in time, we’d be an easy target. Besides, the last thing they need is to cram more men inside that fort, they’re likely swimming in shit as it is. Best thing is to attack now while they’re still divided. If Darmon is correct, eliminating the camp might bring more Watchers to our side. We could secure Trylla today and turn the tide of the entire war in our favor.”
Worren, always in favor of aggressive tactics, bared his teeth in a savage grin. “Let’s kill the bastards, then.”
Within the hour they had halted just half a league or so from where the Malithii had made their encampment. Darmon and his second, Captain Vaslat, trotted their horses back to where Emrael and his own officers rode.
Darmon bowed his head briefly to Emrael, then pointed down the wide avenue on which most of their forces traveled. “The camps are just ahead, where those buildings up there give way to a clear space. There will be soldiers from the Westlands standing guard, probably some sentries posted at regular intervals around the perimeter of the camp. They are more interested in keeping people in—soulbound especially—than they are in any threat. Still, we’ll need to move quickly to overwhelm the defenses before they can organize themselves.”
“How many soulbound are there?” Emrael asked.
Darmon shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed into the Malithii encampments.”
Emrael nodded. “Nothing for it but to attack decisively, then. Form a shield wedge. I’ll have my foot form ranks to cover your flanks once we enter the square. Bowmen will shoot from the third rank until contact, then withdraw to the reserve. Cavalry will be held in reserve until you break through their lines. Press your wedge forward as quickly as possible, we can’t get stuck fighting in streets like this one. Punch through hard, we’ll do the killing in your wake.”
Darmon frowned but nodded without comment, then moved quickly to arrange his men in tight ranks that would fan out to form a giant wedge once they reached the square. Emrael issued orders and formed his soldiers up behind him. They started at a fast march, the sounds of thousands of boots and hooves on the broken cobbles of the large avenue now thunderous.
A loud baying horn sounded somewhere ahead of them, then another, and another. A milling mass of soldiers in odd armor all painted black suddenly appeared at the mouth of the avenue, each carrying a large black wooden shield and a pike with a slender, wickedly curved blade.
“Press forward!” Emrael shouted, and then Darmon’s Watcher battalions slammed into the front ranks of the soldiers from the Hidden Kingdoms in the far-off Westlands. Their wedge formation parted the surprised, disorganized Westland soldier ranks like the hull of a ship through water. Watchers in the second, third, and fourth ranks of the wedge used their shields to support their fellows in the front ranks as they pushed forward, continuing their advance even as they used spears and long swords to skewer the Westland soldiers. The rear ranks used their short swords to finish off the enemy that fell underfoot.
Before long, however, the Watcher advance slowed as more and more blue-uniformed men fell to the curve-bladed spears. The black-clad warriors had recovered from their surprise and had already formed into ranks of shields and slender pikes three or four deep.
“Push the flanks!” Emrael called to his officers, who repeated the orders. There was only a space about one hundred shields wide on either side of the back end of the Watchers’ wedge formation. The bulk of his army was still trapped in the wide avenue, rendered useless in the battle. If they didn’t push forward enough for the rest of their men to engage the enemy, they’d be overwhelmed in minutes. Darmon and his Watchers already took heavy losses, surrounded as they were.
Emrael called orders again. “Engineers! Explosives twenty paces beyond the ranks! Now! Now!”
He had hoped to save the few of Darrain’s explosive Craftings they had left for a truly dire situation. Without additional materials and infusori stores, she and her Crafters couldn’t make any more. But he had to do something.
Darrain and her company of engineers hurried forward, loading the explosive Craftings into six small catapult-like contraptions that could be carried by two men together. After a brief moment of fiddling with the catapults and the timing controls on the Craftings themselves, the engineers launched the first Craftings to tumble over the heads of the Iraean and Watcher ranks.
Balls of blue flame preceded concussive explosions in the rear ranks of the gathered Westland soldiers, incinerating men inside a ten-pace radius and knocking those within twenty paces off their feet. Many were set alight where they had flammable clothing or hair exposed.
One Crafting had either been poorly aimed or shot from a faulty catapult, and it landed directly in front of the Ire Legion ranks where they had joined the end of the Watcher shield wall to the left. Iraeans, Watchers, and Westland soldiers alike were enveloped in a flash of blue flame that Emrael could feel from where he sat on his horse one hundred paces from the fighting.
“Seventh Company forward!” Emrael shouted, though Seventh Company’s Captain Second already had the men moving to fill the gap. One of the reserve squads assigned to recover the wounded ran forward with them, trying to beat the flames off of their fallen comrades, pulling them back to safety before the Westland warriors could recover and attack.
The explosives worked, despite the one malfunction. The Malithii’s soldiers had reacted much as he had expected, recoiling from the blasts and leaving their front ranks unsupported. A massive ball of flame erupting in your midst had a way of disrupting focus and unnerving even the most hardened warrior.
“Push, push!” Emrael repeated, and his men moved forward quickly, slaughtering the disoriented Westland soldiers by the dozen. The Ire Legion ranks finally pushed into the square, far enough that they were able to deploy four ranks deep stretched across the width of the large open square—really an entire block of the city that had been demolished, the stones carted off somewhere or another, leaving only bare dirt and cobbles. Emrael, five companies of cavalry, and one battalion of foot held in reserve waited anxiously behind the fighting line as the battle turned to an ugly melee. The Westlanders fought well, but caught off guard as they had been, simply didn’t have the numbers to stand against Emrael’s forces. Some of the foreigners even fought bare-chested or in loose black clothing not unlike that of their Malithii priest comrades, and some lacked shields. Emrael watched with grim satisfaction as the Iraeans and Watchers cut through their lines methodically.
Just as Emrael started to wonder whether they were going to have to kill every last one of the black-clad soldiers, the baying horns they had heard earlier sounded once more. A chorus of dozens of horns emanated from somewhere just beyond the opposite side of the square, and immediately the Westland soldiers broke away from the fight to retreat north and east toward the horns. After a few moments, they were gone, scurrying back into the warren of crisscrossing streets like wasps retreating into their nest.
They let the few survivors go, too tired from the intense battle to give chase. The sun had been near its noonday peak when the army had entered the ruins, but it now sat low in the sky, no more than an hour away from twilight. Emrael thought about ordering his cavalry to pursue and put an end to the enemy here and now, but if there were horns farther back in the city calling to these troops, there could be another army waiting for him. Starting such a conflict just before sundown would be madness.
As if his thoughts had summoned them, half-dead soulbound monsters boiled out of the streets and alleyways on the far side of the large open square. Thousands of them arrived within minutes, herded by dozens of Malithii priests. Emrael could see their copper-cable weapons glinting in the late-afternoon sun as they whipped at the soulbound, exerting their control over the horde.
“Absent Gods,” Emrael cursed as he watched the horde continue to grow. There must have been nearly ten thousand of the beasts already, with more pushing into the square from the rear. At even odds, he wouldn’t risk a confrontation with those monsters if he had any other choice. As best he could determine, fighting soulbound two to one was the minimally acceptable tactic. Jaina and Timan agreed with him and said that three to one would be better with troops unused to facing the implacable half-dead beasts.
“Reserves load the wounded on horses,” he screamed, panic in his voice. “Square formation pull back into the avenue, pull back! Eighth Battalion form ranks to the east, three hundred paces back from the square. First to the north, Third to the west. Cavalry leads the rest to the south. Move move move!”
Darmon and his Watchers pulled back first, and Emrael didn’t stop them. The square was littered with bodies in blue uniforms, and nearly every Watcher left unharmed helped an injured comrade back into the safe space behind the battalions assigned to form deep ranks in the avenue to cover their retreat. They were fortunate that the Malithii and soulbound in the square behind them seemed to be waiting for something rather than attacking immediately. Perhaps they wanted to gather greater numbers to ensure their victory? Whatever it was, their opportunity for escape wouldn’t last long.
Emrael stopped Darmon as he drew near where Emrael, Worren, and Jaina had gathered to supervise the retreat. “Can we get to the fortifications across the bridge? Will the other Watchers attack us if you are in the lead?”
Darmon shook his head and panted his reply. “Not all of the Watcher Captains are sympathetic. They may follow Malithii orders.”
Jaina nodded. “We will not make it that far anyway, not even close. Alai’ahn are difficult to outrun in formation. They do not move quickly, but they can march for days at a time.”
Emrael swore under his breath, his mind racing. They could retreat all the way outside the city, to the encampment where they had left the bulk of their supplies. The camp only had a shallow trench and hastily placed stakes for protection, however. Thousands of soulbound would run right through such defenses. And that assumed Emrael’s battalions would make it that far before being overrun—it would take nearly as long to reach the camp as Ban’s fortifications to the south.
Everyone was watching Emrael as he deliberated. Finally, he asked, “Where do we go? We need walls, and quickly. Did any of you see anything we could use on our way here?”
All of them stood silent, shaking their heads. Fear and dread shone in their eyes. All save Jaina.
“The temple compound,” she said with authority. “It has head-high walls, enough to slow the beasts and give us a chance. We can put men with bows on the buildings inside. And the temple will give you, at least, an opportunity to recharge some of our stores.”
Darmon looked at Jaina oddly; he wouldn’t know about Emrael’s ability to pull infusori directly from an infusori Well, or an ancient Ravan temple that sat over an untapped Well. Emrael and Timan, however, nodded. It would work. It had to work.
“Can you find it?” he asked.
Jaina nodded in reply.
“Good. Take command of the cavalry, lead the way. Quickly, please.”
At that moment, the horns behind them blasted once more, their low reverberating sound physically palpable. The thunderous sound of thousands of shuffling feet replaced the sound of the horns as the soulbound finally began their charge.
“Timan and the Guard on me, we’ll support Eighth Battalion. Tell the engineers to bring every explosive we have left. Throw a few in the buildings at the mouth of the avenue, throw the rest well back into the soulbound’s ranks. Worren, lead the main body, make sure we have shields in tight ranks to the sides, and a battalion in reserve. Eighth is about to lose a lot of men.”
Emrael raised his voice to shout orders to the Legionmen of Eighth Battalion nearby. “Quick march to the rear! Now! Bowmen face rear to cover the retreat, shoot at will!”
Orders given, Emrael strapped a shield to his wounded arm and drew his sword before he stalked toward the rear ranks, where Eighth Battalion had locked shields in preparation to meet the soulbound charge. Timan and the hundred or so Royal Guardsmen were quick to follow. To his surprise, Darmon and two companies of Watchers joined them as they found places to join the shield wall.
Emrael nodded solemnly to Darmon as they both jogged toward the impending battle line. He nodded back. Darmon had obviously participated in the battle himself, despite not having what had once been his sword hand. Blood smeared the front of his blue uniform, and accompanying tears in the material likely meant that some of it was his.
“We’ll earn our place,” his unlikely ally said grimly. The Watcher Captain Second that seemed to follow Darmon around like a shadow nodded his agreement.
They reached Eighth Battalion’s commanding Captain Second when the shuffling soulbound were perhaps a few hundred paces away, pouring into the avenue with a shambling gait. The Ire men had packed the avenue with a wall of overlapped shields that spanned between broken stone buildings on both sides.
Emrael returned the Captain Second’s salute before rapidly giving his commands. “Send orders for the first and second ranks to lock shields and hold the line at all costs. Second rank will need to hold up the first, those soulbound will hit like an avalanche. Third rank will use spears. These soulbound bastards won’t defend themselves, but won’t stop fighting until they bleed out, so cut off their hands if you can, and aim for the neck or heart to kill them quickly. Hold until you see explosions in the enemy ranks, then we all retreat as quickly as possible. Understood?”
The Captain Second nodded and shouted orders that echoed down the lines. Spears were passed forward to the third ranks as the first two pressed their shields tightly together. Bowmen used boulders, the steps and windows of buildings to either side of the avenue, and anything they could to gain a vantage from which they could continue shooting over the heads of their comrades. Any damage they inflicted on the enemy was imperceptible, however. There were just so Fallen-damned many of them.
Emrael made his way to the engineers that had accompanied him. Darrain’s nose was smudged with dirt—she had been among the engineers who had volleyed the first round of explosive Craftings at the enemy. She was supposed to have gone with the main body of the Legion, but Emrael didn’t have time to argue with her. “When my mages throw your Craftings, run as fast as you can back to the reserves. Stay close to me. Timan and Daglund will take care of you.”
She nodded mutely, staring at the oncoming soulbound with her lips pursed, resolute. Timan and Daglund hovered nearby.
“Hold the explosives until my command!” Emrael shouted to his Royal Guard, who had formed a rank of their own just behind the Legionmen. There were only a dozen or so of Darrain’s explosive Craftings left, each in the hands of an Imperator or Iraean mage from Emrael’s Guard.
The bowmen stopped shooting as the soulbound neared, running back down the avenue to form tight double ranks just behind where the main body marched away.
The soulbound finally collided with the ranks of Iraean Legionmen with an earsplitting crash, like a hundred buildings collapsing at once. Some of the men in the first rank were knocked flat on their back upon impact. The soulbound wasted no time in savagely hacking them to bloody pieces with their heavy swords and giant axes. Iraean Legionmen and some of Darmon’s Watchers from the second rank filled the gaps quickly, using short swords to rend horrible wounds in the soulbound’s unprotected bodies.
After recovering from the initial clash, the front two ranks of Legionmen huddled behind their shields, straining to hold the line against the crushing press of the mad-eyed soulbound, keeping their heads low as the grey-skinned monsters hacked with inhuman strength at the tops of their shields. Men in the third rank lunged with spears to stab over the top of the shield wall in front of them, trying in vain to slow the soulbounds’ vicious attacks.
The soulbounds’ strength was too much for the Legionmen to handle for long. Wooden shields began to splinter, rendering them useless to the soldiers hiding behind them. They screamed and fell before the onslaught, shield arms ruined as soulbound weapons found their marks.
“Now!” Emrael shouted at the men of his Royal Guard, who depressed the actuators on the Craftings and heaved them overhead. Emrael began a slow count to ten in his head, then held up the shield strapped to his arm to shelter Darrain, who still stood next to him, staring in horror.
Again, a searing flash of blue light preceded a massive concussive blast that shook Emrael so hard he almost lost his feet. Others around him did, though luckily those in the shield wall were pressed so tightly together that most had stayed upright.
The mages in his Royal Guard that had lobbed the Craftings overhead had done a better job this time, and the balls of fire had each obliterated dozens of soulbound and set more still alight. Several of his mages had thrown their Craftings into the huge stone buildings that loomed over the mouth of the avenue where the soulbound milled in a seething mass. Those Craftings tore the stones apart as if they were made from sand, propelling chunks of debris outward in a lethal arc, obliterating the nearby soulbound and their Malithii masters that had sought shelter in the ruins. The buildings themselves groaned after the blast, then slowly toppled into the avenue, crushing hundreds more soulbound and isolating those fighting Emrael’s men from the larger part of their force, just as he had hoped. The Ire Legion was left facing a mere hundred or so of the half-dead monsters rather than thousands.
A few surviving soulbound had caught fire and apparently didn’t have even the presence of mind left to them to try putting out the flames. They still fought even as they burned alive, compelled by their Malithii masters via their soulbinders despite the agony apparent in their screams.
The stench and the all-too-human screams coming from the burning beasts were enough to drive a man mad. Emrael could see the effect they had on his soldiers, who hesitated even in the midst of a vicious battle. The wooden shields they used to fend off the continued attacks of the burning soulbound were beginning to catch fire, further threatening to collapse his ranks.
He himself shuddered. “Rear march! Hold the line! Slow retreat!”
Most of the men obeyed the order, retreating from the attacking soulbound while holding the shield wall. Where the soulbound had caught fire and still pressed the attack, however, men began to panic and pull back too quickly. Soulbound that had escaped the blasts of Darrain’s Craftings charged into the gaps, hacking mindlessly at Legionmen who were now exposed by their comrades who had fled the line. Legionmen began to scream and scatter before the pressure of the soulbound attack, despite now having superior numbers. The wild, powerful swings of the soulbound that had been mostly contained by a tight shield wall now wreaked havoc among the disorganized battalion.
“Timan!” Emrael shouted. “Ready the Guard to charge!”
He signaled to Eighth Battalion’s Captain Second, who sounded a full retreat. As soon as enough of the Legionmen were clear, Emrael waved his Guard forward, jogging with them in a loose line to meet the soulbound.
As he passed his weary Legionmen and neared the shrieking soulbound, Emrael pulled his shield tight to his body and put his shoulder behind it, ignoring the pain that lanced through his arm. He used the shield as a battering ram, colliding violently with the first soulbound in the remnant horde. Soulbound might be inhumanly strong and immune to the effects of pain, but they weighed roughly the same as normal humans and seemed to be no better than an average person at keeping their feet.
The soulbound rebounded from Emrael’s shield to crash to the ground. He thrust his sword into the beast’s gullet and moved on quickly to make sure he was out of range of the axe the soulbound flailed as it died.
He hit another soulbound with his shield, just barely getting inside a wild swing of a sword to knock this one backward as well. Pain flared again in his wounded shield arm, so bad that he flinched involuntarily. He stepped backward quickly, letting his Guard pass by him to engage the soulbound in his stead.
Timan stopped at his side, a concerned look on his face. “The arm?” He shouted to be heard over the din of battle.
Emrael nodded mutely, sucking breath between gritted teeth.
Disappointment flashed in Timan’s expression. “You should not be fighting injured, Emrael. There is no need, one man will not win this battle.”
Emrael grunted his agreement but didn’t pull back any further. The fighting still raged on a mere twenty paces away. Timan, his eyes constantly surveying the fighting, positioned himself to cover Emrael. Then the insufferable Imperator began pushing him forcibly back toward where Eighth Battalion still loaded their wounded on supply wagons, preparing to retreat with the rest of the Legion. The pain in his arm continued pulsing, feeling as though it had been cut to the bone all over again, or worse, so he let himself be herded. His Guard were making short work of the remaining soulbound anyhow. Getting to the temple compound was what mattered now.
He might not have been in proper condition to fight with his men in a shield wall, but he balked when Timan tried to get him to climb into one of the supply wagons that now held scores of their dead and wounded.
“I can walk, Glory blind you,” Emrael said irritably, shrugging off Timan’s attempts to get him into the wagon. “Just get these wagons moving, and make sure the Guard is prepared to cover our rear. Moving quickly is what will save us now.”
He sheathed his sword and pulled desperately at the straps of his shield to finally get the damned thing off of his aching arm. As he set it in one of the wagons holding their dead, however, he spotted a body that made him numb again, though with shock rather than physical pain this time. Darrain lay dead in the wagon next to armored Legionmen, blood still oozing from a mess of a wound in her chest. A crossbow bolt protruded from her back.
Emrael closed his eyes and bowed his head briefly in grief. Legionmen losing their lives for him was bad enough. But Darrain … people like her weren’t supposed to suffer the same fate as simple soldiers. She was so intelligent, had so much promise. Ban would be devastated. Emrael was devastated, and was ashamed that it was for practical reasons as much as personal. Next to Ban, Darrain had been their best Crafter.
But how had she been killed? She had been near Emrael until he charged the soulbound with his guard. None of the enemy had penetrated their lines so deeply.
Timan came over to see what had caused Emrael’s reaction. “Ah, shit,” he cursed, his voice full of emotion.
Emrael looked up to meet his gaze. “Find out how this happened, Timan. She was behind our lines. She should have been safe.”
“Westlander arrow?” Timan guessed softly, pressing one hand tenderly to Darrain’s forehead. He had spent considerable time with the serious little Crafter, coordinating between the mages in his Guard and the Crafters in Darrain’s company of engineers.
Emrael shook his head. “No. I saw her after the Westlanders retreated. The Malithii and soulbound didn’t use any arrows.”
“The Watchers?”
Emrael bared his teeth in a snarl. “Could have just as easily been one of your Imperators using a stolen crossbow, Timan. You know as well as I that the loyalty of Ordenans is fickle. There are many in our midst who could be our enemy. And now they’ve killed one of our own. This will not happen again.”
Timan’s eyes glittered hard and dark. “I’ll find them.”