‘Wesmen seven hundred yards and running, General,’ said one, a willow-framed elf, very tall, bald and dressed in tight-fitting cloth.

‘Spread?’ asked Darrick.

‘Three hundred to three fifty, touching the first north rises and down closing on the first trees south.’

‘Thank you.’ It was a wide front but nothing more than Darrick had anticipated. He assessed their terrain.

To his left and north, the trail broke into small rocky undulations that cut up to high crag and scree slopes a mile distant. South, the Grethern Forest stood, dark and dense. Its first boles were scattered no more than a hundred yards from them but Darrick’s preferred battleground was the thick growth that burgeoned a further two hundred yards distant. He could see the darkness within, could sense the restrictive snags of bough and branch and prayed to all the Gods that he’d made the right decision.

Behind his army, Izack would be leading the Manse relief column south. Now was the time of greatest threat to the plan. Darrick could not afford a single Wesman scout to report the split of the army. Tessaya had to believe he was fighting all of the last Eastern regulars outside of Korina. Mage-assassins from Gyernath swept the forest behind and the crags and rises north. It was time to move.

He raised a hand and the order sped down the column to halt. Next, he clenched the raised fist, splayed his fingers and shouted the order to split.

‘Centiles, detach, crescent formation by number. Running. Now!’

Slight unevenly, the result of a lack of drill time, the centiles broke formation, cutting away from the main trail in sequence, leaving a strong line defending the trail. Darrick called it a crescent and in his drawings, that’s how it appeared. In reality, however, it was a more uneven cascade. He could be nothing less than satisfied that they understood his orders at all.

Darrick nodded his appreciation and set off with his own double centile, angling only slightly from the main trail. He was little more than bait. Acting as running vanguard, he hoped to bring Tessaya’s army to the forest before they had a chance to work out the weakness of the defence leading to his camp. They could, he knew, be quickly surrounded but he was relying on the Wesmen desire for battle. And though Tessaya was tactically aware, Darrick remained confident he would see their move into the forest as an attempt to skirt around to the Septern Manse.

Behind him, the army ran down towards the forest, breaking its borders. Orders rang out, centiles switched directions and from the morass came order as each found its feet and space from its adjacent centiles. A wall half-bricked and a temptation surely too much for the Wesmen to ignore.

Darrick would not be disappointed.

Ahead of him, the leading Wesmen crested a rise, bellowing out cries as they surveyed the fragmented army below. For a while they gathered, like a dark stain spreading on the near horizon, then a blast from a hundred horns sent them flooding down on the Balaians, their battle cries and chants splitting the air, Tessaya plainly visible at the centre.

For a moment, Darrick considered attacking him but, though he was in the front line, he would be very well defended. And Darrick had better things to do than commit suicide. He took his twin centile and ran for Grethern, the first arrows of the Wesmen falling short.

‘Stand ready!’ he shouted, seeing his men ranked inside the confines of the forest. ‘Fall back three paces. Make them break stride. Mages, fill those gaps.’

The orders were relayed through the forest as the Wesmen swept towards them, no more than half a minute behind. Arrows skipped and snapped against trees and branches, howls and taunts echoing darkly into the depths of the forest. Darrick turned, drew a line in the leaf mould in front of him, his men forming around and behind him.

The sky, brooding and grey, spilled rain, and the wind whipped up beneath the cloud, whistling through the trees. Somewhere, Izack and his men raced to the aid of the Protectors. Darrick watched the Wesmen pour on towards the forest, so far taking the bait laid for them. But the Balaians were outnumbered and would have to work very hard to remain unbroken. It was going to be a long afternoon.

Chapter 34

Senedai brooded over the reports from his army surrounding the pitifully small band of masked warriors defending the Septern Manse and its gateway to the land of the dragons. As his warriors tired, the enemy seemed to grow in strength. Their movement was smooth, their fighting ordered, like nothing he had ever seen. He knew there was magic involved but he couldn’t see where. There was no mage, of that he was now certain.

Yet that hardly mattered. What mattered was what was before his eyes. The bodies of his men covered the ground, in places so thickly that the dead and injured had to be dragged away through the legs of the fighting front line to give them solid ground. And as the afternoon wore on, with the rain increasing in intensity hour by hour, Senedai’s desperation increased with it. The enemy left no gaps, the numbers of their dead could be counted on the fingers and toes of a single man; and even though his warriors had injured a good many, they simply melted back from the battle to bind their wounds while others took their place.

Their strength and endurance were extraordinary, their courage something Senedai could admire. But his failure to overwhelm them despite massive odds in his favour gnawed at his confidence and at the belief of his men. It should have been a quick victory and yet, with the afternoon waning, he was now faced with returning to his camp as night fell, to face another day of humiliation.

He could force his warriors to fight on by fire and moonlight but somehow those masks would be even more terrifying in shadow. And to fight at night was not the Wesman way, though he had done so at Julatsa. It displeased the spirits. He growled, silently cursed Tessaya’s failure to appear, called up more reserves and ordered another push.

Fire bloomed to Darrick’s right, the injured Wesmen shrieking in pain, the burning trees casting stark light on the confused battle scene. As the General had hoped, the Wesmen line had been forced to slow and break by the density of trees and the early exchanges had been even as he had foreseen. And with his mages calling FlameOrb, HellFire and IceWind from the mana, the Wesmen charge was blunted.

Now, though, the tactics had changed, Tessaya had broken off the frontal attack, sending a sizeable force towards the Balaian encampment and concentrating on an area of Grethern perhaps seventy yards wide, daring his enemy to close ranks. So far, it was a temptation Darrick had been able to resist. He’d quickly reorganised mage teams to prevent flanking and keep the Wesmen line ahead thin, left four centiles in reserve to provide emergency cover and brought in all of his mage assassins to maraud outside the flanks.

A barrage of metal on metal had him moving smartly forwards. Ahead, the Wesmen had forced a triple centile back and were pushing their advantage to the limit. Calling reinforcements to him, Darrick raced in from his overseeing position, too late to save a knot of Balaian swordsmen and mages, caught against a wall of trees and cut to pieces by triumphant Wesmen.

‘I want fire behind the front line! First centile right flank, attack at will!’ roared Darrick as he crashed into the battle. With veteran swordsmen either side of him and a trio of mages behind, he waded into the Wesmen line, hundreds strong, his blade flashing down on a defensively placed axe. ‘Second centile, mage protection!’ The axe was knocked aside and Darrick followed up with a boot to the abdomen and a reverse sword strike to the bowed head.