“How fast would we like it?” Ehren asked dubiously. A stray sphere from the last mule launch had come down inside the ramparts, and a supply wagon was burning enthusiastically.

“Twelve million of them an hour would be ideal,” Calderon replied.

Ehren choked. “Twelve mil—An hour?”

“That would be enough for one hundred mules to loose two-hundred-shot loads at their maximum rate of fire, nonstop,” Bernard said. He squinted out at the battle. “With that, I could kill every vord in this swarm without losing a man. We’re going to have to figure out a way to manufacture these things more quickly.”

Ehren shook his head. “Seems so unbelievable. When Tavi showed me the sketches for this idea, I thought he’d gone insane.” He paused. “More insane.”

Two more mules launched their payloads, and a column of fire brought more vord screams to the predawn darkness.

Suddenly there were sharp, high-pitched whistles drifting down from the bluffs on either side of the little city. Bernard looked up sharply and swallowed. “There. Here it comes.”

“Here what comes?”

“The enemy’s flanking attack. It’s the weakest part of this position, defending against an attack from the west.” Bernard gestured at the two bluffs. “The vord are going to try to take the heights, then come down on us.”

“The Marat are stationed there, I believe,” Ehren said.

“Yes,” Calderon said. “But if the vord have reinforced their flankers…” He bit his lip and beckoned Centurion Giraldi. “Signal the Marat.”

Giraldi saluted and stomped off to dispatch a messenger as the battle upon the bluffs resumed, with the screams and howls and cries of the Marat, their beasts, and their foes echoing down into the Valley.

“It would be nice to be able to see what’s happening up there,” Ehren said.

“Probably why they did it at night,” Calderon replied. “Show up with a much larger force and try to hammer through before anyone realizes there are a whole lot more of them this time.” He shook his head. “Did it ever once occur to whoever is in charge over there that they aren’t the only ones who can furycraft a decent trail up onto the bluffs?”

Ehren turned with the Count in time to see three bright white signal-fire arrows launched into the air over each bluff. There was a brief pause, then the sounding of horns somewhere out on the plains.

And then there was a low, rumbling thunder.

As Ehren listened, it began to grow closer—and much, much louder. He hurried to fumble a farseeing into existence between his hands, to let him look out east onto the plains beyond Garrison. And there he saw, surging toward the west, an enormous mass.

Horses.

Thousands and thousands of horses, and pale barbarians armed with spear and axe and bow and sword riding upon their backs.

“Hashat would have killed me if I hadn’t let her in on the fun,” Calderon confided. “And it was something of a challenge to work out a battle plan that included a reasonable use of cavalry in a bloody wall battle.”

The horses split into two columns, flowing around Garrison like a river, then surged up what sounded like plank-lined earthworks leading onto the bluffs on either side of the city. Moments later, Marat cavalry horns caroled brazenly through the dark, and the sounds of thundering hooves and fighting continued on the heights. For a few moments, there was nothing but noise and confusion, but then the trumpets started calling more excitedly and from farther west upon the bluffs—the Marat were again driving the enemy back.

Bernard nodded once in satisfaction, and said, “My Valley.”

And then a low, throbbing bellow rolled through the air and made the soles of Ehren’s feet vibrate. A second one, from vaguely the other direction, rose and slowly fell again as the first call died away.

“Bloody crows,” Bernard snarled. “Signal Knights Aeris,” he called to Giraldi. “I need lights on those bluffs!”

It took only a few moments for the orders to be relayed and the Knights Aeris and Citizens to overfly the bluffs, dropping spherical firecraftings in clusters of blazing light. Count Calderon stood watching as they fell, and the light illuminated the vast, shadowy mass of vordbulks, one of them upon each section of high ground, so heavily surrounded with vordknights that they resembled animated carcasses surrounded by buzzing flies.

Ehren stared at them for a second, unable to believe his own eyes. “Those,” he heard himself say through a dry mouth, “are quite large.”

Giraldi spat. “Bloody crows. But those things can’t attack us from up there, can they?”

“They don’t have to attack us,” Bernard replied. “They just have to walk up and fall on us.”

“Oh, dear,” Ehren said.

“We have to hold them off,” Bernard breathed. “Slow them down. If we can slow them down…” He gave himself a shake. “Giraldi. Tell Cereus to concentrate his forces on the northern bluff. Set the trees on fire, create spines of stone to wound their feet—whatever he can think of. Kill them if he can, but he is to slow that bulk down.”

“Yes, sir!” Giraldi snapped, and went about carrying out Bernard’s orders.

“Slow them down?” Ehren said, bewildered. “Not kill them?”

“It’ll be worse if they arrive simultaneously. And they’re so heavily armored—and just so crowbegotten big—that I’m not sure if we can kill them,” he replied. “But I think we just have to hold a little longer.”

“Why?” Ehren asked, blinking. “What difference is it going to make if they’re here in half an hour instead of ten minutes?”

“Because, Sir Ehren,” Calderon said, “like your own demise, not everything here is as it seems.”

Gaius Octavian’s host dismounted at the mouth of the Calderon Valley, much to the relief of riders and mounts alike. Fidelias watched the entire process, bemused. How different would the role of cavalry be if horses could talk?

And draw swords.

And eat their riders.

He thought there might be a great deal less running about.

Fidelias shook his head and struggled to focus on the task at hand. Such wandering thoughts might perhaps be natural in the face of exhaustion and near-certain death, but they wouldn’t help accomplish the mission.

The captain came riding in from a nearby patch of woods on his big black, his singulares trailing at a slight distance. Though the trees had been a quarter mile away, he had insisted. It would never do, after all, for the Legions to see their Princeps beholden to the call of nature just as they were.

Fidelias swung down from his own horse and walked over to join the captain.

“… know you aren’t used to performing in this role,” Octavian was saying to two young men—a cavalry centurion named Quartus and Sir Callum of the First Aleran’s Knights. Both were the right arms of Maximus and Crassus, respectively, within the First Aleran. “But you’ve been trained well,” Octavian continued. “You’ll do fine.”

Both young man replied in the affirmative and, Fidelias thought, tried to look more confident than they felt. But then, the captain was doing the exact same thing. He was just a lot better at it than the other two. It also said something about him that, even here, at the last, the captain had arranged matters so that he could have a moment to bolster their spirits before the rest of the commanders of the host arrived.

It took only moments for the command staff of both Legions to reach them, along with Varg, Nasaug, and Master Marok in his vord-chitin mantle. To Fidelias’s surprise, Sha was there as well, clad in Hunter grey, pacing along in Varg’s shadow.

“Gentlemen,” Octavian said. There were no murmurs to be quieted—everyone was tired, though only the Cane didn’t look it. Their fur simply seemed a bit limper than was usual. “Let’s get right to it. There are two and a half million enemy troops packed into the next fifty miles or so. There are about forty thousand of us. So there are plenty of vord to share. Let’s not be stingy.”