This one was quicker than the first—younger, perhaps—and as the tongue of flame licked toward him, he managed to sprint to safety. Lan growled deep in his throat, frustrated.
Perhaps; but he felt the same as a hawk whose rightful prey has somehow left him with nothing but a talonful of fur.
Time to shift the barrier again; fuel was running out.
This time, the gap between the cliff and the fire was
Straight into the arrows of the new archers, and the priest was the first to fall.
Lan jigged in place with savage joy.
But there was no denying the fact that he was losing his effectiveness. Every time he shifted the barrier, more Karsites got through; fighting below was no longer one-sided as more of the Karsites managed to survive the gauntlet of fire and arrows. It was no longer groups of fifty getting through, it was a hundred or more, and the press of those on the other side of the barrier grew as it became clear that Lan wasn't creating the impassible defense it first seemed. Nor could he catch another priest unaware, though he tried—even tried to get them two and three at a time. They were aware of his reach now, and dashed out of the way at the first sign of activity in the barrier. By now they were over the burned area on
New motion on his side caught his attention—the light cavalry! He felt a surge of new energy as they charged through the trees and into the massed Karsite forces. He didn't dare watch for too long—but surely, surely, the rest of the army couldn't be too far behind!
It wouldn't be long now before his barrier reached a point where the mountainsides on both ends fell away, and it would be totally ineffective. Already the scouts and the Valdemaran archers had been forced to move to keep from being overrun by the flames.
Oh, how he hated them! With every glimpse of a blue-clad body lying still in the snow, he hated them more!
He was beyond Kalira's cautions now; the flamelets that had danced up and down his body flickered over him in a frenzy, filling the air around him, and even skimming over Kalira's back. She didn't seem to notice; there was a red glow of flame in the back of her eyes, and every muscle was tense with strain.
A roar from below—a hundred thousand voices shouting in triumph and challenge—
He had to let them know that he saw them—and that he would still be fighting up here as long as he could stand... and that he was about to drop the barrier as ineffective.
*
POL tried calling again.
A flicker at the edges of the barrier warned him, just on the periphery of Satiran's vision. It flickered again, in a pattern of three—two—three.
'The barrier is coming down!' Pol shouted, and repeated the warning in Mindspeech.
'Archers, fall back! Form arcs!' the Lord Marshal bellowed, and Pol and the trumpeters repeated that order as well.
He could only watch and hope that Lan had heard him—or was already watching.
The archers moved farther up on the mountainsides, or dropped back behind the foot soldiers. The cavalry, light and heavy together, dropped away from harassing the Karsites and withdrew to the right and left flanks. The foot soldiers moved up, archers behind them, and made a solid, defensive line ten men deep, planting their pikes firmly in the churned-up snow to await the Karsite charge.
Abruptly, the flame-curtain flickered and died.
For a single, dumfounded moment, the Karsites stared at their enemies, with nothing between them. There was a moment of utter silence; not a man moved, as the two armies stared at one another.
Then one of the priests at the front of the group howled something, and the Karsites charged.
Screaming curses, the Karsite forces poured through the pass in a solid, black mass.
There seemed to be no end to them; if the Valdemar forces hadn't already been at a fever pitch of excitement, the torrent of screaming men coming at them would have terrified even the hardiest. They surely
