“Needs be,” Cyrus said. “Get to it.”
Cyrus waited, counting the seconds as they passed, the cool air coming off the river slipping through the joints of his armor, chilling him. He ran his hand over his helm, straightening it.
The first blast of flame exploded on the bridge only a moment later, a blast ten feet wide and ten feet tall, at the railing opposite them. Screams tore through the early morning silence, breaking it as another burst of fire landed on the bridge a moment later and shouts overcame the pre-dawn calm, dissolving it into the chaos Cyrus had sought. Three men tumbled over the side of the bridge in the first few seconds, along with their horses.
Cyrus heard a soft moan from Martaina. When he looked over at her, she wore a frown. “Couldn’t we have found a way to rout them without hurting the horses?”
“Sorry,” Cyrus said with a shake of the head. “I’ve got no love of harming animals, but we need to throw their rearguard into utter disarray.”
Another dozen or more horses vaulted off the side of the bridge, flames covering their riders, wreathing the end of the bridge in a way that reminded Cyrus of another bridge, only months earlier, and a wizard who had sacrificed years from her life to bring twice as much fire as his whole corps of spellcasters were delivering now- and not nearly so sustained as what Chirenya had created.
Cyrus could feel the heat, as though a furnace door had opened in front of him. He could see bodies tumbling off as the men and horses sought to escape the fiery doom that awaited any who remained on the bridge. They fell, dropping off the side onto the rocks in the shallows below. Most remained unmoving, but a few still moaned or cried out. Cyrus saw one man trapped under a whinnying horse that could not stand, though it kept trying, and he cringed. “Martaina,” he said. “For the gods’ sakes, give them some mercy.”
He heard the arrows begin to fly only a moment later, and he turned away from the destruction he had ordered as the last of the inferno faded away. The bridge was silent, but the ground and water below was a mass of moaning and whinnying, the survivors of the jump crying out for relief that would not come-at least not in the way they intended it.
“I’d say you’d suffer in Mortus’s oil pits for that bit of cruelty,” Martaina said as she loosed another arrow, “but I think we both know that at this point, that’s not likely true.”
“There were some folks suffering there, that’s certain,” Cyrus said, recalling the phantoms that had been loosed when Mortus died; souls crying out, screaming in pain for vengeance; they sounded much like the suffering souls under the bridge. “No time for recriminations now. J’anda?” Cyrus looked to the enchanter. “Are we set?”
“Set,” J’anda said. “Excellent choice of words. They look like a matching set, in fact.” He waved his hand toward figures that were lined up in even rows behind them, stretching over the riverbanks and onto the river, horsemen with the helms of Galbadien’s dragoons, walking on water as though it were the greenest grass. “Let us hope that our enemies don’t look too closely at their conformity and see through the illusion of it all.”
“They’ve never seen an enchanter at work,” Cyrus said. “And by the time they figure it out, hopefully it’ll be too late.” He drew his sword, Praelior, and urged Windrider up the bank. “Let’s get out in front of this charging army of specters and get these Syloreans turned around.” His horse stormed up the embankment as Cyrus held his sword aloft. He heard the others follow him in the morning gloom and saw the illusory dragoon army close behind as they crested the top of the ridge.
A flat, grassy plain stretched before him, running all the way to the edge of the Forest of Waigh. Cyrus saw the road that led from the bridge back to the forest, the one they had been following with the army until they caught the scout. Set up on either side of the road at the forest’s edge were ranks of soldiers, footmen with pikes, polearms, and swords. Standard bearers waited at either end, each of which was divided into six armies, each with four or five ranks lined up one behind another. They were arranged in a half circle around the entrance to the woods, although now many of them had turned, heads looking toward the bridge to try and make sense of the flaming chaos.
When Cyrus crested the edge of the embankment he judged the distance to the nearest army at only a few hundred yards. He let Windrider carry him onward as he watched the armies before him panic, men turning, stunned at the appearance of a charging army on the rear flank. The Sylorean officers screamed at their men to turn in formation but Cyrus watched them hesitate before beginning to organize.
Detached from the body of any of the six legions, dead in the center of the road back to the forest was another cluster, smaller, this one only a few men. Cyrus squinted, and saw that one of them appeared to be much shorter than the others, and had a long beard, one that reached nearly to his waist. The dwarf carried a hammer almost as tall as he was, holding it diagonally across his body with both hands. The small group of fighters was only about six strong, Cyrus noted. He pointed his sword at them and noticed Windrider had already altered his heading to charge the mercenaries. “Clever horse,” he said faintly. “So, so clever.”
The others changed course behind him, and Cyrus felt the wind rushing through his hair, blowing it out the bottom of his helm. His mouth was wide with a feral grin; he was going into battle, riding into danger from the fore, his forces behind him. The dwarf ahead of him was already running out to meet him, along with the others in his party, while the rest of the Sylorean army was still executing its turn and trying to shift their formations to deal with the threat at their flank. Cyrus saw horses beginning to stream out of the woods behind the backs of the Syloreans. The real Galbadien Dragoons were forming up to hit the unsuspecting Syloreans from behind while Cyrus distracted them.
“Watch out for the paladin’s attack!” Cyrus shouted as they closed the distance to the mercenaries. He locked his eyes to the dwarf, watched him extend his hand, felt Windrider tense beneath him.
A blast of ice sent the dwarf staggering, his hand flying into the air as he loosed a massive burst of force that went sailing over Cyrus’s head, barely brushing his helm but sending it flying. Cyrus could see the two mercenary warriors, armored at the fore, and the two rangers, their bows drawn and arrows ready to loose. Each of them was downed in the next moment; one caught an arrow in the face from Martaina, who smiled grimly as she drew another arrow. The other was blasted by a bolt of lightning that originated from Ryin Ayend, who sent the man spiraling through the air as though thrown.
“Spellcasters!” Cyrus yelled, “let loose on the armies! Keep them off us while we finish the mercenaries!” He watched another arrow sail forth, this one from Aisling, and it came to rest in the thigh of the mercenary healer, who let out a cry and fell to the ground.
Flames sparked up in a line along either side of their charge, isolating Cyrus and the Sanctuary forces from the Syloreans on either side; the lines blazed back toward the woods but stopped behind the mercenaries, sending the grass into conflagration as it looped around the four surviving mercenaries, cutting them off from Sylorean reinforcement.
Another arrow caught the healer in the face as he cast a spell, sitting on his haunches, his legs in front of him. His hand dropped, limp, into his lap, and he fell backward, dead, forcing Cyrus to smile. The dwarf had been knocked over by the ice spell, but was back on his feet now, hunched over, the two heavily armored warriors flanking him to either side. “Get the paladin!” Cyrus shouted as the dwarf’s hand rose again, this time without warning. Cyrus was only ten feet away now-
The air around the paladin’s hand rippled as his spell burst forth from his mailed hand. With the aid of Praelior’s mystic enhancement to his speed and reflexes, time seemed to slow as the air folded around the force of the spell, the world distorting as the enchantment sped toward Cyrus. Windrider had already cut hard to the right before the blast landed, and the horse managed to dodge under the effects. Cyrus felt himself hit by the widening radius of power as the wave bloomed outward, like a wall had been picked up and slammed into him. He flew sideways off the horse, dragging his legs behind him as he flipped in midair, before coming to rest on his shoulder.
The impact knocked the air out of him, but he maintained his grip on his sword. He looked back and saw the paladin’s attack wreaking havoc behind him; half of Cyrus’s small force had been hit, and a trail of upturned earth ten feet wide marked the place where the paladin’s incantation had wrought its effects. Those who hadn’t been hit had dodged outside of the cone of destruction, trying to get their horses back under control. Cyrus saw Curatio among them, as well as Terian. “Come on!” Cyrus shouted and slung himself to his feet. “Terian, get over here!”
