He grunted angrily and slashed even harder, trying to keep the enemy from getting past their line. Another man rushed him and he got his boot up onto the man’s midsection and then kicked out, sending the man flying back and over the cliff edge with a horrified cry.
Loghain wiped his eyes and looked down the cliff, then began laughing out loud in sheer surprise. The thundering of hooves heralded the charge of the rest of the rebel’s force of horsemen as they struck the larger enemy force from behind. The armored figure leading the charge could only be Rowan, the green plume atop her helmet trailing.
The effect on the enemy was dramatic. The Orlesians were pushed back toward the cliff, their shouts turning to confusion and surprise. Almost immediately their organization broke. Panic overtook the foot soldiers, and they began to scramble and run, even as the commanders screamed ineffectually for them to hold.
Loghain had no more time to watch as the enemies still on the path became desperate. Caught between the crush of men trying to run up behind them to escape the cavalry charge and Loghain’s remaining men, their fearful cries became deafening.
“Now! Do it! Push them back!” he shouted. Six knights stood next to him, their armor smeared with gore and all of them heavily wounded, but they gritted their teeth and did as he commanded. They pressed their advantage and began swinging hard to drive the enemy back.
There was a long moment of frenzied resistance as steel met steel, and then the enemy line broke. With a victorious shout, Loghain moved forward and stabbed his blade into two men who scrabbled backwards while screaming for mercy. The knights beside him did the same, and as the enemy fell back, they ran out of ground and forced a whole group of their own soldiers off the cliff.
There was mass panic below. The enemy was racing to get out of the way of the horsemen, dashing into the forest at the edges of the valley. Some even dropped their weapons in their rush. One of the Orlesian commanders screamed at his men with indignation, attempting to lead a rally, but Rowan put a quick end to that. A pair of hooves cut the pompous fellow off in midshout, sending his body flying against the rocks and galvanizing the nearest enemy soldiers into even quicker retreat.
Calling to several of her men to follow her, Rowan turned and raced up the path toward Loghain.
Encouraged by the sight, Loghain urged his knights to continue pushing—and they did. They were shoving forward now, sweeping the line of enemy soldiers before them off the edge of the path like so much debris off the front steps. The bloodcurdling screams as those men were sent falling to their deaths were difficult to bear.
And then they stood at the edge, Loghain and his six men. They stared down at the carnage below, the many men lying broken at the bottom of a hundred-foot drop. Like dolls scattered by an angry child, Loghain thought grimly.
The few soldiers left on the path were now leaping off the side to get out of the way of Rowan and the several horsemen charging with her up the path. Those that stood their ground were cut down mercilessly. One of them was a lone, quaking halberdier who leveled his weapon toward the horse racing at him. Rowan pulled her horse to one side at the last moment and efficiently sliced her blade deep into the man’s neck as she rode past. He went down without so much as a blink.
When Rowan reached the top of the path, she slid off her horse in one smooth motion and ran toward Loghain, lifting up her helmet. Brown hair spilled around her face as she took in the sight of the small number of wounded, haggard men standing there with him. They all stared back at her dumbly, numb with exhaustion and the fading remnants of adrenaline.
“Are you . . . all right?” she asked uncertainly, her expression concerned.
Loghain walked toward her and held out his hand. Rowan hesitated, staring at him as if she wasn’t sure what it meant before she relaxed and shook it.
“That was quite the charge,” he congratulated her. Their eyes met, lingering a moment longer than was necessary. Rowan quickly disengaged her hand and glanced away.
“I can’t believe you lasted this long. I wish I’d come sooner.” She nodded officiously to the other men behind Loghain, several of whom had dropped to their knees. “Well done, all of you.”
“It’s not over yet,” he sighed. Already he could see the enemy recovering below. The charge had spooked them and taken a toll on their forces, but it wouldn’t be long before the Orlesians would recover from the shock. They still had the superior numbers, after all, and if they realized it quickly enough, they could race back into the clearing and surround Rowan’s men. They needed to get out—now.
Rowan was nodding, understanding the situation exactly as he did, he realized. Loghain found himself hardly surprised. “Maric will need us. Let’s go while we still can.”
Maric panted at the edge of the battle during a few rare seconds he could even breathe in the chaos, ears ringing with the sound of steel on steel. His sword arm ached so badly, he thought it might just fall off. He also suddenly noticed an arrow sticking out of his shoulder, the shaft having penetrated between the grooves of his fine armor.
The ebb and flow of the melee seemed to go on forever. He had lost the ability to judge what was actually going on with the overall battle once Arl Rendorn had charged the line. It had become his only concern just to survive, facing an endless array of opponents that charged at him from every direction.
So far, he remained alive despite it all. The heavy dwarven armor he wore had repelled dozens of strikes without so much as a dent. Far too many rebels had been killed before Maric’s eyes, trying to buy their prince a few more moments of life. Even with all this protection, his sword dripped with the blood of men who would surely have killed him, if Maric hadn’t been a second faster than they. And then, of course, there was the blind luck.
At one point he had been barrelled over by a giant of a man in chain armor, and when Maric had rolled over, he’d seen a great axe ready to come down right on top of his head. None of his protectors had been near enough to help. All that had saved him was an errant gauntlet flung from some unknown soldier nearby, probably by accident, which struck the giant in the back of the head and knocked him off balance. The axe came down just shy of Maric’s ear. His breath had steamed on the metal of the axe-head buried in the ground not an inch away from the tip of his nose.
The giant soldier yanked the axe back up, but this time Wilhelm had intervened. An arc of lightning streaked
