A cry and hue came from farther down the line, to the right. “Not a good sound,” Cyrus said under his breath. “Do you think that means …?”
There was no need for him to finish, as Martaina appeared out of the darkness to his right, firing two arrows in rapid succession, both hitting one of their foes in the face and causing them to cease all motion. She slid to a stop in front of Cyrus, slung her bow over her shoulder and drew blades, slipping into the formation next to him. “Bad news from the Sylorean lines, sir.”
“Let me guess,” Cyrus said, cleaving another head as one of their enemy slid past him in a foiled attack, “the Syloreans broke in the middle.”
“Solid guess.” She buried a dagger in a grey face and another in a stout, four-legged body. “Our healers did their best, but they ran short of magical energy about ten minutes ago. Mendicant is about to try something to drive them back, but we’re running low on things we can throw into the breach.”
“What about the cavalry reserve?” Cyrus asked. “Longwell was waiting for the right moment to turn them loose, and this sounds like it.”
“He moved into action to shore up the left flank and give some relief to the army of Actaluere about two hours ago,” she said, and her smooth motions with the blade prompted him to wonder how long she had been using them, she did it with such fluid grace. “They’re still committed over there; I guess the enemy moved fast and doggedly, because from what I can see from here, it looks like they’re barely holding, even with the cavalry reinforcement.”
“Okay,” Cyrus said, and motioned for two warriors in the line behind him to move up. “Let’s you and I head over there, see if we can help. What’s Mendicant planning to-”
There was a blast of fire that lit the night sky, a circle of flame that turned the whole field of battle orange with fury then red with its intensity as it burned brighter still. Cyrus watched as it slid around a widening hole in the line that he hadn’t even been able to see without the fire. It pushed back, back toward the scourge, and Cyrus watched the four-legged creatures run from it in a way they hadn’t run from anything he’d seen thus far.
“It would appear they’re afraid of fire,” Cyrus said, pushing through the line and making for the place where the flame glowed. “Nice to know; kinda wonder why we haven’t figured that out before.”
“You’re the one who wanted the spellcasters kept in reserve in case we had to fall back,” she said, leading him. Her bow was unslung now, and she fired it three times as she ran, picking off targets as she brushed by Sanctuary members locked in combat along the front. “Not such a bad strategy, actually, because we’d been doing well enough before now that they didn’t need to intervene.”
“We may yet need them to cover our retreat,” Cyrus said as they reached the end of the Sanctuary line; he passed a few men of Syloreas who were in battle with the scourge, and Cyrus aided them with a few well-placed slashes as he did so. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve easily killed ten thousand of these things and they’ve yet to blink at throwing another ten thousand at us.”
“Being not quite as blind as you in the dark, I have noticed,” she said. “I have also noticed that their number continues to extend beyond the horizon, which is a mite worrisome seeing as we’re supposed to kill them all and then continue north to destroy the portal. I believe we may have the order wrong on that; we may need to destroy the portal before we can go north.”
“A fine contradiction, isn’t it?” Cyrus brought his sword around and slashed a foe that charged hard at him, killing it with one well-placed stroke. “I, for one, wish there were another way to do it, but as I don’t possess a single flying mount with which to carry myself over these enemies, let alone a bevy of them to carry an entire army to the portal without fighting them, I’m afraid we may just have to do it the hard way.”
“I don’t know that you could define this as the hard way, sir,” Martaina said, and her short blade was out again, working in a flash of metal against two of the scourge at once, “I believe this may in fact be the impossible way.”
“I don’t believe in the impossible,” Cyrus said, greeting a jumping enemy with a kick that knocked it back to its fellows.
“Then I’d like to see you try and give birth to a child yourself, sir.”
Cyrus shot her a sideways look and got one in return, only a hint of a smile as Martaina stabbed into another one of the beasts as it jumped at her. The fire of Mendicant’s spell had died out, finally, and Cyrus wondered idly if the goblin had sacrificed any life energy to make it last as long as it did. The two of them were now firmly in the middle of the sagging Sylorean line, and they had, as predicted, failed squarely in the middle of the amateurs who were carrying hand-me-down weapons and wore no armor. It’s not from lack of courage that they’re breaking, because none of them are running; they’re literally being killed here in the center at too high of a rate to keep the line solid. He looked back and saw holes that stretched clear through the middle, no reinforcement to seal them; the Syloreans had run out of men to throw at the problem.
“I believe that if you were looking in a dictionary,” Martaina said through gritted teeth as she dropped to her back and let two of the enemy run headlong into each other while she executed a backward to roll to get to her feet again, “this might fall under the word ‘untenable.’” Cyrus gave her a blank look for only a moment before he was forced back to attention on the battle as a foe went for his knee with glistening teeth. “It means-”
“I know what it means,” he snapped, driving the tip of his blade through a skull and then whipping it out sideways to intercept another running foe’s forehead. A slap of black blood hit his armor, where it blended with the metal and the night and a thousand other splotches that had already landed there in the day-long battle. “I don’t like to retreat.”
“Perhaps you should think of it as an opportunity to find some reinforcements and re-commence the battle on more favorable ground, then,” she said. “Because we’re only about five more minutes from ending up in the middle of that village, Filsharron, if we keep having to fall back like we are.”
Cyrus cast a backwards glance and realized she was right, that the village was just behind them now, only a few hundred feet away. There were torches burning, and he could see motion in the streets; the back rank of the Sanctuary reserve of spellcasters were already standing in the outskirts. “Dammit.” He turned to say something to her and watched as she landed two blades in a rampaging enemy’s shoulder and neck, keeping it from attacking him, and he shook off his surprise. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get distracted.”
“I’m here to watch your back,” she said, the slight tension evident in her voice as she threw the body back at its fellows, bowling over another one of them.
“And what a fantastic view that must be,” Cyrus said as he waded back into the fight.
“I’ve seen considerably better, even lately,” she said, fending off three of the scourge at the same time.
“I’ll try not to be insulted by that.”
“Nothing personal, sir.”
Cyrus waved at the Sanctuary line, motioning for several of the warriors toward the back to move to them, which they began to do, filtering in. “How long do you think we can keep this up?”