“When we hit the village, we’ll fold,” she said. “We don’t possess the ability to continue falling back the way we are, especially not with that stream and all those houses providing obstacles.” He didn’t say anything, and she continued after a pause in which she dispatched three enemies with her blades. “The obstacles don’t work to our advantage because we have to dodge around them, but it makes holes in our lines that they can exploit, because I think they can jump onto the roof of the houses in town and use it to leap over our lines. We of Sanctuary might be able to pull that sort of a retreat off, but the Syloreans are going to break. When they do, it’s going to be near-impossible for us to form a survivable order of battle with all the enemies crushing in on us from our right.”
Cyrus gave it a moment’s thought. “Fair assessment.” He let that seep over him as he dealt the deathblow to three enemies in rapid succession. “So, it’s time to retreat, is it?”
He caught the motion of a shrug from her. “You could try and reform south of Filsharron, but I doubt the men of Actaluere are going to go for that, and I even more seriously doubt you could get the Syloreans to pull it off.” She puffed as she struck again and again. “We’ve been fighting for a day; the Syloreans have lost half their number. We need more men to be able to beat them.” There was skepticism from her now. “If we can.”
“We retreat, they’ll come after us,” Cyrus said. “They’ll keep coming, too, unless we can outrun them. Any suggestions on that?”
“Plan for it ahead of the battle next time?” Martaina asked, still fighting. “Falcon’s Essence. If you can get a couple of the druids to spread it around the entire army, we can not only fly high enough to avoid them but it also gives you the ability to run faster. Couple it with a few wizards dropping some flame spells as we go, and you can pull off an orderly retreat.”
“Not bad,” Cyrus said. He looked back at the village. “Now seems the moment.” He raised his voice, loud enough to overcome the battle and the crashing of the fight. “RETREAT! RETREAT!” He heard others take up the call, but he knew his own voice was heard in the back of the Sanctuary line, and that was all that mattered.
Like a flame moving across spilled kerosene, the fire spread across the ground in front of them. It stitched a line before the front rank of the army, a wall as tall as two men, and it lit the night with a flickering orange glow that reminded him of a night spent around a campfire. There was no smoke, only the smell of the fire at work on the grasses, and then on flesh as a few howls cut through the night, the bellows of their enemy as the flames licked at the grey rot. Cyrus watched a pair of black eyes through the wall of fire; they stared back at him, glaring, leering, jagged teeth held at bay by the flame.
The gentle sweep of magic ran across him, and he felt himself float off the ground. He turned to look at Martaina, and saw the Syloreans already moving behind her, well into the retreat, each of them floating, flying, and moving faster at a run than would normally be possible.
“You already had it planned, didn’t you?” she asked, watching him warily.
“Of course,” Cyrus said, and nodded his head as he sheathed Praelior and ran for the back of the lines, where he saw the horses all saddled and waiting. “Do you think me so arrogant that I wouldn’t consider the possibility of retreat?”
She raised an eyebrow at him, and he caught it out of the corner of his eye as he ran. “Normally, no. In your current state, however, I have seen you make one or two errors of judgment, in my estimation.”
“Touche.”
He climbed onto Windrider, who ran out to meet him at his approach. The flames were burning behind him, a steady wall of fire that kept the enemy at bay. “Our wizards will give us about a five-minute head start,” Cyrus said. “After that, I’ve got them riding in groups to cover the retreat, taking turns protecting us and burning them back.”
“That may keep them off of us,” Martaina said with a tight jaw as she brought her horse alongside, “but you know that won’t stop them. There are villages along the way, and if we’re not going to fight, and we’re going to retreat, they’ll be caught in the path of-”
“I know,” Cyrus said. “We’ll warn them, get them to flee, but …” He shook his head. “You know they won’t all listen. They won’t all be able to run.” He felt the tightness in his own jaw, the slight swell of emotion. “They’ll be overrun. Just like Termina.”
“We won’t stand and fight for them?” Odellan rode up and joined them, now, then Curatio and J’anda. “You know what these things will do to the land, what they’ll do to the people as they come down across the plains.”
“I do,” Cyrus said. “But we just threw everything we presently have at them and they chewed it up and spat it back at us.” The Sanctuary army was already in formation and moving, Cyrus saw. Actaluere’s was in motion also, even faster than Sanctuary’s, and they were on the march south. It was the Syloreans who were the slowest to move, some of them still looking back through the fire at the demons on the other side that were pacing there, waiting to get through. “We could make a stand like this on every bit of open ground between here and Enrant Monge and we’d only succeed in slowly bleeding ourselves dry. We need to stage a slow retreat. We need to trade land for time.”
“Time for what?” Odellan asked; Cyrus could see the ripple of emotions on the elf’s young-looking face. “You just said there’s no hope to beat them with what we have, and I can’t see where you’re far wrong about that. What could we possibly do with more time other than throw more of these men’s lives down their jaws?” He gestured at the armies of Actaluere and Syloreas in turn, a sliding wave of the hand that came down in disgust.
“Simple enough,” Cyrus said, grimly, as he urged Windrider forward, following the last rank of the Sanctuary army. The wizards and druids were riding at the rear, ready to hold the retreat against the overwhelming numbers of the scourge that waited just beyond the wall of fire, their black eyes shining with orange firelight as they paced, their number growing, crawling and scrabbling over each other now, waiting for the fire to subside. Cyrus watched them, stared back at them, at death, at fear itself, so overwhelming in its scope that it could eat whole armies and never even taste them, ready to devour them whole. The maw of death, he thought. “There’s only one thing we can do, now.
“We get a bigger army.”
Chapter 65
Vara
Day 35 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The dark elven wizard had appeared in a flash, in the middle of the night and had brought with him over a hundred dark elves, right into the foyer. The sounds of blades clanging against one another made for dreadful noise, but the fighting had spilled out onto the front steps this time, bodies fallen here, there and everywhere as battle raged on. Vara was in the midst of it, on the threshold of the entrance to Sanctuary, and there was war all about. There was no noise from beyond the wall, at least-not this time, thankfully. Her weapon was at a high guard, and it landed squarely between the eyes of a dark elf with all the armor one might expect from a well-trained and equipped warrior.
The smell of smoke was in the air, smoke and sweat, as she moved her sword in a defensive position. They had come in fast and the stairs were packed, the guard force that had been stationed in the foyer was there, prepared to attack and catch them as they teleported in, but the dark elves were too many to dispatch in a quick moment of frenzied attack.
“How are there this many?” Vara whispered under her breath as she parried the attack of another dark elf, capturing his blade under her arm and twisting to yank it free of his hand as she kicked his legs from beneath him. She plunged her sword into the weak spot where his armor met his gorget, heard the satisfying gurgling that ensued, and turned to attack the next.