Cyrus saw Longwell down the line of defense that they had just left, his lance skewering two of the scourge while his men covered him. The dragoon looked up and saw Cyrus, and hesitated for only a moment before pulling his lance free and attacking the next enemy that came against the Galbadien army that backed him. He does well at the head of an army of his own; he would make a fine General for Sanctuary. Cyrus looked back and saw Odellan leading a force of men and women to cover Cyrus’s advance, keeping the increasing numbers of scourge from pushing them back, fighting desperately to keep forward, to not surrender an inch of ground. He’ll hold til we get back-another fine General.
They were away from the front rank now by fifty feet, surrounded by the enemy, who came at them two and three deep, crawling over each other trying to attack them. Cyrus’s sword remained in motion, constant, flowing, cutting their foes to ribbons of blood in the snow, blooming black flowers of death on the trampled ground of the battlefield.
“It’s moving,” Martaina said cautiously, her short swords a flurry of motion. “Looks like it’s heading away.”
“How far are we gonna pursue this thing?” Terian asked. “And please don’t say all the way to the depths of the Realm of Death, because we’ve been there, and it’s no party.”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said, his weapon moving in front of him, where he stood at the head of the attack party. “If it’s going to constantly circle away from us, I don’t see much need to keep going because there’s no way we can chop through these things fast enough to catch it.” He brought his sword aloft for a long, swinging chop across an enemy leaping at him, and he watched Praelior glimmer faintly in the close of day.
“Whoa,” Terian said, “it stopped.”
“Sudden, too,” Aisling added. “It was looking at us and just froze.” She let her hands work in a blur, cutting at the scourge that was coming for her; she caught it across the face with a quick thrust, then spun low and opened its neck.
There was a quiet that fell over them, then Cyrus saw the shadow in the distance that jutted over the heads of the creatures, and it rose higher, at least four times the height of the beasts around it. “Not small,” he breathed.
“It’s looking … right … at us,” Terian said quietly. “I find that very, very unnerving.”
“I don’t blame you,” Aisling said.
Cyrus brought his sword up again and drove Praelior into the skull of a running scourge that came at him. He brought the blade up in the air again and let it descend in a hacking motion, the faint blue glow along the length of the blade gleaming in the early, cloudy twilight.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Aisling said tightly, “is pissing him off. That thing is looking right at us.”
“I’m killing its fellows,” Cyrus said, keeping his weapon light and attacking the beasts that continued to come at him. “This is hardly new.”
“His eyes are right on you,” Terian agreed. “I mean, anchored. It’s watching you, not us.”
“Do you think it senses he’s the General?” Nyad asked.
“Could be,” Aisling answered.
“Fine,” Cyrus said, raising his sword again into a high guard and slashing a leaping scourge into halves in front of him. “Whatever the reason, let him come-”
“It’s your sword,” Aisling said as the ground rumbled beneath them, “that’s what’s catching his attention; and it looks like you get your wish because here he-”
The rumble grew loud now, the shadow in the distance that was as large as a small house was crossing the snowy ground, chewing it up with surprising speed. Where Cyrus would have imagined the creature be ponderously slowly, it was anything but, rumpled skin becoming plain as it closed on them, the same grey of dead flesh covering its massive bones. It really is the size of a dragon with no wings. “Are you sure it’s my sword that’s catching it?”
“Pretty sure,” Aisling said, steadying herself as she parried the attack of another one of the creatures. “Every time you raised it where he could see the flash, he watched closer. Now that he’s gotten a look at it three times, he’s charging us.”
“I can’t argue with her logic,” Terian said, “her judgment in men, but not her logic. It happened exactly as she describes.”
“If that thing hits our line he’s going to trample his way through,” Curatio said as they held there, the beast traveling toward them. “You might want to-”
“Martaina,” Cyrus said warningly, “Nyad-”
Arrows were already in flight before he could finish his thoughts; the spells followed, a flame spell that shot in a small burst. It was hardly enough to compare to the long, flaming lines that had blocked scourge advances, but it was enough to light up the sky, to slow the massive creature as it barreled toward them, legs like tree trunks pounding feet the size of stumps against the ground, leaving tracks as big in diameter as Cyrus’s shoulders. He clutched Praelior close but kept it moving; even with this thing charging them down, the smaller ones keep coming, their onslaught always threatening to overpower our defense.
It grew closer now, a hundred feet away, thundering across the snowy plain like a dead rhino, its eyes different than the others. There was red in them, reminding him of the eye of a white rat he had once looked into when just a boy. There was intelligence burning in there, too, something far beyond the simple ravening hunger of the others, the mass. This one came for him, watched him, not the others. He could see the exhalations of steaming breath as it came forward, jagged teeth as long as his forearm.
“Nyad!” Cyrus called. “Stop him!” Too fast, he’s not slowing enough from the fire and arrows, and if he splits us, we’re dead, damned sure guaranteed to be overrun in seconds-
There was a flash of light, blinding, from behind Cyrus, white in its intensity, and hands yanked him to the side as the thing burst through the center of them, a grey, blurred leg missing him by inches. Cyrus staggered into Aisling, who had pulled him along, and the thing thundered past, stopping just beyond them, snorting into the air as it shook its head. The others, Cyrus realized, had dodged as well, breaking their small formation down the center. They surged back together now, quickly, and a wall of flame burst forth in front of them, in the open, crushed-down snow where the largest of the scourge had charged through, and it half-circled them in a hundred and eighty degrees of protection.
“A little wall,” Nyad said, her voice strained, “to minimize the vectors of attack. I won’t be able to hold it long.”
“He’s pinned between us and our army,” Cyrus said. “CHARGE!” he called out over the lines. “CHARGE!” There was movement on the line, and Cyrus could see them begin to fight forward, on the Galbadien side and in the middle of the Sanctuary forces. With Nyad’s flames stymieing the advance of the scourge behind them, Cyrus moved back toward the army, slicing his way toward the creature-the General, he thought of it-as it stood, shaking its head as though it were trying to get its senses back. It took faltering steps, crushing some of its own kind underfoot.