“That may be true,” Guthrie stated, his paunch making him appear to lean unsteadily in the saddle. “But the question still begs to be asked. And the answer Jillian gave seems the most plausible one.”
“I say we take no chances,” Devan said, his hulking form matching his gruff voice. He rode the biggest dartan of the bunch, an animal that dwarfed the others. “Act as if they do have Matii. Prepare our Ashishin to counter rather than attack.”
Galiana nodded. “I agree. If they’d smuggled in Namazzi or Alzari we would have known. And well, the Svenzar fight for no one but themselves.” Her cloak flapped in the breeze, and she pulled it tighter around her. “But I see the Golden Tide banners of Barson among the Sendethi forces. The Pathfinders have never penetrated their borders. I do not think now is the time to act without caution.”
“Well,” Guthrie said, “They have our ten thousand outnumbered by three to one. If our original plan can’t work, what now?”
“We split forces,” Stefan said. “Make them move their army.”
Edwin’s brow rose. “How do we do that? And why we would we split when our strength lies in our numbers.”
Stefan smiled, all teeth. “Their strength is in their numbers. Ours isn’t. Our strength is maneuverability, our Ashishin, Dagodin and what divya we’ve mustered. Our mounted divisions are groomed for speed. Their heavily armored horses are no match. Today will prove their downfall. Horse against dartan. There’s no contest.”
Everyone nodded their agreement. Galiana could see part of the plan clearly now. But where would they leave Eldanhill vulnerable?
As if seeing the question written on her face, Stefan answered. “We keep several Ashishin here. Fire the tar and oil pits. Let the battlefield burn even before they charge. Why wait? Have the Ashishin maintain the blaze. There’s no way those horses will charge through fire like dartans would. Their infantry certainly won’t. We have the river’s protection on one side of Eldanhill. Put a small force there led by Jillian in case they decide to use the river. Her eagles can keep her abreast of anything they see across the Kelvore.
“The remainder of our forces we take west to face the Greenleaf Forest. They’ll have to change positions. As they do, we spring the traps we set in the fields to that side. If they have Matii, they’ll be forced to respond then. When they do, we strike. Our Ashishin will counter their Matii as our archers pick their infantry and cavalry apart from atop the dartans. Then it will come down to infantry versus infantry. Our Dagodin versus their regiments.” Stefan drew a line across his throat with his thumb.
Galiana almost grinned. As she’d thought, even after fifty years without his active involvement in a war, Stefan hadn’t lost a step. The best General to serve under Nerian the Shadowbearer was proving his worth. The best Knight Commander ever to don the Tribunal crimson was now in his own element.
With the decision made, they ended their meeting and joined their individual cohorts. Nervous mutters abounded as new instructions were given. Galiana passed the word to the green and white clad Ashishin spread to her left and right. Once, they’d all been warriors, trained for worse battles than this, until they took on the task to be Teachers. Now, they were being drawn into what they loved the most, what their power often cried for. She nodded at the stern faces all around.
“Archers! Light!” Guthrie’s voice boomed, silencing the shift of cold feet, the clink of armor, and the restless murmurs of men and women.
All across the lines, archers dipped arrowheads into fires. The ones who needed to move did so quickly and efficiently, rejoining their rank with practiced smoothness.
Galiana opened her Matersense. All around her, she felt Ashishin do the same. They seized essences of fire from the Streams and essences of air from the Flows. The orange flames at the tip of the arrows bloomed into phosphorescent spheres, sealed off and fed by air. Shadows fled before the luminescence.
“Archers! Ready!”
Longbows arched into the air as bowstrings drew taut. The creak of wood stretching whispered along the archer lines. Flames illuminated faces strained in concentration.
“Loose!”
The twang of several thousand bows reverberated through the air. Burning arrows streaked high, illuminating the heavens with its multitude of thunderclouds boiling in a dark stew. The shafts sailed over oil-filled moats, the chasm of palisades and spiked barriers between Eldanhill and the Sendethi army, and down.
Galiana focused on the army, picking out movement among the cavalry. She squinted and brought her looking glass to her eye.
Hooded men stepped forward from around the Golden Tide banners. Hands raised in the air, they moved up in front the Sendethi horse.
“Ashishin!” Galiana yelled. “Shield those arrows. Now!”
A nimbus glowed around the men and women as they quickly linked for the undertaking. A dome rose up in the air above the arrows.
Thunderless lightning cracked across the sky. The bloated clouds tore open, and icy rain fell in a silvery sheet. At the same time, the wind picked up into swirling eddies, buffeting cloaks and spilling hair about the faces of those who went helmetless.
Just as sudden as it began, the storm cut off as the barrier closed above Eldanhill’s forces. The tempest, Forged by the Barsonian Matii, battered against the shield created by the Ashishin. Lightning lanced across its surface, and water flowed off, revealing the shape of the immense oval dome in streaming rivulets.
The shield held. Galiana smirked.
The fire arrows landed with a whoosh.
Flames roared up where the arrows struck oil and tar, racing across the ground in every direction until a curtain of fire, a few thousand feet thick, separated southern Eldanhill from the Sendethi forces. Heat shimmered and swelled to devour the cold that dominated only moments ago. The essences worked into the blaze gobbled up the Mater in the air, and an inferno bloomed, white-hot and eerily quiet. Eldanhill’s army cheered.
Guthrie and the others wasted no time. Orders barked out in quick succession, and their cohorts split.
“Ashishin Berg, Maurer, Jung, and Finkel,” Galiana yelled, voice carrying over the march of the departing soldiers. “Choose five more to feed the fire and maintain the barrier.” She waited as they complied. When they were ready, she nodded her approval of their choices. “The rest of you with me.” She shook her reins and headed toward Eldanhill’s west side.
As she moved, she heard someone yelling and pointing. Why was the town lit up to the west? A sinking feeling grew in the pit of her stomach.
Screams echoed from the same direction. Above those cries came frantic orders. Those on mounts gathered in formation and charged. The infantry quickened their march toward what Galiana knew now to be flames. Eldanhill’s western flank was under attack.
Slapping her reins harder, she broke into a gallop. Rain and biting wind lashed her as she left the protection of the shield. Coupled with the icy water and howling gale, the fear crawling through her stomach chilled her to the bone. She huddled in her saddle, cloak streaming behind her as her dartan dashed headlong along the slick road. Behind her, the remaining Ashishin followed toward the new threat.
Lightning continued to flicker angrily across the sky, but this time thunder bellowed its response. Galiana ignored the tempest, knowing the Barsonian Matii couldn’t be controlling this portion of the storm. Unless they were stronger than she thought. But the elements within the weather brewing above them now was natural and not a Forging. The change was subtle, like the difference between the smoothness of wet clay and grainy texture of mud, but it was there.
She turned off the Eldan Road onto Market Row and kept pushing west. Small houses along tight alleys huddled against the streets in this section of Eldanhill. Sewage and debris spilled onto the lanes from swollen drains, clouding the air with their stench. Along with the icy sheets the freezing rain had created, this made the going much more treacherous. The occasional gust that found its way down the alleys whipped anything not heavy enough into the air.