Dawn came, grey and silent.
The Blackwood held its breath.
Noella lay prone on the damp forest floor of the eastern slope, a blanket of dead leaves over her. Beside her, Volsei was a statue, his eyes fixed on the distant curve of the road.
They had been in position for two hours. The volunteers were hidden across the valley. Kael was with them, a steadying presence.
The air was cold. Noella's fingers were numb around the handle of a small, loaded crossbow—her personal weapon. Her mind ran through the equations one final time.
Burn rate of powder: optimal.
Trigger mechanism sensitivity: within tolerance.
Wind speed: negligible.
Psychological readiness of enemy: assumed high confidence, low vigilance.
All variables accounted for.
A flicker of movement at the edge of the tree line far down the road.
"Scouts," Volsei whispered, his voice barely a breath.
Three Tombsrose cavalrymen emerged from the woods, moving at a trot. They scanned the road and the slopes with professional eyes.
Noella's heart hammered against her ribs. The tripwires were well-camouflaged, but not invisible. If the scouts were thorough…
The lead scout's horse snorted, tossing its head. The man reined in, peering up at the slopes.
He saw nothing. The volunteers were too well-hidden. The charges were buried.
After a tense minute, he gestured forward. The three riders continued, passing through the kill zone and disappearing around the next bend.
The vanguard was clear.
Ten minutes later, the main force arrived.
It was a column of grim, efficient power. The infantry marched in tight ranks, their polished breastplates and spears a rippling stream of steel in the gloomy light. The sound was a low thunder of boots on packed earth, the jingle of harness, the creak of leather.
At the column's heart, surrounded by a knot of officers on horseback, was the armored wagon. It was a box on wheels, reinforced with iron plates, with narrow slits for viewing. The three chanters.
At the very front, riding a powerful black destrier, was the commander. A man with a plume on his helmet and an air of bored authority.
Prince Caelan was not with them. This was a professional soldier's job.
Noella's eyes tracked the wagon's progress. She calculated. The lead infantry would reach the first pressure plate in thirty seconds.
"Chanters are in the wagon," Volsei murmured, his hand resting on his knife's hilt. "Their soul-light is bright. Agitated. They sense something."
"Can they sense you?"
"Unlikely. I'm dampened. But the tension here… it has a taste."
The front rank of infantry, twenty men abreast, entered the marked kill zone.
Noella stopped breathing.
A soldier's boot came down squarely on the first disguised pressure plate.
CRUMP.
The earth erupted.
A fountain of dirt, smoke, and fire swallowed the first five ranks. The sound was not a bang, but a deep, visceral thump that punched the air from Noella's lungs.
Men were lifted off their feet, torn apart, or hurled backwards into the ranks behind them. The neat column disintegrated into screaming, burning chaos.
Before the echo died, two more charges detonated further down the column, shredding the center.
The road became a slaughterhouse.
"Now," Noella hissed.
On the opposite slope, Kael's whistle pierced the cacophony.
The volunteers rose from hiding. They launched their projectiles—clay pots filled with a sticky, burning pitch Noella had concocted. The pots arced through the air, smashing amongst the rear ranks and the cavalry. Horses screamed, rearing. Men batthed at the clinging fire.
Panic, pure and infectious, rippled through the Tombsrose force.
The commander on his destrier bellowed orders, his voice cracking. "Form ranks! Ambush! Archers, loose at those slopes!"
A ragged volley of arrows hissed towards the volunteer positions, but they were already ducking back, retreating along the escape path as ordered.
Noella's focus snapped to the armored wagon. It had stopped. The horses were panicking. The officers around it were shouting.
"The chanters," she said.
Volsei was already moving.
He stood up, a stark figure against the trees. He drew his knife. The world seemed to narrow to the point of his blade, the wagon seventy yards away.
He took a breath, and his voice cut through the battlefield din, calm and absolute.
"Umbra Scindo."
There was no visible beam. Just a series of crisp, slicing sounds.
The iron plates on the front of the wagon peeled away in neat strips, like the skin of an orange.
Then the roof sheared off, flying backwards.
Inside, three grey-robed figures were revealed, clutching amulets, their mouths open in a chant that died in their throats.
They glowed with a sickly green light to Volsei's eyes.
He whispered again. "Scindo. Scindo. Scindo."
Three precise, horizontal cuts.
Not at the men. At the air around their throats.
The chanters gasped, their hands flying to their necks. No blood flowed, but their glowing light flickered wildly and snuffed out. They collapsed into the wagon, unconscious, their souls temporarily severed from their ability to channel.
The Tombsrose officers stared, horrified, at their neutralized super-weapons.
The commander saw Volsei. Recognized the description. A terror colder than any arrow shot through him.
"The asset! On the slope! Cavalry! Charge him! Take him down!"
A squadron of a dozen cavalrymen, who had managed to control their burning mounts, wheeled and charged up the slope. They lowered lances, a wall of horse and steel aimed at one man.
Volsei didn't move. He watched them come, his expression one of mild annoyance.
"They're coming for you," Noella said, raising her crossbow.
"I see them."
At fifty yards, he finally acted.
He reversed his grip on his knife and plunged it into the ground at his feet.
"Umbra Scindo. Wide."
He didn't whisper. He spoke it.
A visible distortion, a heat-shimmer of force, radiated out from the blade in a wide, shallow arc.
It passed through the trees, shearing off branches at knee-height.
It passed through the charging horses.
A horrific, synchronized stumble. The front legs of all twelve horses were cut cleanly through at the knee.
The animals screamed, a sound of pure agony, and plowed into the dirt, throwing their riders. Men were crushed under falling horseflesh, or sent flying, their lances snapping.
The charge disintegrated into a tangle of screaming beasts and broken men before it got within thirty yards of him.
Volsei pulled his knife from the ground.
The slope below him was a scene from a butcher's nightmare. The road was a smoking ruin filled with dead and dying. The army's cohesion was shattered. The chanters were down. The cavalry was broken.
But two hundred men is a large number. And terror was now giving way to a desperate, cornered rage.
The commander, his face a mask of fury, rallied his remaining infantry—perhaps a hundred and twenty men still able to fight.
"He is one man! One trick! Form shield wall! Advance up the slope! Archers, keep that witch on the other side pinned down!"
A disciplined core of Tombsrose veterans locked shields and began a slow, steady advance up the slope towards Volsei, a bristling hedge of spears.
They were adapting. They were coming to kill him with sheer, grinding numbers.
Volsei looked at the advancing wall of steel. He glanced back at Noella.
"The plan worked," he said. "Now comes the hard part."
Noella met his gaze. The cold fire in her gut was burning white-hot.
"Then we do the hard part," she said.
She loaded another bolt into her crossbow.
The battle was not over.
It had only just begun.