Isana arched an eyebrow. “I see,” she said, and stared thoughtfully at the ditch. Puddles were already collecting in its bottom, thanks to the rain. She closed her eyes, touched upon Rill in her thoughts, and sent the fury out into the land around the steadholt, where it appeared as a barely noticeable ripple in the downpour. It didn’t seem favorable. The steadholt was located upon the local high ground, such as it was, so that any floodwaters would pour around it. Making that much water run uphill would be a terrible strain, possibly beyond her strength.
Instead, on an inspiration, she sent Rill up. The fury flowed into the air above the steadholt, leaping from raindrop to raindrop, and then began to spread out like a wide, unseen umbrella above the steadholt. Ah, much better. She spread Rill’s presence out as widely as she possibly could and murmured to her to begin redirecting the rain as it fell.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, all at once, a waterfall appeared out of nowhere, the collected rain of several acres worth of ground all funneled to the same spot. It splashed down into the trench, knocking several mantises from their feet, and within seconds had begun to fill it.
Exhausted men lifted their voices in ragged cheers, and the surge of hope that arose from all of them struck Isana like a cleansing fire. The legionares began pushing harder, their spirits lifted, slamming the vord back into water that grew deeper and deeper as Isana’s crafting continued.
A good start. But she could do more. Once the improvised moat had been filled, she sent Rill down into it and, with another effort of will and a faint circling motion of one hand, the water began to spin. It was not long before it had become a current, circling the steadholt, strong enough to take a mantis from its feet and send it spinning off downstream. She pressed it faster and faster, then withdrew Rill wearily from the stream. It would continue circling on momentum for a good while, she judged, long enough to give the legionares a few moments to breathe. Vord after vord splashed into the water, only to be swept helplessly around the steadholt, over and over and over—and the current had the added benefit of slowly eroding the ditch deeper. By the time the water did calm enough for them to ford it, the vord would find the defenses higher and more difficult to attempt than they had been before.
She turned wearily to the First Spear, and said, “Is that sufficient?”
Marcus pursed his lips and watched one luckless vord, which was on its third trip around the steadholt. “Entirely, my lady. Thank you.”
Isana nodded, and said, “Eventually, I think they’ll bridge it, as ants sometimes do. Or simply choke it with enough bodies to create a crossing.”
“Probably,” Marcus said. “But even so, this buys us time, my lady. And—”
A brassy, blaring, groaning horn call sounded out in the rain-lashed dimness. Then another, and another, and another. A few instants later, the ground shook, and the taurg cavalry burst out of the murk, the huge beasts smashing through the vord gathered around the steadholt. Five thousand strong, their blue-armored Canim riders wielding their axes with deadly skill, they simply sliced off a portion of the vord army. It was, Isana thought, oddly like watching a limb hacked off a body. The cavalry drove through the vord in a wedge-shaped formation, cutting out a portion of the enemy. Then they whirled on those mantises who had been isolated from the main body and crushed them. The entire business took less than two minutes, then the taurga were gone, bounding off into the grey haze of rain and storm. Acres of dead and dying vord were left in their wake.
Marcus let out a low whistle and shook his head.
“I take it that was impressive?” Isana said. “Beyond the surface appearance, I mean.”
“In weather like this? Crows, yes, my lady. They took a tithe of the enemy force in a single pass. They won’t gain the advantage of surprise again—see there, at the back, where the rearmost vord are facing out now?—but if the vord stay on that ground, the taurg riders will nibble them to death one bite…”
The air suddenly went silent and still. The ground stopped shaking. The only sound was the patter of rain.
“… at a time,” Marcus finished, his voice loud in the sudden hush, before closing his mouth himself.
No one spoke. No one moved. Even the vord seemed to recognize that something was happening, for they fell into a restless near stillness. Hushed expectation made the air heavy. Lightning flickered somewhere far overhead, pulses of vord green light. The grumbling sound of their thunder didn’t reach Isana’s ears for several seconds.
“What is happening?” one of the nearby Knights whispered.
Valiar Marcus glanced from the man to Isana. His expression flickered with a tiny, questioning frown, swiftly hidden.
Isana shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
The sky to the northwest flared with irregular flashes of light. Blue, red, vord green, and instants later, the deep purple of an amethyst. Each burst of colored light would fade slowly, only to be replaced by newer brilliances. And the whole time, it was silent. No thunder rolled out to accompany the flashes.
“That’s metalcrafting,” Araris said with quiet certainty, his voice still ringing with steely undertones. “Three swords. The red and blue—that’s Octavian.”
Isana drew in a sharp breath. “Tavi.”
For several moments, the flashes went on, green against purple. And then the ground suddenly shook again. That incredibly vast sound, laden with pure rage, filled the air once more. The storm returned in an instant, the wind rising to such a howl that, combined with the shaking ground, it knocked Isana from her feet. Araris caught her before she could fall to the stone, supporting her with one cool metallic arm as the earth trembled, and the tempest raged.
The vord warriors let out shrieks of their own and turned to fling themselves at the defenders with fanatic energy once more. Little was accomplished by the attack. The still-running waters of the moat swept them from their path. The shaking earth prevented the ones who managed to reach the other side of the moat from exploiting the vulnerability of the defenders—who were similarly incapacitated by the shaking earth and screaming sky. Lightning began to burn down from the storm, running along the ground like great, grasping fingers digging trenches in the earth for seconds at a time. There was a great wrenching snap of strained stone, and one section of the barn’s roof caved in, only a few paces from where they stood.
“What is happening?” cried the Knight again, panic stretching his voice high and thin. “What is happening?”
Isana shivered and clung to Araris, feeling terrified, powerless, and small in the face of such raging, destructive forces. She wasn’t sure how long it went on. It felt like hours, though it could only have been a few moments, or they would all have been slain. Then, the earth slowly began to grow calm again. The storm began to wane, the winds and rain dying down until they were no more severe than any springtime gale.
“The vord,” Marcus choked. “The vord!”
Isana looked up and saw… utter confusion among the enemy. Mantises hissed and let out sharp shrieks and ran in every direction. Hundreds, if not thousands, of the creatures were locked in battle with one another—battles that seemed to end mostly in gory mutual destruction. Other mantises ripped at the bodies of their own dead, devouring them as though they were starving.
Again, the brazen horns of the Canim blared, only this time there were twice as many—Varg and the Canim infantry came out of the rain at the rangy lope of a Canim warrior, closing with the enemy from south of the steadholt, even as the taurg cavalry came rushing in from the northeast—accompanied by the bright clarion calls of the Aleran cavalry, who rode on the flanks of the main body of taurga, running down any stragglers who had separated from the main body of the vord… mass, Isana supposed, for it surely was no longer an army.