The vord all but climbed over one another in a desperate need to attack the Aleran forces and showed none of the hesitance they generally did before attacking a shieldwall. They simply rushed forward, one vord paying the price to break the cohesion of the lines while two others took advantage of the disruption to strike. The First Aleran was giving at least as well as it got, Fidelias thought, but that was a ruinous rate of exchange in the current market.
Footsteps made him look over his shoulder, and he found the First Lady approaching with an escort of hard-bitten types wearing mail and the black sashes of the Windwolves. Aldrick ex Gladius, a large, brawny man with cold eyes and a black beard, walked on Isana’s left, opposite the gleaming figure of Araris Valerian. Aldrick’s madwoman, Odiana, trailed along behind him with one finger hooked into the back of his belt. She was beaming at the battle all around them.
“My lady,” Fidelias said, scowling, “you need to leave the area at once. I insist that you take to your wind coaches now.”
“We cannot,” Isana replied steadily. “There are too many enemy fliers overhead. They’d swarm the coach before it could pick up speed if we tried to leave.”
Fidelias glanced up at the sky above. It was filled with vordknights, more of them than he could easily count. For the most part, they seemed willing to hover overhead, though a few score were harassing the infantry, streaking down to rake at them with their scythe-limbs when they thought they had an advantage. At least two dozen kept trying to sweep down onto the rooftop, but the Free Aleran Knights Aeris were handily swatting them off target with blasts of wind, working with excellent coordination.
He considered the idea of passing them over to the First Lady to cover her escape but dismissed it. The Windwolves already had more than enough Knights Aeris to manage that trick. Men blasting away with wind from solid ground was one thing. Hurling extraneous windstreams around while Knights Aeris were trying to keep a wind coach aloft was something else entirely.
“How can I help?” Isana asked.
Fidelias grimaced and looked from her to her two immediate escorts. Aldrick ex Gladius looked completely unconcerned. The big swordsman was one of the most unreadable individuals he’d ever met, and it was entirely possible that the man wasn’t sane. He might actually not feel any genuine anxiety about today’s outcome. Araris, though, was scowling and eyeing Fidelias as though he expected him to Do Something About That Woman.
On the ground below, the vord broke open an enormous hole in the shieldwall, and only the efforts of the First Aleran’s Knights Terra managed to close it again. Crows, but he didn’t need another problem to solve. “You can get out alive, and take my wounded Citizens with you. They might be needed.”
“I told you… Marcus, isn’t it? There are simply too many vord in the air.”
“Take Antillus Crassus,” Fidelias said. “He can probably veil the whole lot of you, if you flew in close enough formation. He can’t walk, but he can sit in a coach. Antillar Maximus and Ambassador Kitai are down there, too, unconscious.”
“First Spear,” Isana said. “You need such talents here. Or better yet, helping my son.”
“They were helping your son,” Fidelias growled. “That’s how all of them wound up in healing tubs in the first place.”
A trio of vordknights came zipping in from one side, with the risen sun behind them, and the Knights Aeris on the roof didn’t redirect their windstreams in time. Fidelias moved on pure instinct, grabbing the First Lady and taking her down to the stone of the roof with as much speed and as little harm as possible. He stayed there, shielding her body, as the swords of Araris, Aldrick, and half a dozen Windwolves leapt clear of their scabbards.
Bits and pieces of vordknight, divided in perfectly neat lines, scattered to the roof around them.
Fidelias lowered his voice for Isana’s ears alone, and said, “My lady. We cannot hold the position. We do not have much time. Do you understand?”
Isana’s eyes were a little wide, but her expression was controlled. She took in a deep breath as Fidelias rose and Araris helped her up.
“Captain Aldrick,” she said.
Aldrick gave a slight bow of his head, “My lady?”
“This Legion is short of their company of Knights. I wish you to deploy your men to support them.”
Aldrick said nothing for a moment. His eyes shifted, left and right, toward the waiting wind coaches and the vord outside the steadholt, respectively.
The fingers of his right hand, his sword hand, flexed slowly, as though being loosened up for action. Fidelias had a flash of insight. Though Aldrick might be a mercenary, he wasn’t inhuman. None of them were. And no Aleran could look at the vord destroying their world without realizing that there was no way to remain safely out of this fight. You could only decide whether to make a stand beside your fellow Alerans—or delay the moment of reckoning until you faced the vord alone.
“Say yes,” Odiana said, her lovely eyes eerily bright. “Oh, say yes, my lord. I’ve been waiting ever so long to see you kill vord.”
The mercenary glanced over his shoulder at Odiana, then turned to Isana with a second bow of his head. “Aye, my lady,” Aldrick growled.
Wolfish smiles spread through the men behind him, along with growled words of agreement.
Aldrick stepped forward to overlook the battle below, and Araris went with him.
Aldrick grunted. “Earthworks?”
Araris nodded. “Little elevation will make a big difference.”
“Odiana,” Aldrick said.
She was still hanging on to his belt. “Who?”
“Antillar and his brother. We need them.”
The woman turned and hurried from the roof.
“Where is she going?” Fidelias asked.
“Wake up your sleepers,” Aldrick replied.
Fidelias shook his head. “You can’t watercraft someone back to consciousness.”
“She can.”
Isana stepped forward. “It is possible. But it’s somewhat insane.”
Aldrick almost smiled. “Sanity. Huh.”
Isana frowned after Odiana. “It’s dangerous. For patient and healer alike.”
Aldrick shrugged. “Dangerous for the vord to run those scythes through you a few times while you’re lying there unconscious, too.”
Isana’s mouth compressed, and she nodded once. “I’ll go with her.”
Fidelias touched her arm as she began to turn. “Lady,” he said quietly, “you need not do this.”
She blinked at him as if surprised. “Of course I must. Excuse me, First Spear.”
She left the rooftop to follow Odiana, and Fidelias turned to Aldrick. “The Antillan brothers could get us a ditch around this place—it’s mostly soil here. I assume that’s what you had in mind?”
Aldrick nodded. “Get your best seven or eight engineers, too. We’ll give them each a Knight Ferrous escort to cover them.”
Araris nodded. “It would be best if there was some way your Knights could drive them back for a moment,” he added. “Buy the earthcrafters a few seconds in the clear.”
Fidelias nodded slowly. Then he turned to the courier stationed on the roof near him, and said, “Ask Master Marok if he would please come speak to me.”
In the five minutes it took to line up the desperate plan, the First Aleran suffered more losses than it had during the entire campaign in the Vale and Canea combined. Men screamed and were dragged back to badly overworked healers. Men fell and were dragged out into the horde. Swords shattered. Shields were rent asunder. Vord died by the hundreds but never relented.
On the flanks, the Free Aleran fared little better, for all that they were in what amounted to a backwater, in terms of enemy presence. Perhaps a double tithe of the vord in the battle wrapped around to the sides of the beleaguered Legions, but the Free Alerans’ inexperience meant that they were hard-pressed. The only thing that kept some of the cohorts from bolting was the certain knowledge that there was no escape. Only victory—or death.