Below her, Captain Calomir led the Selesnya army. He rode his white war rhino, driving the Selesnya ranks forward, guiding them through the streets toward the Rakdos horde. Emmara could hear him shouting orders, but she barely made them out over her concentration.
Trostani traveled with them. The three dryads had merged their bodies with one of Emmara’s elementals, over Emmara’s objections, and the great nature beast was carrying them with it into the fray. She could see the three dryads gracefully poised at the top of the elemental’s shoulders, replacing its head, looking down at the troops on the streets below. In all her years Emmara had never seen a Selesnya guild leader go to war. She was the cause of all this. She was the center of this conflict.
This is what it feels like when an entire guild makes a mistake, she thought. This is the flaw of the Conclave, the inability to hear the truth of one voice over the din of all.
The Selesnya army pooled at the entrance of a bridge that spanned a canal. The bridge wasn’t the most direct route to Rakdos territory, but it would take them clear of any other guilds.
But Emmara saw Calomir pulling the reins of his rhino toward another route, up a short flight of steps onto a wide plaza punctuated by a line of stern archways. Above the entrance to the plaza was a sunburst symbol marked with a mighty clenched fist: the sign of the Boros guild. Throughout the plaza, Boros legionnaires stood in plate mail, their backs as straight as the pillars. Sentinels patrolled the ramparts, watching what the Selesnya army would do.
“The bridge, Calomir,” called Emmara. “We must take the bridge.”
“Not the bridge!” Calomir shouted, more to the assembled army than to her. “We travel straight through this plaza, straight to the heart of the Rakdos.”
“Calomir, no!” Emmara yelled.
But the Selesnya army swirled past her to follow Calomir. When the front feet of Calomir’s white rhino stepped across the threshold onto Boros land, trumpeters up on the ramparts blared on their instruments, and the soldiers in the plaza quit their posts and assembled into formation. Legionnaires marched forward, bristling with halberds and swords, backed by archers and pyromancers.
“Conclave, retreat!” yelled Emmara. “We must not involve the Boros as well!”
She saw Calomir glance back over his shoulder at her. If she wasn’t mistaken, he had a slight grin on his face. He kicked his beast and proceeded into the Boros plaza.
Boros soldiers collapsed on the Selesnya front lines. Archers loosed their arrows, and they sailed over Emmara’s head and rained down on the rear ranks. She could hear the screams of those behind her who fell under the assault.
A few of the missiles lodged in the foliage bodies of her elementals. Emmara commanded her minions to spread their great limbs and chests out, to deflect or catch the missiles as best they could. Arrows punched into the bramble-like elementals, most of them simply adding to the wood-beasts’ bulk. One arrow sank deep into the leg of the elemental on which Trostani rode, and exploded with a boom of magical fire. Smoke trailed out of the creature’s limb, and it stumbled.
“Trostani!” Emmara called. “We must turn back!”
“This is our destiny,” said Trostani, all three of the dryads pointing forward into Boros territory, for all the army to see. “The path to harmony is never easy. Lead us, Calomir! Lead the way!”
The Selesnya cavalry crashed into the Boros legionnaires, rending flesh on both sides. Halberdiers pierced centaurs’ flanks. Armored elves slashed through archer battalions. War-priests called down columns of searing light on wolf-riders and woodshapers.
“Senseless,” Emmara said under her breath.
She commanded her elementals to stop, and they came to a slow halt at the periphery of the Boros plaza, even as more Selesnya troops poured past her into the fray. The elementals began to turn their great forms away from the battle, but then they stopped in mid-turn. Emmara willed them to quit the battle once more.
They hesitated, shuddering like oak trees in a strong gale. Then, with a moan of their twisting trunks laden with masonry, the elementals stepped back toward the Boros plaza.
“No,” said Emmara. “No! Stop!”
She was still channeling mana into them, but her control was unraveling. They no longer responded to her commands. She was riding with nature-giants that apparently had plans of their own.
She looked to Trostani. She saw the three dryads undulating, their arms interlacing in a complicated spell. Emmara recognized part of the ritual as Trostani’s signature magic, a spell that replenished the warring Selesnya troops below with a constant stream of living energy; this is what kept every Selesnya commune in the Tenth District relatively protected from harm, and it was powerful magic to cast over an army. But the dryads had merged their signature magic with another spell, one with which Emmara was personally familiar. It was the elemental magic they had taught to Emmara.
That was why the elementals no longer obeyed her. Trostani had taken over command of the elementals, and was forcing them into the thick of the battle. Trostani’s power was far greater than hers, and she couldn’t wrest the creatures away again.
With the power of the great elementals behind them, the Selesnya army plowed ahead, ripping through the Boros defenses. Emmara had to duck as the topiary beast on which she rode passed through a stone archway. The arch wasn’t quite tall enough to accommodate the elemental, and the curved structure scraped a mane of brambles from the elemental’s head, sending a spray of burrs and woody vines at Emmara and nearly knocking her off its shoulder. Trostani continued driving the elementals across the square and through a main thoroughfare, with the Selesnya army massing around them.
Emmara scanned the battle, looking for Calomir, though she didn’t know whether she was looking for the comfort of his face, or looking for someone to blame. She spied his white rhino, and saw it charging ahead after having dispatched a pair of Boros legionnaires—but Calomir was no longer in its saddle. She looked over the bodies of fallen Boros and Selesnya warriors as the army passed through the Boros zone, and more than once she thought she saw him among the dead. But he was gone.
The Selesnya army cut through Boros territory and into a run-down industrial district that billowed with hellish smoke—a region controlled by the Rakdos.
“Onward, soldiers of Selesnya!” cried Trostani, spurring forward the great elementals with her magic. Hooves and boots and claws marched into the Rakdos zone, and wings swooped into the thick smoke above. “There, ahead, is our target!”
Emmara looked into the haze ahead, and saw a private club building marked with the demonic symbol of the Rakdos and the name “The Rough Crowd.”
“Woodshapers! Elementals! Cavalry!” Trostani called. “Shake it to the foundation!”
As the Selesnya army neared, Rakdos warriors began pouring out of the club as if it were a barracks. Emmara balled her fists.
Jace had already fooled the Rakdos with minor illusions. Parlor tricks wouldn’t sway them again. But there was no way he was going to beat an army of demon-worshiping sadists with individual psychic attacks. It was time to unleash major magic.
Ruric Thar and his band of Gruul brutes were already slicing into the Rakdos, and the war party’s savagery was shocking. Bodies of broken cultists went flying as the Gruul slammed into the horde, swinging great blows of blunt might. But the Rakdos horde kept coming, and they surrounded the Gruul in moments, tearing at them with jagged blades and spiked whips.