Sarth conjured a bolt of lightning and blasted half a dozen orcs from the top of the embankment. The brilliant flash of light and deafening thunderclap caught the wyvern’s attention. It wheeled in midair and fixed its eyes on the sorcerer. The reptilian monster plummeted down at Sarth from directly overhead, deadly sting whipping from side to side behind it.
“Sarth!” Geran shouted, but the sorcerer did not hear him; he was already snarling another spell at more Bloody Skulls surging up the dike. Geran realized in an instant that even if he caught the sorcerer’s attention, the wyvern would still be upon him too quickly to dodge or avoid. There was no time to reach him; Geran seized the flowering symbols of a spell held in his mind and hurled his will behind the arcane words. “Sierollanie dir mellar!” he cried, and in a dizzying eyeblink he stood where Sarth had been standing, while the sorcerer stood where he’d been. Sarth reeled and floundered on the slope, but Geran paid him no mind-he was already looking up at the wyvern hurling down at him. He shouted out a word of shielding, and then the monster was upon him. He slashed it once across its snout, leaped aside and blocked the deadly stinger with his shielding spell, and spun around to rake his blade across its wing as it hurtled past him. The wyvern screeched once in rage and tried to beat for altitude again, but it was too fast and too low. Its damaged wing buckled and the monster cartwheeled across the embankment. For a moment it lay still, tangled up in the brush, but then it shook itself and clambered to its clawed feet, glaring at Geran with pure hate.
“I think I just made it angry,” Geran muttered.
He put his point between the wyvern and himself and dropped into a fighting crouch, holding his shielding spell firmly in his left hand. The monster charged at him with the speed of a striking snake, far faster than Geran would have imagined. He managed to parry the sting once, then twice, but then the wyvern got its jaws clamped around his right leg and worried him like dog. It whipped him from side to side and then flung him away; Geran’s sword flew from his hand, and he hit the ground hard enough that his vision went black for an instant. When he could see again, the wyvern was darting toward him, yellow fangs gleaming. He started to climb to his feet, only to find that the world swayed drunkenly when he tried to sit up.
The wyvern hissed and sprang at him-but a coruscating green ray struck it in mid-leap and knocked it aside. An instant later Sarth appeared by Geran’s side and shouted another of his spells. A barrage of shrieking purple darts shot from his scepter and pinioned the wyvern to the ground; the monster snapped and snarled at the phantasmal javelins transfixing it, then shuddered and fell still.
“Are you all right?” the tiefling said.
“I think so,” Geran answered him. Sarth reached down and helped him to his feet; the swordmage staggered over to his sword and picked it up. “I hope there aren’t any more of those around.”
The tiefling scanned the skies anxiously. “Thank you, Geran Hulmaster. I did not see the monster’s dive. But next time, I’ll ask you to give me a moment’s warning before you teleport me.”
Geran looked around, trying to get a sense of the battle. He could see several places where the orcs had overwhelmed the dike, and scores of the ferocious warriors fought to widen the breaches and push on past the weakened defenses. Human riders did their best to counter the breaches, as did haphazard bands of the volunteers who had shown up to fight. With lance and bow they held back the black tide, but they were failing fast. “Gods, what chaos!”
“It seems the issue is still in doubt,” Sarth replied-an understatement if Geran had ever heard one.
Geran spied a large breach less than a hundred yards away. Orcs were fighting their way east and west along the top of the dike, rolling up the defenders still trying to hold back the rest of the attack. “There,” he said, pointing. “Try to do something about that, and I’ll see what I can do here.”
The tiefling nodded grimly and leaped into the sky. In a moment he hovered over the orc breakthrough, hurling blasts of fire down on the Bloody Skull warriors. Geran started to rejoin the fray, but a rider came galloping up from behind Lendon’s Dike.
“Lord Geran! Lord Geran!” the messenger called. “Lady Kara says to bring any troops you can spare and come to the center at once! She needs help there.”
“Spare? I can’t spare any!” Geran replied.
The rider was a young Shieldsworn, bloodied and disheveled, and he simply stared at Geran in confusion. The swordmage grimaced and glanced around at his part of the field. Kara wouldn’t have asked for help unless she needed it, he told himself. She knew how many soldiers he had on his part of the line. He held up his hand and said to the messenger, “No, wait. I’ll bring as many as I can.”
The swordmage climbed back up to the top of the dike and found the young soldier carrying his banner. “Shieldsworn, to me!” he shouted. “Marstel, Double Moon, to me! Assemble on the south side of the dike! Spearmeet, House Sokol, stand your ground!”
All along the earthen wall, soldiers of Hulburg began to disengage, backing down the dike while the miltiamen on either side spread out to try to cover their absence. It left Geran’s line woefully thin-another concerted attack would certainly punch through. But Geran realized that his hodgepodge force had largely repulsed the first rush of the Bloody Skulls. The dawn was a thin orange sliver clinging to the hilltops of eastern Highfells; sunrise could not be far off now. By the growing light he could see that the embankment was littered with dead or wounded orcs, and that many of the ironclad warriors of the Bloody Skull horde were shifting across his front, flowing toward the middle of the fight.
Geran looked around and found Brun Osting, the son of Durnan, standing by the tattered flag of his Spearmeet company. He hurried over to the young brewer and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got to go help in the center,” he told him. “I’m leaving you in charge here. You Spearmeet have to hold this end of the line on your own. I’ll leave you the Sokols to help, and the sorcerer Sarth there. Can you do it?”
The young man nodded soberly. “We don’t have much choice, do we? We’ll hold the line or die where we stand, Lord Geran.”
“Good fortune,” Geran said. He squeezed the young man’s shoulder, and then hurried down the back of the dike to the spot where his small company was assembling. It was a little less than a hundred strong, and he wondered if it would be enough to make a difference in the heavy fighting in the middle. He took a moment to speak with the Sokol captain-a fierce-looking Turmishan woman whose detachment was down to a dozen riders-and point out Brun to her. Whether she’d follow the brewer’s orders, he had no idea, but at least she hadn’t ridden away from the battle yet.
“Where to, Lord Geran?” one of the Shieldsworn footmen called from the ranks.
“The Vale Road!” Geran called back. “They need us in the center, lads. Let’s go lend them a hand. Follow me!”
He set out at an easy jog, holding back his pace so that the soldiers in their heavier armor could keep up. It helped that they were moving downhill and had only five or six hundred yards to travel. Sporadic fighting continued atop the dike a short distance to Geran’s right, but he passed no more major breaches. In a few moments they came in sight of the furious melee swirling around the spot where the Vale Road pierced the embankment. Hundreds of orcs thronged the gap, pushing inward against a thinning line of Icehammers and Shieldsworn.
Geran looked around for Kara’s banner or the harmach, and saw nothing but pitched battle. He would’ve liked to know where she wanted his small strike to fall, but one glance was enough to show him that he couldn’t wait. Strange, he thought. For all the years I’ve lived with a sword in my hand, I’ve never fought in a real battle, only duels and skirmishes-nothing more than twenty or thirty warriors on a side. After traveling for ten years all over Faerun, I find the biggest battle of my life not three miles from the castle where I was born.