Paul Kemp - Shadowbred

"See to those fallen men!" shouted Lorgan to Paalin, who sped off to assist the wounded. Mennick started to cast a spell to counter the wizard, but Lorgan waved him off.

"Wait," he said to the wizard, and shouted to Reht and his archers. "Archers on the wizard! Archers on the wizard!"

Shooting at a moving target by mounted archers was difficult, but Lorgan knew Reht's men to be very good. Reht's squad pulled their bows and drew the strings to their ears.

"Fire!" Reht said, and eleven arrows buzzed into the sky. Most fell harmlessly to the road but two hit the wizard's mount and it fell onto the road. The Saerloonians did not stop for their downed man.

"Run him down," Lorgan shouted.

Two of Enken's men steered their mounts over the fallen Saerloonian wizard, smashing his skull before he could rise. The Blades drew closer to the Saerloonians. The Saerloonians tried to form up as best they could on the run.

Heads appeared out of the carriages once more. Lorgan could make out their wide-eyed expressions. One shouted something to a nearby rider and ducked back inside. The left door of the rearmost carriage opened and a man stood on the foot rail, facing backward. His blue robes swirled around a breastplate enameled with a symbol of a spoked wheel-a Gondsman. His hand gestures told Lorgan he was casting a spell.

"Beware the priest!" shouted Enken, and the call was repeated across the formation.

"Hit him," Lorgan said to Mennick.

The wizard hurried through an incantation and completed his spell before the priest could. Four glowing missiles of energy streaked from his fingertips and blasted the priest in the chest. The Gondsman grimaced with pain but held his footing and completed his spell. He pointed his open hand at the road behind the carriage and Lorgan saw the telltale ripple of a magical distortion move across the earth.

The road behind the carriage turned to mud in an instant. Most of Gavist and Boris men could not stop and rode right into it. Their mounts hit the mud and sank to their gaskins in the sludge. The abrupt stop threw the riders head over heels. Panicked and wounded horses neighed and screamed. Some of the men cursed; others shouted in pain.

Lorgan, Vors, Mennick, and the archers yanked their steeds to a halt and steered around the mire, but the spell separated them from the rest of the force.

Meanwhile, Enken and Scorral's squads, unaffected by the mud trap, rode hard after the Saerloonians. The gap between the two groups of Lorgan's forces yawned.

The Saerloonians suddenly went on the offensive. Twenty of the Saerloonian riders wheeled as one to the left, turned, and galloped toward Enken's men. Scorral shouted and his squad moved to intercept them on the diagonal. Meanwhile, the remaining dozen Saerloonians and the carriage sped northward down the road.

The Saerloonian riders wore breastplates and open-faced helms, and carried round cavalry shields. They raised blades high as they closed on Enken's men. Enken's men responded with readied blades of their own.

"For Saerb and Endren!" shouted Enken, and some of his men echoed the lie. Lorgan smiled, pleased that his sergeant had remembered to put forth the ruse.

Flesh and steel collided with thunderous impact. Horses went down; men screamed. Blades fell and came up bloody. A handful of dead were left on each side as they parted.

The Saerloonians wheeled to their right, circled, and headed back up the road. Scorral's squad crashed into their flank. Horses neighed and bucked. Shields collided. Men shouted and died. For a moment, Lorgan could not tell who was who.

"For Selgaunt and Sembian freedom!" Scorral and some of his men shouted.

The Saerloonians put up only a token fight and tried to speed away. Scorral's men let them go and Scorral held up his hand to halt his squad from pursuing. Enken did the same.

"Probably enough," Lorgan muttered to himself. They had drawn some blood and set the Saerloonians to flight. There was no need to risk his men further.

A horn sounded from up the road and a hundred or more riders thundered into view, moving down the road at a full gallop. The sun glinted off their blades and plumed helms. They bore a standard but Lorgan could not make it out.

The fleeing Saerloonians cheered. The cavalry fleeing from Scorral's forces wheeled around as though for a counterattack.

"Who in the Hells are they?" Vors asked.

Reht shouted, "They fly Ordulin's wheel, sir!"

Lorgan cursed. He had too small and too scattered a force to withstand a charge of a hundred cavalry. Besides, his charge had been only to hit the Saerloonians. What in the Nine Hells were Ordulin's forces doing in the field?

"Give the Ordulins some fire, Reht!" he shouted, then hit Mennick on the thigh with the flat of his blade. "And you-earn your keep, godsdammit! You cannot even counter a Gondsman." To the rest of his forces, he shouted, "Get the men, even the fallen, and fall back. Now. Move! Move!"

Ordulin's forces blew another horn blast and formed a charging line.

The Saerloonian cavalry completed their turn and formed up for another pass.

Lorgan's men retreated and scrambled to gather their fallen and those still mired in the mud.

The Ordulin cavalry shouted as it charged. The Saerloonian cavalry did the same. The carriages pulled to a stop and Saerloonian nobility emerged to watch the battle.

Reht's archers fired a volley at the Ordulins and wheeled around to retreat. A few arrows struck home and a few of the charging cavalry went down. Mennick incanted the words to a spell and a curtain of sizzling flame appeared in front of the onrushing Ordulin cavalry. Most of the Ordulins pulled their mounts to a stop in time, but a few did not and three horses and men plunged through the flaming wall. All came out afire and flailing. The horses screamed and fell to the ground, rolling over the burning men.

Mennick intoned another spell and pointed at the onrushing Saerloonian cavalry. A thicket of barrel-wide black tentacles sprouted from the earth in their midst. The magical appendages plucked men and horses indiscriminately and squeezed. The Saerloonian counterattack died in its tracks as horses panicked and men tried to free their fallen comrades from the tentacles' deadly embrace.

Lorgan thumped Mennick on the shoulder. "Well done, wizard! An ale on my coin."

Lorgan shouted encouragement at his men. "Get them up! At it! At it, men!"

In moments, all his fallen men were loaded onto horses. Behind them, the Ordulin forces wheeled wide around the wall of fire.

"Ride!" he commanded. "Ride!"

The Blades kicked their heels into their steeds and tore south down Rauthauvyr's Road. Lorgan scanned his forces and estimated the damage. He had lost fewer than ten men, but left in his wake no fewer than a dozen Saerloonians and a handful of the soldiers out of Ordulin. He would get a firm count from his sergeants once they got clear.

He turned in his saddle and looked behind him. The Saerloonians still struggled with the tentacles and the Ordulin soldiery did not appear keen on pursuing.

He let himself relax. He disliked losing men but they had accomplished what they had hoped and gotten clear. The Saerloonians believed they had been attacked and bloodied by forces out of Saerb and Selgaunt. He would circle back, disperse his force into small teams, and rendezvous with Malkur outside of Ordulin.

4 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

Nobles from nearby Yhaunn, Tulbeg, Surd, and Ornstar had been streaming into Ordulin for days to attend the moot. The city was thronged. A steady stream of caravans rattled down Tildaryn's Road from Yhaunn's docks, bringing grains from the distant markets of Ravens Bluff and Procampur. Perishable foodstuffs were teleported from distant locales directly to city warehouses. The city's mills turned night and day. The markets were well stocked and prices were only slightly above average. The people cheered their new overmistress for her decisiveness. The influx of nobles and food put the citizens of the capital in an almost festive mood.