Saul and Jerry stood side-by-side on the little strip of walkway that ran along the top of the palisade. Jerryl had given orders that everyone should remain alert, as they all knew that the warlocks would attack at any moment now the weather had turned.

The sky above was a forbidding iron gray, and the white flakes fell steadily onto the flat ground in front of the village.

“How much did you know of the warlocks in your past life?” Jerryl asked Saul. He spoke quietly, knowing Saul’s desire to keep the details of his origins private.

Saul smiled, remembering his insatiable appetite for study in the early days of his old life. “There was not a great deal known about them by the time I was old enough to learn,” he said. “When I was learning my history, the warlocks were a force that was gone from the world. They were destroyed in the wars that followed the fall of Xorn. It was often cited as an example of a mistake to be avoided by any military commander; the warlocks under Grimdir knew how to take territory, but lacked the wisdom to manage what they took. They overextended themselves and were destroyed, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake.”

Jerryl shook his head, smiling. “It’s still strange to me,” he said, “that you should know the chain of events before they happen. But I’m glad you’re here with us.”

“So am I,” Saul said. “The wars that followed the fall of Xorn took a horrible toll on the whole world. If I can help save Harkin’s Holdfast, I might manage to stop a great deal of other terrible events as well.”

The snow fell steadily. Jerryl looked out and shivered. “These warlocks get a boost to their magic from the early snowfall,” he said. “We’ve learned that the hard way. They attack when the cold first begins to bite, but before the snow becomes so heavy that it makes it difficult to maneuver. Their magic cohesion is strongest with the first snowfall, and the monsters that they use have the most ferocity then. The blow will fall soon.”

“When they come, they’ll find us ready,” Saul said.

Jerryl nodded, and they looked out silently over the defenses.

The ditches, filled with sharp stakes and flammable dry branches and covered with straw, awaited the advance of foot soldiers. The soldiers who lined the walls were equipped with fire arrows and many regular arrows, prepared to deal with flying units, which Jerryl assured Saul was a strong possibility.

Within the village ranks of Xornian infantry were forming up. The Raptor Riders, who had been pulled in from their duties scouting in the woodland outside, awaited orders in the shadow of the walls.

Jerryl was determined that the raptors should not be deployed until the last moment.

“We will not fight for every ditch,” he had said. “That’s not the kind of fighting that the raptors are best suited to, and we have few enough men and beasts to fight in that way. No, we must use the ditches to slow the enemy and take them out with arrows from the palisade wall as best we can. That way, we will be able to reduce their number as much as possible before they reach us here and weaken them before they try to take the walls themselves.”

Saul reluctantly agreed to this plan. If it had been for him alone to decide, he would have tried to fight for every ditch, but he was happy to defer to Jerryl’s judgment. After all, despite the extra training Saul had given them, Jerryl knew best how to use the Xornians in a fight.

And they had no idea yet what they would be up against.

That first day, time passed excruciatingly slowly.

Everyone had been pulled into the village, and no scouts remained in the forest above. As they stood on the barricades and waited, Saul saw figures skulking in the tree line, groups of them.

Saul used his Eagle Vision spell to get a closer view.

This was the second time he’d used the magic, and it was just as disorientating as before. There was the distinct sensation of being lifted out of his body, and then he was flying, his awareness split between his body and the feeling of soaring through the skies while gazing down.

Something blocked his vision. As he approached the trees, he saw for a moment a greater level of detail. He caught a glimpse of gleaming warlock runes, and of ranks of black clad soldiers and of something else, something gleaming and shimmering deeper in the trees. Something big.

Then a shadow closed them off from his sight, and he could see no more.

Saul returned to his physical body with a jarring snap. His eyes popped and his head pounded as he leaned forward, panting as if he’d just run a sprint.

“What is it, Saul?” Jerryl asked, concerned. He put a hand on Saul’s shoulder, but Saul shrugged it off.

“I’m okay,” he gasped. “I used a spell that allows me to see past a great distance. But when I got closer, there was some concealment spell, some counter magic that blocked my sight. I managed to catch a glimpse. There were many figures gathering in the woods, but then my vision was clouded, and I was…sent back to my body. Almost as if I was thrown back.”

“Grimdir,” Jerryl said. “Wytchlord Grimdir is the greatest of all the warlocks and the leader of this rebellion. He has strange powers of concealment, so it’s said, and I’m not surprised that he was able to block you from getting a good magical vision of his forces. That means that Grimdir himself is here. So, this truly is their final battle. They are throwing everything they have at us. Grimdir is a powerful mage and a careful commander. If he is here himself, then that means this truly is their last throw.”

All that day they waited, watching it snow.

The warlocks gathered in the forest but did not attack.

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Before long, Jerryl gave orders that the men behind the wall should go on rotation to rest. There was no point in tiring them out waiting in the cold, he said. That would be exactly what their enemies wanted. They would try to wear Jerryl’s men down, to exhaust them with tension and wait before they attacked in earnest.

“They would not try to starve us out?” Saul asked. Though the men had orders to rest if they could, Neither Saul nor Jerryl felt they could afford a moment away from the palisade.

“That’s not their way,” Jerryl replied. “They want to capture as many of us as possible. And they know that we have good supplies and a deep, fresh well in here. They would not be able to starve us out before they starved themselves in the snow. warlocks or no, they are still men, and there is no magic in the world that can stop a man from dying of cold. No, they are just trying to frighten us as much as possible before they strike for real.”

Saul nodded slowly, peering out over the barren landscape. It was not a good place to die, he thought suddenly.

Well, he had no intention of dying here.

* * *

The attack came the next day at dawn, and it came suddenly.

The guards on the palisade were in the process of changing when a hideous shrieking pierced the air, and a host of horrible black and silver shapes rushed out from the tree line.

The Xornian foot soldiers reacted quickly and kept their heads, to Saul’s great approval. The men who were about to leave continued down, but instead of retiring to the barracks they took up their positions behind the wall as planned, and quickly fitted the strings to their bows. The men on the walls grabbed their short bows and prepared to fire on Jerryl’s command.

“Hold until my signal!” Jerryl shouted.

Saul knew the captain was very wary of wasting arrows. They had plenty of ammunition, but even a good supply was finite. And when they ran out, they would have to meet the enemy in melee.

The creatures that now filled the air reminded Saul of huge bats, but they were hideously deformed. They had huge, heavy bodies supported by wings so small that they did not look capable of flight. Each one had a head more reminiscent of a hairless dog than any flying creature, with blazing red eyes and huge fangs that flickered as if with white fire.

Their black leathery wings and strange, spider-like bodies were covered in gleaming silver runes. Saul thought he could almost see the channels of magical connection that joined the hideous monstrosities back to their Sigil-wielding warlock masters.

He could feel the connection, and he knew that these creatures—like all the warlock warriors—were being controlled remotely through Sigils.

That’s their one weakness, he thought. There are not actually all that many warlocks, and they rely entirely on magically enslaved armies to do their bidding. If I could become master of their Sigils, I could take control of the whole army.

He remembered what had happened when he’d tried to grab the control Sigil from the warlock in the previous skirmish, however, and he knew that it was not such an easy proposition.

Sigils were, by their very nature, bound to the mage who used them. To take control of a Sigil once they’d been bound to another was not something anyone had ever figured out as far as Saul knew.

For now, he would have to rely on more traditional methods, such as killing them all.

“Now!” Jerryl cried. “Fire at will while they’re in range!”

The first flurry of arrows flew up, accompanied by a battle cry from the Xornians. The projectiles found their marks—the Xornians were good shots, and the creatures above were large targets.

Several fell, thudding to the ground outside the village wall, but more came up, and of the initial squadron some made it through. As they got closer, Saul could get a better look at the creatures piloting them.

On the backs of the monsters rode dark figures armored like the strange zombie creatures that they had encountered in their previous battle. They were looking down on the village with greedy eyes, and Saul figured part of their role was just to gauge the defenders and see what challenges awaited the warlocks when they reached the walls.

He cursed under his breath. If he had anticipated this, he could have ordered the majority of the fighters to remain hidden until the fight was joined properly, but it was too late for that.

Instead, he would have to rely on more direct methods.

As the bat monsters flashed their cold silver magic through the sky above the village, a host of Xornian archers let rip with their arrows. At the same time, Saul used a Fireball spell to hurl a crackling globe of white-hot flame at the back of the first enemy squadron.

The spell was devastatingly effective, much more so than the first time Saul had used it. It hissed and spat out flames from either side as it blasted through the air.

The fireball spat out flickering fire and caught the arrows of the Xornian soldiers that were skimming along through the air next to it. The arrows caught flame and burst into smaller fireballs, speeding up and smashing into the hideous carcasses of the evil flying bats.

Saul was certain the bat riders were relaying this back to their central commander. It may have been Grimdir himself, or it may have been some menial warlock captain, but Saul had no doubt that the enemy were counting the numbers of the defenders visible in the village.

The flaming arrows peppered the flying monsters, and Saul’s fireball smashed into the largest ones. As the flames from the fireball engulfed the creature, there was a horrible shriek, and flashes of bright sickly green light expanded from the monster in the direction of the other flying creatures.

The creatures struck by arrows screamed and reared up in the air. Two of the lucky shots had caught a heart or a lung and felled bats outright.

Curiously, the others too seemed to be losing their ability to stay airborne. Saul tilted his head, studying the effect that his volley had had on the others.

Then, the second squadron appeared, gliding toward the village in a tidy formation.

“What’s that?” he said to the man beside him. “Do you see that white light?”

The man shook his head while loading his bow. “I see nothing, outlander,”

So, Saul thought, it’s not just the readouts from the System that I can see while others can’t. To Saul’s eyes, a clear pulsing green-white light spread out from the largest creature to the rest. He’d seen that same light explode out of the one he killed.

It’s like anchors and channeling, he realized. The central bat is channeling power to the others; power and control.

If he could take out the central power-giving monster, he could sow discord among the others just as he had done at the start.

The Xornians fired well-aimed arrows at the now anchorless bats, which were still swinging around the village. They were not in formation anymore but still flew about. Four had been brought down and a fifth fell before Saul’s eyes, smashing through the roof of a building after catching an arrow.

Shouts and the clash of weapons came from the village. There, down in the village Saul saw dark figures fighting among the soldiers.

They were the heavily armored soldiers in black, the ones who had fallen from the backs of the bats. Across their bodies, ran flickers of red fire as if they were under the influence of some strange magic.

Another two bats crashed to the ground as well. One crushed its rider under its bulk, but from the wreck of the other rose a threatening figure, eyes gleaming red as the flame that ran along its sword as it strode toward the nearest Xornian foot soldiers.

Saul glanced back toward the forest. The first lines of foot infantry marched their way down the long path from the forest above atop the thin carpet of fresh snow.

“Jerryl!” Saul called, and the captain swung round to look at him. “The bats are being ridden by champions. The dead bats in the village allow the champions to attack our soldiers here. I’m going to deal with them. Keep an eye on the advance.”

Jerryl gave Saul a tight nod, and Saul flung himself down the ladder and dashed into the battle.