“Not that way,” Saul said.

Brand had immediately run toward the main walls. The young man turned and looked at Saul.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Follow me,” Saul said, jerking his head in the direction the gray-bearded assassins had come from. “We’ll find where they snuck in and make sure they were alone, and then we’ll hopefully be able to get round the back of the attacking force and make an impact with a flanking maneuver.”

“Let’s hope it will be enough to turn the tide,” Zorea said, darkly.

“We have to try,” Brand said.

The trio jogged through the deserted village. Sounds of battle were in the air, and the thick smell of smoke filled their noses. The snow was not falling now, though it lay thick on the ground from the overnight fall, and back here it had not been churned up. Saul followed the tracks of the berserkers they had just killed until they reached the wall.

They arrived at the edge of the palisade wall nearest the cliff face and found what they had expected. A single gray rope had been thrown over the wall for access.

They kept one eye on the lightening sky as they went. The tracker dervish had put Saul’s nerves on edge. If the warlocks were deploying such outlandish technologies, who knew what else they might have to throw?

“Do you think they have more of the dervishes?” Zorea asked, seeing Saul scanning the sky.

“It’s unlikely,” he said quietly, “but even one or two more of them could spell trouble for us. But, honestly, I doubt it. They’re incredibly expensive, and whoever is making them will not want to waste them.”

“That assassin must have had some seriously important secret information then, if they were prepared to use the dervish to kill him,” Brand said thoughtfully.

He was right. The presence of the tracking dervish on the battlefield had profound implications for the deeper story of the war.

But all that could wait.

“Come, we only have one thing we need to do now,” he said. “Whoever is behind this, their attempt to infiltrate the village has failed. The only card they have left is to take the village by force by a full-frontal assault. We have to stop them.”

They used the gray rope that the assassins had left and clambered up over the palisade wall. Saul went first. Zorea and Brand followed right behind him.

He landed on the packed earth on the other side and came upon a terrible sight of two dead Xornian soldiers. They must’ve died after having caught the assassins in the act of climbing the wall into the village.

Saul dropped to one knee beside the nearest of the two, as Zorea and Brand took up their positions behind him, scanning for threats. There was no one near.

“This man has been killed with magic,” Saul said with certainty, studying the nearest Xornian. “His throat’s been crushed—from the inside.”

Zorea looked grim and Brand shuddered.

A cold part of Saul could not help but be impressed at the magic used here. It was certainly effective, and he was glad that he and his friends had surprised the three assassins too quickly for them to respond with such insidious and effective spells.

“Come, we can do nothing for them,” Saul said. “Let’s see what the situation is on the battlefield.”

The situation, as they found it, was not good, but neither was it quite as bad as they had feared it might be.

They sneaked up round the palisade wall, keeping in its shadow. The scene was gray, white, and black lit by the late afternoon sun. The recent snow was thick on the branches of the forest and had gathered in clumps on the cliff below.

On the battlefield, it was churned up to gray mud that matched the color of the heavy sky.

Saul and his friends kept in the relative cover provided by the shadow of the palisade. Action was concentrated at the front of the village. They got to a vantage point and looked round.

Merrick and Bellow—in charge of the foot soldiers and the Raptor Riders—had followed Saul’s orders to the letter. The raptors had driven a wedge in between the advancing black-clad warlocks and the gray-armored berserkers, stopping them from joining up into a single unified force.

The berserkers had charged straight for the gate and the wall, as Saul had predicted. The Xornian infantry had moved to meet them in a shield wall formation.

They were holding the berserkers at bay, for the moment at least.

The raptors were pushing the warlocks back with successive charges. They were shock troops, less designed for a prolonged melee, but the riders had gotten their mounts to swing round and charge again and again, each time pushing the enemy further back than before.

The warlocks wavered, broke, reformed, and charged again. Lieutenant Bellow ordered a group of Raptor riders to break away from the main host and attack the berserkers in the flank.

Saul approved of this. The berserkers were ferocious, but they hadn’t managed to break the shield wall and a flanking attack from a furious team of Raptor Riders was a terrible thing to be up against.

Many of them had died, but the others showed no sign of wavering. They were using magic.

Flames of many colors blossomed up vividly in the battle, lurid points of green and blue and yellow amid the gray and black of the battlefield.

Flashes of flame and the red of fountaining blood stained the snow and the mud and the black armor of the warlock thralls.

“There,“ Saul said, pointing to the nearest edge of the massed berserkers. “We will have the most impact there. The berserkers will not break. We will have to take them all out to free up the Xornian infantry to join the Raptor Riders and finish off the last of the warlocks.”

Saul led the way, Brand and Zorea right behind him. They were tired and grim-faced, but ready to die for their home if that was what it took.

Saul was ready to defend the village. Only he knew that this small outpost was the pebble that started the avalanche.

If Harkin’s Holdfast fell, the Faction Wars that had caused so much pain and suffering in Keldor would inevitably break out.

He wanted to avoid that at all costs…

Well, not at any cost, he thought.

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Reluctantly, he admitted that if the battle were lost and the village fallen, he would save himself from the destruction.

Ultimately, even if he did not manage to avert the Faction Wars, he still had to fulfill his mission. He still had to try and regain his power and defeat the gods. Sarkur had said that the consequences of his failure would be the entire destruction of the universe.

Saul did not think that his death would not avert that catastrophe.

No, even if Harkin’s Holdfast fell, he must survive the conflict. He must continue and save the world.

Brand, Zorea, and Saul thundered into the flank of the beleaguered berserkers at the same time.

Blood flew and a cheer went up from the Xornians who were still on the walls.

As Saul had ordered, there was a solid complement of men left as archers on the walls. They were lobbing a steady rain of arrows and other missiles on the berserkers.

Saul deployed first the Fireball spell, sending a group of berserkers flying up into the air as if they had been fired by a catapult.

Then he sent a Rock Troll into their midst. The huge creature lumbered into the melee, bigger and stronger than ever. In the increased size and power of the monster, Saul saw the effect of his recent steady progress through the system’s magic levels. Though he might not have been actively unlocking new spells every time he crafted a Level Up Sigil, his spells were improving.

The Fireball was bigger, brighter, and hotter than ever, and the rock troll he’d summoned was taking blows from every side without any sign of being destroyed or even damaged.

Saul felt that tug of connection again, running between him and the summoned monster, and between him and his two human companions.

Brand and Zorea were fighting side-by-side, using all the techniques Saul had taught them in their training sessions. They were defending each other, feinting left and right to confuse their opponents, attacking in formation together and keeping an eye out for each other at all times.

Though they were both tired and worn from the recent fighting, and from the days of tension in the run-up to the siege, they could take it.

Saul was suddenly no longer afraid for their safety. He trusted their skills.

As he scythed his path through the enemies, he activated the Burning Hand spell. Deadly flame rippled out along his hands and arms and covered his sword. Even a touch of his hand killed.

The berserkers were fast—very fast—and they had some kind of magical guard around their armor that made it hard to land a blow, but even with their skills and their spells they were no match for Saul and his companions.

Saul could feel their fear, almost taste it. These were no thralls, no mindless automatons commanded from afar by a warlock’s subtle spell.

No, these were men. Highly trained and well-equipped, yes, but just men all the same.

And they were subject to human emotions.

They knew when they were beaten… but would they break? Saul doubted it.

He redoubled his efforts. The berserkers were tough opponents. Fast, fierce, and facing death, they fought like demons, but Saul fought harder.

The Xornians, encouraged by Saul and his friends joining the fray, pushed forward until Merrick, fighting at one corner of the formation, called out for them to hold the shield wall.

Saul caught Merrick’s eye through the press of fighting figures and gave him a tight nod. No matter how well things seemed to be going, a break in the shield wall would open things up for these berserkers to regain the initiative and get off the defensive.

He yanked his blade from between the shattered chainmail rings of a berserker’s chainmail and pulled back to look around. There was a momentary lull in the battle, as the berserkers retreated to regroup.

Saul gazed toward the cliff, to check up on how the clash between the raptor cavalry and the warlocks was going.

Not well, was the answer. The raptors were holding their ground, but they were outnumbered three to one. The giant spiders were also surprisingly impactful.

For some reason, the otherwise fearless raptors were scared by the spiders, and drew back from attacking them. This forced the riders to dismount and fight the spiders on foot. That was not ideal, and Saul itched to get over there.

Brand and Zorea were doing well, though Zorea had taken a cut to her arm.

Saul’s countdown timer had been activated and had just finished, and so he sent a blast of Heal to her. The pale green power of the magic soaked into her like ink into paper, and he saw her straighten up, the wounded arm suddenly useful again.

Brand saw what he was looking at and shouted over to him.

“Go!” he said. “We can finish things here!”

Saul didn’t question the young man’s ability. Taking advantage of a gap in the press, he ducked away from the berserkers and sprinted across the open ground toward where the raptors were engaged with the spiders.

As he ran, he fired off a summoned troll first to his left and then to his right. The magic lurched through him, the feeling of power in the casting almost intoxication. That was a new sensation, but he didn’t stop to question it.

Air exploded behind him. Saul glanced over his shoulder to see the Rock Troll that had been fighting among the berserkers collapse into lifeless stone.

He activated the Burning Hand spell and charged straight to where the fight was hottest.

Here, a group of spiders had formed a vanguard, pressing the Xornians backward. The raptors had moved away. They were fighting the warlocks and the thralls, but if the spiders were not dealt with, they would soon break the Xornian line and flank the foot soldiers who were fighting the berserkers.

Saul would not allow that to happen.

As he ran, he sent a thread of intention along his connection to the stone trolls. They received his orders and hurried to back up the raptors that were fighting the thralls.

Then he grabbed up a dropped halberd and charged into the midst of the giant spiders.

The creatures were something out of a nightmare; enormous, ungainly bodies covered in thick spines of black hair as thick and sharp as swords. Each of their massive, jointed legs was tipped with a claw that gleamed like polished steel, and their hideous faces and piles of chaotic black compound eyes shone with cruel intelligence.

Their stench was almost overpowering, but Saul soldiered through it as if he was pushing into a thick, wet blanket of cobwebs. He spun and swung the halberd, lopping off a foreleg with a single sweep, then followed it up by plunging the halberd deep into the monster’s brain.

A high-pitched screech cut short as the creature died.

Saul fired a blast of Fireball at point-blank range into the face of the next one. The flame consumed the spider, flashing all over it and curling the black, sword-like guard spikes like melting wax as it ran over the monster’s body.

“Go on!” Saul yelled to the Xornians who were still fighting the spiders. “Get back to your raptors! I’ll deal with these horrors!”

The Xornians—Raptor Riders who had dismounted to fight the spiders—were only too glad to do so. They shuffled off in good order, and Saul was left in the midst of the horrible spiders.

A strange trance seemed to descend over him.

Sounds of battle faded from his ears and his thoughts became still. All became quiet.

The spiders, suddenly wary of this new, powerful foe, fell back slightly, wondering what he would do next.

He activated Windspeed, and everything slowed down.

When he had used this spell in the past, he’d been impressed by how well it worked, but this time there was a new element to it. Not only did the spell activate and everything around him slow down, but the system showed him the image of a small glass timer, the golden sand trickling through at a steady rate.

He knew what it was intuitively. This was a visual representation of how long he had left under the influence of the spell.

He smiled. That was a useful innovation.

His blade sang in his hand. Magical flames rippled from his hands and forearms along its length as he spun and stabbed, moving at what seemed like a good speed to himself.

To the spiders he was an invisible blur.

He butchered them with the Xornian halberd, and there was nothing they could do to stop him. One by one, as the sand dripped through the timer, he slew them, until the spouts and droplets of their dark, caustic blood hung all round him in the air like an evil rain.

One swirl of the flat, broad blade of the halberd through the air smashed the poisonous blood out of his way so that he would not be burned. He shoved through the mess of slow-motion falling enemies, his teeth bared in a ferocious battle-snarl.

Power coursed through him. Saul ran forward, leaped into the air and landed feet first on the head of the last of the spiders. He plunged his blade down through the head of the final monster with such force that it vanished up to the hilt down into the creature’s fetid flesh.

Saul let it go and stood there on top of the falling spider for what seemed to him a long moment.

He looked around from his vantage point and saw at last what had hardly dared hoped to see.

From the south, on the narrow valley that connected the village to, approached a mass of figures.

Dark figures, shadowed in the pale light of the winter morning. For a moment, he thought he saw the black glint of warlock thrall armor, and the white gleam of runes. Then a banner caught the light of the sun breaking through the clouds, and he saw that in the air above the soldiers fluttered the golden eight-pointed star of Xorn.

And at the head of the crowd, riding a huge, silver-colored raptor, was none other than old Rork, the blacksmith of Harkin’s Holdfast.

The sand ran out from the spell, and Saul leapt from the top of the dying spider, drawing his sword as the din of the fight roared back into full volume around him.

His reinforcements had come at last, but the battle was not yet over.