They were harried at every step.

The ashwalkers were dogged and unrelenting. Even with a full third of their numbers cut down in the opening raid did nothing to slow them, only loosening their cohesion with the death of an officer. And it was clearly not the only one, as she had hoped.

The sand boiled with the dead. Reaching claws, unnatural, heart shaking screams, snapping and clattering jaws. The hooves of her warhorse pounded a corroded breastplate and the ribs beneath it to splinters and dust, riding at the head of her reconstituted formation. On her right man and horse alike screamed as a skeletal hand larger than a man was tall grasped them. She gave a sharp whistle, and three men at the edge of the formation wheeled and struck out with barbed lances smashing apart bone, her hand twitched, and lashes of flame dragged the falling man back into the saddle, armor smoking from the contact.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a plume of dust on the horizon, and tiny silhouettes within. More cavalry, and not theirs. This had truly escalated beyond anyone’s expectations. It seemed strange, that barely a week ago, she and the outrider company she had been assigned were merely running communications between the engineering parties under Major Yu, fending off little bands of the wandering dead.

Then the first distress call came. Not unexpected, but the second and then third, had begun to draw alarms. Riders were sent out, including their own, but the outbreaks were well spread, and seemed timed, all to ensure their forces were spread thin.

It was a sign of much greater intelligence than the Walkers bore these days.

And now, cavalry pincer, trying to cut off their retreat?

Gu Xiulan urged her warhorse on faster, and her riders followed. The ragged, fatigued platoon they had retrieved, was already marching at their hardest. Their boots pounded the sandy and worn stone of the rode in an unending beat. A shell of warriors in the outer formation, the formation engineers and the wounded in the center. None were to be left behind for the walkers to take, for everything they knew would seep into the terrible will of ash that animated the things.

And now, with it showing such a malicious mind, would be the last time to allow that. If it came down to it, all soldiers of the Golden Field were prepared to end themselves in fire, that their souls might pass on pure, but she refused to consider such a desperate and final tactic.

“Don’t worry! I’d burn you up good before I let you get sucked down into the icky stuff!”

She smirked, her spirit Linhuo had been keeping silent to not distract her. The little wildfire fairy certainly did have a way with comfort. She did have an idea though. “Linhuo, I release you to dance for those horseman.”

“Huh, really?” the fairy exclaimed in her mind. “I can? I can? You won’t get mad?”

“As long as you stay away from the road. You can take as much qi as you need,” she spoke hoarsely, under her breath, barely even audible to herself over the rushing wind and thunder of hooves.

She felt a little bad, Linhuo was… simple and innocent in many ways, but a wildfire was meant to burn mightily and fast. She would pull the fairy out before she consumed herself, but it was still risky.

Stolen novel; please report.

They couldn’t let the cavalry hit their line. She gave another whistle that pierced the wind. A different pitch and timing. Open meridians, channel qi into the martial formation. She felt her subordinates react, felt the channels' open energy pouring into the platoon formation for her to shape and guide. She opened herself to it, and through it Linhuo.

“Wooooowwweeeee!”

Linhuo let out an ecstatic cry in her mind and she felt the spirit rise out of her dantian, first as a cloak of liquid flame flying from her back, and then as a blooming orb of fire rising above her head.

“Yay, come and dance with me!”

The orb shot off toward the approaching plume, shot off into the dry grass that grew from the cracked earth of the badland they were passing through, the thin and scraggly growth. It would be nowhere near enough fuel for a wildfire born in the dense canopies of the Emerald Seas, but with the power she could provide it would be enough, if only for a little while.

As a minute, and then two passed, she could see the leading edge of the enemy cavalry formation, fused bone and melted armor, skeletal horses flying over the dusty earth with manes of deathly green flame. Riders with empty eyes and helms with plumes of ash and dust.

Linhuo detonated.

The shockwave of it buffeted them even so far away. All the force of a raging wildfire that had been contained and compressed since she had bound one heaven born ember of it. The badlands were instantly transformed into a hellish vision, sheets of raring flame ripping through the grass, searing the earth. Gu Xiulan grit her teeth as she felt the pool of qi in the platoon formation empty almost instantly, and then draw still more. She hissed through her teeth, breathing out crackling sparks as she felt her own qi drain precipitously.

Her spirit was no legendary beast, no Dragon or Xuan Wu or Pheonix, but, like Xiulan, she could burn bright indeed if allowed, if only for a short time. She heard the distant wailing of the dead… the blowing of signal horns. Saw the front rank of Ashwalker cavalry blown away into dust at the searing edge of Linhuo’s fire. And the grasping tongues of flame that formed a hundred hundred hands as a young girl’s voice laughed and laughed in the crackle of the fire and drew them in to dance.

With their western flank consumed by a roaring inferno, they reached the top of the next ridge. From there it would be a straight and even march back to the southern base camp, where they could find rest behind the defenses.

A sea of bones awaited them. Shifting, rising, sifting out of the sands, ashwalkers groaned and clattered and burned with cold and deathly fire. Rank upon rank, more than she could swiftly count. A thousand at least simply from the depth of their ranks. She immediately wheeled a snap of her fingers making a thunderous crack, an emergency signal to halt and dig in.

And Behind her, she felt a shudder through her spirit bond and a surprised wail. She immediately yanked back on the connection, forcing Linhuo back.

“Ah so mean, shooting from where I couldn’t reach…”

Gu Xiulan’s hand snapped up, her lash of flames snarling out, tongues twining together into a solid spear of fire that she spun just in time to catch the missile flying for her heart. Her horse screamed at the impact, and she felt her arm nearly wrench from her socket as she batted the arrow, a thing of black volcanic glass into the dunes.

What madness was this.

“Lady Gu, orders?” She glanced back sharply at her second among the riders, a young man from the soldier clans just into the third realm.

“Signal fire, then tortoise. You ride to disrupt, I-”

In the north, two great wings of light bloomed into the sky, and from the sky a lance of lightning wider than a small house detonated among the dunes, blowing away hundreds of the dead who blocked their way.

Gu Xiulan let out a sigh of relief. They had gotten close enough to camp.