The last bridge over the Zorn was wide and cement, repaired by planks of wood where wind and time had caused the stone to tear away from its metal bones, reaching from sloping bank to sloping bank. Rolling fields were on either side of tall grass, bent with the wind and tipped with white from frost that had yet to melt over insulated wetness below. There were no trees as far as the eye could see once they crossed the bridge toward the setting sun, only behind them, rising in patches here and there. But across the bridge, towards the sky that had turned pink and orange with a blinding brightness even with the clouds blocking the sun, there were only hills and the horizon.

  Olaf and his mounted archers had blazed through the field from the road once they passed the bridge while the archers on foot sprinted to hill tops on either side of it. The engineers hurriedly laid rails with rods between them as they followed the archers. Others quickly began digging at the edges of the bridge. Then, Adrian and his knights, along with the rest of the horsemen, crossed at trotting gallops, separating on either side of the road and up the hills to where the archers were already setting their arrows.

  Wagons pulled by the oxen came across the bridge only after the long lines of marching soldiers had made their way up the road and spread into ranks into the field. Draka and Aurie’s wagon, along with the others carrying heavily armored soldiers, followed them, but those stacked with assemblies to catapults and ballistae turned onto the rails and were led up onto the hills by the engineers.

  As the Paladins and other troops leapt from the wagons where the footmen had formed in the fields, long wooden barricades with pointed and angled pillars were pulled from the sides and carried to in front of the formations. Soldiers with sledgehammers hammered them into the ground to make sure that any horse charge would be hard pressed to dislodge them while others began unraveling spools of razor-edged iron wire between them.

  Aurie followed Draka toward the formation of Paladins, carrying Maud’s flag across her shoulder. Her breath echoed in her helmet nearly as loudly as the noise of the movement around her. She was wading through the grass as if it were the river, lifting her knees and stumbling to keep up with him. Archers with longbows strung on their backs as they helped the engineers lift the heavy spoons of catapults into their holders up on the hills. Soldiers counting paces and then holding up numbered flags before continuing on. Mounted knights gathering in the distance, like glimmering ants on a horizon that was becoming dimmer and dimmer. She couldn’t stop turning all around her.

  “Olaf’s mounted archers are engaging the northern pincer now. We estimate about ten minutes before they’re within sight,” one of the Paladins with six points on his breastplate's star said to Draka as they neared the formation.

  Draka nodded.

  Aurie wished she knew this one’s name. She didn’t know any of their names. She couldn’t even see their faces. They all had the same helmet as Draka’s before he got his new one. Spiked dome with a cross opening for the face that was so narrow you could only see whether it was a man or woman and not much else. When Draka turned to her, she wondered what his expression was then. She could see nothing of his face, not even his beautiful golden-hazel eyes, and she knew he could plainly see her terrified pale blues.

  He rested a hand on her shoulder and nodded his head. Then he took the flag from her shoulder with one hand and ran the other across the side of her helmet as if touching her cheek before stabbing the flag into the ground. That made her terror a little quieter.

  “That’s the signal from the south,” the same Paladin slapped Draka’s shoulder. “Dimitriy’s leading them this way. Aurelie, is it?”

  Aurie nodded, her armor rattling.

  “These flags are how he will command us. When he points, you wave it high and wide to those two up there.” He pointed to men with horns standing on the hills where catapults were being turned and loaded with barrels.

  Aurie nodded, “Got it.”

  “Keep an eye out, though. If they get close to you, that means they broke our lines,” the Paladin stepped up to her and leaned close, his muffled voice sounding metallic as he said, “he might not see it before you do. You grab him and run across the bridge, waving the Alcalia battle flag to them.”

  She followed his pointing finger back across the bridge to the angled scaffolding far on the other side and her eyes widened. Six angled scaffolds lined the field between them and the crossing back to the Clevlan Towers with long tubes propped on them and men all around them. She could see Enya among those men, standing on a makeshift tower in the middle of the line.

  “Don’t look back,” he turned her back to him with a jerk. “You just hold onto him and run as fast as you can back to the castle.”

  “What are those?”

  “Dragon’s Tails,” he answered breathily, meeting a shouldered glance from Draka. “They’ll light this entire area up and blow the bridge to slow their advance across the river. Anyone caught on this side of the river will know that they will be in God’s hands after. So, don’t hesitate. If you do, you doom all the people behind us. Understand?”

  Shakily, “Yes, sir.”

  “God’s Will be done, sister.”

  “God’s Will be done…brother,” Aurie tried not to sound so shaken by the idea.

  He and Draka locked arms for a moment before he went off to take the front of the formation of Paladins. With a loud call, the Paladins brandished their two-handed swords and began marching at an angle to cross back onto the road and follow behind those who were already moving towards that pink and orange horizon.

  Draka’s head shot left and he pointed to the yellow flag with a picture of a bow with an arrow crossing through it. Aurie quickly grabbed it from sticking in the ground and lifted it over her head. It was heavier than she expected, but she made sure it was high over their heads. He pointed toward the hill on the left and she waved the flag in a wide arc toward the man up there.

  “Nock arrows!” she heard the command on the hill carry with the wind. “Hold, I see them now…Draw! Loose!”

  Aurie sucked in air that tasted like the iron of the chainmail hood cooling the edges of her cheeks as the arrows flew upward, coating the darkening gray clouds in arching lines.

  Draka pointed to a blue flag with two circles and a triangle through them, again towards that hill. She waved that flag and the catapults on the hill lobbed their barrels as more arrows were sent skyward. Another barrel, more arrows. Then the same for the hill on the other side.

  The battle had begun.

  Adrian drew his falchion the moment Olaf and the other mounted archers were within sight. He lifted himself in his saddle. They were shooting their arrows at someone behind them, but he still couldn’t see who or how many yet. By how quickly they were fleeing, how spread out they were, how few of Olaf’s group there were left…he could only imagine. He huffed and flicked his brows.

  “I suppose I should say something,” he said to the knight beside him, Jasmine’s second, Lord Thraiden.

  “Your sister always does,” Thraiden shrugged, keeping his lance upright like the rest of the three hundred horsemen gathered behind them. “Would love to hear your version of the ‘we die for honor’ speech.”

  Adrian nodded. “We die for honor speech, huh? I’ll see what I can come up with,” he turned Pearl so that he faced the mounted knights behind him.

  Their helmets turned toward him. He unlatched his face shield and opened it so they could see his face and the pinch of his mouth to one side at them.

  A few of their horses rubbed their hooves in the tall grass. Others shifted in the group with impatience. He gave one last glance over his shoulder at Olaf in his fleeing group in the distance. They were riding fast and were in chaos.

  He turned back to his men. “Those behind us think we’re untrustworthy,” Adrian shouted as loudly as he could without making his voice a roar. “They think that we mean to sit on your asses behind those walls while they bleed this field red.”

  “Not a good start, your Majesty,” Thraiden said from behind him.

  Adrian guided Pearl to meander down the line, ignoring him, “Behind us, they’re waiting for us to turn and run because they think that we are cowards, because they think we see this as not our fight.” He let a pause linger as he turned Pearl to meander back again. “But I know better. I know that because the blood of Anatolia that flows through my veins is telling me that over that hill,” he pointed his falchion toward where Olaf was fleeing, his voice lifting, “Is where I want to go! And that is the same blood that flows through all of your veins! I know that because you are here!”

  “Getting better,” Thraiden said as he passed him.

  Adrian’s voice raised to a roar, “Behind us, they think this isn’t our fight, but I say to you that this is our fight. These fiends murdered your king! They set out to murder your Prince. They have encircled your Queen! They intend to destroy the strength of the Paladinate and God’s greatest Order on Earth, my Order! The Order of the Holy Sepulcher! They hope to lay waste to Christendom and destroy your homes once they finish here! And they have come with a force capable of doing so, hoping that we will run away at the sight of them.”

  The horizon behind Olaf’s group became jagged as it filled from end to end with galloping horsemen.

  Adrian bit his lip and spurred Pearl into a gallop down the line, waving his sword over his head as he roared angrily, “There they are! Will you do what they want you to? Or will you shout from these hills, not only to those behind us, but to those bastards intent on taking all that we love from us, what I say to you now?”

  At the top of his lungs, standing in his saddle as Pearl carried him across the front of their line, his falchion raised with a stretched hand over his head, “WE ARE STILL HERE AND YOU WILL BLEED FOR EVERY DROP SPILLED AND STEP YOU TAKE THIS DAY!”

  They pounded their armored chests.

  They raised their lances.

  They cheered.

  Adrian stopped Pearl in the center of the gathered knights, raising her up on her hind legs as he howled, “FOLLOW ME INTO THE ARMS OF CHRIST, BROTHERS OF ANATOLIA!”

  Pearl’s forelegs touched and Adrian latched his face shield back in place as she leapt into a gallop. He held his falchion’s point aimed for the hills that became a blanket of horses carrying knights charging their way. He heard the thunder of his men keeping with him. A glance and he knew they were at his side, raising their lances into the hooked holsters under their arms to point towards their overwhelmingly numerous enemies they were charging towards.

  His heart drummed with the rhythm of Pearl’s hooves. His breaths steadied with each blink through that narrow slit in his helm. Adrian grinded his teeth with anticipation as he rotated his blade to signal them to shift their formation and turn their charge slightly. For a moment, as the blanket of thousands of mounted knights of their enemies covered the field before them, they were riding sideways along it. And then, they were riding upward onto one of the hills, and Adrian signaled for their formation to turn into them.

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  Thunderous were the roars of their collision. Horse into horse. Lance into Man. Lance into lance. Man into man. Horse into man. Steel into steel.

  Adrian felt the saddle fall from beneath him long before he recognized that the ground was lifted to below his feet. He kept hold of his sword even as the impact made his knees crumble. Hooves were all around him. Men fell about him. Horses tumbled and trampled. Grass became furred mud. Steel chimed and rattled.

  He was weighed down as he slammed sideways into someone. He stomped a head into the mud so that he could leap to another and pull his helmet back to slit his throat. He ducked beneath a swinging pike. He cut the legs of a horse.

  He was dizzy, he forgot to breathe. He remembered to take a breath when a horse knocked him into the ground on top of a shield. He used it to stop a lance from impaling him. He rolled into a crouch behind the shield as Thraiden ran up it to jump on a knight still on his horse behind him. He slammed someone with the shield. Another pulled the shield off of him. He stabbed that one. He had to breathe again.

  Horse hooves. Arrows, now. Lances. Steel. Armor. Shields. Swords. Adrian grabbed a pike from a corpse in his other hand. Rocks pounded and bounced across the ground around him, knocking men and horses alike. Arrows struck down even the deadliest of men around him. He twisted and swung, again and again. He remembered to breathe. His ears were clouded by the roars. He couldn’t see more than mud, men, horses, mud, men, horses. All he could do was swing and move.

  Aurie was waving one flag after another. Her arms were already tired and that was all she was doing. She wanted to slap herself for that. All those weeks of working her arms and she was nothing compared to all those men who were fighting in the distance. She tried to keep up with Draka’s pointing, tried to keep up with the directions, but she was getting slower. She was getting sloppier. She was tossing the flags to the ground instead of setting them in the mud. She was only waving them once or twice. She wasn’t looking to see if they saw her wave it. She wasn’t even sure she was getting all of his commands after a while.

  Draka began waving them the same time he was directing her to wave others. Arrows were raining from the sky. Boulders were flying instead of barrels from the catapults. Javelins were being launched from the ballistae against lines of shields, often with sparks and fiery explosions.

  Where the barrels had struck, Aurie had waved the flag that sent flaming arrows to ignite blue flames across large swaths of the field beneath the feet of the advancing hordes. At first, she was awestruck, wanted to cheer even, but then she saw that some of those flames had clawed over areas where the chaos of the fighting had come together and she felt her heart pulled from her chest.

  Flames were engulfing their own as well as the enemy’s. Draka broke the next flagpole over his knee and tossed it in his rage before raising another and pointing for Aurie to signal a new set of barrels be launched.

  The sky darkened from the pillars of billowing smoke as the first wave of the casualty carts and wagons arrived across the bridge to gather the wounded that were being dragged back by their comrades. The battle was no longer shifting across the open field, it had become stagnant, which allowed for trains of men carrying wounded to the bridge. Screams were now the silence between commands to an orchestra of metallic chimes and thunderous booms in the distance.

  “Mark their foreheads,” Aurie was surprised to hear Nina’s voice from the bridge. “U for Urgent, S for surgical. Surgical goes on the horsedrawn wagons, Urgent on the carts. If they can walk and carry a weapon, send them back. If they can’t carry a weapon, but can walk, have them follow. Fill them up, everyone we can. Surgical first, everyone else after. The rest of you, with me!”

  Draka tapped Aurie’s helmet to draw her attention back to him. He pointed to a flag with two shields side by side, the red one: press the shield wall forward. She nodded and raised it over her head and waved it with all her numbed and aching might.

  Nina didn’t even glance at her as her cart rolled past her, pulled by a horse that was galloping so fast that it jumped and rocked with every bump. Nina only whipped the reins and leaned into the jumps, sometimes calling for the women sitting in the back to hold on, sometimes grunting when it came down too hard, but otherwise roaring for those running on either side of her to keep up and keep their heads down.

  It wasn’t until Aurie had to switch flags again that she was able to really see who was in the back of Nina’s cart with a twisting of her heart and jolt through her nerves. It was Leta and Alexandra among them. She waved the next flag that Draka pointed to, hoping that it meant for them to be protected, too.

  It didn’t.

  Adrian’s helmet had been dented just above his ear. He had no idea how or when, but it was becoming annoying. He tried tilting his head sideways. That didn’t work. He threw the ax in his off-hand at someone while kicking the corpse in front of him to trip someone coming toward him. He tried turning his helmet on his head at the same time. He missed who he aimed the ax at—hit the soldier behind him square in the face with the blunt back of it, which seemed good enough, really—and managed to make the dent now press in his forehead and the helmet cover one of his eyes.

  “Worse,” He slashed another, backstepping up the hill and twisting out of the way of a thrusting spear. A shield hit him and he jabbed his sword into its carrier’s armpit with a huffing, “Way worse.”

  He pushed his helm back to proper position and turned to let another thrusting pike slide under his arm so he could grab it while killing its holder. He felt the bounce of an arrow on the top of his helmet, the vibration only making him duck down instinctively.

  Hassan was waving a shield wildly beside him, already prickly with the arrows he had blocked with it, while slapping and parrying spears and pikes out of the way with his sword. Thraiden was on the other side of him, using his shoulder to leverage his long lance as he thrust it against the foes in front of him. In front of them, the bodies were beginning to stack. They had a barrier, a barricade of horses and dead that was getting higher as it filled the base of the hill, causing the Olgas to climb to get to them.

  How Adrian’s eyes caught the spear rising out of the sea of a thousand moving prickles and metal pieces, he would never know, but he dodged with a slap of his hand at yet another sharp thingy coming his way before he hit the folds of a ground covered in limbs and dead.

  Rimmed helmets were smashed near him by two sets of charging horse hooves leaping over the barrier of corpses and the line of his men. He rolled to see who had charged through his lines, begging that those who were up the hill were able to meet them.

  It was Olaf with Pearl in tow. Adrian smiled as Hassan helped him back onto his feet. The hilltop, he saw then, was completely theirs, finally. The remaining horses were shifting and circling in place while Olaf and a few of the other Clerics that had been with him quickly leapt from their saddles. They shot arrows into the onslaught on their way to join Adrian’s men and the line they had formed around the hill. A welcomed miracle.

  “You hit your head,” Olaf said as he strolled to Adrian’s side like he was walking into a market or through a garden. A few times he leaned his head a little to let an arrow fly past him, reflexively sending his own in the direction of its sender, but otherwise insanely calm.

  “My ears are ringing…” Adrian kicked a bold attacker who was climbing over the ridge of corpses, slamming several more behind them, “Did you bring coffee?”

  Olaf tugged Thraiden sideways from a pike thrust and sent an ax whirling into the fray, taking his place beside Adrian, “I knew I forgot something!”

  “How many…you bring?” Adrian huffed between dodges and swings.

  He was getting tired. His arms were aching. He was out of breath. His ear was hurting from being bent backwards by that blasted dent. An arrow was sticking out of his pauldron on his armor, thankfully not piercing through. Olaf pulled it out and sent it—without the arrowhead—into a face.

  “Four,” Olaf had his bow in one hand and a falchion with a much longer, wider and far more curved version of Adrian’s blade in the other. “Saw Pearl and thought she looked lonely.”

  “Four?” Thraiden was on one knee, leaning his back into the hill slope, his thrusts with the lance sending one after another falling backwards. “That’s it? Where are our reinforcements?”

  “They’re leaving us to die out here!” Hassan growled over the noise of the fray, bashing with his shield in both hands. “Bloody cowards!”

  All of them were ducking and dodging between their thrusts from whistling arrows and a few spears. There were men along their line that were bracing themselves on dead horses or stacked corpses to continue fighting even with arrows or spears protruding from them as their lives were draining away. Olaf’s other three had taken up positions around the horses, sending two and three arrows at a time into the fray to answer those that were coming their way. Horses were whinnying, but they had been brought down to lay on the ground so that their own armors were protecting them as much as possible from falling victim to the ones that reached that high.

  “Watch your mouth, sandflea,” Olaf snapped at Hassan in between slashes with his oversized falchion that cut through armor smoothly, adding limbs to the barricade at their feet. “He’s trying to get to you now but no cavalry left and they’re overrunning the southern flank.”

  Aiden nodded with a wince that none of them could see through his face shield.

  Thraiden hissed, “They’re overrunning us!”

  Olaf’s boisterous guffaws resounded over the roar of the fray around them, “And yet you’re holding the only hill beyond the front lines!”

  Adrian felt his heart soar as if the whistle of another arrow skimming his twisting dodge, a pull at a spear so that his slash reached the man holding it, were signs of hope. It was short lived.

  A javelin struck his codpiece hard enough to dent it but not pierce through, forcing Adrian to drop his sword and cup his groin with both hands as he bent over double. His breath shot out of him to the excruciating pain that erupted through his body. He wanted to sock Olaf in his bearded chin for how much louder that laugh of his became.

  “That’ll make Maud take their boots, next!” Olaf shouted between swings, jabs, and booming cackles.

  Once Adrian regained his breath, he rolled to grab his sword and forced his wobbling, stiffened legs to lift him back to the line. “That was low, even for you!” He shouted at his foes as he kicked one of the corpses to roll off the top of the barricade and trip some of those trying to advance towards them. “Pricks,” he spat.

  “If this is the only hill,” Adrian wished his voice wasn’t so high pitched, “How far away are the main lines?”

  “Far,” Olaf’s cheerfulness was cut short. “But you need to hold it. You’re the reason the northern flank hasn’t folded.” After a two-handed swing of his falchion that sent a head flying into a bounce across the sea of steel helms, “The only reason.”

  That was when the cold wind shifted, carrying ash and billowing smoke across them. With it was a tidal wave of heat. The horses began to jump upright in cries and jolts. Adrian and his men found themselves thrusting at nothing, nearly stumbling over the barricade themselves. The enemies in front of them had suddenly backed away to the resounding calls of horns.

  Adrian and Olaf tipped their ears to listen. There were two different signals being called: pull back…and reserves to assemble.

  Thraiden and the others were scrambling to regain balance, expecting a charge that would overtake them, while some rushed to their fallen who had been fighting despite their wounds.

  Adrian turned to meet Olaf’s wide, crooked toothed grin through the thick dark of the smoke and dimming light of the evening.

  “Smells like Draka remembered my recipe for roasted Olga,” Olaf beamed.

  Adrian chuckled, “So long as I don’t have to eat it. I remember his cooking.”

  “No one ever forgets his cooking,” Olaf’s guffaws were again louder than anyone would expect in such a situation.

  “Hassan,” Adrian grabbed him and pointed up the hill, “Grab every other man and prep the horses while we have cover. We’re getting off this bloody hill.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  Olaf dug a long blue ribbon from the breast of his studded armor and tied it around the haft of an arrow, still smiling at Aiden, his falchion already sheathed in his belt. “Time to signal that they sounded the call.”

  “Do it,” Adrian sheathed his own and lifted a lance with a watchful eye into the smoke that was filling with a glow around them.

  Drawing with all three strings of his recurve bow into the one arrow, Olaf arched back onto one knee and let it fly toward the bridge. The arrow flew through the smoke, causing a whirlpool in its trail, the ribbon streaming behind it in rippling flaps.

  At first, Aurie thought the cheers were screaming wounded or cries of pain, but then she saw the blue Alcalia flags on the catapult hills being waved down at her and she, too, found herself cheering at the top of her teary-eyed lungs.

  “We did it!” She grabbed Draka’s hand and jumped with her other fist to the air. “We did it!”

  Draka tightened his grip on her hand and raised the flag in the other for them to begin their retreat. She could tell that if he didn’t have his vow of silence, he would be cheering along with the rest of them.

  Zack Hemsey – Soothsayer (Instrumental) (Battlefield prep/ Aurie 1),

  Ryan Taubert – Marvel (Adrian’s Charge),

  Thomas Bergersen – Rada (Aurie 2),

  Piotr Musial – For Honor! For Tousaint! (Adrian’s Hill/Olaf’s Signal)