Chapter 106: Thunder Before the Wall

"Sister, would it be all right if I rode with one of the other soldiers?"

Lucian kept his voice even. "If something attacks us, I’m afraid your sword arm will be cramped with me sitting behind you."

Jeanne glanced over her shoulder at the greatsword strapped across her back, its hilt rising above her shoulder like a second spine. The way she fought had never been built for a passenger.

A rider with a blade that size needed room to swing, to shift her weight, to let the momentum of each cut roll cleanly into the next.

With Lucian clinging behind her, one lunging Dark Beast would be enough to throw off her balance, and on horseback, a single cut that came late could be the last mistake she ever made.

She rolled her shoulder, testing the angle of an imagined swing with and without his weight at her back, and her frown softened as the logic settled in.

There was another reason to take it seriously. The plan was not simply to race for the northern wall. Captain Ulrich’s report had made it plain that the western flank could not be ignored, and the army would be skirting it the whole way.

"Fine," she said at last. "But stay close to me, Lucian. Do not drift off. This is a battlefield, and anything can happen in a single breath."

She waved over a Phantom soldier and sent him to take Lucian up with him.

Reasonable, she thinks. If only that were the whole reason.

Riding double with his sister would have pinned him in place, unable to move freely the moment a fight began. Lucian took the soldier’s offered hand and swung up behind him, though he had no real need of the help, and as he settled he glanced back along the line.

Eleonor was on her own horse. Alone.

Arnold and Luis hovered at either side of her, wearing the expressions of men watching a toddler walk toward a staircase.

"Miss, are you absolutely sure about this?" Arnold asked. "We have never faced anything like this. Not you, not us."

"He’s right, Miss Eleonor," Luis added, his helm turning toward her. "This isn’t a dungeon, where we can sketch out an escape route over tea. On a battlefield, one small mistake is enough to kill you."

"What has gotten into the two of you?" Eleonor sniffed, chin lifting. "You were bold as lions an hour ago. Have you both turned into cowards while I wasn’t looking?"

It was a fair question, and they had an answer, though it was not one she would enjoy.

Neither of them had expected Supreme Commander Flemming to place them in the very front of the formation.

In the center of the ranks, they could have planned for the worst, kept a path of retreat open, found a gap to slip through if the battle turned. At the vanguard, there would be no gaps. The first Dark Beast to reach them would reach them quickly.

What they did not understand was that Flemming had not put her there to spend her. It was his gentle way of keeping Eleonor within arm’s reach.

Had he sent her to the middle of the formation, he would have spent the entire battle glancing over his shoulder, torn between the fate of Korven and the fate of a citizen of Rippledale.

She had told him that whatever happened to her would not be held against him. Flemming, being Flemming, did not intend to test that promise.

"Cardinal Hugo," Flemming called across the churned ground. "Come up here."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Have you got a mount yet? War horses are short this morning."

That much was true. The horses Flemming had set aside for the assault were chosen beasts, each fitted with Relics that reinforced their bodies and pushed them well beyond the speed of an ordinary charger.

Such animals were scarce enough that Arnold and Luis were already sharing one. Hugo had few options, and a cathedral inside Korven that he needed to inspect as fast as he could.

So when Eleonor waved him over, offering him a place behind her, he nodded and started toward her.

Then he watched her work the reins.

She was clearly fighting the horse for every inch of the trot, her seat too stiff, her hands too busy. This was not a rider. This was someone who had learned to ride very recently and very hopefully.

"Please don’t worry, Cardinal Hugo," Arnold said, in the tone of a man reciting a prepared statement. "Our lady only began learning this month, but she’s already as capable as any ordinary soldier."

It was not reassuring. Hugo wondered how two grown men had looked at that and decided to let her ride alone.

"Miss Eleonor, down you come," he said. "I’ll take the reins. You can ride behind me."

"Are you certain, Cardinal Hugo?"

"Quite certain. I may wear a Cardinal’s vestments now, young lady, but I did not forget how to ride. I served in the cavalry, you know."

"But Cardinal Hugo, this horse is more..."

He did not hear the rest. He had already swung into the saddle in front of her, gathered the reins, and snapped them once, sending the horse surging forward to take its place beside Flemming, Jeanne, and the leading ranks.

Ahead of them, Flemming was giving his final orders to the commanders around him, one gloved fist slamming against his breastplate for emphasis. His voice rolled across the field.

"Listen to me, all of you! Whatever happens, we ride for Korven’s fortress. If something unexpected rises in our path, you do not stop to fight it. You push through. We take the fortress first, and we build our defense from inside its walls."

It was a simple command, as the best ones were. With so many soldiers moving under a formation he had drawn himself, the plan was sturdy enough. If the Dark Beasts on the western side tried to cut across their line, the column should have the weight to smash through and still reach the city.

Still, he asked.

"Anything from the west?"

"Nothing, Supreme Commander," said the general at his side. "They are still holding their ground. No movement, no activity of any kind."

Their route would curve close to that western edge, because it was a shorter path to the north than swinging wide around the river-choked eastern ground.

Flemming did not like how quiet the west had been. A mixed horde of Dark Beasts sitting motionless for days was not a thing that happened in nature.

But the road was the road. And it was, at least, honest ground. The forest on the west side was thick, yes, but the stretch they would cross was a flat expanse of bare earth, with nowhere to hide. If anything moved toward them from the treeline, they would see it long before it arrived.

"Then we ride," he muttered. He raised his voice again. "Check your reins! Check your weapons! We move out!"

He thrust one hand into the air and pointed north.

Down the ranks, tens of thousands of eyes followed that hand, and a shiver passed through the army that no one spoke of aloud.

Hearts stuttered.

Palms went damp on leather. But the soldiers had been given something to do with their fear, and they did. They bent it into anger. Korven was their city, and the monsters inside it were trespassers.

"ADVANCE!"

Flemming’s horse leapt forward first, his cloak snapping out behind him like a banner of its own.

The sound that followed was something Lucian felt in his ribs before he heard it: tens of thousands of hooves, striking the earth in one rolling thunder, a drumbeat so large it seemed to come from the ground itself.

Dust boiled up from the churned mud and swallowed the air above the column in a long brown cloud. Under it, the banners climbed and streamed, hundreds of them, whipped taut by the wind of their own charge.

Sarnel, Versys, Pneuma, and above them all, the grinning Dire Bear of Knight Fulgur, one eye bound in cloth, clutching its lightning-wreathed spear.

Lucian tightened his grip on the soldier’s waist and looked out at it. A hundred thousand riders, as far as he could see, pouring across the plain like a tide.

-

Meanwhile, inside Korven itself, things were rapidly falling apart.

On the western stretch of the fortress wall, two figures stood apart from the chaos, looking down on the streets below.

The bells had been ringing for some time now, harsh and frantic, and beneath them rose the shouts of soldiers, the stamp of boots, and the wail of a city that had understood too late that the wall was not going to save it. People ran in every direction at once.

Carts overturned.

Children were dragged by the wrists. A woman stood in the middle of the street, shouting a name, and no one answered.

The two on the wall watched all of it without hurrying. Only one of them could be clearly seen, and he wore a coat bearing the crest of Orvis Academy.

"Are you certain Saintess Rosaria isn’t among the reinforcements coming this way, Kai?"