Shoving broke out among the prisoners as Firepathers vented their anger against the old fellow for speaking, but other tribesmen, young and old, defended him. The alliance between tribes obviously was wearing thin. Ergothians moved in to quell the disturbance.

“Why didn’t the savages just run for the forest?” Hanira said, gesturing at the Great Green in the distance.

Kiya said tartly, “These ‘savages’ are no more at home in the greenwood than you are, Syndic. They’re plainsmen, riders. The people of the forest would treat them as invaders!”

As he had vowed, Tol released the captives once they’d been disarmed. Some of his horde commanders protested, but he had no intention of burdening his army with prisoners. The freed nomads scattered rapidly as the ten thousand Ergothians veered north toward the Isle of Elms. Sunset was nearly upon them, but Tol would not delay. He was certain Chief Tokasin was the true leader of the nomad invasion. Mattohoc and the other chiefs, however great their hatred of the empire, were not charismatic enough to forge their disparate tribes into a single army. Tokasin had done that.

They rode through the night. Darkness made it impossible to hold formation. By daybreak Tol’s ten hordes were strung out over four leagues.

When the sun rose, its light revealed the Isle of Elms ahead. Towering trees, on a low hill, were isolated from the primeval growth of the Great Green by a half-league of rolling field. Morning light also picked out the iron blades and helmets of the hordes under Egrin’s command. Their numbers had not been sufficient to surround the Isle. The arrival of Tol’s hordes would remedy that situation.

The trumpeters sounded assembly. Tol needed to bring his straggling hordes together, and quickly. Egrin’s men were engaged. If Tokasin was smart as well as fierce, this would be no more than a rear guard, a small force left to hold off Egrin’s hordes while Tokasin and the main body slipped away.

At Hanira’s suggestion, Tol sent her Free Company on a wide sweep around the Isle of Elms, to prevent such an escape. The Tarsans, on fresher mounts than the hard-riding Ergothians, could move fast. Captain Anovenax vowed that not a single nomad would get through, then his disciplined company galloped away.

Valderra begged the syndic for permission to go with them. This request obviously surprised Hanira. Her herald was no soldier.

“I can fight,” the young woman insisted. She drew the slim saber from her gilded scabbard. “Let me go, mistress. I will do you honor!”

The syndic hesitated, then gave her leave to go. Valderra twisted her horse’s head around, and Hanira added, “But mind you come back, Val! It’s very hard to get good heralds these days!”

Smiling under her heavy helmet, Valderra galloped after her comrades.

“Your herald shows a warrior’s pride,” Kiya commented.

Hanira sighed. “She and Tindyll hope to wed. She doesn’t want to be parted from him, even in battle.”

Half the morning had gone before Tol’s scattered force had regrouped into fighting formation. Nerves and the day’s heat conspired to drench them all in sweat by the time he gave the order to advance.

Ranks of horsemen trotted through the trampled, brown grass. Any sounds of the fighting ahead were lost in the thunder of their own horses’ hooves. Veteran of many battles, Tol felt the old tightness in his throat, the hot tension forming in the pit of his stomach. Battle was never routine. It remained a hard, bloody business to which no sane person ever grew accustomed.

At his command, horns blared from the leading hordes. Answering blasts came from Egrin’s men. Arrows were flying, and riders surged back and forth along the edge of the elm grove. Some nomads had taken up positions among a tangle of windfall trees.

A messenger rode up and saluted.

“Lord Egrin requests Lord Tolandruth lead his men into the gap between the Isle of Elms and the Great Green, to cut off any escape attempt by the enemy,” he panted. This was the very route Anovenax’s Tarsans had taken.

“Tell Lord Egrin we will deploy as he suggests,” Tol replied. He added a warning about the Tarsans’ presence. It wouldn’t do for Egrin’s men to attack their new allies.

Horns blared commands right and left. The Ergothians drew their sabers, resting the dull edge against their ironclad shoulders. Surveying the lofty elms, Tol regretted sending Tylocost and the Juramona Militia on to Caergoth. Riders would never be able to get at the nomads hidden among the lofty trees, but the militia might.

Denser clouds of dust rose in front of them. Captain Anovenax’s force was already engaged. It wouldn’t do to let hired Tarsans have all the glory.

“Forward, at the canter!” Tol ordered.

He glanced once at Hanira. She was keeping pace, with Fenj a few steps ahead of her. He carried an oversized shield to defend her, if need be. It was astonishing that anyone as rich and powerful as a syndic of Tarsis would risk her life in someone else’s battle, but Hanira was no ordinary woman. Even so, Tol knew she wasn’t motivated by loyalty or love. She expected to profit from her deeds in some way.

The Free Company, a streak of brass amidst the gray and brown mass of nomads, was fighting furiously against a far larger band of plainsmen. Tol ordered the pace increased to a gallop, and with a roar his Ergothians charged forward. They were echeloned to the right to cut off any attempt by the nomads to reach the Great Green.

The last few paces before the clash, all sounds seemed to still. There was only the drum beat in Tol’s head, the sound of his own heart. Although loud, it was steady, not racing. He held Number Six high, point out. He might have been bellowing, but at that moment he could hear nothing.

– and then he collided with a nomad, horse to horse, blade to blade. His opponent wielded a captured Ergothian saber, and they traded several cuts until Tol shifted around and brought his saber down hard on the nomad’s wrist. Steel hissed through the man’s buckskins, and beyond. His hand, still gripping its stolen sword, fell and was lost amid the churning horses.

Tol slashed at the next nearest foe, a plainsman with a straight sword and leather-covered buckler. The nomad attacked, his point scoring a bloody line along Tol’s jaw, before Tol drove Number Six through the man’s small shield and into his chest. The fellow slid off his horse, eyes wide in astonishment.

The weight of Tol’s hordes washed over the enemy like high tide over a lonely rock. Pinched between the Tarsans and the Ergothians, the nomads were pushed back, half their number driven toward the Isle of Elms and the other half to the distant Great Green. Still they did not break, for these were Tokasin’s Firepath warriors, considered by all to be the fiercest fighters among the nomadic plainsmen. Their buckskin shirts bore a design, worked in red beads, of a stylized thunderbolt. Red beads likewise decorated their long hair, in imitation of their chief’s fiery hair.

The melee separated Hanira and Fenj from Tol, but Kiya remained by him, protecting his back. She took a hard knock from the hilt of a nomad sword and reeled in the saddle, blood welling in her mouth. Dazed, she found herself staring up at the summer sky. It was filled with towering clouds, sculpted white shapes against the hazy blue. As she grappled with her reins and fought to stay atop her tough plains pony, she was amazed to see the clouds changing shape. The white columns flowed into definite forms: separate individuals standing shoulder to shoulder and gazing down onto the battlefield with cloud-white eyes. The image was so clear Kiya froze, head thrown back, staring up.

The clang of blade meeting blade in front of her face shocked her out of her stupor. Tol had leaned over and fended off an attack by a black-bearded nomad.

“Kiya!” Tol roared. “Kiya, are you hurt?”