Emeric was a Knight. That much was true. He had won his title as a youth, felling his way through the tide of soldiers trying to reach his lord. He was proud of his title, proud of the deeds he had accomplished, satisfied that he had done right by the grand concept of Knighthood.

  But he was not an arrogant man. He was a Knight, yes, but a Knight was a man atop a horse.

  And without that horse, he would have been nothing.

  Galnt's hooves thudded against the dirt, digging deeply of the soft Tulian soil. His sides swelled with each breath, pressing outward against the links of his scaled armor, lifting a hundred pounds of metal with each inhale, rattling its scales with each exhale. Steamy smoke burst from his nostrils each time, clouding the muggy jungle air with a cloud that fell to his knees, and all the while he continued on, carrying Emeric into battle with each inexorable footstep.

  It was times like this that Emeric grew almost intoxicated. The feeling of a strong steed beneath him, of a nce resting under his arm. If not for the limits of his body, he did not think he would ever leave the saddle. Given the choice, he would gdly roam the world atop Galnt's back, running down what foes he chose, skirting easily past those who hid at his passing. He was a Knight, and Galnt his partner. Two adherents to an ancient bond, the twin faces of a single coin.

  But intoxicating though it was, Emeric couldn't let himself lose his wider perspective. The enemy was ahead of them still, the long column of their army snaking around a thicket of trees, the bend of which carried the leading half of their element just beyond his sight. His scouts had told him this particur stretch of the sporadic Tulian jungle was a long, thin one, fed by seven miles or so of meandering river stream, never growing wider than a half mile. For the st several hours the Champion had hugged its line, using the impassible forest to protect her leftmost fnk, putting those deadly "firearms" of hers to the right, to ward off any approach from his cavalry.

  The Champion was a woman difficult to categorize, Emeric had found. In her manner of speech and her political maneuverings she was aggressive to a fault, perhaps recklessly so. Perhaps she was not mad, but she was furious. This was undeniable, and obvious to even the most casual observation.

  But this fury had not shown in her strategies of battle. In his pursuit of her he had found a very different woman from the reports, one of shrewd calcution, a general who carefully tended what advantages she could seize. It had been six hours, and not once had any of his bluff charges provoked the ill-advised counter-charge he had hoped to encounter. Many a cool-headed commander had been provoked to shing out by lesser trials, but not her.

  She was the Champion of Amarat after all, he supposed. It was to be expected that she would see through his bluffs, his lies.

  And so it would be a straightforward battle, one cking in subterfuge. His warriors were the superior of any in her army– save, perhaps, herself and her immediate companions– and they both knew it. Should the battle come to a direct confrontation, even dismounted, his eight hundred Knights could inflict an irrecoverable blow to her fledgling military.

  Thus, the dance. The hours of approach and retreat, of teasing and prodding, letting the sun slip the sky by. Emeric was growing tired of it, as were his troops. Though not all formally considered Knights themselves, they were cavalry, and they were not meant for this half-battle, this inconclusive sidestepping. Several times now he had approached close enough to receive the rattling crack of firearms, to hear the lead balls whip and hiss through the air beside his head, and each time he had dutifully pulled away, not wishing to risk the King's resources in a charge less than ideal. The Knights were the backbone of the military, of the Kingdom's pride and defense, and having been so entrusted with such a resource, there could be no greater dishonor than for Emeric to unnecessarily savage them against a prepared enemy.

  But there was dishonor in cowardice, too, and in failing to duly meet the enemy on the field of battle. As he watched the mighty column of heavy infantry take its turn around the bent fork of the jungle, he made his choice.

  He gave an order to the man riding beside him, who dropped behind to rey it. Even before the message reached him, they began preparations. His troops were experienced, and saw the same opportunity that he did. As the infantry came around that corner, they would be thinned out, the army separated into two. It was a brief moment, one that would pass by in mere minutes, and there wasn't time for a complex meeting. His troops would follow their commanders, and the commanders would follow Emeric.

  Though he hadn't done a thing, Galnt knew him too well to remain still. He began to pull at the reins, yearning to break into a sprint. Only a calming hand on his neck and a firm press on the stirrups kept the horse under control, kept his bunched muscles from exploding into motion.

  "Not yet," he whispered to Galnt, leaning forward, "But soon. Soon."

  He leaned back up with a cnking pat against Galnt's armor, sparing a gnce to check the formation, though it was more a matter of procedure than need. It was fwless, as always. There was not a soldier among their number with less than a decade in the saddle.

  Gently, ever so slowly, so as not to encourage the eager animal, Emeric tapped his heels against Galnt's sides.

  The horse leapt forward, breaking away from the front of the line for a brief moment, before the others could react. They quickly gave their own steeds their lead, letting them catch up to Galnt, and the line reformed, Emeric at its head.

  It was a beautiful, complicated thing, the cavalry charge. It required an utmost dedication to coordination, for every animal to trust their rider and every soldier to trust their fellows. Though legend and lore would have the commoners believe otherwise, cavalry were not invincible. Even with all their armor, all their training, they could no more surmount a solid wall than they could take to the skies. To break the enemy required from the riders an unerring dedication, bravery beyond belief, and a stalwart refusal to accept any other eventuality. If they offered anything less, their steeds would sense it, balking at the st moment, the charge ruined.

  Steadily, the formation's walk became a trot, pace rising. He took a grim satisfaction in the ripple which ran through the enemy, the startled reaction as they shifted weapons from shoulder to hand, halting their march. Though the forest protected their left fnk, the curve of it broke their formation in half, and those that could see the charge were isoted.

  He heard the Champion's spell change, the music she emanated pounding louder. She knew it too, then. This was no bluff. This would be the real thing.

  Emeric felt his heart soar, felt Galnt's breath begin to heave, even though they had barely begun. The animal was as eager as he, and he couldn't fault the beast for it. Should the charge break the enemy, it would be a fine, fine moment, the restoration of the honor lost by their earlier failure to breach the castle walls.

  Emeric leaned right, steering Galnt around the fnk of the enemy, the block of cavalry curving along behind him. They would attack at the peak of the jungle's protrusion, at the center of the enemy column, then split into two, sweeping down their scattered lines with nce and bde.

  From within the block of the enemy line there was a sudden burst of smoke, followed an instant ter by three others. Emeric heard the monstrous shriek of iron rip through the air a few seconds ter, a warbling hiss unlike anything else. It rose in pitch as it shot towards him, reaching a fever pitch as the ball crested overhead, then fell away in tone until stopping with a sudden thump, blowing a chunk from the earth some few hundred yards behind them.

  Three more projectiles followed in simir fashion, two of which nded among their number, coating some of the cavalry's armor with thick clods of half-dried mud as the recoiled off into the distant sky.

  Emeric and the others paid it no mind; the firearms were not new, their effects now known. Ever since that first failed assault, he had drilled his cavalry in a new formation, lighter and more spread-out. After so many years spent endeavoring to achieve the tightest possible charge, to have the luxury of many horse-lengths between them made things ughably easy to coordinate.

  At five hundred yards, a second volley of smoke emerged from the center of the line, and at this distance, Emeric could briefly recognize the bck figure of the Champion directing the cannons, just before she was enveloped in smoke. He respected her for this. She remained at the point of impact, the weakest part of her line, and did not flee to the safety of the fnks. Goddess of Diplomats though her patron may be, she was a General. There was no longer any denying that.

  Without his orders, Galnt increased his pace. Emeric did not censor him for this, for all the others around him were doing simirly. A trot became a run, the rumble of hoofbeats rising to a rolling thunder, tens of thousands of pounds of beast, men, and steel driving across the open field. The untamed wilds of Tulian were dotted by shrubs and grasses high enough to reach the horse's necks, but in the wake of their charge, all was gone, trampled ft.

  Emeric braced himself as Galnt continued to accelerate, entering a full sprint, such that he now had to stand in the stirrups, lest he be thrown free. In his right hand he adjusted his grip upon his nce, checking that it was settled well into the crook of his arm.

  At three hundred yards, he and eight hundred others reached forward to slide ptes of metal forward across their steed's heads. A thick sb of steel now covered Galnt's eyes, blinding him, but protecting him from the lead balls of the enemy firearms. Every animal trained for Knighthood was familiar with sprinting in such a state, blindly trusting the commands of their riders. It had never been necessary before, to protect even their eyes from enemy blows, but when facing such a volume of fire, he'd ordered the troops to do so.

  Even consumed by darkness, Galnt continued his charge, throwing his head from side to side with an excited whinny. It was not what a normal horse would do, when it knew it was charging into battle. Normal horses did not become the steeds of Knights.

  At two hundred yards, when Emeric could see the bronze contraptions in full relief, the Champion standing between them, he grew confused. The smaller firearms had not opened fire yet, when they should have long ago. In fact, he couldn't even see them among the enemy troops, only the more familiar halberds, which rushed in to protect the rger weapons.

  It was too te to consider the matter further.

  At the st possible moment, the entire formation of cavalry colpsed in on itself, hundreds of riders steering their steeds with an expertise born of untold hours of practice. The loose brick of cavalry became a concentrated wedge, so tight that animals bumped and jostled with one another, dense enough that one could have walked from saddle to saddle without having to so much as stretch their legs. Emeric lowered his nce, couching it against his breastpte, and so too did the entire front row of cavalry beside him, until hundreds of steel tips were aligned with an equal number of enemy halberds.

  Once more, in the final moments before battle was joined, he was struck by the discipline of the enemy. To see a thousand-pound beast bearing down at your, nostrils fring, lungs heaving, nce glittering in the sunlight, and to stand your ground? It was an incredible thing. For a brief few seconds, he was filled with respect for those Tulian peasants.

  Impact.

  Sparks flew in violent sprays as halberds met breastpte, an all-consuming crash rippling up the nce to Emeric's arm. He felt strikes nd upon his legs, his waist, his chest, several more skating along his arms, but he ignored them all, his head and nce kept lowered.

  All around him was the sound of battle, metal against metal, horses and men screaming. The air itself seemed to grow hot beneath his armor, his blood rising to a roaring crescendo as Galnt's momentum finally began to fall away. He dropped his nce, trusting its enchantments to return it to his saddle, and seized his long-handled mace, with which he finally began ying about himself with over-headed blows, trading form for speed, striking as many as he could reach as often as he could swing.

  When the red left his vision, he was awash in a sea of humanity. Hundreds of men and women were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder around Galnt, though their humanity was difficult to discern under their universal armor. This was the second thing that had struck Emeric now. How he had never fought against a force so well equipped, so uniform in their appearance. Even the most elite of Sporaton forces, the mercenary men-at-arms who wore armor of simir quantity and caliber, at least personalized it. They spshed their chestptes with garish paints or adorned their helmets with little bobbles, icons of individuality that broke the outline of the greater whole.

  Not here. Not in Tulian. Here was an army of one being, one purpose. This was not a lifestyle for these people, nor was it a point of pride. Their armor and weapons were nothing more than cold, passionless instruments, meant to protect and kill without any further purpose.

  But they could not protect them from him. Every swing of his mace was met with the tear of splitting steel, every thundering step of Galnt's hooves crushing whatever y before them. He was a Knight in the charge, and he would not be denied.

  With all the power and inevitability of a boulder grinding down a hill, his formation began to split. With only the jungle ahead of them, they slowly pulled away from the hole they had made in the enemy lines, half of them turning left, the other right, and then they began to move again, no longer charging, but riding steadily forward, crushing the enemies before them underfoot.

  For a brief moment in the chaos, Emeric was in the center of his cavalry, without an opponent to strike at, and he took this opportunity turn away from the enemy and lift his visor, taking deep gulps of air that suddenly seemed cool and fresh.

  A small, brief luxury. He looked out to the beautiful green fields, hazy from the dust of his cavalry's passing.

  Then he smmed the visor shut, turned back around, and began to search.

  The Champion was nowhere to be seen, but he found the bronze contraptions in an instant. They had been pulled back into a path cut in the forest for them, wooden wheels clogged with mud, sinking into the thick soil.

  He had only a moment to register this fact, that the enemy had somehow prepared for his impromptu assault, and then he found himself back on the front line, halberds lunging forward, many trying to hook his limbs and drag him from Galnt's saddle.

  He resumed swinging.

  By virtue of chance and battle's chaos, he shortly found himself in the group heading to the right, working his way through the portion of enemy troops which had already passed around the forest's bend. They were not taken unawares, not fully, but they also hadn't had the time to form the deep lines necessary to stop him. Rather, individual squads had formed squares wherever they happened to have stood, weapons bristling in every direction as their sergeants called for them to hold steady. Aided by the Champion's thumping music, they did so, staring squarely down at Emeric as his cavalry continued to roll up their army's fnk, bloodying any who stood in their path.

  As his mace smmed down into yet another helmet, coming away wet with blood, his mind roared with questions. How had the Champion prepared a slot for the bronze weapons to retreat to? Where were the smaller firearms? Smoke still lingered from the bronze weapon's earlier shots, but that was all. There should have been more.

  Paranoid though he was, he was not fool enough to retreat simply because a situation seemed too good to be true. He continued to crunch and press his way through the melee, Galnt following his commands nearly before he gave them. If the Champion was preparing some trap, he would at least inflict all the damage he could before it was sprung.

  As these thoughts finished passing through his mind, Emeric was briefly distracted by a strange sight. He had just emerged with the rest of his cavalry from one of the now-vacant halberdier squares when he saw it. A small iron... something, falling from above. For a moment he thought it was a tossed helmet, some halberdier mad enough to throw his armor itself in a rage, but he quickly recognized it as just a simple sphere of metal.

  He had just long enough to note sparks coming from one end of the iron sphere, where a string was disappearing out of sight.

  With a hideous crack shrapnel hissed through the air, embedding itself into the nearest horses, the unfortunate beasts rearing up on their hind legs in shock and agony. Almost immediately afterwards a second sphere fell, then another, and another, and Emeric followed their path in shock.

  Up in the trees, holding canvas bags and firearms as they dangled from low-hanging branches, were enemy troops. Some had firearms put to their shoulders, others fistfuls of the metal spheres. Both were in the midst of a furious barrage.

  The long-awaited sulfur smoke began filling the air with pops and cracks, punctuated by fewer but far rger detonations of the iron spheres which were being scattered amongst his cavalry's feet. He felt several shots bounce off of his left side without effect, his armor holding strong, but he had seen the effect of the spheres for himself, and knew that he could not withstand such a thing.

  "Charge!" Emeric roared, digging his heels deeply into Galnt's sides. "Charge! To the enemy!"

  Breaking into an open sprint was unconscionably dangerous in such tight confines, risking the cavalry dissolving in a tangle of broken horses as they tripped over one another, but he had no choice. The enemy had begun their assault the moment they'd broken free of their allies, and so, ironically, the only refuge from the barrage would be in entering the melee yet again.

  A testament to their discipline, his cavalry responded instantly, joining him in a headlong charge towards the next enemy square. Without nces to blunt the enemy's defenses the attack was far more dangerous, but they had no choice. Emeric once more felt bdes thump and scrape against him as he embedded himself and the others amongst the enemy, far more numerous this time.

  As he'd hoped, the fusilde slowed, the enemy firearms unwilling to hit their comrades. Emeric wished to pause, to take stock of his situation, but couldn't afford the luxury. The halberdiers were fighting like devils, trying to rip him from his saddle and drag him into oblivion, something he could not allow. Some of his riders had already been successfully pulled from their horses, the straps that held them in pce severed by chance or good aim, and Emeric started to check his mace's swings for fear of hitting a friend. Instead he reached out with an open hand and snagged the wooden hafts of the polearms, snapping them in two with a clench of his fist.

  Forming an accurate account of time in battle was a near impossibility, but Emeric thought it was only a matter of a minute or two before the enemy broke. Their numbers were being rapidly thinned by his troops, the screams of their wounded shrill and terrifying to a sympathetic ear, and as more and more voices joined the unholy choir, it became too much. Even as their sergeant roared at them to hold, the halberdiers broke, the rear ranks turning to run before they were engaged, the engaged ranks throwing down their weapons and covering their heads with their hands as they scurried away.

  Emeric felt the reflexive spring of satisfaction rise up in him at the sight, the heady joy of an enemy beaten, but for once he tamped it down, rather than exulting.

  "Again!" He cried. "Again, charge!"

  Though growing exhausted by the brutal pace of their bor, the cavalry heeded his call. As the shattered enemy melted away from them, their blows were slowly repced by the rain of leaden shot rippling out of the trees. He had never anticipated such a thing; no one could fire a longbow from a tree, nor load a great crossbow, and so his armored cavalry should have been invulnerable to any such skirmisher's tactics.

  As they met the next line of halberdiers and the shots once again faded away, his thoughts turned not to the thrill of contest, but self-recrimination. He had known the enemy possessed firearms. Graf of the Night's Eye had even shown them their form, shown him their versatility and ease of use. He had known, even, that the Champion possessed explosive spheres for their greater bronze weapons.

  And yet he hadn't anticipated what they could do with them. Only what they had already done. The Champion, though her forces were inarguably inferior, had perused his pns as easily as one might a book, and, forewarned with this knowledge, adapted her tactics in preemptive reply. He had trained and braced the cavalry for the volleys of her lines, expined the terrific thumps that they could expect from her powder-armed troops, and yet he hadn't seen.

  And now men and women who had trusted him were falling. As they broke through the third halberdier block into the open field, it was with a noticeably smaller contingent following them. Not a great loss, not yet, but noticeable. They were suffering casualties at a rate once thought impossible, and unlike the wars of Emeric's youth, there would be no ransom offered, no parole given. Those that survived their wounds would be imprisoned or executed, their lives hung on the fickle whims of a peasant jury.

  There would be no second opportunity, Emeric suddenly sensed. If he retreated now, he would not risk another charge of this nature. Every time he had done so, it had been met with some new otherworldly monstrosity. With his forces weakened and reinforcements a day or more away, he would not be able to conscience provoking the wrath of some newer, even more terrible weapon.

  Some would consider that cause to halt the assault, to wheel away and reconsider. Not Emeric. No matter how many casualties he took, this battle had taught him at least one thing about the Champion:

  This would be the weakest he ever saw her again.

  "Onward!" He cried, dropping both of Galnt's reins, sliding the protective facepte away so the animal could steer himself. "Onward!" He cried again. "To victory or ignominy! To honor or to the death! Onward!"

  No longer restrained by Emeric's steady hand, Galnt exploded forward. Twenty years had Emeric spent in the saddle with Galnt, twenty years had they honed their Skills. He first left his escort behind by virtue of surprise, the riders stirring their own steeds to motion, but it was a hopeless thing. Galnt's hoofbeats fell to a new, unmatchable rhythm, first with ten feet between each fall of his hooves, then twenty, until the wind was whistling through the slits of his visor and he felt the air tug at his arm as he raised his mace high, signaling for all to know where he was, who he was. The next block of halberdiers stumbled in their stances, the whites of their eyes growing massive behind their helmets as they realized just what was bearing down on them. Those directly before him threw down their weapons, dove to the side–

  –but not fast enough.

  Galnt's raised knee tore through the first soldier's chest, flicked through the next, and nded in a crushing blow upon the third. Emeric dropped his mace low, felt it bounce off one, two, three, four heads, each pulverized by the impact, and when Galnt had reduced himself to a speed slow enough that Emeric could open his eyes without the wind's sting, he too joined the fight.

  This was no longer a battle. It was not a product of war, or of tactics, or even of reason. It was one Knight, both halves, testing themselves to their utmost.

  He leaned in the saddle to reach a fleeing woman, and the dig of his knees prompted Galnt into a circle within the enemy formation, right at is very core. His cavalry were still a hundred yards behind him, charging onward, but for now Emeric was alone, and he exulted in it. They tore a ring through the middle of the enemy, crushing the fallen to bloody pulp underfoot, adding to their numbers with each kick of Galnt's legs and each swing of his bloodied mace. That the enemy continued to press in, continued to try and pull him from the saddle, it was no longer bravery– it was madness, pure madness. It infuriated Emeric, disgusted him. Nothing but a Champion and her hexed words could compel peasants to such suicidal ends, nothing else could inspire such idiotic loyalty. Anything else Emeric had ever faced would have fled long ago, the battle ended, the sughter over. A Champion of Rights, bah! She was a siren, leading these poor fools to their doom, all while professing her love and care for them. If she really thought herself such an angel of progress, where was her proof? In the blood of those she led astray? In the culling of those who knew no better? In–

  A snap. Emeric felt leather give.

  He was falling.

  The ground rushed up at him in the same instant his hand rushed down, just barely preventing his neck from being broken. He tucked into a roll, crying out, "Run!" to Galnt before he even finished standing.

  The horse, thank every god, obeyed. He flicked only one ear back to Emeric, thinking of disobeying, then fled. The screams of those he trampled echoed in Emeric's pounding skull.

  He found his feet in a sea of humanity, standing over the peasants, so much shorter than he. Those behind him shuffled to reform their lines, bracing for the impact of his onrushing cavalry, while the rest of them circled him, tense, anxiety written pin on their faces. He wondered only briefly why they were not attacking before he saw her.

  The Champion. A bck monolith towering over her troops. At least a head taller than any human present, Emeric included. Her armor was an unyielding ste of bcksteel, tinged orange at the edges where strange magic had sealed it to the rest of her armor. Most, at least, was not bcksteel, because he could see the streaks of flecking paint where the armor had refuted blows against it. She held her greatsword in one hand, its tip resting amongst the bdes of grass, and the faceless sb of ft metal that was her helmet turned its gaze upon him.

  "Surrender."

  "No."

  "Fine."

  Lightning leapt from the bde with a heavenly brilliance, consuming all of Emeric's vision. He almost felt his armor fighting it off, the energies of enchantment and spellcraft snapping at each other like like rabid dogs. It was more powerful than the st time he had suffered her spell, he realized, though it hadn't yet been half a month. Such was the nature of Champions. Ever progressing, ever moving onward.

  But it was still not enough.

  The world blurred back into focus a second ter, the scent of ozone and ash intermixed as he took a steadying breath. The ground around Emeric was reduced to bck charcoal, even the dirt burnt to a crisp. Through the spots in his vision, he thought he saw the Champion's shoulders fall in disappointment.

  Not eager to fight me, are you? Emeric thought with a grin. Falling from his horse had nearly been a disaster, but not any longer. Now it was an opportunity.

  "Evie?" She called.

  Emeric whirled.

  Behind him stood the former heir to house Eliah, the name she once bore erased from all reality. Adorning the razor tip of her rapier was a thin strap of leather, pinned in pce with the exacting precision of an insect prepared for dispy.

  The woman took a step forward.

  Emeric took a step back.

  He looked over her, towards his cavalry. They had sheared away, to his great surprise. This block of halberdiers had been reinforced by the survivors of the others and those that had waited behind, swelling to an insurmountable size. They would break in, of course, but they would need to retreat, to reform, take the time to prepare a proper charge.

  His eyes fell back down to the feline, to her glittering grin. He had heard much of the woman, both before and after her fall from grace. At first he had known her as a fledgling Lady, the lone heir to a family whose fortune supposedly might outstrip the King. In some circles, a political beacon, a weak link in the titan that was Lady Eliah, perhaps open to influence and favor.

  Then the trial, and her ciming as a sve. A fitting mercy, he had thought, appropriately thematic to be offered by the Champion of Amarat. He had been gd to hear it, and hoped her soul would find absolution in servitude. But as the months progressed, and word of the Champion changed, his thoughts had trailed away from the former Eliah, consumed by rumors of the growing threat. It was not until the war had been unched and battle nearly met that Emeric had thought of her again, and only when the King had called a meeting to prepare for the siege, Graf of the Night's Eye presiding.

  The mercenary's advice on the Irregurs of the Tulian army had been simple. The commoners, disregard. The Champion, overwhelm. Though powerful, she was not a force in and of herself, and could be beaten, while those she'd trained hadn't the experience or equipment of Sporatos. The mercenary leader had been returning to his seat when someone had asked him of the former Lady Eliah, wondering what to do if she were encountered in battle.

  Graf had looked at the man, a single eyebrow raised.

  "Run," he had said.

  And now Emeric faced the woman himself, for the second time. Before, atop the walls of Castle Midwich, she had been in a ruby robe, hiding the bck leather of her subtle armor. Now, she wore a bnk cuirassier's pte, nothing but undyed cloth protecting all the rest. Also adorning her hips were a number of tools hung off her belt, from potions to six rather odd looking leather pouches arranged across her hips. A far more practical ensemble than her prior appearance. On both occasions, however, her grin had been the same.

  Eager.

  Emeric didn't know exactly why Graf had advised them to run upon contact with Evie, and he hadn't put much thought to it. Either it was because of lingering affection Graf had for the woman, or because he respected her skill with a bde. It was immaterial. If the former were true, it meant that killing her would earn the personal ire of Graf Urs, a torment none had ever suffered for very long, and if the tter, the advice was more straightforward.

  Run.

  Emeric broke into a sprint, feinting right, dodging left. The feline barely reacted, watching as he went, until she suddenly darted in a most peculiar fashion, sliding across the grasses to remain a half-dozen strides directly before him.

  Emeric skidded to a stop, dropping his mace, seizing his warhammer and shield from his back.

  She raised her bde, grinning, teeth bared.