Chapter 752: An Army’s Reach

Leon didn’t step left.

He folded space toward a bare shelf beyond the volley’s far edge. The arrows came down across the ground he had just left, burying their heads where his next several strides would have taken him. The river volley slammed into the dead ground on his left and blew it apart in a fountain of mud and stone. If he’d gone there, it would have caught him mid-step.

He came out of the fold in open ground with arrows and mud raining down behind him, and he laughed.

Oh, that’s very good.

In the early days, he’d have gone left. He’d have trusted the dead ground because any sensible fighter would. And he’d have learned about the river casters the hard way.

Now he’d felt the river volley being aimed before it left the redoubt. He’d felt where it was going and simply not gone there.

He ran.

The redoubt was closest. He went for it in a straight line, low and fast, and the archers on the ridge tracked him and fired again. This time he didn’t fold. He brought up a wall of wind behind him at a slant, and the arrows struck it and slid off sideways into the river.

The redoubt’s front rank locked shields as he came. Leon hit them with his shoulder and a burst of his old strength, and four of them went backward over the wall. The fifth stabbed at him with a spear. He took it in his left hand, broke it, and put the broken end through the man’s guard.

A local officer shouted, and a line of casters behind the shields raised their hands together. Leon cut them down before they finished. One, two, three, a sweep of fire along the parapet. None of them had been worth more than a single stroke.

He was on the wall of the redoubt in eleven seconds. He’d counted.

Then the reserve arrived.

It came out of the covered trench in a solid block, shields up. Behind it, from the ridge, came a fresh volley of arrows into the ground between him and the reserve, to keep him from moving to meet it. The reserve reached the redoubt’s back gate and poured through. In the space of three breaths, the wall he had just cleared was full of soldiers again.

Leon fell back a dozen paces and looked at what had just happened.

The ridge had screened their approach while the island’s surviving casters delayed him. He’d cleared a wall, and the commander had filled it again before he could secure the rest.

How many times can you do that?

He tried the ridge next, from an angle, to see what they’d do.

They did it again. The moment he started up the slope, the redoubt’s casters shifted their volley to the foot of the ridge, behind him, to cut off his retreat. The reserve swung back the other way, along its trench, toward the bastion. And somewhere at the far end of the valley, the banner on its pole dipped twice.

The rhythm of the arrows changed.

They’d been coming in steady waves, every four breaths. Now they came in a stutter, two quick, a pause, then three together. He’d started timing his advance between the waves, and the new rhythm caught him exactly in the middle of a stride. He had to throw up another wall of wind in a hurry, and two arrows clipped him on the way past.

So you’re watching me.

Leon pulled back out of range and sat down on a rock to think, which he suspected was not how most people conducted assaults.

Not a single soldier he’d met could stand against him for more than a breath. Yet every opening drew fresh men and covering fire. Leon kept looking at the trench between the forts, where the reserve had begun moving back toward the river.

He grinned to himself.

Fine. Then I’ll change the ground.

The river was the key. He saw that once he looked.

The redoubt’s casters drew their water from the river itself, and the trench the reserve ran along followed the river’s northern bank. Everything on the valley floor depended on that water. It fed the casters, gave the reserve cover, and kept the ground muddy so nothing could move fast across it.

Leon walked down to the bank, out of the ridge’s sightline, and put his hand in the river.

Freezing a river was well within his old abilities. This time he let his native circulation help sustain the working, changing its contribution as he added earth to brace the growing ice. He watched for the hesitation that had once accompanied those adjustments. The flow continued cleanly.

The river froze from his hand outward.

It went white in a long line that ran up the valley toward the redoubt. As it went, he pulled the ice upward into a wall, thick and rough and twice the height of a man, all along the northern bank. It cut off the ridge’s view of the river and the trench.

He drove his own energy through the intake channels beneath the redoubt. Its casters could melt ice; wresting those channels from him took longer. Their next volley sputtered.

Halfway along the trench, the reserve halted below the wall. Its officers could no longer see the ridge’s signal flags, and the archers above had lost sight of the ground they needed to cover. A runner scrambled up the bank to get new orders.

Leon moved before he reached the top.

Leon went over the ice wall at a run.

He hit the reserve in its own trench, from the side, while it was still deciding where to go. It was a hundred soldiers in a narrow ditch with no room to turn. He came down the length of it like a storm, and when he came out of the far end, there was no reserve anymore.

Then he went to the redoubt, and this time nothing came to help it.

[Strongpoint secured: The River Redoubt]

The bastion on the ridge took longer. It had height, and it had the best archers in the valley. But without the redoubt, nobody could cut off the foot of the ridge, and without the reserve, nobody could replace its losses. He went up the slope through a storm of arrows behind a slanting shield of wind and stone. Its casters switched to shorter, scattered volleys, trying to catch him around his shield. He kept climbing and broke their line before they could establish another rhythm.

[Strongpoint secured: The Ridge Bastion]

The gatehouse was the strongest of the three. It also knew it was alone. Its soldiers fought well and died anyway. Leon took the gate with fire and the towers with lightning, and when the last tower fell, he stood on the top of the keep in the wind and looked down at the rise behind it.

[Strongpoint secured: The Gatehouse]

[Mandatory objectives complete]

[Basic clear available. You may exit now.]

He stood there and breathed. He was warm and loose and pleasantly tired, the way he felt after a long hard ride.

I could leave.

On the rise behind the keep, the Marshal of the Valley Host was gathering what was left of his army.

There were still several hundred of them. They came off the far slopes and out of the rear lines and formed up around the banner in a single block, shields locked at the front, casters in a ring behind, spears all round. As they settled into place, Leon felt something change in the air.

The pressure of the formation was greater than the sum of the soldiers in it. Much greater. And it was all flowing toward one point, at the center, where a tall figure in gray armor stood under the banner.

The Marshal on his own was weaker than Leon. Leon could tell that at once. But the Marshal with his army behind him was something else.

He’s seen how I took the forts. Let’s see what he learned.

Before entering, he had decided to stop if the basic clear left his circulation strained or his movement impaired. Neither had happened. He still had ample strength to spend, and now he knew what the harder reward required.

[Optional objective available: Defeat the Marshal of the Valley Host]

[Accept?]

Leon jumped down off the keep.

“Yes,” he said.