Where Dragons rule

  The sun sat sm half hidden on the horizon, immovable, impaled there to bleed its liquid fading light across the sky, staining it a burning, bloodied e. Its amber light smeared on the jagged knife bde mountains, gred off the river and shaking marsh water, glowed in the sails of the riverboats and behind the thousand banners. It was a twilight just dark enough for deep shadows to rule in the shade.

  And where the light failed, fire ave. Dragonfire burned in white hot streaks and siegefire rumbled in rolling stoic waves. Everywhere armor and bdes fshed the color of fme, and the smoke formed a dense pin in the sky, sister to the scorched silt below, but twisted and chaotic, a nightmare realm urained by gravity, where dragons cshed and flying magi and mounted air Padins wove lines of smoke and steam that traced their violent deeds, and which at times dropped corpses and bombs on the nd below.

  Those who flew up there saw, when unassailed, the battleground id out ile order. A pything.

  The massive pin was bordered by the hills to the west, dense ke forest to the northeast, the great river to the east, and lesser river to the southwest.

  The Forces of the Cloth, those who would see the Empire reformed, had e from the northwest, where twinkling fires whispered of their hateful march through the nds of the hillfolk, and were ned west to east, south fag, on that massive pin, their left fnk now pressed between their enemies and a dense pocket of marsh.

  The forces of Wovenleaf, those who would see her the empire return nor suffer the dull taxes and projes of soft poroxy wars of the myriad of anti-imperial republics, had e down from the nearby city of Angleis, visible from the battlefield as a mounded mas of darkness whispering with sparse torchlight, where the twi rivers met. The leafen army was arranged like a sed sail, and its rear was a curved line pressed against banks and sand bars.

  The battle was fierce, and the dying day, though having shed most of its hours over the struggle, did not diminish the violence by falling into night.

  Wovenleaf mariormed the beaches of the downstream fnks of the great river while aided by Angleisie siege maes throwing all manner of burning, crushing, smoking, and exploding ordi the Cloth’s beach defenders. On the pin, cloth Padins led crashing charges against the Leaf Lord’s infantry, and Cloth archers and balistamen rained hell from the safety of their northern marsh-ringed hills. The arrows and bolts fell in a myriad of colors tones and sounds.

  Leafen Pikemen turned maneuvers against Fyed Zealots of the Barbed band, And the main masses of infantry bled themselves into the soil at the ter, where siege carts and trenches and fallen shardtowers were the only scraps of prote against the death that fell in all kinds and from all pces.

  None of which was more feared than dragohough magi of either side repelled it in brief boiling translut domes that smeared it into molten puddles, and the Dragons threw it sparingly, being too locked in bat with each other to let their eight eyes linger on the ioids on the pin, all feared the time when their enemy’s dragons were left unopposed, free to throw fme in equal to their wrath.

  Though the dragonfire may have been the most observed spectacle, it was not the most brilliant. That honor fell, as always, to the heroics of the fighters.

  In a brief gap in the cmor, where a low grass had miraculously survived untrampled, and a single purple Lealiodded in the wind, Myrlias dismounted Sarnec with his great hammer, and raised it overhead with a wavering howl mastered by his people. But Eustus, hidden in the surrounding cloud of melee, stretched out a ringed hand and froze the on before it could deliver that fatal blow, so that the great Draugh-fed hammer head shattered against Sarnec’s rune-blue pte like gss. Another wavering howl beat back the ring of soldiers, and Myrlias gave battle with his shattered on like a spear, killing both of Sarned Eustus in rage at the destru of that on.

  Stormlord Hedwin was cut down by Sylverai Bckbde, dark assassin of the Foghold streets, and the summoorm of Dourm, thus left unopposed, poured helmet sized hail and biting corrosive rain upon the forces of the Cloth.

  Dryadame managed, while riding that moss covered purple eyed mount of hers sidesaddle, to charm the enemy dragon for a moment, causing it to torch a legion of its own calvary.

  And others too put their names in the log food though glorious deeds.

  But another more subtle struggle was unfolding to the north forest, where forces greatly needed by the Cloth to ford the mile wide river were about to enter an unspeakable obstacle.

  The great trees of the Xenshua forest have been untouched by bde for all of history. The edges of that dense region are marked by rolled boulders taller thaowers of Pleidon, pced by the as to decre the edges of agriculture. Past them, no forestry ermitted by w, and ning beyond the annual holy walks by the chosen priest, which sted only from suo su was an untamed and imperable forest. Which is why the sappers of the Cloth chose it as their passage, thinking its strength would bow to theirs, and bee their shield.

  The sun had not fallen, but was barely a glow through the smoke darkned skies, as they marched, led by nine magi of the Bestuod Sect, who sung a low t that turned everything above the soil to brittle stone. Great beasts of Donra walked in the front, trampling the fossilized trunks and growth to dust, and three cohorts of sappers marched behind, armored Shodai-Sen shieldmen at the outside, then crossbowmen and grenadiers behind them, and at the heart of the n, their priceless cargo, nine Silthian powder carts, dark wood and iron liters carried by shelled lizards and defended by the Padins of Scarlet, wielding crystalline maces and halberds.

  In their haste, they had taken no forward scouts besides a low level Hawkhand, whose bird circled high in the air, only desding below the opy to iigate a suspect clearing ue hill. They had calcuted that any forot itted to the battle on the pin or the csh at the ke would not be worth w about anyway, given their own strength.

  This assumption would be their undoing.

  They y in wait still as stone, but not unfortable. They knew how to sit still in the forest for hours and even days. Eae had about them a tented cloak reinforced with foliage from the immediate area, a defe only against the dumb eyes of humans, but also against the keener infrared eyes of Quanli, and the thermal sight ons.

  If they could have beeheir formation in waiting would have resembled a V shaped jaw of teeth, with their enemy walking towards the throat. At the tip of one of the formations incisors, halfway down the jaw, she waited.

  Double obscured, not only by her fabrit of fed foliage (in whiow ed a silver rk and a weaving moonspider, not unaware of but pletely uned with her presence), but also by her silken cloak of twilight, one of only three iire battle of ten thousand souls, and by far the fairest of the three. It drew colors from around, threw her body heat off at diffused shapes, and buffeted itself against arrows.

  At the tip of her bow, hard drawn, was an arrow of special ing. Itself camoufged, tipped with ultradiamond fed by the beaded sweat of a volon. Hard against armor, shattering like gss under flesh, mixing with blood and dissolving into a potent poison that took effect quicker than a heartbeat. It was aimed, expertly, at the visor of Khianron, head guard of the marg sappers.

  She had watched him for weeks. Stalked him as he rode out from the distant fortress of Lanyh, seen him dispatch a rebel raiding team with ease, studied how his armor ut on and removed morn and night by his squire, and been lucky enough to witness his fight with Molt-Molt, head guard of Kaldren bridge, just days before High and had sent Khianron on some uionable mission. She could have taken him as he marched through the Doldric caverns and took the backpaths to the battlefield, but she k was better to take down an enemy’s oak whes among the braha stands alone.

  So here he was, with armor like polished amethyst, atop a reptilian mount with flow eyes. His spear bde was long and shined like sleepial. Silverfish he called it. Its segmented bde would break apart into twelve razor shes that moved through the air as if suspended in their own invisible water as he fought. Impossible to predict or parry for all but the most trained fighters. She had seen the silver fingers catch a magi’s fire ball and throw it back at him.

  But, she had also see him do something else. Every time he sensed a threat, he twitched his spear and squared up ily the same way. So when Knucklebuster coughed iree line, and the Sappers halted in their march, as the bowmen and sheildmen readied arms and the singing magi shifted to verses of anti-personnel destru, Khianron shifted his shoulders, bared his chest, lowered his silver bde down and to the right, with the shaft along his back behind him, and Lindsey let the arrow fly.

  Do not adjust your reader. Manda is running as intended. ime, the forest es alive. episode, Ambush in Xenshua forest.