I went to bed around ten in the morning, got up four hours later, and went right back to work. Reports from flicker-birds had been collated for me, and one of the young glamor artists in the palace had volunteered to maintain a live-updated map of the region around Lyraniorn. The spread of destruction from the city was already horrific: the dead army was slaughtering everything it encountered, adding dead animals to its numbers and leaving ruined towns in its wake. The blood mage had to be with their army still.

They were coming towards us, just like we'd known they would. Heading dead for the Antlered Palace, the magical heart of Stag Court. Destroy the Antlered Palace, and Stag Court would fall. Between us and the dead army was Dain and the First Army, with the other armies closing in around it, like a pack of wolves closing in around a herd of deer. The thought made a sharp, angry smile cross my face.

How is a wolf supposed to lead the stags? By sharing his heart with his people, becoming more like a stag as they become more like wolves.

Throughout the day, we adjusted our civilian response, comparing intelligence with the First Army and making sure that the civilians in the way of the inexorable advance of the dead army were ready to be evacuated when our armies reached them. Palaces and manors, schools and civil buildings became emergency housing for people. When the army had to engage with the dead to defend the fleeing civilians, their injured were treated in ballrooms and throne rooms.

To my awe and pleasure, Stag Court responded of their own accord. Once I'd managed to drive home that, yes, this was happening, and it was serious, the nobility had buckled down. But around them, everyone else buckled down, too. Reports trickled in: of civilians destroying bridges behind them to slow the enemy, of foresters back-burning before starting blazes that ate into the dead army, of people opening their homes and coffers to house total strangers, human and fae alike. Stag Court rallied against their common enemy, with all of the great-heartedness and willing sacrifice that people are capable of.

The army met the dead and started retreating in front of them, destroying what they could with fire and physical traps. When the terrain cooperated, they blew up mountainsides and buried dead things under stone. They saturated fields of crops with oil and lit them with fire-arrows as the dead army passed over it. And like the foresters, the army left forest fires in their wake, sacrificing the natural landscape to save people.

A forest would return in a century or two. Mountains rise and fall over the course of millions of years, but eventually even those shattered rock faces would be smooth again. The fae? If something didn't end their lives, they could look forward to billions of years.