The avalanche of sound as the two lines met was indescribable, and even Alberich winced. Screaming, shouting, the clash of weapon on weapon; there was nothing as dreadful as the sound of army meeting army. Some of the Tedrel fighters ran right up on the spears like maddened boars, screeching as they died; the rest hacked at the shafts with heavy broadswords and axes, shouting furiously, while more pikemen came up from the rear to take the place of those who’d lost their weapons.

A rain of Tedrel arrows fell on the pikemen and the archers behind them, but the pikemen had good armor and helms meant to defend against arrows, and the archers were under their shields. And the moment the hail of arrows stopped, the archers popped out from under cover and let fly a volley of their own. This volley fell on the Tedrel archers, who were lightly armored and not as fast as their Valdemaran counterparts. This time, the hail of arrows took a higher toll; more screaming, and louder now.

Men of both sides fell and died, or fell wounded, crying out in agony. The innocent little rill that marked the Border went from muddy to bloody.

Though Sendar watched it all, it would be up to the Lord Marshal to issue orders. Wise man, was Sendar; he knew he was no more than a fraction of the strategist under actual battle conditions that his underlings were. The Lord Marshal had faced these troops in his own person for the past three years, while Sendar had only gotten his reports. The Lord Marshal had the direct experience of the battlefield that the King did not, and Sendar knew it.

And at the moment, as the sun climbed into the sky and then reached its zenith, the Lord Marshal was looking for something, peering down at the battlefield with a frown on his heavily-bearded face.

“The cavalry,” Alberich heard him saying, as if he was thinking aloud. “Where are their cavalry?”

And in the same moment, he turned to his Herald, and there was urgency in his voice. Alberich felt both relief that the Lord Marshal had noted the same thing he had, and a heart-sinking moment of dread. “Mindspeak the flanks,” the Lord Marshal ordered, “and ask the ones with the birds. Find out if the cavalry is behind their lines, still, or if they’re trying to get us in a pincer.”

Alberich strained to hear the answer, which came within the instant. “No and no, my Lord,” the Herald replied. “There is no sign of mounted troops of any sort.”

Now Sendar turned his head to fix the Lord Marshal with a look of surprise. “Then where are they?” he demanded. “Surely they haven’t put all of their mounted troops afoot!”