Behind them, hidden from the vord by a wall of illumination, Amara could see the ranks of cavalry waiting for direction, for the battle captains of their Legions to decide where they could best be used. Rangy, long-legged coursers from the plains of Placida stood beside the hulking, heavily muscled chargers of Rhodes, who in turn stood next to the shaggy, hardy little northern horses that were barely taller than ponies.

Aquitaine was not content to rest behind the massive fortifications built around the city. The invaders had driven Aleran forces from one defensive position after another, and he had been strongly against Gaius Sextus’s defensive strategy from the beginning. Supported by the experienced Legions of the north, he was determined to carry the battle to the enemy.

The Aleran forces were in motion, moving forward.

From high above, Amara could sometimes see entire cohorts of Knights Aeris, black spots of shadow, far below, sharply outlined against the lighted columns of Legions on the ground. There were fewer than there should have been relative to the forces on the move. The Knights Aeris of Alera had taken hideous casualties in the battle to defend Alera Imperia. Their sacrifice had been one of the factors to help convince the enemy to commit the lion’s share of its forces to the final assault on the city itself—an assault that had resulted in annihilation for the attacking vord.

Gaius Sextus’s final, suicidal gambit had bought Alera the time the Realm needed to recover and prepare for this battle, but the cost had been grievous—and Amara feared that their comparative weakness in the skies would leave the Legions with a deadly weak point in their order of battle.

The leading edge of the vord tide rushed to within a quarter mile of the front ranks of the advancing Legions, and a flare of scarlet-and-blue light leapt skyward from the Crown Legion, Aquitaine’s signal to commence. Alera’s Knights and Citizens, after months of preparation and fear, after enduring more than a year of humiliation and pain inflicted by the invaders, were ready, at last, to give them an appropriate reply.

Even though she’d heard of the general theory behind the opening salvo of furycraft, Amara had never seen anything quite like it. She had witnessed the utter destruction of the city of Kalare by the wrath of the great fury Kalus, and it had been a horrible, hideous sight, vast beyond imagining, uncontrolled, horrible in its beauty—and completely impersonal. What happened to the leading wave of vord was every bit as terrible and even more frightening.

The lords of Alera spoke in a voice of fire.