It took them only a few moments, working together—and then in half a dozen places just behind the frontmost ranks of the vord, great whirling columns of ash and soot and scorched earth writhed up from the ground. The cyclones roared, howling out a ground-scorching wail of hunger, and began to rush rampantly through the vord ranks, seizing the creatures like ants and tossing them hundreds of feet through the air—when they didn’t drive tiny bits of detritus through their carapaces like so many diminutive arrowheads, or simply rend them limb from limb on the spot. Each cyclone was shepherded by its own team of windcrafters, each of which kept its own massive, deadly vortex from turning back upon Aleran lines. Windmanes, glowing white forms, like skeletal human torsos trailing a shroud of smoke and mist where their legs should have been, began to glide out of the cyclones and swept down to attack anything within their reach upon the earth.

Amara shook her head. She’d been trapped without shelter in a furystorm that had called up windmanes once before—and the deadly, wild wind furies had nearly torn her to pieces. Gaius Attis was creating hundreds more of the creatures with the cyclones he was harnessing, and they would haunt the region for decades, if not centuries to come, posing a threat to holders, cattle, wildlife—

Amara forced herself to abandon that line of thought. In this respect, at least, she thought Aquitaine was quite right—if the vord weren’t stopped, here, now, there wouldn’t be any holders. Or cattle. Or wildlife.

We aren’t just fighting for ourselves, she thought. We’re fighting for everything that lives and grows in our world. If we do not throw down the vord, nothing of what we know will remain. We will simply cease to be—and no one will be left to remember us.

Except, she supposed, for the vord.

Amara clenched her hands hard and restrained herself from calling upon Cirrus and flinging her own skills into the battle being fought below.

“Countess?” called Veradis in a shaking voice.

Amara looked around until she spotted the younger woman, hovering several yards farther south and slightly lower than Amara was. She altered her windstream until she had maneuvered into position beside the Ceresian Citizen. “What is it?”

Veradis pointed wordlessly at the causeway leading up from the southwest.

Amara frowned and focused Cirrus upon the task of bringing the road into clearer visibility. At first, in the dim light of the weak moon, she could see nothing. But then flickers of light farther down the road drew her attention, and she found herself staring at...