Bernard scratched at his chin, then leaned his forearms on a merlon, casually crossed, like a man gossiping over a stone fence. The pose was intentional, Amara knew. The men around him were looking at him for indications of his state of mind every so often, and he showed them a mask of calm, almost casual confidence. “Three, four months after the Elinarch, I reckon. But I didn’t look at them again until he wrote about his idea to use the fire-spheres as ammunition for the mules. So I had Giraldi build one and test it and...” He spread his hands demonstratively.

“I know you said they’d be effective, but...” Amara shook her head. “I had no idea.”

“I know,” Bernard said.

“This... this is going to change everything.”

“Hope so,” he said fervently. “Means there’s something left standing to change.”

Amara looked steadily at him for a moment while his eyes shifted back to the battlefield. He knew. She could see it in his face. He knew what the mules represented. Not in and of themselves, of course, but as a symbol for the collective strength of the freemen of Alera—strength that could now be given deadly expression, if need be, now that someone had shown them the way.

The battle raged. Gargants fitted with huge baskets shambled up and down the walls, carrying more stones to the legionares. Legionares with spears began to fend off the vord as they came within reach of the longer weapons. Occasionally, a Knight Ignus would melt a corpse-ramp into a bubbling pool of slagged, stinking chitin, or a Knight Terra would simply cause it to sink into the soft earth. But they were holding. By the great furies, they were holding.

Another flight of fire-spheres went whispering overhead to bring down raging fire on the heads of the mantis warriors, when there was a sudden tremor in the ground, and a distant sound, a roar that rose up like some great beast voicing a warning.

Amara turned her face to the north and looked at the enormous, bleak grey mountain that loomed there, like some unimaginably huge bastion positioned to hold the Legions’ flanks. As she watched, she saw clouds of dust billowing forth from the mountain. An entire face of the mountain’s slope had apparently given way, causing a rockslide so enormous that it beggared the imagination.

The roll of the land kept her from seeing any details, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened. The vord had circled around the end of the second wall, probably hoping to come at the Legions from the rear, or even to proceed toward the civilians back near Garrison. Instead, they had discovered what anyone who lived in the Calderon Valley knew from the time they were old enough to understand speech—that the mountain’s name was Garados, and that it did not tolerate visitors.