The trumpeter looked nervously out at the field and licked his lips.

Bernard took a deep breath, then drove the heel of his boot down onto the stone, shattering it.

A pulse of cold wind seemed to flow out from the broken stone, raising dust and smearing fresh blood into new streaks. Seconds after it did, one of the merlons, the large blocks of stone atop battlements, suddenly quivered and groaned, its form twisting into a new shape. What looked like a Phrygian sled dog seemed to come shuddering out of the block of stone as if digging its way from a snowbank.

It promptly turned, lunged forward, and crushed a vord warrior against the opposite merlon, splattering the mantis to shards of broken chitin and smears of green-brown blood.

All along the walls, the canine gargoyles came to life and began smashing into the vord with implacable ferocity—and once all of them were free of the merlons, the stone beneath that recently vacated place began to quiver and heave, and more gargoyles began to emerge.

“Sound retreat!” Bernard ordered.

The trumpet began sounding the signal, and the Legions moved back instantly, as if Bernard’s voice had carried to each and every one of them. Amara joined her husband and the rest of the command staff as they turned to abandon the walls, while all around them more and more canine gargoyles tore their way free of the stone that made the wall and began killing vord with what looked like ferocious glee, their upcurved stone tails wagging.

The mules and their teams were already on the move, and as Amara reached the Valley floor again, she noticed—the ground was growing soft even on this side of the wall. Riva stayed where he was, gasping, both hands on the ground.

Amara rushed to Riva’s side, and said, “Your Grace! We’ve got to go!”

“In a minute!” he panted. “Ground on this side of the wall is all loose earth. Watering it will slow them down even more.”

“Your Grace,” Amara said, “we do not have a minute.” She turned to the engineers and snapped, “You men heard the signal. Retreat.”

Exhausted, only a few of them had enough energy to salute, but they all groaned to their feet to begin shambling away from both the steadily shrinking wall and the steadily growing numbers of gargoyles.

Amara looked wildly around her. Everything was flashing colored lights and screams and confusion. Here and there, vord broke through the living wall of angry gargoyles. Knights Terra and Ferrous would close in on each of them, slowing their progress to give the tired legionares more time to retreat. Men dragged the wounded toward safety. Horses screamed in panic. Vordbulks continued their vast, deep bellowing while the mantises shrieked and screamed fit to pierce Amara’s eardrums.

She couldn’t see Bernard and the command group.

“My lord!” she screamed. “We must go! Now!”