Giraldi saluted and stomped off to dispatch a messenger as the battle upon the bluffs resumed, with the screams and howls and cries of the Marat, their beasts, and their foes echoing down into the Valley.

“It would be nice to be able to see what’s happening up there,” Ehren said.

“Probably why they did it at night,” Calderon replied. “Show up with a much larger force and try to hammer through before anyone realizes there are a whole lot more of them this time.” He shook his head. “Did it ever once occur to whoever is in charge over there that they aren’t the only ones who can furycraft a decent trail up onto the bluffs?”

Ehren turned with the Count in time to see three bright white signal-fire arrows launched into the air over each bluff. There was a brief pause, then the sounding of horns somewhere out on the plains.

And then there was a low, rumbling thunder.

As Ehren listened, it began to grow closer—and much, much louder. He hurried to fumble a farseeing into existence between his hands, to let him look out east onto the plains beyond Garrison. And there he saw, surging toward the west, an enormous mass.

Horses.

Thousands and thousands of horses, and pale barbarians armed with spear and axe and bow and sword riding upon their backs.

“Hashat would have killed me if I hadn’t let her in on the fun,” Calderon confided. “And it was something of a challenge to work out a battle plan that included a reasonable use of cavalry in a bloody wall battle.”

The horses split into two columns, flowing around Garrison like a river, then surged up what sounded like plank-lined earthworks leading onto the bluffs on either side of the city. Moments later, Marat cavalry horns caroled brazenly through the dark, and the sounds of thundering hooves and fighting continued on the heights. For a few moments, there was nothing but noise and confusion, but then the trumpets started calling more excitedly and from farther west upon the bluffs—the Marat were again driving the enemy back.

Bernard nodded once in satisfaction, and said, “My Valley.”

And then a low, throbbing bellow rolled through the air and made the soles of Ehren’s feet vibrate. A second one, from vaguely the other direction, rose and slowly fell again as the first call died away.

“Bloody crows,” Bernard snarled. “Signal Knights Aeris,” he called to Giraldi. “I need lights on those bluffs!”

It took only a few moments for the orders to be relayed and the Knights Aeris and Citizens to overfly the bluffs, dropping spherical firecraftings in clusters of blazing light. Count Calderon stood watching as they fell, and the light illuminated the vast, shadowy mass of vordbulks, one of them upon each section of high ground, so heavily surrounded with vordknights that they resembled animated carcasses surrounded by buzzing flies.