Tavi had heard cries like that before, and knew what they meant: The vord Queen had taken the field.

“See!” Kitai hissed, pointing. “There she goes!”

A shadowy form, hardly visible behind a windcrafted veil, burst through the thick stone wall of the barn as though it had been made from rotten wood. It shot off along the ground, visible only through the disturbance its violent windstream raised from the ground. As it passed over the hibernating vord, it screamed again, and more of the warriors began to stir.

The Aleran command sent out signals by trumpet, but not signals to re-form the ranks or to retreat. The trumpets rang out in pure, clear defiance of the sleeping swarm: attack, attack, attack.

“Go high!” Tavi snarled, and flung himself after the Queen. He dived for the ground to pick up speed and pulled himself out of the dive only seven or eight feet above the earth. He dodged around two Narashan warriors and half a dozen joyously destructive taurga before streaking out ahead of the entire host, closing distance on the fleeing, shrieking disturbance. As he went, even more warriors began to stir, and once a reaching scythe-limb came near to ripping his belly open more or less by pure providence. He batted it aside with his sword, closing to within a few yards of the Queen, and hit upon an inspiration. Concentrating intently, he reached forward with a windcrafting and closed it around the vord Queen in a bubble—a simple privacy crafting. Her voice cut off in midscream.

It took her several seconds to realize what Tavi had done to her. He thought he knew what tactic she would use next, and readied himself for it. Not two seconds later, the vord Queen suddenly shot twenty feet up, and her veil and windstream vanished altogether. She whirled, clearly visible in the predawn light, flinging open a small leather bag of fine salt.

But Tavi had anticipated the maneuver, and as the Queen shot up into the air, he did as well, dismissing his windcraftings an instant later. He sailed through the air and the cloud of fine salt on pure momentum, and didn’t call back his windstream until he was sure he was past the salt.

He and the Queen regained their windstreams at almost the same instant, and she let out a shriek of frustration—cut off midway by another privacy windcrafting. She whirled on him, naked but for a cloak, her sword in hand, her eyes glittering. Then she reversed the direction of her windstream, slowing her forward momentum.

Just as her velocity came to an instant’s standstill, there was the hiss of an arrow loosed from a bow in the darkness above Tavi. The sound gave the vord Queen more than enough time to react, and her sword rose to cut the arrow from the air. The missile splintered upon her blade.