That tore it. Against a sleeping enemy, they’d had a chance. But if the enemy was waking, and if, as Fidelias dreaded, the Queen had summoned reinforcements, they could be in for it. He was willing to die, if it was necessary to save Alera—but as far as his experience had taught him, a living, fighting solider was almost always more valuable to his Realm than a dead one.

The Aleran infantry had been tasked to take the steadholt. He would simply have to expedite matters. They couldn’t have fitted a fraction of the forces there into the steadholt, but at least it would provide a solid object against which the other forces in the field could put their backs—if it could be taken quickly enough.

Fidelias signaled for the Prime Cohort to move, sending them in after the first two, along with a pair of Knights Terra and Ferrous attached to the unit, with orders to support the Battlecrows and secure the steadholt with all due speed. Then he turned to the Canim.

“Master Marok,” he said. “There are significant enemy forces inbound. We need to secure the steadholt immediately. Are you willing to help?”

Marok flicked his ears in the affirmative and began loping calmly toward the steadholt. Fidelias and the command group followed him. Fidelias unlimbered the Canim balest from its holder upon his saddle, more a gesture of habit than of any real intent. He was unused to ordering things done at this level rather than doing them himself.

The interior of the steadholt was chaos. Vord rushed and darted everywhere, wax spiders and warriors alike, boiling out of windows and doorway, skittering across rooftops, rushing along the walls. The Battlecrows had formed into two separate squares with iron-hard discipline, defending themselves from attackers and moving, step by step, closer to what was obviously their objective—the mouth of the large stone barn. A furycrafted ramp sloped down into the earth below its flooring. It was often an area used for cool storage on a steadholt. The barn’s interior was shadowed, but a steady green glow emerged from two holes in the barn’s flooring.

The cohort from the Legion of ex-slaves hadn’t done as well as the veteran Battlecrows. Through whatever fortunes of war, they had not been able to lock into a defensive formation when swarmed by the vord. Half of them were dead, or isolated in odd corners of the steadholts, desperate rings of half a dozen men fighting a remorseless enemy. The other half had managed a defensive square, but it was a ragged one—the mantises were steadily picking it apart.

“Master Marok!” Fidelias called. He pointed at the rapidly disintegrating formation of the Free Aleran. Sensing weakness, the vord were attacking more ferociously and in greater numbers. “If you please!”