Raucus flung his sword’s point down as he closed on the exact center of the Icemen’s position atop the wall, and called fire from the burning blade, sending out a white-hot column of flame that charred flesh to ash and blackened bone in a circle fifteen feet across. At the last second, he called upon his wind furies to slow him, landed hard upon the unyielding stone of the wall—now cleared of the treacherous ice.

Raucus called strength up from the earth, shattered two hurled clubs with sweeps of his burning blade, swept a wave of fire over a hundred of the foe between himself and the southern side of the wall, then began grimly hacking his way northward. The Icemen were no fools. They knew that even the mightiest furycrafter could be felled if enough spears and arrows and clubs were thrown at him—and Raucus knew it, too.

But before the shocked Icemen could coordinate their attacks, the High Lord of Antillus was among them with his deadly sword, giving them no chance to overwhelm his defenses with a storm of missiles—and no Iceman alive, no dozen of the savages, was the match for the skill of Antillus Raucus with steel in his hand.

The Icemen fought with savage ferocity, each of them possessed of far more strength than a man—but not more than an enraged High Lord, drawing power from the stones of the land itself. Twice, Icemen managed to seize Raucus with their huge, leathery hands. He broke their necks with the use of one hand and flung the corpses through several ranks of the enemy around him, knocking down dozens at a time.

“Third Antillan!” Raucus bellowed, all the while. “To me! Antillus, to me! Antillus, for Alera!”

“Antillus for Alera!” came the thunder of his legionares’ reply, and his soldiers began to reverse the tide and drive the foe from the walls. The veteran legionares , bellowing their war cry, fought their way to the side of their lord, hammering through the enemy who had been close to overwhelming them moments before.

The enemy resistance melted abruptly, vanishing like sand washed away by a tide, and Raucus sensed the change in pressure. The Third Aleran’s Knights Ferrous cut their way to his side and fell in on his flanks, and after that, it was only a matter of dispatching the animals who remained on the wall.

“Shields!” Raucus barked, mounting up on a crenel, where he could overlook the Icemen’s snow ramp below. A pair of legionares immediately came to his side, covering all three of them with their broad shields. Spears, arrows, and thrown clubs hammered against the Aleran steel.