Many of the Legionnaires have truly fallen, and given to the earth they remain. Spud-Bar quietly gathered and converted as many small groups as the span of one night allowed, and those groups absorbed others before the dawn, but their numbers only totaled slightly more than a third of the Savage ranks belonging to the Skrain. Their battle would be pantomime, pretending to hack and maul each other to death, and a grand show they did stage for the Skrain. The rest of the Legionnaires knew nothing of Evie’s plan, and there was no sparing them from it, or Evie’s Savages from their weapons.

What’s left, however, is more than enough to do what Savages are conscripted and trained by the whip to do; rise like chaos itself in the ranks of the enemy and scatter them to the winds before the real strike closes its fist.

Sirach draws her sword. “The Sparrow General!” she calls down the line, and every Sicclunan on horseback and on foot surges forward.

The B’ors warriors act as vanguard, rushing ahead of the Sicclunan infantry and Special Selection soldiers, though Sirach’s forces are right on their tribal companions’ heels. They fall on the exposed Skrain still forming ranks.

Evie and Sirach, joined by several dozen reinforcements, rush past that skirmish to aid the Savages fighting in the heavy midst of Skrain. They begin slashing their way through soldier after soldier, doing their best to alleviate the pressure on the Savages risking the most by attacking from within the Skrain’s own closed ranks, giving the surviving Savages a chance to regroup. Those ranks are soon thinned out and displaced across the battlefield, the Skrain’s march all but obliterated. They find themselves being attacked from all sides, the chaotic shock of the situation disintegrating the unity that make the Skrain such an effective force on the field, reducing them to fighting soldier-to-soldier.

Evie meets a Skrain sword with her own, quickly enveloping its blade in hers and crushing her body against the soldier’s breastplate. With their swords trapped between them, Evie unsheathes her dagger and rams it under the soldier’s raised right arm. As the soldier reels from the puncture wound, Evie steps back, pulling her blade free and thrusting it through the Skrain’s throat. Retracting the blade just as quickly, Evie lowers her head against the spray of blood that stains her hair to the roots. By the time she’s raised her chin the soldier has fallen to their knees, clawing at their neck as they collapse to one side.

The moment Evie turns from the fallen foe, what feels like a tree trunk smashes into her blade, nearly knocking the sword from her hands, and Evie off her feet. She quickly regains her balance and chokes against the sword’s handle, raising the blade defensively only to watch as the thick end of Laython’s blackwood mace snaps the blade cleanly in two.