The captain smiled. “I should,” he agreed. “But I won’t.” He flipped his visor down and crouched slightly, as he always did when he fought. “Come on, you bastards,” he shouted through his visor.

Twenty lances heard him, and moved forward.

The Fairy Knight ordered Bescanon’s charge, and it had the smallest effect. At first.

Bescanon trotted his thirty lances over the crest and looked down on the maelstrom. He looked left, where the Faery Knight, outlined in lurid green sorcery, sat a rearing stag like a horned centaur. His knights—the survivors of the dragon’s breath—and all his people were locked in death grips with the very centre of the enemy line—a huge behemoth, tentacled hastenoch, too many imps and wolves and a wing storm of barghasts.

Bescanon pointed his wedge at the side of a swamp creature, couched his lance as if in the lists, and slapped down his visor.

“Charge,” he called.

Sauce saw the company banner and the charge. Bescanon—she knew his coat armour—vanished into the titanic melee to the west of the armoured brigans. She kept moving, trying to reach the banner—the Saint Catherine—and she prayed as she walked. She had the oddest position—a spectator in the midst of an enormous battle. Both sides seemed to have spent their reserves. Even Morgon Mortirmir merely glowed with protective energy. No more missiles rained from his fingertips.

In the time it took to power a tired, armoured leg over a log, it began to change.

Bescanon’s small force killed two hastenoch, gored by lances in their unarmoured flanks until they fell—and the war horses pounded the imps to red meat, although a few fell in turn.

Then, suddenly, something gave—and the Faery Knight shot out of the melee and into the churned and boggy grounds behind it. He turned his great stag, red to the fetlocks, and began to harry the behemoth. And then the edges of the melee began to collapse, and men—who had been fighting savagely, hand to hand—came out of the trees to the left, with painted Outwallers amongst them, shrieking war cries.

Arrows began to strike the behemoth, even in the pouring sheets of rain. And almost, the great monster might have been a victim—something from the art on the rocks at the edge of the inner sea, or perhaps some cave all in the south. Ringed by irks and men, it took blow after blow, and trumpeted its rage and sorrow—to die alone, far from kin, to be tormented by these tiny predators, to fall for so little gained—

Its tragic trumpet-call pierced the rain and sounded for every creature that died in the mud that day.