Down in the vale of the Cohocton, the first Ser Gavin knew of approaching disaster was that Ser Gregario’s knights were all dismounting on the south side. He was just wishing that he had a reserve under his hand when the first stone troll appeared downstream.

Gavin saw it all in a single beat of his heart. He didn’t need to watch more to know that Gregario was fighting for his life against a rising tide of wardens on the south side. Nor to guess that the trolls were intended to cut his rear guard off from the ford.

“Tamsin!” he roared. He could not wait to see if she would come. He had no reserve but his own household knights, but he led them against the trolls at once. Despite the uneven footing of the rocks around the ford, he got his lance from his squire, got it in the rest, and put it dead center in the stone face of a huge cave troll, and the thing went down even as his lance splintered.

But the trolls outnumbered his knights, and the ford was terrible for horses, although not much better for stone trolls; men and horses went down in the water, and so did monsters; slippery stone feet on slippery rock. But the charge of the knights was blunted, and with every beat of Gavin’s heart, there was another horse down.

Just east of the ford, 1Exrech inhaled the scents on the wind and knew his enemy was close.

A thousand hardened bogglin warriors rose. They were tired, but they were the spear bogglins; they were the alliessss. Ten days of watching their kindred die had not changed their minds; for bogglins, inhaling the revealed false scent of the enemy revealed his evil even to the simplest bogglin mind.

1Exrech formed his people very close, as was his wont; close so that he could protect them with his sorcery, and close because their wall of spear points made them far more dangerous to man and monster alike.

“Come,” he exhaled.

But 1Exrech had another tool, another weapon; subtle and weak. Under his vestigial wingcases, he set himself to exude the true scent of command; of nobility of intent, of nests defended and wrongs set to right.

He loosed a perfume called Justice.

Bill Redmede’s Jacks couldn’t hold the front and flank at the same time; their charge saved the irk knights, but left the Albin militia naked.

The enemy bogglins were flooding forward, and with them were irks and wardens and thousands of imps, fixing the line of the Allies. They shot and shot; the foresters ran out of arrows and stood with their swords and bucklers against the tide, and then, step by step, they began to retreat up the ridge, bleeding men who, when they fell, were stripped and eaten.

The Morean mountaineers pelted the horde with rocks and then charged through the great wardens with their axes, clearing the front of Mogon’s clan and giving them a moment to breathe.