Mogon looked left and right from atop a huge rock, and ordered a retreat. The Long Dam bears, freed of opponents, turned left and slammed into the sharp-toothed imps that were destroying the Albin militia, and for a moment, the line was saved.

But Ash had deep pockets, and the Allies had none. Another wave came forward at Loomsack, and the whole alliance line ran.

Mogon, however, had always intended to survive their retreat. She led her warriors to the left, uphill and then down over the shoulder of Loomsack and down toward the fords. Jacks and militia and bears followed her.

The foresters fought on as the rest of the rear guard passed behind them. They had the best position, chosen by Harald Redmede and resting on the place where the little creek had high banks. Even when they retreated, the foresters had a deep swamp on one side and a boulder field behind them.

Harald Redmede was watching his foresters repel another attack, cutting down the handful of long-toothed imps who managed to scramble up the bank, but he turned and trotted to Mogon as she led her clan past him.

“The whole flank is going,” she called.

“Where’s my brother?” he asked.

She shook her head.

Harald held the stream bank as long as he could, waiting for his brother. But eventually he had to go, or lose all his people. They filed off along the edge of the deep swampy ground to his left and then turned, breaking contact with a sprint that ate their remaining energy. In a few minutes they had caught up with Mogon’s people.

But the head of Mogon’s retreat had just discovered that the fords were contested.

Off to the alliance right, Bill Redmede’s Jacks had slaughtered the hastenoch cavalry but lost the right flank. Redmede was out of options, and he chose to save the irk knights.

By the time they’d wrecked their immediate opponents, they were high on the flanks of Loomsack. Redmede found himself with Tapio, looking west. From their height, they could not see the fords, but the flow of their enemies around the mountain was obvious. His people were exhausted—if that word still had meaning—and most of them were out of shafts.

The irk knights were also done. Most of them were dismounted; some of the great elk had lain down and would never rise, tired unto death.

Together, Redmede and Tapio moved a little farther east, to a rocky outcrop that allowed them to look down into the chaos of the ford. Even as they watched, the ballistae that Ser Gavin had ordered began to search out the trolls in the water; the wardens on the west bank, easily picked out by their engorged purple crests, were beaten, and the enemy bogglins on the far bank were behaving oddly, milling in confusion just beyond the spearpoints of 1Exrech’s phalanx.

But closer in, the tide of Ash’s flank attack was endless, and the fords were all but lost.