Niko, the only allied magister who had not been directly in Ash’s path, threw a ripple of simple energy strikes down the mountain against the relatively defenceless wardens and bogglins still pressing east toward the ford. Their own casters rose to the challenge, shielding many, but again, the precision of Niko’s involvement allowed his castings to penetrate shields and then expand, a single strand of hermetical ops exploding into hundreds of deadly filaments.

“I must keep the rest for shields,” he said.

The irk knights whose mounts were able to move leapt down the hill; the charge was pitiful compared to the might of their earlier attacks, but the creatures of the Wild at the foot of the mountain were rudderless, demoralized, and had just had windrows of death carved through their ranks, leaving only desperate islands of safety around their shamans. Hukas Helli alone held his people together in a great shield wall, but Tapio left them on his shield side and carved his way through easier prey, and his tired knights simply widened the road made by Master Niko and his choir of magisters, and the survivors of the allied right wing pushed tired muscle to the limit, running north, away from the river and the road, and following Tapio.

Niko and his choir were almost last, covered by Bill Redmede and a dozen Jacks, their bows useless, all their arrows spent, their swords and axes in their hands, but the sounds of fighting had died away. The sun was high; in the east, bells would be ringing the hour for ten. The bogglins were as exhausted as the Jacks; the enemy wardens stood in ranks, their crests deflated, and watched the last survivors of the allied rear guard pass through their lines with weary indifference. Nor did Niko unlimber the mighty working he had ready to his mind; once cast, he would have no further ability to shield them, but he was determined to sell himself dearly.

No challenge was offered, and the Battle of the Cohocton ended, not in glory, but in a stillness broken only by the shrill despair of the wounded and the fatigue of the survivors; a stillness deepened by the silence of the dead.

Then Bill Redmede had to drive his people as if he were master and they slaves; Tapio’s knights all dismounted and led their poor, stumbling beasts; Niko was as pale as a corpse and Kwoqwethogan walked like an animal, his tongue hanging listlessly from his mouth. Niko tried to talk to him, feeling guilt, and shame, that he had so overtaxed an ally. He was worried, very worried, that the great warden mage’s mind was damaged.

Bill Redmede made himself run to Tapio’s side. “How far do we go?” he asked.

Tapio looked at his knights, walking through the daylight woods leading their great antlered elk. “Until one of the animalsss fallsss,” he said.

“Holy Trinity,” Redmede blasphemed. “What if I fall first?”