Count Zac didn’t need direction or orders. He could feel the vacuum in front of him, and he moved his command more rapidly, and Comnena linked on him, and they began to pass the main line.

Edmund’s gonnes fell farther and farther behind as the casa accelerated away. And began to turn like a door on the hinge of the Nordikaans, swinging inward.

Two thousand paces to the left, Simone raised his visor just in time to see the five hundred-fold forked purple lightning strike the center. But like Count Zac, he could feel the absence of the enemy, and he pushed his knights to mount; their stumbling advance became much more fluid; and the Venikan light horse suddenly had Sauce at their head and they were outpacing him, spreading through the thorny brakes and probing out to the left of the road.

The third pulse of purple-white burst on the center. It was followed by a massive surge of bogglins, or whatever they were; they had long spears and they came in dense clumps. This time, it was all coordinated, and on the flanks of the central phalanx there appeared two massive blocks of Grecklins (Snot coined the term for them between one shaft and the next) who had crossbows.

The company archers shot them away.

The lightning didn’t even scorch the ground.

The company went forward. The Saint Catherine streamed in the breeze; and by it, a sable banner with three lacs d’amours and the red banner, a massive golden lion on scarlet silk.

Gabriel was under the red banner now. He’d raised his new passive shield over the center of the center; it seemed to him the only contribution he could make.

“How are we doing?” Michael asked. “To me, it looks like we’re winning.”

“We’re winning so handily that I’m saving myself for the real fight,” Gabriel said. He looked to the right; where he could see Robin Carter and Gadgee and Scrant all drawing their bows together, and beyond them, a hundred men and women he knew by name; thousands; there was Oak Pew, calling orders, and there, far off on the plain, the brilliant sun shone on the red coats of the Vardariotes as they turned inward and there was Zac, and the Scholae drew their sabers and they shone like the spears of the phalanx of angels in heaven.

The magisters cantered up.

The phalanx of enemy spear-creatures was melting under the shafts of the company, but they stood, stolid, stubborn, waiting. Their unshielded crossbowmen were gone; already lying in long rows in the volcanic dirt, like sea wrack washed up after a storm.

Edmund’s gonnes appeared, and with the surviving Nordikaans covering them, they ran forward, the heavy bronze tubes bouncing up and down as forty strong men and women hauled them by ropes, another dozen carrying the trails of the long carriages.