The speed of the charge was its undoing. Muck sucked at the legs of the beasts. Flailing skirmishers hindered them, tripped them. Cavalrymen fell as their mounts collided. Mire and pestilence took them. Their rush became chaos, a tumult of floundering and hoarse cries.

In response, the priests gestured with their staffs. At once, the ranks of cavalry on the trampled slope slowed. Slewing on snow and mud, they stopped.

Nevertheless the priests could not save the beasts and men still plunging downward, carried by their own momentum. There were hundreds of them, too many to count.

“Now, Captain!” yelled the General. “Now!”

At once, gunfire blazed along the ridgecrest. Bullets slammed into the exposed men, the mired beasts. Then the riflemen raised their sights. Their fusillade marched up the opposite hillside like the front of a hailstorm.

Watching the fury of lead hit, Klamath felt a pang of alarm like an omen, the first hint of disaster. Bullets tore cavalrymen from their mounts all along the enemy’s line. Blood sprayed from their wounds. They fell and died as easily as other men, swallowed by the Slough. But the beasts—

Hells! Down in the water and mud, the animals brunted ahead, fighting the cling of mire and weeds. With or without their riders, their great strength carried them forward. Hooves driven too deep into the muck snapped legs, toppling beasts onto their sides until the waters devoured their screams. Many of them were lost. Many more were not. They seemed to shrug off bullets like raindrops, like snowflakes. They endured the Decimate of pestilence. Some of them staggered in their tracks. Rearing, they trumpeted pain. Yet they righted themselves. The staccato glare of lightning in their eyes gave them a look of madness as they surged out of the Slough and pounded upward.

In bursts, Brighten and her comrades defended the slope. Sorcery scoured the beasts until they were clad in agony.

At that moment, Crawl and his Magisters of fire struck.

A holocaust of flame charred beasts, killed men, made the waters boil. Like the lightning, it came in irregular spasms as the Magisters unleased their Decimates, paused to gather themselves, attacked again. But their fire was savage. In moments, Magister Crawl and the others had covered the whole surface of Long Slough with flame. Then they worked their way up the opposite slope. Like the incessant punch of bullets, sorcerous fire stalked the priests.

For a few heartbeats, General Klamath imagined the taste of success. Then its flavor turned to gall in his mouth.

Flames did not touch the priests. Bullets and lightning did not. Some power shielded the men in black.

Then one of them swung his staff in a throwing motion. As bright as lightning, its globe arced upward, untouched by the snow. It sailed closer. While Klamath watched, it came down into the upper trench, among the Magisters of fire and lightning.

When it struck, it exploded like a keg of gunpowder.