Stay firm, he told himself, continuing to ride and call out the order to hold. It was important that they hear his voice. That boy is the Dragon Reborn. He’ll keep his promises.

“My Lord!” a voice called. Ituralde’s guard split to let a young boy ride up, panting. “My Lord, it’s Lieutenant Lidrin!”

“He’s fallen?” Ituralde demanded.

“No, my Lord. He’s…” The boy looked over his shoulder. In the pike line nearby, the soldiers were bulging forward toward the Trolloc wave, rather than falling back.

“What in the Light?” Ituralde said, heeling Dawnweave into motion. The white gelding galloped forward, Ituralde’s guard and the young messenger joining him in a thunder of hooves.

He could hear Lidrin’s yells despite the roar of the battlefield. The young Domani officer was out in front of the pike lines, attacking the Trollocs with sword and shield, bellowing. Lidrin’s men had pushed through to defend him, leaving the pikemen confused and disoriented.

“Lidrin, you fool.” Ituralde reined his horse to a halt.

“Come!” Lidrin bellowed, raising his sword up before the Trollocs. He laughed loudly, voice half-mad, face splattered with blood. “Come! I will face you all! My sword thirsts!”

“Lidrin!” Ituralde screamed. “Lidrin!”

The man glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were wide with a crazed kind of glee. Ituralde had seen it before, in the eyes of soldiers who fought too long, too hard. “We’re going to die, Rodel,” Lidrin called. “This way, I get to take them with me! One or two at least! Join me!”

“Lidrin, get back here and—”

The man ignored him, turning back and pressing forward.

“Get his men back here,” Ituralde yelled, gesturing. “Close the pike ranks! Quickly. We can’t…”

The Trollocs surged forward. Lidrin fell in a spray of blood, laughing. His men were too strongly pressed, and they split down the middle. The pikemen reset themselves, but a fist of Trollocs crashed into them. Some Trollocs fell.

Most didn’t.

The nearby creatures screeched and howled at seeing the hole in the defenses. They came, scrambling over bodies at the base of the hill, throwing themselves at the pikemen.

Ituralde cursed, then pushed Dawnweave forward. In war, as in farming, you sometimes had to step in and get knee-deep in the muck. He bellowed as he crashed into the Trollocs. His guard rode in around him, closing the gap. The air became a crashing tempest of metal on metal and grunts of pain.

Dawnweave snorted and danced as Ituralde lashed out with his sword. The warhorse disliked being so close to the Shadowspawn, but he was well trained, a gift from one of Bashere’s men. He had claimed that a general on the Borderlands needed an animal who had fought Trollocs before. Ituralde blessed that soldier now.

The fighting was brutal. The leading rank of pikemen, and those behind, began buckling. Ituralde briefly heard Ankaer’s voice taking command, screaming at the men to get back into line. He sounded frantic. That was bad.

Ituralde swung, doing Heron on the Stump—a horseback sword form—and taking a bull-headed Trolloc across the throat. A spray of fetid brownish blood spurted forth, and the creature fell back against a boar-headed monster. A large red standard—depicting a goat’s skull with a fire burning behind it—rose atop the hill. The symbol of the Ghob’hlin Band.