Screams of alarm sounded from the rear, cries for help and reinforcement. It was only when the mages fired a salvo of arcane attacks that she ascended, but not before taking ten men with her and dropping them from hundreds of feet up. The archers fired thousands of arrows, but they just bounced off her like pebbles. She shrank to a dot before the overcast sky, then circled above us like a patient vulture. So beautiful she was, so beautiful when she was in pain. When I smiled back, I was sure I looked the same. The light infantry took five steps inward, and closed around the orc rear. Whatever the new field marshal was planning, Shordian was going against it. The hills that had seemed small when I entered the valley now appeared to tower over me, the bowl of the valley floor seemed an abyss of sulfuric haze from which only demons could emerge, and the grey sky seemed so high, and I was but an insignificant dot below it all.
