Stone and arrow rained down upon the squad, thick as a literal hail.

  But the beastfolk barrage was no threat to Nietian Royal Army discipline.

  “Shields up!” Volusia called.

  His soldiers, the men he had trained through engagement after engagement, moved as one. As if the squad was a tortoise, there was suddenly a hard protective exterior raised in all directions. Even the newer men knew the drill by now.

  The miners were not so quick on the uptake. Armed with the same spears and shields as the squad, they took an extra second to realize what the plan was and to react accordingly. It was still a quick reaction time—probably the product of the Blessing of the War God, in Tybalt’s view—but the delay came with a cost.

  A dozen or more stones and arrows made it past their defenses before they could raise them. Most of them struck harmlessly against half-lifted shields or padded clothing.

  But one man took a stone to the temple and fell to the ground instantly. Another suffered an arrow to the chest. He staggered around, bumping the other men in a panic, plucking at the shaft ineffectually until he stumbled into the space between two huts, fell, and inadvertently thrust the arrow all the way through his body and out the back. He stopped moving after that.

  Well, that’s two down. Thirty-something, forty-something, to go…

  No one had helped either man as they fell, and the miners paid no attention to them now that they were down. Their focus was entirely on defense.

  To their credit, the miners held steady once their shields were raised. Tybalt suspected the squad could do this for a long time, even including these semi-volunteered members. As a second volley of stones and arrows flew, he wondered if the beastfolk were likewise prepared for a prolonged fight.

  The necromancer looked over the battlefield from multiple angles, bouncing between the perspectives of his undead as he assessed next moves.

  Mariella’s initial large burst of fire had flown faster than the physical projectiles and managed to strike a few men near the middle of the formation while they were raising their shields. Tybalt assessed that the flames had injured a few and perhaps killed one man. That soldier had fallen out of view.

  But the more important effect, which he only saw while looking through different angles, was that the middle of the formation was suddenly partially on fire. The shields, though wooden, were not as flammable as untreated wood. But Mariella’s fire had taken some hold and at least temporarily forced the men whose shields were not on fire to keep a little distance from those in close proximity to the flames.

  If I exploit that, I could split the squad in two, Tybalt thought. Divide and conquer.

  “Mariella, keep concentrating your fire in the center,” he said. “Aim for the places you’ve already lit on fire.”

  “Do you want me to use my Endless Flame?” she asked breathlessly, sweat already beading on her forehead. “Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ll get through the shields.”

  “The point isn’t to burn the shields efficiently and kill the soldiers holding them. The men are avoiding the flames. I want to divide the squad in two, so our friends can fight them more easily. Don’t use Endless Flame if it’s a big investment of mana.”

  The fire mage grunted her assent and focused her fire as the necromancer directed, hurling what Tybalt was pretty sure were just her normal fireballs.

  The stones and arrows from the beastfolk were bouncing off of shields and not doing any real damage, still.

  But as Mariella continued to throw her flames on her former comrades, Tybalt saw a gap opening up, separating the squad into two groups.

  The soldiers, he now observed, were mostly in the front, while the miners were more concentrated toward the rear. The rear group was significantly larger than the front one.

  I just have to kill ten, or maybe a dozen, men to exterminate the front group. And Volusia is one of them. If the soldiers up there die, the rest of the men will probably run. They’re not experienced, and they don’t have a deep reason to keep fighting when the hardened men have fallen.

  He saw that his scorched-bone skeletons had succeeded at putting out the flames that had taken the periphery huts.

  “March around until you get to the humans in front,” Tybalt sent, along with a mental image. “Exterminate.”

  He drew his spinal cord dirk from his side and sent a simple, additional order to all of his other undead in the vicinity—Baldwin being too far away, still, to be of help.

  “To me.”

  “What are you doing?” Mariella asked without apparently taking her eyes off the people she was slowly baking to death.

  “Joining the battle,” Tybalt replied. “I have twenty-four creatures with me, ready to fight. We’ll attack the ten or so in the front. If you can keep the two groups separate, it should be easy.”

  “Tybalt…” She frowned. “That’s dangerous. You’re exposing yourself to attacks by the beastfolk as well as the Army. They won’t know friend from enemy.”

  “I can’t give the beastfolk orders on where to shoot their arrows,” Tybalt replied. “We arrived too late to establish contact. It can’t be helped. Plus—” He held up his own shield—“I’ll be fine.”

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  “Yeah.” She gritted her teeth. “Probably. Don’t do anything stupid and die.”

  He bent and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be relying on you. Keep doing what you’re doing. That’s the best way you can keep me safe. Unless you get a shot at Volusia. Then kill him. That would save everyone. You can do it, gorgeous.”

  She reddened slightly but still kept her eyes on the enemy, continuing to throw fire in short bursts.

  Tybalt barely caught the parting words she spoke under her breath.

  “I won’t let you down.”

  As Tybalt circled around in the grass, he sensed his scorched-bone skeletons moving opposite him. Both human and monsters were still a ways back from the line of huts as Tybalt tried to figure out the best angle of attack. His other skeletons stood around him in a protective ring. The zombies rose up from their various positions on both sides, all converging toward Tybalt.

  The soldiers in the front section of the squad all had shields raised, and their faces and bodies were protected to the point that Tybalt could not even see who was where. As another barrage of projectiles flew from multiple sides, they bounced off of this tortoise shell like so many flecks of dust.

  How do I break through that? Tybalt thought. I could use Bonebreaker to break the arms holding the shields, but I’d have to get awfully close. I guess my skeletons can protect me enough for me to start picking apart their defense—

  A shout broke his train of thought.

  “Charge! Send them to Lord Mudo!” He recognized the voice instantly. It was strong, firm, in control. The speaker expected immediate obedience.

  Andric.

  Fox-eared heads and ibex horned heads rose from within the grass that still stood between Tybalt and the squad. They apparently weren’t going to just keep ineffectually hurling projectiles at the squad. One or two of them looked in Tybalt’s direction, but when he didn’t move to attack them, they focused back on the squad.

  Perhaps the fact that all of his skeletons had ibex beastfolk horns indicated to them that he was a friend, or maybe Vidalia had told them all to be expecting a necromancer.

  Andric had sort of the same idea as me, but does his ragtag bunch of half-trained recruits have the discipline to execute?

  He got his answer a moment later. The beastfolk charged at the squad. But they did so in fits and starts, little pairs or groupings of three and four at a time.

  With the rain of projectiles suddenly at a near stop, the soldiers lowered their shields slightly, took in the situation, and switched to offense. Spears bristled from behind the shield wall, and the first half-dozen beastfolk to charge at the dozen soldiers Tybalt was targeting were run through in a flash.

  The next wave of beastfolk that had been set to charge at Volusia’s contingent slowed, hesitated, and looked at one another with doubt in their eyes.

  So much for that charge.

  On the other side of the fiery barrier, however, the outcome of the beastfolk advance had been notably different.

  The miners, as Tybalt saw through the eyes of one of his zombies, were slower to recognize that the sling and bow threat had paused. The dozen beastfolk who had charged into close range with them managed to use that slight hesitation to actually properly engage the miners. This meant that rather than hesitating, the group of beastfolk behind them joined the first dozen, and soon, the thirty or so men of the mixed miner and soldier group were surrounded on all sides by a force that had something approximating numerical parity with them.

  But Andric’s people were not properly armed for this kind of fight.

  The beastfolk had knives and daggers, a couple had wood axes, but none had weapons well suited to getting through or around shields or past the range of the spears. Even though the charge at the miners had gone much better than the charge at the soldiers, Tybalt could see immediately that the beastfolk were not making much progress there. For every lucky slash around the wall of shields and spearheads, the miner and soldier force managed to stab or slash three beastfolk.

  Tybalt let out a little groan of frustration.

  Why would you call a charge if it’s not something you ever trained these guys to do, Andric? Or something they were even materially equipped to do? What did you think was going to happen when boys with knives and daggers had to deal with hardened soldiers—or even miners with muscles tempered by years of hard work in the mines—armed with shields and spears and wearing thick clothing to repel shallow slashes? Your boys could have kept hurling projectiles forever, and if the squad didn’t have this blessing—which you morons don’t even know about yet!—they would eventually have to lower their shields and take a bunch of rocks to the face. I assume you have no shortage of stones on this mountainside. For Mudo’s sake… I guess I understand getting emotional when it’s your home under attack, but I thought you had planned better than this.

  Tybalt refocused on the fight closer to him. Volusia and his men still held to a defensive wall position, aware that the beastfolk could resume their hail of projectiles at any moment. But a few men, safe behind their comrades’ shields, were reaching out and stabbing the downed beastfolk with their spears.

  It was an effort both to make sure they wouldn’t get back up and, the necromancer guessed, a provocation aimed at the remaining beastfolk.

  And it was working.

  “Charge!” Andric called again. “Don’t let their deaths be in vain!”

  On the bright side, I guess your lack of military discipline has given me the chance to really play the hero, Tybalt thought with only a slight trace of annoyance. Not in the way I intended… but I will be able to say, after this, that all you idiots would be dead if not for me.

  Twenty beastfolk threw themselves at the soldiers’ shield wall with an audible collective thud. There was almost a feeling of coordination this time.

  It might have been the necromancer’s imagination, but he thought that through a brief gap in the shields, he could actually see Volusia smiling from behind his wooden defense.

  Probably thinking, These poor primitive fools.

  Beastfolk started dropping mere seconds after their charge made contact. They simply lacked the force to make a dent in the Army’s carefully honed defense, and with the spears of the soldiers versus the knives and daggers of the beastfolk, it was really no contest. If they had been able to break the strength of the arms holding the shields, it would be a different story, but they had no horses, insufficient numbers, insufficient weight behind their charge, to accomplish the task.

  Tybalt decided he would add to their force.

  “All zombies except Christos and Ariane, charge at maximum speed!” Tybalt ordered silently. “Break the soldiers’ formation! Skeletons, to me. Wait for your opportunity to be of use.”

  The skeletons lacked the weight to make much of a difference, but the zombies would hopefully add some additional oomph to the beastfolk’s effort to break through the shield wall.

  And the necromancer would contribute one more thing, of course.

  Tybalt charged.