Still, there were too many. The dark riders were patient; where one was knocked, two more shuffled forward to keep pressure. Solis could feel the screen of his limit: the potion's glow thrummed and thirty percent tried to creep upwards as the body demanded more. He checked himself with a breath — slow in, hold, long out — using the breathing cadence instructor Tedric had beaten into them. He kept the flame small.
Vaidya moved like a scholar wgo is left on the battlefield and he is not messing around, not by brute power, but by making lives harder in small, precise ways. He flung a loop of a binding-silk and it caught a knight's shield arm; he brandished a small mirror sigil to reflect a lantern flare into a rider's eyes. His spells were not showy, but they were efficient. He called a quick hush-sigil under the feet of a horse and the animal balked, shying away and throwing its rider into the path of a swinging axe. That gave Solis a clean line to a spear haft; Solis knocked it aside and slid low to sever a tendon with a quick, practiced cut.
For a while the fight felt like a scrape of luck. The dark knights were better-armed, but the two of them — a brawler still learning restraint and a scholar turning theory into cunning — managed to keep the edge of the skirmish from turning into slaughter.
Then a horn cracked like a thrown stone from over the hill. The knights looked up at the sound; their formation shivered. Solis heard it too — a clean, military call, different from the riders' low bark. It was a summons that split the night into two parts.
From the slope came armor not quite the same as the dark riders' black. A standard lifted: a field pennon with Cassius' mark — the Postknights overlaid on a K.P.P. stripe — fluttered in the breeze. Behind it came half a dozen mounted men with heavy pennons and a small band of infantry — a mixed task force with long lances and torches; they rode like a professional tug of weather, closing fast.
"It's the Emergency Corps," Vaidya breathed. He smiled without joy. "Orsic's name is on that standard. Maybe he is leading it or someone who is faithful to him."
The dark knights shifted; they had not expected reinforcements. They moved to stand their ground, but something in their ranks broke at the sight of the joined banners. A knights voice boomed, rich and exact. "Hold position! You are surrounded! Drop weapons and you will be taken alive!"
The sudden shift mirrored across both sides like a reflection. Riders who had tasted blood slid toward command and away from rashness. Two of them sprinted for the lanes; the rest paused, calculating.
A Postknight's lance slammed into the flank of a dark knight's horse, and the beast snorted and veered. Colins who was there among them, probably leading the lance, rode with a steady, weathered look on his face; his eyes took in the two stragglers at the wall and then — with a small, pleased nod that felt like a light being given to a couple of street performers — he grinned. "You two look like you need good company," he called out as he drew up.
Solis slumped against a wall, knees trembling. Thirty percent had kept his shape but hadn't saved him from the pounding of exertion. Vaidya breathed ragged with the strain of constant spells. The Emergency Corps dismounted with efficient movement; soldiers moved to secure prisoners and to help the injured. A pair of K.P.P medics made for Solis, but he waved them away. He was not ready to be inspected by Orsic's men, not here.
Colins pulled reins and hopped off his horse, boots thudding in dust. He walked over to them and proffered a hand. "Solis, eh? Heard you were alive. Looks like you two wrestled a storm."
Solis accepted the hand with more force than he intended. "We nearly ended up as horse-feed," he muttered.
Colins' expression softened. "Not on my watch. The King authorized scavenging runs after the last council; Orsic signed them off and Seraphine took the lead with a mixed detail when we found tracks that suggested Kreg's men were raiding supply lines. I've been sweeping for stragglers and civilians. You two got lucky with scouts."
Vaidya opened his mouth to explain their mission; Colins waved him down. "Save it. You're with us now for the next stretch. We will depart now. You did well out there — quiet and lethal. Where are you headed?"
"Caldemount," Solis said. It was less a plan than a prayer. "To find Ada."
Colins' eyes narrowed in a way that was not suspicion but calculation. "Good. Then you'll ride with us until we cross the inner guard. Move quick and stay behind the corps. The K.P.P runs checkpoints with their nerves raw. We'll get you close — closer than you could go alone."
They rode then — a mixed tide of Postknights and K.P.P — through the streets Solis had tried to slip across earlier. The Emergency Corps had its own momentum: large wagons guzzling supplies, small teams fanning out to secure caches, and riders sent to knock on doors and gather what the city still hid. Colins kept talking — about routes, about rangers who'd been bribed, about a plan to siphon off some of Kreg's patrols by laying false trails. His voice had the cadence of a man who could make the world move with a sentence.
Solis listened and let the warmth of the potion ebb into a dull simmer. He had been improved — not healed, not whole, but sharper and steadier than when he'd woken. He had survived a fight and not been broken. He had Vaidya at his side and a raft of Postknights riding with him. For the first time since the Reliquary, the world felt like it might offer a route where he could still walk and not simply fall.
Ahead the middle ring's outer gate loomed; behind it, the heart of Caldemount waited — a city with scars and people who had either buckled or become armor. The Emergency Corps grunted past the gate and into Caldemount's uncertain streets. Solis kept his head down and his hands ready. He let his physical body rest.
They had come this far. The rescue had been narrow, a cut of luck wrapped in better force. Solis folded that luck into himself like a small knife. There would be more nights to come and battles to be fought. For now, they rode on, into a city that might still be saved.