Chapter 26: The Battle of Ember Ravine, Part 2
The Wardens came in lines. Shields overlapped, spears angled down like the jaws of some great iron beast. The ravine swallowed their march, forcing them two by two, but their discipline didn't break.
Hale stood at the choke, spear grounded, his eyes hard as flint. Beside him, Thorek rolled his shoulders, hammer already humming with a faint weave. Elvi crouched in the brush above, bowstring tight, waiting. Lysera spread her hands and pulled veils across the fog, bending sight, twisting angles.
Noll stood just behind them, arms trembling as he wove the ward. His threads bent slow, then faster, his speed sharper than even a week ago. Sweat ran down his face, but his eyes never left Hale's back.
Elias wasn't with them. Not yet. His path had split off into the woods, chasing the caravan he alone had sensed. The squad had no choice but to trust he'd hold, just as they would.
The first mine went off.
A flash tore through the fog, followed by a roar that rattled stone and bone alike. The front rank of Wardens vanished in smoke and fire, their screams swallowed by the blast. Shards of metal and dirt rained back down, clattering off shields.
"Now!" Hale barked.
Thorek bellowed a laugh and crashed forward, hammer arcing low. He smashed into a staggered shield, the impact ringing like a church bell. The Warden folded, ribs breaking under the force. Hale's spear followed, sliding through the seam at the man's shoulder.
From above, Elvi loosed. Her arrow cut straight through the smoke, pinning a torch bearer before he even realized his hand had let go. Lysera twisted a veil sideways, and the second torch bearer stabbed his own comrade in confusion.
The choke was theirs. For now.
But more came. Always more.
The second line of Wardens surged forward, stepping over the broken, their discipline holding even under fire. They pressed into the pinch with snarling shields, spears darting like fangs.
"Hold!" Hale's voice snapped across the ravine. "Ward steady!"
Noll's weave flared, the shield of threads pulsing bright. A spear struck and skidded away, another cracked against it and split. Noll's teeth clenched, but he held. His weaving speed kept the barrier alive where a week ago it would've shattered.
Thorek cackled as he swung again, knocking two men into each other. "You bastards march like festival pigs!"
Hale didn't waste words. His spear worked with quiet precision, each thrust aimed for a gap, each kill clean. Blood splashed across his mail, but his movements never faltered.
Elvi rained arrows from above, each one singing with perfect rhythm. She aimed for gaps Hale left, for throats exposed when Thorek knocked men sideways. Her breath stayed calm, her shots measured.
Lysera's veils rippled, bending the world just enough. A spear struck where she wasn't. Another man overbalanced chasing a phantom and paid with his life. Her hands cut through the fog like a weaver at her loom, patient and precise.
The ground shook. Another mine erupted further down, fire and shrapnel tearing a fresh hole in the column. Screams cut through the disciplined chants.
Still the Wardens pushed. Their numbers made courage where their fear might have broken.
"Forward!" Hale roared, and the squad answered.
Thorek crashed like a storm. Hale stabbed like a surgeon. Elvi's arrows whispered death from above. Lysera bent the battlefield with threads only she could see. And Noll, young, shaking, but steady, kept the ward alive with a speed that astonished even himself.
The first mine went off with a scream of light and thunder, ripping the ravine floor open. Shards of stone and shredded iron bit through the front rank of Wardens, their shields useless against the sudden roar. Men crumpled, broken and burning, and the line behind stumbled over them.
"Hold!" Hale barked, voice cutting through smoke and panic. He was already stepping into the gap, spear driving forward, a soldier carved from iron. Beside him, Thorek's hammer rose and fell, every strike a sermon in steel, each one breaking through shields and helmets like brittle pottery.
The minefield sang. Each blast was a drumbeat, shaking the ravine walls, but it was not chaos. Noll's ward hummed steady over the traps, his young arms trembling but his will locked tight. He released the barrier only when Hale's barked orders told him, one mine at a time, each strike timed like a heartbeat. Lysera veiled the soil so perfectly that the Wardens never saw the danger until they stepped into it. Then the earth roared again and another section of their ranks was torn apart.
Elvi's arrows threaded through the haze. She shot without pause, each shaft finding a gap, eyes, throats, joints. Her face was calm, but her eyes burned with the cold fire of a woman who had already buried too much. When one of the Wardens tried to flank wide on the slope, her arrow pinned him to a trunk before he'd taken three steps.
The Wardens pressed harder, their discipline showing. Even as their comrades fell, they closed ranks and surged forward. A chant rolled down their line, harsh syllables meant to drown out fear. Hale felt the rhythm and shifted his stance, barking his own cadence back. "Step and strike. Step and strike." His squad matched it, their smaller numbers wielding precision against the tide.
A hammer blow cracked a shield apart, and Thorek barked laughter, sweat bright on his brow. "Come on, you bastards! There's plenty of forge fire left in me!" His hammer caught another man under the chin, snapping him backward, blood and teeth scattering in the torchlight.
Lysera's veil flickered, threads of light shimmering as one Warden's spear clipped the edge of her weave. She steadied it, her lips pressed tight. "They're adapting," she hissed, twisting the veil into something sharper, blinding the torches outright so the ravine became a wall of smoke. In the half light, her illusions made the mines look like safe ground, leading the enemy straight into more traps.
Noll's ward shook, sparks crawling over the boy's arms. His teeth were gritted, his whole body shaking as he forced the barrier to hold against thrown spears and hammering strikes. Hale caught his eye once, gave the smallest nod, and Noll straightened like he'd been given another spine. The ward steadied, glowing brighter.
"Atta boy," Elvi murmured as she loosed another arrow, voice steady even as blood spattered her cheek.
The battle stretched like an iron string pulled taut. Each mine thinned the Wardens, but more kept coming, torchlight weaving through the smoke like stars in a storm. Orders rang from behind their line, commanders shouting, driving the men forward no matter the cost.
Then the horns blew.
A deeper note, longer than before. Not the warning of scouts, but the push of reinforcements. Hale's gut twisted even before the shapes appeared in the fog. More boots, more spears, another wave rolling down the ravine.
"Shit," Thorek spat, wiping blood from his beard. "Whole damn company's on us."
"Then we bleed them twice," Hale said, voice flat, steady. "No retreat until the bridge burns."
The squad shifted tighter, their circle small, their weapons flashing in the gloom. Mines still waited, but fewer now. Noll's face shone with sweat, pale as ash, his ward flickering with every breath. Lysera whispered sharp words, pulling new illusions into place, turning the smoke into shadows that clawed at the Wardens' eyes.
They fought like a single body. Hale the heart, beating steady. Thorek the arms, brutal and tireless. Elvi the eyes, sharp and unerring. Lysera the unseen hand, twisting the field itself. Noll the shield, trembling but unbroken.
But still the tide grew.
One Warden captain pushed through the smoke, armor brighter, voice louder. He rallied those behind him, his spear humming with a heavy weave that cracked through Noll's barrier like glass. The boy staggered, blood spilling from his nose.
Hale caught the spear on his own shaft, the clash ringing like a bell. "With me!" he barked, and Thorek surged forward, hammer swinging. The captain parried once, twice, before Elvi's arrow slammed through his shoulder, opening him for Thorek's hammer to crash down. Bone shattered, the man crumpled, but the space he'd carved let more Wardens press in.
The squad gave ground, one step at a time, their backs inching toward the narrow throat of the ravine. Smoke rolled heavier. Blood slicked the stones. The sound of boots never stopped.
Lysera's eyes flicked sideways, sharp with worry. "Where is Elias?"
No one answered.
Elias's fight burned a world away, though only a few ridgelines separated them.
The caravan's escort had closed around the cages, seventeen Wardens circling like wolves around meat. The children's faces pressed to the bars, pale in torchlight, eyes wide with terror. The Wardens thought their formation perfect, but Elias felt the hum of their weaves, the wrong note in the air that sang to his Resonance Sense like a wound.
He moved before they knew he was there.
His spear thrummed, a sharp frequency running the length of the ash shaft. Fire coiled at the tip, not wild but bound, controlled, fed by the oxygen he pulled from the air. His breath matched the rhythm, each inhale sharp, each exhale stoking the blaze. His body ached from strain already, but training held him together.
The first Warden fell before the alarm rose, his weave sliced apart mid chant. The second stumbled as his shield buckled, resonance severed in a heartbeat. Elias drove forward, spear a line of flame and sound, cutting threads faster than the Wardens could weave them.
The horn lifted, Elias cut the thread in the soldier's arm before it touched his lips. The man screamed as his ward collapsed, leaving him open for a thrust that sent him sprawling.
Torches flared, shouts rose, the circle closed.
Elias's Resonance Sense screamed with every hum, every weave rising around him. He moved through them like a blade through cloth, unraveling shields, snapping bindings, tearing the Loom apart one stitch at a time. His lungs burned, his heart hammered, sweat poured down his back, but he didn't stop.
The children clutched the bars, eyes wide. One of them whispered, voice high and thin, "He cuts them… like Saint Caelus."
Elias heard it, but the words slid past the roar in his blood. His world narrowed to fire, steel, and the endless pull of the Loom's hum.
The ravine shook with every clash.
Thorek roared as his hammer caught a Warden square in the ribs, the man folding like a cracked bellows. Hale followed with a thrust to the next, clean and efficient, never wasting motion. Elvi's arrows cut the gaps, sharp threads of death stitching the front line into tatters.
But the Wardens kept coming. Smoke curled low across the ground, torchlight glared in streaks through the haze, and the horns kept driving men forward.
"They mean to drown us," Lysera said, her voice cold as iron. She twisted the Loom again, pulling shadow into shapes that looked like soldiers waiting in the smoke. The first rank hesitated at the illusion, giving Thorek time to break two more skulls before they realized the figures weren't real.
Noll staggered to one knee, his ward flickering, sparks crawling up his arms. Hale was there in an instant, hauling him upright with one hand and planting his spear with the other.
"Stand, boy. Stand or we all break."
Noll's teeth clenched, the ward flared, and for a moment the ravine lit like dawn, spears glancing off the glowing barrier instead of finding flesh.
Elvi's eyes flicked over the battlefield. "Not enough," she muttered. "For every one we drop, three more step forward."
Thorek spat blood and grinned. "Then we make them choke on their own dead."
Another mine boomed, the earth buckling beneath the charge. Men screamed, the shockwave carrying stone and steel through the line, but the Wardens behind didn't slow. They clambered over bodies and broken shields, chanting louder to drown their fear.
Lysera's voice cut sharp. "We can't hold like this forever. We need Elias."
Elias was fighting his own war.
The caravan's escort swarmed him, twenty against one, their shields locking, spears thrusting in tight rhythm. His Resonance Sense sang with their every move, the threads of their wards vibrating in his chest like discordant notes.
He pulled the hum tighter, letting it guide him. A spear thrust—he felt the weave hum a heartbeat before it struck, cut it, and drove his own point into the man's gut. Another Warden tried to chant a ward Elias sliced the thread in his mouth before it formed, the man choking on the sudden silence.
His spear thrummed, fire coiling at its tip, oxygen burning hotter as Elias fed it. Each strike came with heat and light, the air itself hissing at the violence. He was faster now, sharper, his training keeping his body from collapsing like it had in Ashvale. But every cut tugged at his own thread, a toll the Loom demanded.
"Hold him!" one captain shouted, his weave heavy with reinforcement. Elias cut it mid cast, the shock tearing the man's scream from his throat, then slammed him into the dirt with a crack of fire and steel.
The children clung to the bars of their cage, wide eyed, their voices thin with awe. "He's cutting them," one whispered. "Like Saint Caelus."
The Wardens faltered. Fear crept in. But numbers pressed harder. Elias's arms shook, his chest heaved, sweat ran down his face in rivers. He burned through men, but there were still more, always more.
Back at the ravine, Hale caught Elvi's shoulder, voice low but steady. "We can't wait on him. We break them here, now."
Elvi glanced once toward the trees where Elias had vanished. "If he's still breathing."
"He is," Hale said, iron certain, though his jaw was tight. "He's too damn stubborn not to be."
Thorek slammed his hammer down, breaking the haft of a spear and roaring over the clang. "Then let's remind these bastards why dwarves don't die easy."
The squad tightened formation. The ravine floor became a grinder, bodies piling, smoke thick enough to choke, the roar of mines and the snap of veils layering into a symphony of survival.
And still the horns blew.
Elias staggered. His spear hummed like a live wire, his vision swimming from heat and strain. He'd cut through half the escort already, bodies scattered in torchlight, the cage rocking as frightened children clung to the bars.
Five men remained. Not enough to stop him, but enough to bleed him dry if he faltered.
He planted his spear, chest heaving, resonance roaring in his bones. The Wardens circled, chanting, their torches throwing shadows long and wild.
Elias bared his teeth, wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, and spat.
"Come on, then."
The Loom thrummed in answer, taut as a bowstring, ready to snap.