Exhausted, only a few of them had enough energy to salute, but they all groaned to their feet to begin shambling away from both the steadily shrinking wall and the steadily growing numbers of gargoyles.
Amara looked wildly around her. Everything was flashing colored lights and screams and confusion. Here and there, vord broke through the living wall of angry gargoyles. Knights Terra and Ferrous would close in on each of them, slowing their progress to give the tired legionares more time to retreat. Men dragged the wounded toward safety. Horses screamed in panic. Vordbulks continued their vast, deep bellowing while the mantises shrieked and screamed fit to pierce Amara's eardrums.
She couldn't see Bernard and the command group.
"My lord!" she screamed. "We must go! Now!"
Riva let out a short, hollow-sounding gasp and sagged to one side, throwing out an arm to catch himself. It was too weak to hold him up, and he crumpled to the steadily dampening ground.
"Get up!" Amara shouted. She knelt and pulled one of the man's shoulders over hers. "Get up!"
Riva blinked and stared at her with glazed eyes.
Amara wanted to scream in frustration, but she managed to get him mostly upright. The two of them began staggering away from the wall, lurching like a pair of drunks. Faster. They had to move faster.
There was a whistling shriek behind her, and Amara turned to see half a dozen mantises rushing her.
Fighting would be impossible. Instead, she flung up a veil around herself and the disoriented High Lord. The charge of the mantises slowed abruptly as it lost a focus, and they began to turn this way and that, each of the six darting forward after the first moving thing it saw.
Unfortunately for mantis number three, the moving thing it saw was Walker the gargant. Though the mantis charged with berserk aggression, Walker barely took notice of it. Instead, he simply lifted one big paw and brought it down in a simple, smashing arc that ended the vord's offensive with abrupt and absolute finality.
"Amara!" boomed Doroga from Walker's back. A pair of gargoyles went hurtling by in pursuit of the vord who had broken through. Walker tossed his head and snorted as Doroga continued to call out. "Amara!"
Amara dropped the veil. "Doroga! Over here!"
The Marat leaned forward, and said something to Walker, and the gargant began striding toward her. Doroga grabbed the saddle rope and swung partway down Walker's side, holding out a hand. Amara guided Riva's arm into the Marat's grip. Doroga hauled the man up with a grunt and dragged him onto the saddle. Amara swarmed up the braided leather rope after them, and Doroga shouted something to Walker. The gargant whirled, both front paws coming up off the ground, and turned to the east. It started forward at a pace Amara had never seen in a gargant before - a kind of lumbering gallop that nearly threw her off its back every couple of steps and covered ground with impressive speed.
Doroga threw back his head in a howl of triumph, and Walker answered him. Amara looked over her shoulder. The wall of gargoyles was holding, but not perfectly. Hundreds of mantises were slipping through, and one of the vordbulks had reached the space where the wall had been, despite the treacherous footing. Walker was moving quickly, but not quickly enough to outrun the oncoming mantises.
But then, he didn't need to.
A chorus of answering bellows came from ahead of them, and a moment later a long line of gargants came lumbering toward them out of the dark - Doroga's tribesmen. Gargants, moving in trios and pairs, went smashing into the vord that had leaked through the gargoyles, crushing them before they could mount an effective pursuit of the fleeing Aleran Legions. The sound of battle began to recede behind them, and Amara felt herself shivering in reaction.
She wasn't cold. She wasn't even reacting to the fear though she'd certainly been afraid.
The chill that went through her did so because of what had happened.
Invidia had told them the truth. They hadn't expected the sheer size of the vordbulks, but Invidia had certainly tried to tell them they were larger than gargants.
She'd been telling the truth.
If there was even a chance that she might actually be able to deliver on her promise of taking them to the vord Queen, of ending the war, they would have no choice but to take her up on the offer.
Amara looked overhead. The battle was winding down up there, and the