Lady!"
Isana's cloak and dress were soaked through by the time she reached the barn's roof. Thank goodness. It was the closest thing she'd had to a bath in weeks.
The ground continued to quiver and shake at odd intervals. Vast sounds, deep and unearthly, reverberated through the night, passing over the screams and cries and drums and trumpets of battle, the roar of wind, the slap of heavy rain. They reminded Isana of the calls of leviathans in the open sea - only a great deal more expansive. She couldn't see a hundred yards in the rain, and she had a feeling that she should be glad of it.
She hurried across the roof with Araris and Aldrick trailing behind her, to where Valiar Marcus stood with his command staff. He saluted her as she approached, pointed at the ditch the legionares were defending, and said, without preamble, "My lady, I need you to fill that ditch with water."
Isana arched an eyebrow. "I see," she said, and stared thoughtfully at the ditch. Puddles were already collecting in its bottom, thanks to the rain. She closed her eyes, touched upon Rill in her thoughts, and sent the fury out into the land around the steadholt, where it appeared as a barely noticeable ripple in the downpour. It didn't seem favorable. The steadholt was located upon the local high ground, such as it was, so that any floodwaters would pour around it. Making that much water run uphill would be a terrible strain, possibly beyond her strength.
Instead, on an inspiration, she sent Rill up. The fury flowed into the air above the steadholt, leaping from raindrop to raindrop, and then began to spread out like a wide, unseen umbrella above the steadholt. Ah, much better. She spread Rill's presence out as widely as she possibly could and murmured to her to begin redirecting the rain as it fell.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, all at once, a waterfall appeared out of nowhere, the collected rain of several acres worth of ground all funneled to the same spot. It splashed down into the trench, knocking several mantises from their feet, and within seconds had begun to fill it.
Exhausted men lifted their voices in ragged cheers, and the surge of hope that arose from all of them struck Isana like a cleansing fire. The legionares began pushing harder, their spirits lifted, slamming the vord back into water that grew deeper and deeper as Isana's crafting continued.
A good start. But she could do more. Once the improvised moat had been filled, she sent Rill down into it and, with another effort of will and a faint circling motion of one hand, the water began to spin. It was not long before it had become a current, circling the steadholt, strong enough to take a mantis from its feet and send it spinning off downstream. She pressed it faster and faster, then withdrew Rill wearily from the stream. It would continue circling on momentum for a good while, she judged, long enough to give the legionares a few moments to breathe. Vord after vord splashed into the water, only to be swept helplessly around the steadholt, over and over and over - and the current had the added benefit of slowly eroding the ditch deeper. By the time the water did calm enough for them to ford it, the vord would find the defenses higher and more difficult to attempt than they had been before.
She turned wearily to the First Spear, and said, "Is that sufficient?"
Marcus pursed his lips and watched one luckless vord, which was on its third trip around the steadholt. "Entirely, my lady. Thank you."
Isana nodded, and said, "Eventually, I think they'll bridge it, as ants sometimes do. Or simply choke it with enough bodies to create a crossing."
"Probably," Marcus said. "But even so, this buys us time, my lady. And - "
A brassy, blaring, groaning horn call sounded out in the rain-lashed dimness. Then another, and another, and another. A few instants later, the ground shook, and the taurg cavalry burst out of the murk, the huge beasts smashing through the vord gathered around the steadholt. Five thousand strong, their blue-armored Canim riders wielding their axes with deadly skill, they simply sliced off a portion of the vord army. It was, Isana thought, oddly like watching a limb hacked off a body. The cavalry drove through the vord in a wedge-shaped formation, cutting out a portion of the enemy. Then they whirled on