back the way they had come, following the channel crushed through the croach. As he did, Amara leaned over the barrels mounted on Walker's saddle and struck away the plates that covered large tap holes at their bases. Lamp oil mixed with the hardest liquor Giraldi's veterans could find flooded out in a steady stream as Walker retreated, leaving two wide streams that spread out through the channel of broken croach. Giraldi's veterans broke into a flat-out run, racing toward the edge of the croach, and the vord followed in eager pursuit.
As the first legionares came to the end of the croach, Giraldi snapped another order. The men whirled, snapping into their lines again, this time on either side of the channel, shieldwalls aligned to funnel the vord warriors between them. The vord, reckless and aggressive, flooded directly toward the Alerans, their course guided by the shieldwalls, which channeled them directly into Doroga, Walker, and the crushing strength of Bernard's Knights Terra.
Walker let out a fighting bellow, rising up onto his rear legs to slash one vord from the air as it tried to take wing, and the gargant's crushing strength was more than a match for the vord's armor. It fell broken to the ground, while Amara clutched desperately on to Doroga's waist to keep from falling off the beast's back entirely.
The Knights Terra held the gargant's flanks, and ripples of earth, furycrafted by the Knights, lashed out at the vord as they closed, shattering the momentum of their charge and exposing them to well-timed blows from the savage hammers that crushed vord armor plates like eggshells.
And all of it was nothing but a prelude to the true attack.
"Giraldi!" Bernard cried.
"Fire!" the centurion bellowed. "Fire, fire, fire!"
Along the whole of the Legion shieldwall, furylamps blazed into full and blinding brilliance.
And as one, the legionares hurled the lamps down into the viscous liquid of the broken croach mixed with lamp oil and alcohol.
Flames spread with astonishing speed, the individual fires in nearly a hundred places rapidly meeting, melding, feeding one another. Within seconds, the fire blazed up and began to consume the entrapped vord warriors.
Now the legionares had to fight in earnest, as desperate vord tried to batter their way out of the trap. Men screamed. Black smoke and hideous stench filled the air. Giraldi bellowed orders, hardly audible over the frenzied rattling and clicking of the armored vord.
And the lines held. The vord at the rear of the trap managed to reverse their direction, streaming back toward the cave.
"Countess!" Bernard cried.
Amara reached out for Cirrus and felt the sudden, eager presence of her wind fury. She took a deep breath, focused her concentration, and shouted, "Ready!"
"Down, down, down!" Giraldi barked.
Amara saw everything moving very, very slowly. All along the lines, legionares abruptly drew back a pace and dropped to one knee, then to their sides, their curving tower shields closing over them like coffin lids. Desperate vord staggered and thrashed their way to their deaths, while those who had managed to retreat drove directly for the cave.
Amara drew Cirrus into her thoughts and sent it, with every ounce of her will, to fly toward the fleeing vord.
A hurricane of violent wind swept down from the air at Amara's command. It caught up the blazing liquid and hurled it in a sudden, blinding storm of blossoming flame. Fire engulfed the air itself, fed wildly by the wind, and the heat burned away the croach wherever it touched, melting it like the wax it resembled. Croach-covered trees burst into individual infernos, and still the frantic fire, driven by Amara's wind, rolled forward.
It engulfed the last of the vord who had attacked fifty feet short of the mouth of the cave-and then kept right on going, fires spreading and whirling madly, burning away the croach wherever it touched it.
Amara's concentration and will faltered in a sudden, nauseating spasm of fatigue, and she slumped hard against Doroga's back. Without the gale winds to feed and push them, the fires began to die down into individual blazes. There was no sign whatsoever of any croach anywhere upon the surface-only blackened earth and burning trees.
They'd done it.
Amara closed her eyes in exhaustion. She didn't feel herself listing to one side until she actually began to fall, and Doroga had to turn and catch her with one heavily muscled arm before she pitched off Walker's back and to the ground.
Things were blurry for a few moments, then she heard Bernard giving orders. She forced herself to