The centre of the Brevan lines crumbled under the attack of the Tiger Lords, just as it was supposed to. It was made up from poorly equipped and poorly trained levies, paupers collected from New Stetven's streets, perhaps even prison inmates – practically anyone unpleasant and unimportant enough for House Surtova to get rid of. They were being sacrificed to make the pincer movement work, and at the same time, to humiliate the barbarians by throwing unworthy opponents at them.

  From the hillock serving as her temporary headquarters, Lady Jamandi Aldori watched the developments through a spyglass with mixed emotions. She'd seriously fallen out with Lady Natala Surtova over the gruesome tactic, but alas, she was at the mercy of her grudging allies, and Kassil couldn't come up with a better plan. Which made Jamandi wonder what that kid had been doing at the Aldori Academy instead of devoting himself to his studies.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to start the battle before the sluggish Nightvale forces crawled their way to the Flintrock Grassland, but Jamandi was running out of options. The longer she dallied, the lower her soldiers' morale dropped, to the extent that desertions became an everyday occurrence. They were all too close to the border of Brevoy, and an increasing number of soldiers thought it better to defend their homeland from home. Also, there were reports of Tiger Lord agents disturbing the supply lines by some shamanic ritual or whatnot. It was best to get over with this before the Brevans were cut off from their homeland.

  "Kassil? Is it time to start the pincer?"

  Her adoptive son didn't stir, absorbed in the sight, clinging to his own spyglass with both shovel-sized hands. Jamandi gave him an elbow jab in the ribs.

  "Kassil?"

  "Huh?"

  "The pincer!"

  Kassil felt about his person, patting the pockets of his elegant outfit, even rummaging in some of them. Finally, he gave a despondent sigh.

  "Sorry, Mother, I don't think I have pincers on me right now. Did something get stuck?"

  Jamandi pursed her lips, fighting down her worries. Kassil had been acting strange ever since he'd arrived in camp. Leaving the Nightvale army behind had been a decision hard to justify, unless Guelder didn't take the threat seriously or, worse, was dancing to the tunes of the Surtova (and truth be told, it was harder by the day to give her the benefit of the doubt). Kicking Amiri out of camp had seemed a rash decision, but Jamandi supposed Kassil had his reasons to do so. After all, he'd been working with Amiri on a daily basis, whereas Jamandi had only met her twice. It made sense that he knew better what could and couldn't be expected from the Kellid girl. However, being unfamiliar with one of the most basic tactics after years dedicated to military studies was more than strange. How exhausted did someone have to be to commit such a blunder?

  "Kassil, if you feel unwell, just return to camp and get some rest. I'll take it from here."

  Kassil shook his head so vigorously that even his voice broke.

  "No, no, Mother, I'm fine! I wouldn't miss out on this battle for... for all the treasures of Ilthuliak!"

  "Of who?"

  "Why, the ancient black dragon who lives in the Branthlend Mountains, close to the border of Glenebon! I've told you about her, haven't I? She is amazing! She can breathe acid, and she has kobolds at her service! Just imagine how happy those kobolds can be, living so close to one of those majestic creatures they are most fascinated with! I wanted to recruit her before this campaign, but I... well, kind of ran out of time. Wouldn't it have been great to have a dragon fighting on our side?"

  Jamandi reached up and put a hand on her son's forehead to check his body temperature. She knew about Kassil's deep interest in the Battle in the Valley of Fire, but infodumping about a random dragon in the middle of the battle deciding his homeland's fate was not like him. He was a lot more focused and reasonable than that. But no, his skin was cool to the touch. Was it some kind of battle shock, then? Before even drawing a weapon and facing a single Tiger Lord?

  The Surtova infantry on the right wing was already on the move, along with the accompanying units of crossbowmen. The first volley of bolts was launched into the thick of the enemy, dropping a few of them.

  Jamandi groaned in frustration and turned to one of Kassil's aides. He had two brand-new ones, for some reason. Another thing she would have to talk to him about. A general was not supposed to go through aides like candy.

  "Launch the attack on the left wing and close the pincer! Now!"

  The young half-elf mounted his horse and galloped away to deliver the command.

  Kassil turned to Jamandi and looked down at her, towering above her, his brow clouded with anger.

  "This will not do, Mother," he whispered with his loudest whisper. "You're humiliating me in front of my staff. I can't accept that, not even from you."

  "Then how about bracing up and doing what you're here to do?" snapped Jamandi, refusing to let herself be intimidated. "Blathering about dragons won't take us any closer to victory, now will it?"

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  For a few moments, Kassil seemed to be teetering on the verge of a fit of rage, which he successfully repressed.

  "Do what I'm here to do..." he mused, flashing an unnerving, toothy grin at Jamandi. "Indeed... Why not?"

  Jamandi held his gaze, even though a little voice at the back of her mind whimpered danger. Which was no wonder, what with sorting out personal differences amidst a battle. Of course there was danger.

  At the edge of her vision, the left wing engaged.

  "What's that?"

  While she wasn't looking, a unit of ten hill giants appeared on the battlefield, laying about with their clubs. The right wing seemed to waver. Hell, was it hard to make decisions when one fought in an uneasy alliance, side by side with her enemy. The human instinct to help didn't kick in as fast as it should have, and it was all too easy to repress. Fascinated, Jamandi watched the collapse and flight of the Surtova infantry, which made it possible for the Tiger Lords to focus on the left wing.

  The situation devolved into chaos with a frightening speed. Of course, the pincer didn't happen, one arm being broken off, and something was causing disturbance on the left wing as well. The first aide didn't return, so Jamandi sent the second one to deploy the reserve, giving up on Kassil... and then her son drew his sword, let out a terrifying battle roar, and started running headfirst into the thickest of action.

  It had to be battle shock. There was no other rational explanation. And Jamandi would be damned if she let him get himself killed.

  Following her son at a hurried pace, Jamandi promised herself that in the very unlikely case Baroness Guelder showed up with an acceptable justification of her delay up her sleeve, she would ask her to reassign Kassil to back-office work. Despite his studies and ambitions, he was not cut out for a military career at all.

  Guelder's team scattered as soon as they reached the battlefield.

  She'd left Nok-Nok behind with Darlac, along with the Bag of Holding containing Ironshank, hoping that the General would find the best use for them. The goblin had a knack of handling the golem, and he was also enthusiastic about it – at least from the moment Harrim reprogrammed the construct to respond to various dwarven swear words and gave a detailed instruction of use to Nok-Nok, along with the translation of said words. Hopefully Darlac would deploy them before the goblin would lose interest in the battle and get looting the corpses instead.

  Otherwise, she wondered if Darlac would even be able to identify some strategy she could channel her forces into. Guelder was not a brilliant military mind, but even she could tell that what she saw was nothing but a big chaos, disorganised groups randomly joining together or (more frequently) dispersing. It was pure luck that the two parties looked different enough to avoid mistaking a friend for a foe.

  Finding Jamandi was not an easy task. Not in this horrible pandemonium of screams and roars and stenches and blood and guts and death, like the fall of her grove but a thousand times worse. Guelder pushed through, somehow, prowling on soft paws, crouching in the remains of the grass trodden down by hundreds of feet, lurking in the shade of boulders scattered across the field, wading through the soil churned up into bloody, sticky mud, homing in on that one scent of steel and lilac, clinging to it in the snarl of a myriad other scents, using it as an anchor against panic and madness. She silently thanked Darlac that she had this one task to focus on. The trail was clear enough on top of a little hillock, from where Jamandi must have been directing her army's moves... but for some reason, the place felt tainted by fey presence. Guelder didn't understand that detail, and didn't let herself get hung up on it, either. Instead, she followed the trail deep into the battlefield.

  Alas, this time nobody opened a way for her through the fog of war consisting of an endless variety of smells. She had to use her other senses, looking in vain for the Aldori banner flapping in the wind, listening fruitlessly for voices barking commands, seeking out spots where Tiger Lord corpses were piled up.

  At one such spot, the fey scent hit her square in the muzzle.

  Guelder decided to let herself be distracted, just this once. She had to know where that smell came from, hoping to find another dead Defaced Sister, the fifth of the eight. In order to dig deeper into the pile, she had to move the brawny Tiger Lord corpse on top of it. That would have broken her back in elf form, but as a leopard she was used to moving prey larger than herself. And in the worst case, she still had Pangur for support.

  Sadly, the corpse's head was missing, so grabbing it by the neck was not an option. She chomped down on its left arm instead (luckily, unarmoured), and made to drag it away, when she heard a soft groan of pain somewhere below. Guelder froze in place, listening for another groan, little noises of breathing, anything. She couldn't be sure, not through the din of battle just a few dozen yards away. Her muscles strained as she dragged the corpse off the pile. Letting go of its arm, she noticed the bloody sword in its other hand, and... something stuck to the blade or impaled on it. Rags of a noble outfit, the kind worn by Brevan aristocracy, and threaded through it, the limp, deflated, sickly green skin of a half-orc, smelling like fey.

  Guelder backed away in horror, her fur bristling, a low, gurgling growl bursting from her throat. In her head, it was a scream. All she wanted to do was run, run away, as high up a tree as the branches would let her, to safety, where she didn't have to see or smell that abominable thing. Even after her time in the fey-infested Embeth Forest – or her time in her own fey-infested barony, for that matter – she felt woefully unprepared for such... pranks. However she hated to admit, this sight unsettled her twice as much as the mad tailor's lizardfolk skins had, and ten times as much as the sight of a cloak trimmed with leopard fur. Once she got herself under control, though, she realised she picked up a very faint whiff of lilac through the strong fey scent.

  Pangur, unfazed by Guelder's discovery, was investigating the pile, sticking his muzzle inside.

  "Shoo," grumbled a weak voice. "Bloody scavengers. I'm not... dead... yet..."

  The sentence ended in a fit of wet cough.

  Guelder dropped her shapeshift, careful not to look at the sword and its grisly decoration again, and saw her beast friend adeptly remove another corpse, laying bare what was beneath. She let out a ragged breath of relief as she recognised Lady Jamandi, bleeding from a wound in her chest, bloody saliva drying on her face, her fingers cramped around an empty healing potion bottle. Only now did it occur to her to look around for her companions. She saw none of them, except Hazel, approaching at a trot, with their usual frown of disapproval. That meant Jamandi had to make do with her. Guelder's hands flared up with life force as she unleashed her strongest healing spell.

  It worked like a treat. Jamandi spat out a mouthful of blood, and as her eyes found her focus on Guelder's face, they lit up with life and, most of all, anger. She clenched her teeth in a snarl and slapped her ally's helping hands away.

  "Where have you BEEN?!"