The minutes ticked by, not that there was any clock for them to count, and it now had gotten so dark, it was difficult to tell the time.

The only way the Lightning Battalion had initially managed to time their march was by some careful calculation that Martin had made based on the average marching pace of a soldier and the distance, and by looking at how quickly the sun had set.

There was no longer any sun to judge the time by, only the moon in the sky.

From her perch by the makeshift wall she’d made, Frances frowned. The Alavari riders were growing in number. They had started with a thousand, but another thousand had arrived. Most were still orc war-boar riders. She could tell by the gait of the pigs with their short, stumpy legs.

And yet, they hadn’t attacked. She couldn’t quite understand it. It was almost as if they were simply waiting for them.

She heard someone walking up behind her. It was Martin, visor up, blue eyes narrowed. “Frances, do you have any idea why they haven’t attacked?”

She didn’t reply. She had an idea, but it was half-formed, not something she could put into words.

“You… have an idea?” Martin asked.

Frances shook her head. “Sorry, I do, but I’m not sure. I am wondering if maybe they know something we don’t, or maybe they don’t know something.”

“Maybe they have more reinforcements coming, or are bringing up cannon,” Martin mused.

She shook her head. “No. They don’t need cannons to overcome our little barricade. And they must know that they have enough to attack us by now.”

As Elizabeth and Ayax walked up and all crouched down behind the wall, as if by unspoken agreement. Then again, not wanting to get shot at was probably a good motivation.

“Frances, can you call Eustace? Let him know how we’re holding up and get an idea of where he is,” Elizabeth asked.

“I—” Frances blinked and pointed to the sea. “Look!”

Rounding the entrance of the bay were sails. They belonged to two ships, either barques or frigates, lit by lanterns hanging in varying places.

They weren’t however, unscathed. As they drew nearer, Frances could see tattered sails and holes in their sides. The largest of them was listing and had several sails entirely missing. They did however, have small rowboats tied behind them and even now sailors were rowing the boats toward them.

“Movement among the Alavari! I—I think they are going to attack!” Ayax stammered.

It clicked for Frances then, why the Alavari cavalry hadn’t attacked. “They must not have known our ships were coming for us. Now they know.”

Elizabeth grimaced and stood up. “Get to your companies and have them fire at will. Ayax, stay back for the moment in reserve. Frances let them have it!”

Frances nodded and ran back to her firing step, a spell already in her mind. A fireball that she flung into a clump of riders, scattering them, blasting them off their mounts, or setting them aflame. The orcs that were on fire bellowed with agony, many veering to the sea and right into their fellows.

As she fired spells at the unending mass, all along the wall the crack of muskets firing sounded. Aiming wasn’t really necessary. There were that many orc riders. Torches lit their green skin and black or brown war boars.

Fearlessly they plunged toward the wall. Frances was for a moment, incredulous. They meant to vault the trench!

“Pikes and halberds!” Ginger yelled.

The soldiers not shooting from the wall ran up and took position, levering pikes and halberds.

“Hold!” Martin yelled.

“Let them have it!” cried Elizabeth.

Frances grimly switched her aria to that of her lightning spell even as the wall of orc riders drew nearer. Even as convicts and Erlenberg soldiers trembled beside her.

She could see the helmeted faces of the orcs. Male and female, eyes wide, green skin lit by the torches some of their comrades carried.

She looked them in the eye, steeled her heart and fired.

No orc or war boar made it over the trench in front of her, or in the immediate area around her. They were blasted apart, shocked senseless. Orcs that weren’t zapped to a scorched crisp tumbled to the ground writhing in pain, thrown by their collapsing mounts. Some fell headfirst into the water-filled trench, convulsing, drowning in the muddy water.

And yet Frances couldn’t stop. She kept casting, forcing herself to ignore how eaw her voice was. Up and down their makeshift fort, orc cavalry had leapt over the trench. Most hadn’t been successful. Their mounts had slammed into the water and gotten stuck. Some pigs or riders were speared by the Lightning Battalion’s soldiers. Some boars managed to leap the trench but slammed into the dirt and slid back into the trench, throwing their riders.

But enough, not many, but enough had leapt the trench, onto the dirt wall itself and clambered over where they fought the desperate defenders.

Frances threw her spells at these breaches with pinpoint accuracy. Her magical armor was activated, deflecting the pistol bullets that some orcs shot at her. She saved one soldier bulled over by a war pig by tossing his attacker off. She slammed a fist of magic into another orc rider trying to saber a musketeer.

But as she fired madly into the fray, she looked away at a critical moment.

A weight slammed into her, bowling her backwards. Her armor had saved her but as she scrabbled to her feet a war pig, it’s orc rider screaming wildly, leapt onto her. It would have crushed her but as it was she was pinned to the ground. The pig slamming its feet onto the magic blue shields of her armor. The drain was intense and Frances barely managed to throw a fireball that sent the pig running away squealing, it’s fur and rider on fire.

Someone yanked her up, and threw a card at the orcs clambering over the wall. It exploded, ripping the orcs apart with a gruesome finality.

“Frances! Are you hurt?” Ayax yelled.

“Thanks. I’m fine! Keep shooting!” Frances stammered.

They were holding, barely. The wall and trench really helped. And yet Frances could see dozens of wounded soldiers from her battalion struggling towards the water’s edge. Others lay on the sand, still, or if they were lucky, crying.

She was mid-song, throwing another bolt of lightning, when her song was drowned out by a thunderous crack. Spinning around, Frances saw flashes from the ships in the bay, heard the whistle of cannonballs, and flinched, as the ground shook.

Cannonballs were crashing into the oncoming orcs, slicing the air above the heads of the Lightning Battalion and the melee they were in. It took several seconds, but at the sound of the gunfire, the orcs retreated, running from the fight.

Elizabeth, one hand holding their standard, the other her warhammer, shouted, “Hold! Don’t pursue! Get to the beach! First company to the boats with the wounded! Everybody else reload!”

The First Company were the convicts, Ginger’s company. Frances nodded to that even as she cried out, “Call me to the wounded, hurry!”

“Cuz, you’re exhausted. Are you sure?” Ayax asked.

“We need to triage them until they can get to the boats, or else they won’t survive,” Frances said, running up to a moaning orc with an Erlenberg sash.

Ayax caught her shoulder, “Frances, you’re our only mage, if you use your magic—”

“They’re our soldiers and my patients, Ayax! I won’t abandon them!” Frances hissed. She pushed her cousin’s hand away and knelt down by the orc. He had a horrible slash that had opened up his arm, so deep she could see bone. “You’re going to be fine. Press this onto your wound. I need stretcher bearers!”

Martin ran up with two other humans. “Frances, we’re going to triage them. Get to the water’s edge. We’ll have the wounded brought to you!”

Frances could hear Ayax breathe an audible sigh of relief, which she wasn’t sure about. It was nice her cousin was worried, though. “Thanks! He’s alright, but he needs a tourniquet as soon as possible! Hurry!”

When Frances and Ayax got to the water’s edge, they found Elizabeth and Ginger arguing with one another, even as the boats were pulling in.

“Elizabeth, we don’t need to be babied! We can do our part! What’s this really about?” Ginger yelled.

“I am not going to risk someone sacrificing you to escape! Do you understand?” Elizabeth hissed.

Ginger blinked, mouth dropping open. She closed it and sighed. “Look, we trust you, Elizabeth. We know you won’t do that.”

“Thanks, though… that’s not just it,” Elizabeth said.

Frances coughed. “Your company’s the weakest of our battalion.”

Ginger scowled. “Say that again!”

The convict was glaring at her, but Frances didn’t actually feel any fear. “Ginger, you and your fellow convicts are malnourished, overworked, suffered weeks if not months of physical abuse and torture. Five days of good food is not enough to heal that. If they attack again during our retreat, your people won’t be able to fight and break out at the same time.”

The redhead spluttered, her eyes narrowed, “We… I…”

Having just arrived, Martin gently put a hand on Ginger’s shoulder. She flinched, but visibly relaxed at his touch.

“Ginger, it’s okay,” said Martin in a quiet voice.

Ginger sighed, and after a murmured sorry, she walked away to get her company onto the boats.

“Martin, how did you get her to calm down like that?” Elizabeth asked, eyes wide.

“Because we’re right and Ginger knows that most of all.” Martin swallowed. “I just finished counting. Twenty dead. We have around thirty with light wounds and ten more seriously wounded. Are you ready to heal them, Frances?”

Frances steeled herself and nodded. “Bring them to me.”

Mercifully, the Alavari didn’t attack. They were regrouping, far outside of cannon range. That allowed Frances to heal the critically wounded enough so that they didn’t die and for them to load the 1st Company and the wounded the boats.

A steady stream of rowboats were now ferrying the Lightning Battalion from the shore to the ships. Some of their soldiers cried when they were loaded onto the boats, and nobody begrudged them. They were escaping certain death.

They couldn’t take the bodies of their fallen, though. Each boat was going out almost fully loaded. All they could do was take their personal effects, any money they had on their person and toss them in a bag in one of the boats

There wasn’t even time to bury them. All Frances could say as she stared at the men, women, and Alavari that lay in a neat row on the beach was a quiet, “Thank you.”

She didn’t even know their names, and she knew they wouldn’t be the only ones, but there wasn’t time to grieve.

Especially when an argument was breaking out amongst her and her friends at the boats. She walked over to find Ayax, Elizabeth, Martin and Ginger arguing.

“Martin, Ginger, Ayax, are getting on the boat, now,” snapped Frances.

Ayax stammered, “But you—”

“We cannot die. You three can. And without either of you two, we won’t have someone from Erisdale and Erlenberg to protect our convicts,” Elizabeth said, smiling with relief.

Frances mirrored that smile. “How many are on the boats?”

“Two companies. We just have our cavalrymen and one last company on the beach. If I was the enemy commander, I’d attack now,” Elizabeth said, watching the riders.

Ayax hissed, “Which is why—”

“Ayax, I don’t want to leave Durannon yet, alright? I don’t plan to,” Elizabeth said, meeting the troll’s eyes.

Something silent that Frances wasn’t sure of passed between Ayax and Elizabeth. It was something that to Frances’s surprise, she couldn’t read or even guess at.

And yet, Ayax simply nodded and turned to get on the boat with Martin and Ginger.

Frances stared as her cousin and friends left, not quite liking the feeling in her chest, even as she forced herself to breathe.

“Just us two and a hundred others left,” Elizabeth muttered.

Shaking her head, Frances shoved her feelings down and forced a smile. “Think they’re going to attack?”

“Oh yes. They were meant to prevent us escaping. If they fail, General Antipades is going to be mad,” said Elizabeth, her smile also very forced.

“Well, I think he’s going to be very angry,” Frances said, turning back to their troops.

Elizabeth giggled and they turned to their remaining soldiers, all staring at her with nervous smiles.

“Let’s get off this damn beach,” said Elizabeth.

The soldiers laughed, others remained grimly silent, but they all turned to watch the orcs. Just a small band by the water’s edge, watching the Alavari massing in the distance.

They came all at once, at a signal they couldn’t heart. The sea of lights and riders galloped forward.

The guns of the Erlenberg warships opened up and Frances watched as the cannons tore canyons through the horde of riders. And yet, they still charged.

The rowboats, crewed by what Frances thought were the most fearless sailors she’d ever met, continued to come. Elizabeth ushered men and women into them whilst Frances drew on what power she had left.

She was exhausted, but there was nothing for it. She had to keep fighting and she resolved that, even as her voice shook from the effort of singing for so long.

The orcs had learned. Instead of simply trying to vault the trench and wall, they dismounted and leapt over the trench carefully, clambering over the unmanned walls. They weren’t uncontested. The last of their soldiers continued to fire their muskets, but there were only forty musketeers amongst the remaining company. That and the horses, but they’d left them off their reigns and they’d ran off when the fighting started.

Her chorus built as she charged her spell again, but when she fired, it wasn’t the same lightning spell. Instead of a straight bolt, Frances swung her wand and a myriad of smaller bolts rained down, lancing scores of orcs as they clambered over the wall. That stopped the charge for a moment, as the orcs had to pull their dead aside.

“Wade into the water, hurry!” Elizabeth ordered.

Frances didn’t hesitate, and followed her soldiers as they splashed into the water. Men and women beside her panting as they tried to get closer to the boats.

Whoever was on the boat had seen what was going on had redoubled their efforts. Five boats were floating towards them now. The soldiers continued to try to face the enemy as they waded backward, but as the water got deeper and deeper, it got harder and harder.

Frances was the one closest to the onrushing orcs. The water only lapping at her knees. Spell after spell, blasts of wind, bolts of fire, even icicles she formed from the water and threw into the orcs, they bombarded the onrushing enemy. They didn’t stop. Instead, cracks from orc pistols continued to ping at her shields.

Her arm trembling, Frances barely noticed Elizabeth yell for them to swim for the boats if they had to. She was too busy batting an orc only ten meters away into his fellows. She could sense her magic growing weaker, the empty feeling in her stomach was larger than she had ever felt.

The orcs were almost in spitting distance. Her arm shaking, her throat, raw, sandpaper coarse, Frances summoned every scrap of strength she had left and let loose a primal roar. A great fireball blasted out from where she stood. It sent orcs flying backward, set any cloth they wore aflame.

Almost spent, Frances ran, splashing into the water. She could see most of their soldiers were already on or swimming to the boats. A last few were almost waist deep, fighting desperately with swords and pikes against the orcs.

Elizabeth was in the centre of them, a silvery blur in her armor as she broke bone and smashed limbs with her hammer. She raced toward Frances and flew past her, hammer swinging into an orc Frances hadn’t realized was almost about to get her. The pair charged back to their remaining soldiers. Frances tried to ignore the bodies floating or sinking into the blood-soaked sea.

“Frances, get on the boat!” Elizabeth ordered.

Frances hesitated but obeyed her friend, and waded deeper into the sea, until it was almost up to her shoulders. She leapt for the boat, and was dragged on by her soldiers, falling into the boat, and almost smashing her face.

Straightening, she snapped her eyes to the sound of a cry.

Elizabeth was falling backwards, scrambling to get her balance. A surprisingly lithe orc woman with a saber must have gotten a good hit on her head, because she was pinwheeling her arms. One of her fellows tackled Elizabeth, who somehow managed to twist out of the way, but the orc woman smashed the basket hilt of her saber into Elizabeth’s visored face.

Frances, the sinking horror growing in her chest outweigh any exhaustion she felt, stood and fired a bolt of magic that forced the orc that staggered Elizabeth to dodge, but Elizabeth, who had lost her balance, fell backwards, and was swallowed by the sea.

The world seemed to stop, and Frances raised her wand. She was scared before, but she’d faced death so many times in her home world and now here that she’d grown numb to that fear. But the idea of losing her best friend, that terror drove every spark of magic she had left into a spell that wasn’t so much cast as screamed into existence.

The female orc that had stunned Elizabeth flew backwards, an Alavari cannonball bulling into her fellows and carrying on. Elizabeth rose from the water, spluttering, water pouring from her armor, and flew towards Frances’s boat.

She was nearly there, when something punched Frances backwards. She felt no pain, but her concentration wavered and Elizabeth crashed into the water.

Frances pulled herself up, despite spiderwebs of pain shooting from her right chest, and tried to sing and pull her friend from the water. That was when an orc threw his lance in a spectacular javelin throw.

Frances tried to channel her magic into her armor, but she had pretty much none left and so nothing stopped the lancepoint from hammering into her left thigh.

It was like she was being burned. She remembered suddenly, one time when her biological mother had buried the tip of an iron on her thigh and kept it there. She’d struggled, trying to move, but Dan had held her there and she couldn’t even scream thanks to being gagged. She didn’t even remember what she was being punished for.

It was just like that time. She couldn’t move. The lance had pinned her against the boat. All she could do was howl at the pain, and at how her friend was drowning in her own armor.

“Save her, please!” Frances gasped.

Out of her dazed, groggy vision, she saw only four soldiers were left in the water. The rest had gotten to the boats. Of the soldiers in the water, there were three humans and an ogre.

One of the humans, a scrawny girl turned, hefted her blade and charged the orcs. The ogre dived. The last two humans, a thickset woman with a pike and a halberd-armed man with a stiff chin, nodded and turned to charge.

Frances watched, pinned in place, as the humans fell. The girl first, cut down by sabers. The man with the stiff chin was second, a pistol shot at point blank range making him drop his halberd, before several orcs stabbed him. Somehow, he drew a knife and stabbed one of the orcs, before he fell limp.

The thickset woman was harder to kill. She whirled her pike left and right. Deflecting blows from the orcs, the point of her weapon plunging through gaps in their armor, dropping them into the wast deep water. She even managed to knock an orc who’d managed to get too close into the water with the haft of her weapon.

It bought enough time for the ogre to haul Elizabeth up on the depths and put the gasping Otherworlder onto the side of the boat. Before the willing soldiers could haul her over, though, the thickset woman was killed. Several orcs rushed her at the same time. One died, stabbed by the woman’s pike, but the two other orcs tackled her into the water, their sabers churning the water with blood.

The others rushed the ogre, even as he flipped Elizabeth onto the boat. Instead of trying to get on the boat, though, the ogre gave the rowboat a mighty push. It shoved the boat to sea, where the sailors and any able-bodied soldier began to paddle as hard as they could.

“No! Alfred!” bellowed a man beside France.

Alfred, the ogre, grinned. “Be happy, John. For Erlenberg!”

With that, the ogre spun around and drew his sword. He managed to slay one orc and crack the skull of another with his weapon’s hilt, before flashing sabers cut Alfred down, and he sank into the water.

Frances had watched this without a word, only through wide, horrified eyes. Her leg throbbed, like some sick clock telling the time in bloodloss.

She saw the four dead heroes who’d saved her friend. She saw the bodies of her battalion, who’d fought so loyally and willingly under her command. They were floating in the dark-red surf, or still on the beach.

An overwhelming rage pierced her pain and she bellowed, somehow, with might she didn’t think she had left. Her uninjured leg took a step forward, and she dragged herself up the lance, stepping onto the side of the boat.

“Alavari of Antigones, I, Frances Windwhistler, Daughter of the Firehand, do swear that you may have won this day, but from now on, you will rue the day you stepped foot on Erlenberg because I will bring thunder and lightning on your heads and make the seas run red with your blood!”

And she stood there, glaring, howling every obscenity she knew at the frozen-stiff Alavari, even as her soldiers cut the lance that had impaled her and carried her down into the boat, until darkness took her and she lost all consciousness.