High Lord Antillus Raucus adjusted his own windstream to match the young Knight’s dive and followed him down toward the embattled Third Antillan Legion upon the Shieldwall. “You!” he snarled, passing the young Knight without particular effort by his own, far-stronger furies. What was the idiot’s name? Marius? Karius? Carlus, that was it. “Sir Carlus, get to the healers. Now.”

Carlus’s eyes went wide with shock as Raucus shot ahead, leaving the younger man behind as if he had been hovering in place instead of power diving for the earth at his most reckless speed. Raucus heard him say, “Yes, my l-” But the rest of the word vanished into the gale roar of the High Lord’s windcrafted wake.

Raucus bid his furies to enhance his sight, and the scene below him sprang into magnified vision. He assessed the Legion’s situation as he swept down upon it. Raucus spat out an oath. His captain had been right to send for aid.

The Third Antillan’s situation was desperate.

Raucus had cut his teeth in battle at fourteen years of age. In the forty years since, scarcely a month had passed in which he had not seen action of one scale or another, defending the Shieldwall against the constant menace of the primitive Icemen of the north.

In all that time, he had never, not once, seen so many of them.

A sea of the savages spread out from the Shieldwall, tens of thousands strong, and as Raucus dived closer, he was suddenly enveloped by a chill far deeper than the mere bite of winter. Within seconds, crystalline laceworks of frost had formed across the surface of his armor, and he had to begin the familiar effort of low-grade firecrafting to ward away the cold.

The enemy had built mounds of snow and corpses against the Shieldwall, piling them into ramps. It was a tactic he had seen before, in the most determined assaults. The Legion had responded with their usual doctrine-burning oil and blasts of fire from their Knights Ignus.