The soldiers were stripping the bodies when Evan allowed himself to breathe properly. Two men had been hurt — one by the enemy, one who had twisted his ankle in his own nervousness — and neither seriously. He had looked calm throughout. He hadn't felt calm. Franklin let out a long breath beside him, the first real one since the engagement began. Whatever Evan had proposed had been entirely foreign to Franklin's experience, and he had followed it on faith while expecting it to fall apart, and it hadn't, and that mattered.
Becky moved through the men, her water-element abilities putting her limited training to good use on the injured. The soldiers were in good spirits — the raiders had been carrying everything portable from their weeks of looting, and the inventory problem was Raymond's to sort out.
Evan and Franklin took the captured squire-knight aside for questioning. Squire-knights occupied a gray area — close enough to nobility that ransoming was the expected convention — and the man cooperated without much prompting. He belonged to Baron Iden, who served Earl Edward, and they had split from the main body for a raiding run. He gave them Iden's approximate position and numbers: sixty-odd men, including a knight detachment that had separated and would rejoin later.
The two of them sat with that information. Iden's force outnumbered them three to one, with knights in the mix that Franklin's infantry couldn't match.
Franklin's first instinct was to avoid it. Evan's first instinct agreed. Then his second instinct arrived.
"We could take them."
Franklin stared at him. Raymond stared at him.
"Look at it this way," Evan said. "He's isolated — deep in Laine's territory without support. Laine is losing and badly needs something to change the story. If we destroy Iden's detachment, the effect is larger than the numbers suggest. And it would change everything I said earlier about your position in the family. You might not need the estate at all."
The blood came up in Franklin's face. "That large?"
"Twenty men routing sixty, including a knight unit. It stops the enemy's momentum at a moment when Laine needs that most. Yes. That's large."
"But how? They have three times our numbers and a cavalry component. This sounds like a fantasy."
"It might be. The terrain and the timing have to cooperate. Show me the map."
Becky produced it — rough work, but readable. Evan studied it and thought about fire.
Fire attacks were known in this world, though rarely deliberate and planned. The question was the fuel. It was autumn, and the vegetation had begun to yellow. He would need to prepare the ground. He looked at the map for a long time and put his finger on a spot: a valley between two low hills, heavily grassed, with tree cover on the slopes.
He explained the plan. Three faces looked back at him.
"This isn't in keeping with knightly conduct," Raymond said.
Evan pressed his palm to his forehead. "We're not talking about conduct. We're talking about winning. Did Emperor Charles show knightly conduct when he dealt with the Gochars? Did Emperor Kehwa when he made an alliance with the barbarians and attacked them the day they were celebrating it? Both of them built what the Creationist Church stands on today, and history remembers them as great men. The methods are what people choose to forget."
Franklin's expression shifted from reluctance to something more calculating. "As long as we win, no one asks how."
They worked out the details, dispatched two men to escort the prisoner back to Baron Edmund with a message requesting him to advance quickly and be ready to assist if needed, and broke camp before dawn to move toward the valley.
The hills were modest — a hundred cubits or so at their crest, the cubit being the standard unit of measure in this world, roughly half a meter, supposedly derived from the arm length of Emperor Charles, who, according to legend, had unusually long arms. The slopes held good tree cover.
They took up positions on both sides of the valley and settled in to wait. The grass in the floor of the valley was tall enough to brush a man's chin. They poured every drop of cooking oil they had across it, layered dry brush over the top, and felled trees across the far exit of the valley.
The scouts came back on the squire-knights' horses. Confirmation: Iden was coming this way. Raymond gathered the men quietly. Everyone moved to position.
Three and a half hours.
Then Baron Iden appeared with his column — sixty-odd men, well provisioned from their raiding, in confident spirits. He had divided his full force of a hundred into several groups, the others fanning out for maximum coverage, with his group at the center and the knights positioned to respond to any of the others if needed. He had met almost no organized resistance since crossing into Laine's territory, and what had begun as professional caution had softened into something closer to contempt for the opposition.
One of his knights spoke as they approached the valley mouth. "My lord — the ground ahead. We should consider whether—"
Iden looked at the two low hills. "It's nothing. Two small rises. And we have the knights with us, and Mage Mack. Who's going to stop us? If there's anyone in there, I'd welcome the fight."
He rode in. The grass swallowed the column to chest height.
Evan watched from the hilltop. When the column reached the center of the kill zone, he began his incantation. A fireball the size of a man's head formed, flew, and detonated against the grass. The oil caught instantly. On the opposite slope, Becky saw him move and threw her own fireball — smaller, but enough. Raymond's signal: two crossbow bolts trailing burning cloth strips arced across the valley. The felled trees groaned and settled across the exit behind the column.
The fire ran across the grass in seconds. The oil had saturated the ground through the night. Screaming started.
"Protect the Baron — get to the mouth!" Someone was already chanting — Mack, the mage, throwing up a protective barrier around Iden and himself. The knights surged for the valley entrance. When they reached it, the fallen trees were already there.
The infantry behind them had no such options.
Evan watched and felt something he didn't examine closely. Then he hardened himself and cast Wind — just enough of it to push the fire where it needed to go. The flames climbed to several times a man's height. A Low-rank Knight was faster and stronger than an ordinary soldier, but not fire-resistant, and full plate armor at this temperature became a different kind of problem. The sounds from the valley were difficult to listen to.
Franklin had gone pale. Becky hadn't expected this either. Evan said nothing. He had seen forest fire footage on television once — a documentary, he thought — and this was smaller by comparison.
Several knights fought their way out of the valley and came up the slope. Iden among them, and the mage Mack.
Evan started chanting. Becky followed. Mack heard it, understood, and rushed his own incantation. He didn't finish in time — Evan's fireball arrived, and Mack's hastily formed light shield detonated against it and was consumed. He was still recovering when Becky's Wind Blade connected with his throat. It was a basic wind spell, low power, the kind a Magic Apprentice could produce — but the timing was exact. Mack fell from his horse.
He had been killed by an apprentice. He didn't have time to be offended.
The chanting continued. Baron Iden looked at the source of it, at his surviving knights, at the men with hooked glaives now carefully advancing toward him from three directions, and made the calculation.
"I surrender! I surrender!"
His knights looked at each other. The Holy Light along their armor faded as they released the tension from their weapons, and their blades went to the ground. The infantry came forward with glaives leveled, and Baron Iden and his surviving knights were taken without further argument.