The sweeping grasslands had grown to sapling forest over the course of the day. Their path towards Talibath allowed them to march in four files, watched over by trees looming over thirty feet high. A faint mist hung in the air, suffocating the suns’ light in its white shroud. The clink clunk of steel mixed with the steady clop of their boot heels on weather beaten stone, long past familiar to Edus’ ears.

Sigmarius Landon rode ever on atop his horse in front of Edus, uncharacteristically silent beside another officer, who he noted was not Sigmarius Isaac, but a stout mercenary wearing the jade scaled armor of his Company’s namesake. Another casualty from the battle of the Middenfort siege, he guessed. A friend gone, loathe to be replaced.

The mercenary's armor was of no normal jade however. It was bright green, opaque and polished to a cloudy sheen. What was most odd was that it glinted off light when there was none. The rectangular scales were linked together over his shoulders down to skirt round his thighs. His limbs were covered in burnished golden vambraces and greaves. A gold plate contoured over the top of his head with a mailed coif sloping down his oxen neck. A great broadsword curved to one point was carried in a gold inlaid dark brown leather scabbard, its form crescenting to that of a straightened and thickened sickle. The handle itself was made of the same verdant veined stone.

This man carried himself with the confidence of a higher power. Power graced by the Jadess herself. The Crown Steward had given the allied armies of Hearth and Lyonia over to the command of the Jade Company, uncaring for his mens’ loyalties.

Resentment had spread throughout the legions over being made to follow a foreign command, pouring salt over a prideful wound after having shed so much blood over the last battle. Still, the Crown Steward’s order was not to be denied. What could mortal men do but follow the decree of the mages?

Faraway cries were heard to the forefront. Cracks of gunshot scattered in between the silence. The soldier of jade raised a brutish fist in short order, boots scuffling to a halt. Landon’s horse nickered nervously. The mercenary stepped off his own mount and drew out his two handed broadsword with one hand, revealing the blade was made of the same green stone as his scaled armor. He brandished it in front of him with both hands.

“Side to side!” Landon ordered, and the calls of the captains starting with Grizwald echoed down the lines of soldiers. They formed a shieldwall to either side of the road, Landon scuttling off his horse with a helping hand from Grizwald to join them in between the two lines. Corro and Osgood wandered their muskets aimlessly. Branches spiked out from the white fog that surrounded them, growing thicker as each moment passed. Birds shrieked, echoing and dying out.

The jade mercenary remained outside the formation, perfectly still. He twirled his sword so that the flat of the blade protected his face and body from the arrows that clattered off harmlessly. The rest did not. Edus saw an arrow sprout from the eye of a man further down the line and teeter backwards. His squad slouched behind their shields, and Landon shouted, “Fire at will!”

They did as they were bid, but the mist was so dense and the musket men so spread out they would be lucky to hit a tree, much less a bowman no doubt hiding behind the tree. The mercenary roared and disappeared into the fog, the white air wafting in his wake. More arrows bounced and dinged off their shields, until none came.

The jade soldier strode back, dressed in deep red gore. He wiped away the blood on his face, showing a snubbed nose and a knotted black beard beneath his open helmet. He flicked his sword with such speed and force all the blood which coated it splattered off before sheathing at his back. Golden strings of light faded from his dark cat like eyes. A mage, Edus wondered. How many more rest in our ranks?

The mage spoke tersely, his voice harsh and rasping. “We continue.”

So they marched briskly onward with greater speed. They stepped over the dead and the dying. Edus ignored their weak pleas for aid as he helped carry them off the road. The order had been given down the lines that all wounded were to move off the road, or be moved, so as not to slow down the host’s advance. They circled brokenly round fallen trees blocking their path, what must have been the cause for their sudden stop.

The mist did not last, fleeting in its veil to the bowmen, hooded cloaked forms that were grey as the trees.

“Full tilt!” Landon yelled, having abandoned his horse. The legions had been ordered to stay their course on the stoned road. The Jade Company were to deal with the Rangers of Talibath. Jian and Osgood, being part of Landon’s personal guard, rushed alongside them. Edus saw other mercenaries bearing weapons of different kinds stride out from the lines. One man, chestnut skinned of the Dervishmen, twirled twin curved swords that cut away at the arrows in his path with winding speed. Another seemed to glide from branch to branch, shooting forth the ambushers down below with their own weapon in kind with the nocking of his bow string in rapid succession. The jade mercenary rushed back into the fray, his lips forming a howl as he blocked his half exposed face reflecting off his verdant broadsword.

The mist had retreated with their advance, the suns’ light revealing a clearing. Besides Grizwald the rest of Edus’ squad breathed with ragged breath, but the sight of open ground surely strengthened their burning legs. Edus merely broke into a light sweat. He had hardly even reached weariness since his ascension. As they neared the glade the din and clamor of battle could be heard, rising with each step. Edus saw battalions of soldiers with the crest of Talibath stitched upon their purple tabards, the weight scale, perfectly balanced and tipped to neither side. Such was this battle, for though their numbers may have been greater the broken legions had trickled in and reinforced the forefront.

Edus wondered how it was even possible that the first squads into battle had held for so long, before it was answered. A woman, though cloaked, he was sure was a woman standing behind the formation of soldiers circling out from the forest. A dozen or so other mages stood alongside, their palms facing the pressing enemy.

The men of Talibath looked as if they had met an invisible wall, pushing with their shields and their feet sliding back, not forward. They stopped and spread out in gapped formation for a loose gunnery line of musketeers beside the shield bearers that fired, a cloud of white smoke rising skyward.

The musket balls hung in the formless wall, caught in the force of the mages’ Gift. They spun with increasing speed before being shot back towards them. The musket men promptly stepped behind the nearest shield bearer, who closed in to a shieldwall. Some fell, but almost all survived the barrage.

“We cannot hold much longer!” The Jadess herself uttered, voice piping high. Some of the mages collapsed, squatting down in rest. They then drew their weapons, wielding spears of jade, others twin curving blades glinting green.

“Shields up!” Landon ordered following the other officers. Another thunderous volley was unleashed, this time hitting their mark. The shot dinged and clanged, shattering against the shields that blocked the brunt of the fire. What must have been at least a legion charged towards the huddled semi circle of tired and wearied men and mages.

“Brace!” Landon shouted overhead the cries for their blood. Edus and the others were behind the first line. He noticed Jian held a slim double edged sword of jade, glimmering off the light of the suns. They locked their shield arms tight for the incoming assault.

The surge of soldiers hit the shield wall, but like a dam they held against the mass of pressed bodies. Edus grit his teeth as he thrust his sword through the exposed neck of a man whacking upon his shield, his blood expelling from the wound in a splattering gout. Jian to his left deftly kicked another down the knee, extending it unnaturally back. His cry was cut off as Jian jabbed his sword through the horizontal slit of his helmet. Grizwald at his right shoved soldiers reeling back with his shield before hacking at their unarmored shoulders and necks, gore arcing with his butchery.

Though they were holding they were being pushed steadily back, Edus finding himself behind the front line once more. Fredric and Grizwald were still at the front, shield pressed against shield, each side seeking to crush the other with heavy steel. Soldiers yowled as they were flung skyward by the force of the mages who fought side by side with them.

The Jadess herself wielded a katana of jade, moving with swift speed and strength unnatural to her willowy figure. Her magi fought with her, their bright green cloaks wisping and rippling as Edus caught their blinding movements. A wall of bodies slowly rose between them and the foe, dozens of soldiers having fallen to their flashing green blades.

The mages that had disappeared into the forest strode to join the battle, their bloodied faces in stark contrast to the whites of their wild eyes. The men of Talibath seemed to have depended on the cunning of their ambush, for the favor of battle was now ebbing away from them in blood.

The legions of Hearth and Lyonia were no longer green from battle. Though far from battle hardened, they had still experienced the horrors and grim reality of bloody melee. They had been tested in the siege of the Middenfort, and survived where others had not.

Talibath it seemed, lacked the same resolve and experience, and scores of men fled back into the forest from the other side of the clearing. The men raised their weapons and roared at the foe’s retreat, Edus yelling with them. The battle was won, but the war was far from over.