They were walking back to their part of the camp, Leodin and Amos talking about the differences between Harvand and Marradi unit composition and tactics, when a figure stepped out from the surrounding tents.

“Leo, you’re alright!” Gedrin’s voice was relieved and cheerful, a clear contrast to the anger that clouded Leodin’s face upon his brother’s unexpected appearance. “I didn’t see your unit during the battle, I was worried the general might have had you doing something dangerous!”

“We were securing the flanks,” Leodin said flatly, looking just over Gedrin’s shoulder instead of meeting his eyes.

“That’s good,” Gedrin said with a sigh. “You need to be careful, a battlefield is an unforgiving place. If you let your attention slip for just a moment, you might get seriously hurt! Remember, there’s nothing shameful about running when you can’t win—"

Leodin pushed past him, almost causing him to stumble into a tent. When Gedrin had righted himself, his brother had already moved on down the path.

“Hey, come back!” Gedrin yelled, starting after his brother, but an armored hand stopped him dead in his tracks. He turned toward the owner of said hand with a scowl, although that slackened slightly when he had to tilt his head back to meet Edwin’s angry eyes. Still, he didn’t back down, trying to push past Edwin’s hand defiantly, though impotently.

“He’s my brother! This is between us, so stay out of it!” he hissed.

“We’re the ones who have to live with his foul mood for the next week,” Edwin said, frowning. “And whatever you still have to say, even I can tell that it’s just going to make things worse. We’re going back to our camp, and if you try to follow us, we will both find out how far I can throw you.”

With that Edwin left, moving past an angry Gedrin, who thankfully stayed put. When they got back to their campsite, Leodin was already in his tent.

“What do we do?” Salissa asked.

“Not much we can do, I think,” Bordan said with a sigh. “At least not right now. Maybe we can get him to tell us what’s going on once he’s cooled off a bit. Family is hard, and if we meddle that might just make him angry at us too.”

--- ----- ---

The division arrived at the designated hill less than two days later and immediately began to fortify it. Command had written up a plan, and the soldiers and adventurers stripped off most of their armor and clothing and started digging. Trenches would slow down the enemy advance, while the excavated soil was piled into mounds. Finally, small stepping holes were dug all along the hillside, mostly hidden under the short grass, that would trap an enemy’s foot and cause them to stumble or even break their ankles. A few of the soldiers were assigned to sharpening stakes and felling trees under the watchful eyes of the engineering cohort, and the hillside next to the road quickly transformed into a formidable fortification.

Now that they were expecting combat, the Marradi chose a somewhat slower pace. They still didn’t dawdle, and the morning after 5th division had arrived at their chosen location, Edwin and his party were marching out to take their assigned position and meet their enemies in combat.

Or, maybe not “meet”, per se.

“I tried,sorry,” Gerrack had said on the way back from the command tent the previous night. “I made the case that we’re needed in the fight because they outnumber us, but I think the earthworks we’ve built make him feel secure. Also, to be fair, if they’re ever going to flank us, it will be now.”

So, when morning came, the adventurers were in the forest again, out of bowshot of the rest of their division, making sure that the enemy didn’t circumvent their position.

The Marradi took their time. From his vantage point, high up on the top of the hill on the right of their defensive position, he could easily make out the different cohorts marching into the open and forming a line. This time, they could do so outside of the trees while still being out of range of the defenders’ arrows, and they seemed happy to do so without any haste. Finally, the formation stopped moving.

“Why aren’t they doing anything?” Edwin asked after a minute had passed without anything happening.

“I’m not sure,” Bordan replied with a frown, scanning the battlefield himself. “They must be waiting for something. A flanking attack would make sense, but that looks like most of their troops down there. Maybe they’re building siege weapons, but that will take a long time, and we’re still assuming that they’re in a hurry.”

He kept looking for a while longer, then grunted. “Nothing we can do about it from up here anyway. Let’s just do our job and make sure they don’t get around us.”

Minutes passed agonizingly slowly, but neither down on the field nor up on their hill did anything move. Edwin was just about to ask Bordan something when a bright light from the corner of his eyes made him turn his head toward the enemy lines.

A glowing sphere filled with swirling, orange light rose from the center of their formation, its arc taking it high into the sky before it almost ponderously curved back down again, falling toward the Harvand formation. Edwin held his breath for a few seconds, then slowly released it.

It fell short.

The spell impacted the ground some fifty meters ahead of their infantry with a deafening bang. From his position, Edwin could see how the shockwave expanded in a perfect circle, violently bending the grass and what flowers hadn’t been trampled yet – and then came the fire.

The ball didn’t explode in flames, as one might have expected. Instead, a wave of liquid fire rode the shockwave, falling on churned earth and green grass alike, burning more brightly than any mundane fire ever could. After a few seconds, the magical flames died down, but the damage was done. Where some of their forward earthworks had been was now a large, circular crater, and the hillside for almost fifty meters in all directions was burning merrily.

“Fireball,” Edwin whispered. “They’ve learned it.”

He shook his head, grabbing Bordan’s arm. “Where are our damn mages?”

The former soldier was still staring open-mouthed at the devastation on the field below, but Edwin’s words pulled him out of it.

“They stayed behind to study again,” he said, looking sick. “They’re back at the camp.”

A cold feeling spread through Edwin, running up his back and tickling the base of his neck.

“Without them, we have no protection! Even if it’s just a single mage, they should be able to cast three or four of these!”

Another fireball rose from the Marradi lines, and this time it was accompanied by a roaring cheer. With his enhanced vision, Edwin could even make out the grey-robed mage who had cast it, standing safely behind several rows of soldiers, his hands raised toward the sky. The spell sailed upwards, thousands of eyes following its flight. For a moment, Edwin thought it was going to be a direct hit, but it overshot the formation by a good margin, slamming into the forest near the top of the hill, cracking trees like kindling and tossing burning branches far and wide. A few soldiers in the back were struck by droplets of magical fire, but the majority of the substance fell on the dug-up ground or the surrounding conifers.

“We need to leave!” Edwin told Bordan, his voice urgent. “We can’t—”

A familiar horn call rang across the battlefield, and 5th division’s soldiers began to turn around immediately. This time, the retreat was much less orderly than it had been during the last fight, looking more like a full rout than anything else. A different signal echoed up from the Marradi lines, and with a cheer, the enemy soldiers began charging up the hill.

As the adventurers left their hiding spots and gathered to leave, Edwin studied the battlefield with narrowed eyes. Their allies were leaving quickly, but there were still thousands of soldiers that needed to get out from between their fortifications and off the battlefield. Even at their best speed, it would take minutes for the last of them to clear the open ground and reach the tree line.

“Bordan,” Edwin called, already moving. “I’m taking Salissa and going down there!”

“Be careful!” Bordan yelled after him. Salissa saw him coming toward her with a puzzled expression that turned to a startled one when he simply scooped her up into his arms without stopping.

“Hey!” she yelped, but he braced her against his chest and started running, cursing himself for not handing his glaive off to someone else. It made carrying someone without slicing them up quite a challenge.

“The mages are at the camp, sucking on their thumbs,” Edwin explained as he shot out of the forest and began to pick up speed, his legs devouring the open ground as they charged toward their soldiers. “Everyone is crowding off the field in one big mass. If the next fireball hits, hundreds of people will die.”

Even as he spoke, the third spell rose from the base of the hill, leisurely crawling up toward the grey clouds. “Put me down!” Salissa said, her voice strained. Edwin obliged, his boot carving a furrow into the dirt as he stopped. The young mage shook out her arms, her narrowed eyes fixed on the glowing orb. It reached the apex of its arc and began dropping.

“This one’s on target,” Edwin said quietly. They were still a hundred meters out, but neither of them mentioned how bad of an idea it was to cast magic at this range. They were only getting one shot at this.

Edwin stepped back. He knew that there was nothing more he could do. She either managed it, or she didn’t, and anything he could say would only distract her now.

Screams rose from the retreating soldiers as they spotted the deadly spell falling straight towards the tight press of bodies, where their own earthworks had forced them into a funnel. Soldiers raised their shields or ducked, some even trying to climb over their own comrades to get away.

The fireball exploded with a thunderous clap, Salissa’s shield glowing into visibility a few dozen meters above the frightened soldiers. Liquid fire sprayed in all directions, some of it falling like rain onto the retreating men, blackening steel and burning flesh. Due to their position, Salissa’s shield had been summoned at a steep angle, protecting those closer to her from the flames but leaving those farther down the hillside uncovered.

“Good work,” Edwin said quietly, catching the young mage’s unconscious body before she could fall to the ground. “How about we get out of here as well, hm?”