With her, Alain retreated, but only to form up the line around him—around her. Where the shields parted, where the line buckled or men’s spirits wavered, he had only to go, the shadow to her light, and she would go there as well. In her wake men’s spirits lifted, and they fought with renewed ferocity, shouting his name: “Lord Alain! Lord Alain!”
For where she stood, where Alain was, no charge could succeed. But even the Lady of Battles could not succeed against the thousands, the endless onslaught of savage Eika and their ravening dogs.
The Eika surged forward. Drums pounded until he could hear nothing above them, not even the clash of shield and sword, not even the screams of the wounded or the howling of dogs. He could not be everywhere at once, and where he was not, the line gave way.
The Eika came on and on up the hill from all sides, and soon all sides were hard-pressed. The drums boomed. With a sudden shift of rhythm, the force of their reverberation deafened him, and the very hill beneath trembled as the shield wall failed in a dozen places and the battle no longer had order.
It became a melee as men clumped together fighting desperately just to stay alive. Eika flowed in from all sides. Fear clutched at Alain’s throat as he realized how few were still afoot—and those who fell had no chance against the dogs.
Even the Lady stilled, staring. The hounds boiled up to him then, yipping. Sorrow took his tattered tabard in his teeth and dragged him westward and in this way, with the Lady at the point and Alain right behind her, they drove westward step by agonizing step down the hill toward the distant shelter of the western forest. Men fell in beside him and behind him, seeking shelter, seeking safety in what numbers they had left to them, a wedge of men thrusting through the Eika onslaught. With each step they struggled as Eika raged forward. They had no choice but to escape to the woods, for their hill and their camp—and the day—was lost.
All was lost.
He could no longer see the plain, only the horde of Eika surrounding them.
At the point of their wedge, the Lady cut a path westward until they were at the west “gate,” its wagons smashed and dead bodies littering the gap. The drumbeat increased, and with each beat the determination of the Eika to stop them from retreat grew. There, at the ruined gate, their wedge ground to a halt. The sun beat down with the hammer blow of heat.
With a great breath, like a beast so immense that its voice was that of a thousand and more mouths, the Eika shifted, steadied, and howled until the roar of it drove men to their knees under the merciless bright eye of the sun.
Only the Lady blazed bright in answer. And only Alain could see her as, behind her, he lifted his sword in desperation.
“Hold fast!” he cried. “God is with us!”