"Up!" I roared. "Get your shit together! We're moving out!"

I threw off my bed furs and snatched them back into a storage ring. The camp was badly lit by the first hint of dawn, but the sentries jumped at my yell and began to hurry about waking the rest of the force.

"Mond? What the hell? The army won't engage them for another six hours! We've got loads of time to get into position," Kos grumbled.

"We're the anvil, not the hammer. We'll pull their attention; the main army can smash them in the flank. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!" I yelled again. "We're moving out in half an hour."

"Legate, this is perhaps ill-advised," offered Bon as he crouch-walked over to me.

"Why?" I snapped. Pertabon settled onto his heels and gave me a serious expression. He had somehow already been fully armed and armoured when I woke up with a fire in my belly. The guy must have slept in his wargear.

"We are but a small force. The other groups are in position, I trust?" I checked with Glimpse.

Yes, Ray, the third flanking team has been deployed, and the bird sent back.

"Yeah, they're good to go. No point pissing about. I want Mortimer's head before sunset," I said firmly.

"Yes!" said Jandak as he threw a fist in the air. "See me, Aresk! I'll win glory today!" I exchanged an exasperated look with Kos before we both grinned.

"Yep. Fangs, go light a fire under the nomads. Bon, I want the legionnaires ready to move in half an hour. Kick everyone awake, shove some food in their hands, and get them ready to march. We need to catch up to the bastards first." They spread out to follow my instructions. Anyone who was still in their bedfurs got a kick as they passed, and harsh orders cracked through the air.

With the Fangs and an irate tribune acting as the spurs, it wasn't long before my small band was moving out. I'd grown accustomed to having tens of thousands of warriors around me. Now, with barely a thousand at my back, I felt somewhat vulnerable, especially as I borrowed Glimpse's senses to survey the enemy.

There was a knot of brightness at the heart of Mortimer's formation. Colourful banners waved from spears, and the normal humans acted as the nucleus of an undead cell while it oozed across the scrubland.

Around this band of merry brothers was a sea of grey. The arid landscape looked like a grey swamp, undulating towards Urkash. Trying to count them was a futile endeavour; I had them pegged at around three hundred thousand undead, but I was probably off by at least ten per cent.

That was what Burning Skies was for, though.

My entire force was outnumbered at least ten to one. I could see them maybe a dozen miles away from the horde of undeath as my little band ran towards the enemy.

Scouts from both sides were already skirmishing, nomads and shit-sitter cavalry trading blows. The nomads tended to win out; they were born to ride, but enough of the enemy were escaping back towards Mortimer's army that they'd know soon enough the legions and the nomads were coming.

This might work to my advantage. Aresk had pissed me off. I'd acted without thinking to roust the troops and hit the bastards as soon as possible. Once King Dickhead was in the ground, I'd have some peace for a while to work out what to do with the others. But the lead elements of both sides were already tangling with each other, so we might not be the anvil after all.

We ran like wolves. A steady lope, eating up the ground between us and our prey. The rattle and clank of armour from the legion, and the sussuration of the leather-clad nomads marked our passage as we rushed towards battle.

I crested a low hill and skidded to a halt. My armour appeared over my body at the same time as I pulled half a dozen of my dwindling supply of mana potions from a storage ring. I dropped all bar one into a belt pouch and drew my sword.

Acres of dead men and women moved in the plain below me. A silent mass of animate flesh that ought to be in the ground or have been atop a pyre. Well, I could fix that easily enough.

As the legionnaires stopped, in almost perfect formation, around me, and the nomads spread out to cover their flanks, I made the sky go dark. The last set of upgrades had turned Burning Skies into an apocalyptic weapon. It had to start within my casting range, but I could shape it how I liked, and I was only limited by the maximum area of the spell.

The edge of the enemy army was perhaps half a kilometre away. My range was perhaps a fifth of that, but I could extend a centimetre-wide line of the spell, allowing me to use the bulk of it across a vast area.

I sent the spell out like spiderwebs, half a metre wide, spreading out from my launch point to the mass of the foe. The fireballs that flashed from the sky eradicated everything in a thirty-three metre radius when they hit, turning most organic matter directly into gas and trace elements.

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I cast again, and the red sky darkened once more. Then again. I sent threads of boiling sky-fire down in an intricate web. I'd never tried to use the spell like this before, and it was absorbing all of my attention.

Spheres of impossible heat exploded without warning among the zombies, butting lines through them that reached almost to the bead of colour that lay at the heart of the army. Near Mortimer.

I could feel him like a cyst in my mind. I knew exactly where he was, but whenever I tried to send a thread of Burning Skies in his direction, dozens of shields leapt up to absorb the falling fire.

Reanimated Humanos x33705 slain.

Five hundred and five thousand, five hundred and seventy-five Souls harvested.

Well, that worked. But it was barely ten per cent of the undead. I swung my visor up and chugged two of my precious mana potions. While I did so, the legion mages opened up, elemental bolts slamming across a battlefield that was now pockmarked, with demi-globes of dirt incinerated from existence. Lances of light cut through the mob as it tried to coalesce and turn to face the threat we presented. The lines of blazing glory from the legion spears slammed into more hasty shields before they could hit the human core of Mortimer's forces.

I watched via Glimpse from the sky as another of the three forward-deployed units arrived on the scene. A thousand soldiers emerged from a scraggly forest to the south of us and unleashed another barrage, further disrupting the horde.

My mana ticked back up, and I threw myself forward into the ashy wasteland I'd created, leaping over the divots I'd burned out of the earth until I was close enough for another barrage of burning skies.

"Jandak! Go!" I yelled over the detonations that were racing away from me as the crimson clouds unleashed their fury on my enemies.

My friend blurred past me and ran towards the humans at the heart of Mortimer's army. I followed suit, making sure to let him keep a slight lead. I could feel Kos behind me, and the threads leading to the rest of my unit followed closely behind him. A ululating cry went up from the nomads, Areskyn, Mondyn, Jagapyn, whatever the hell Calpakers tribe was called, they all charged forward with screams of rage and fury.

The dead were nothing to us now, but there were so many of them! Jandak cut a path, a hundred metres of spraying gore and limbs. Then the mob began to slow him down. I ran behind, blade flicking left and right as the swarm tried to close in behind my friend.

Interspersed in the mob were the lesser amalgams, three or four poor bastards melted together by Mortimer's necromancy. They were the pebbles in the stream that bounced off Jandak as he carved a path towards glory.

I leapt into the air and threw fireballs to both sides at the peak of my arc, making sure they landed far enough away that they weren't a threat to my friends.

The Huskar kicked and stomped their way through the grey mob, not even bothering with weapons. Four-foot-long feet, clad in iron-studded boots, made short work of any zombie that got too close.

The nomads worked in trios, fighting back to back with elegant, swirling spearwork. Jandak had clearly trained them well based on the principles I'd passed on to him from Earth.

My friend vanished in a pile of grey flesh for a moment, before surging out, scattering his attackers and driving closer to the real enemy. The enemy that was even now turning their full attention on the threat we represented. I rushed to join him and through up a fire shield as bolts of power flew over the heads of the undead. I don't know whether it was Jandak or Kos, but one of them was on the ball and created spatial tears to swallow the magical attacks and send them back to their origins.

Enemy shields sprang up to block their own attacks. All to the good. We needed to waste their mana and exhaust their trinkets. Once magic was removed from the equation, we could deal with the fighters easily enough. Even my troops, who'd only gotten a couple of levels, were more than a match for the bandaged men, and the Huskar could slam through heavily levelled enemies with ease if they didn't get blown apart before they could close.

Glimpse pecked at my mind, and I grinned behind my visor. It seemed that my Titans had decided to charge rather than advance with the rest of the army and had arrived early.

Mulius and Marbo steamrolled through the northern elements of Mortimer's forces. His human mages were forced to split their attention between the advanced teams and the monstrous Huskar. The flashes of magic were largely ignored by Mulius, who trusted his shaggy, metallic fur and vast health pool to handle the damage. Marbo threw up shields and spatial tears whenever his feline form could slip around them.

For such a large being, Marbo was extremely adept at avoiding attacks, and his two-foot-long claws rarely paused from scything through the dead while he did so.

I sent Glimpse winging back towards the other advanced teams as I continued to slice my way after Jandak. They had charged as well. From above, Mortimer's army looked like a rotten cake with three large wedges cut out of it. Without his massive amalgams, my fellow exile was massively outclassed. The wedges began pushing deeper into the grey mass, carving into the centre of the fetid army he'd amassed.

I cast Burning Skies again and focused it on the nearest sections of the human elements. As soon as the clouds changed colour, dozens of shields flickered into being above the human forces. They stopped the worst of the barrage; barely a handful of fireballs landed.

Reanimated Humanos x1074 slain.

Sixteen thousand, one hundred and ten Souls harvested.

Normalis Humanos x 430 slain.

Four thousand, three hundred Souls harvested.

Soulbound Servant slain x123 slain.

Two thousand, four hundred and sixty Souls harvested.

It was only a fraction of the human troops, but I had opened up a gap in their defences. They were now focused on four directions. The Titans stomping towards them were probably the most terrifying threat, judging by the blasts of magic being fired at them. Then there were our expeditionary forces, enjoying a brief reprieve from the ranged attacks and taking advantage of the opportunity to whittle down the horde some more. Finally, they were clearly watching the sky in fear, waiting for the clouds to change colour.

I waved my sword over my head as I followed in Jandak's wake and we charged to close with the people controlling the mass of the shambling dead.

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