POV: Kane Ashford
The horn sounded at dusk, and forty fighters broke from the treeline at a dead run.
"East road!" Ottilie shouted. "They're hitting the east road first!"
Kane was already moving, blade drawn, the field around him erupting into motion as twenty-three fighters scrambled into positions they'd drilled for days but never under real fire.
The first wave hit Ottilie's line hard, bodies colliding at speed, steel meeting steel in a chaos that no amount of training fully prepared a person for. Ottilie held her ground at the center of it, cutting down a fighter twice her size with a economy of motion that came from years of doing exactly this.
"Hold the road!" she shouted. "Don't let them push past the trough!"
Kane cut left, intercepting two fighters angling toward a gap in th
