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The Penitents who were conscripted criminals of Stent had been trained to hold a line to move in formation, but the Taker Penitents had not. Michael looked at how Lee and Ogun were positioning themselves, since they’d been in this kind of battle before. They had both gotten shields and spears with swords at their waists. They held the shields high in front of themselves and took a medium stance with their spears pointed forward. Michael mimicked their positioning, as did Davi and Pyotr. Ollie and Marcus were thankfully further back, their skills better to be used from a distance. Michael had been asked to move more toward the middle as well, but he wanted to be up front, where he could keep as many people standing as possible.

Across from them stood the Tusynian forces. Much like Stent, they were lined up in neat rows with primarily spearmen in the front, but he also saw a group of cavalry a bit in the distance as well. He wondered if they were feeling the same anxiety that he was in that moment. Did Stent’s sea of gray uniforms inspire the same fear in them as their sea of tan did?

He drew his pendant out from his armor carefully and kissed it before muttering a prayer.

“Divine, give me the strength to protect my friends, to keep people from dying, and to end my foes mercifully.”

“Amen,” muttered Pyotr next to him, tapping his elbow against Michael’s shield.

Davi chuckled from the other side of him… “I’ll say amen to that too.”

They stood there in the anxious calm for a few more minutes. The wind blew strong and warm across the plains, and Michael took a moment to appreciate how it felt against his skin. It was good to be alive, even there at that moment with all those people arrayed against him.

The general’s horn blew, and the sound of it made their bones rattle. They all started moving tentatively forward with shields high and spears ready.

The Tusynian lines started moving shortly after, and soon everyone was marching closer. They were all moving at a steady pace, like two walls gradually closing in on one another, when the Tusynian cavalry surged forward. They were moving at an odd angle, and as they got closer, Michael could see that they had thin, short spears in their hands.

“Javelins!” yelled Lee as the horsemen got closer and threw the javelins into their lines using the momentum of their horses.

Michael threw up his shield and deflected one of them into the ground when very suddenly, a long curved blade came swinging toward him.

Davi smashed the sword aside at the last moment with his own, and Pyotr actually managed to inflict a shallow wound on the attacker’s horse as it passed. The Javelin had only been the opening salvo, not the end of their charge.

Michael began to heal, sensing a few men that had gone down nearby and mended the terrible rends where their armor had been severed. He kept his hand hidden in his shield as he did it, to keep from drawing too much attention. One man had his head cleaved clear from his body. There was no fixing that. The healing was easy at this point, but how long would his reserves of energy last? Who would die because he ran dry?

The enemy cavalry came back around to attempt to harry their lines again, but Stent’s own cavalry thundered in to intercept them. A few of the Tusynians went down in the exchange, but Michael wasn’t sure how it had happened, though he was fairly certain he’d seen at least one slash of a silver-hilted sword as Lance passed by.

The cavalry charges ceased, but the arrows and bullets came soon after. The first volley was from Stent lines, and Michael watched as a rain of arrows flew from behind him and crashed into the Tusynians, several of them falling from the volley, though he noticed a number of them breaking in the air above them. The Tusynians sent their own arrows shortly after, and Michael managed to catch all of them on his shield, though a few bounced off his armor as well, and one seemed to simply break in the air in front of him thanks to his pendant. Davi took a lucky shot to the shoulder, but Michael healed him the moment he tore it out and kept that healing going out among the rest of them as well. No one was killed by the first volley, but the second and third had some men dropping, and when the gunshots started, there was little Michael could do to heal someone whose brain had been turned to paste or whose heart had exploded from bullet fragments.

They were close enough that he could make out the features on the helmets of the Tusynians in front of him. Much like he’d seen before, a number of them had painted elaborate patterns or even scenes on their pauldrons. He saw diamond patterns of blue and red, azure skies filled with fluffy white clouds, and even idyllic scenes of valleys or homes. Most were amateur, but all of them were unique. They were a people that brought art to war with them. That wasn’t something that Stent had told him.

When they were nearing spear distance, both sides started to send out testing strikes. Michael blocked several blows, both headed for him and for Pyotr to his left. Davi was less able with his shield, but Michael trusted him nonetheless, and that trust was rewarded as he smashed spears aside with enough force to knock their foes off balance.

Ogun was the first to have his spear strike true. A lucky stab between the eye slits of the soldier across from him—that killed him instantly. After that, it was as if a floodgate opened. The rows of men pushed against each other, spears thrusting, shields smashing together, and the men behind them pushing them forward.

Michael’s spear thrust forward with perfect form, smashing into shields or armor with enough force to knock enemies back more often than not. Just as he’d practiced his basic sword strikes to exhaustion, his spear wasn’t far behind. He wasn’t Pyotr, for whom weapons became an art form in his hands, or Davi, whose ferocity tore through his foes. He was a machine. A steady force that pushed forward like an automaton, relentless and unyielding.

The lines on both sides gradually began to deteriorate, and everyone was gradually separated by the natural flow of war. Arrows and bullets whizzed by all around them, and the scent of blood was thick in the air. The steady back and forth devolved into chaos, and while he managed to stay with the other Penitents, they were no longer shoulder-to-shoulder. He smashed his spear through a man’s chest with such force that he wasn’t able to retrieve it and drew his sword.

As the Tusynian lines started to flag, very suddenly Michael and the others began to get pushed back. Men, dwarves, and aelves wearing an odd mix of armor with the only unifying theme being bright blue sashes started to attack. Michael was being pressed hard by a dwarf with a massive hammer and armor too thick for him to carve through. Even as he was pushed back, he sealed a sword wound Prakash took behind him and a pierced lung that Feng had taken from an arrow.

Lee came to Michael’s rescue, kicking the dwarf as he tried for a downward strike and unbalancing him enough to knock him backward so that they could both finish him off. They moved to help Ogun and Davi with three aelves that were stabbing at them with long, thin swords, cornering them and running them through with their blades.

He heard hoofbeats, and they all raised their shields as mercenary cavalry bore down on them. Michael narrowly avoided being trampled, but Iqbal’s leg was crushed as they passed. Pyotr managed to cut at a horse’s knee as it passed, and it fell with a terrible scream, crushing its rider and flailing on the ground.

Michael saw Crick actually meet a horse head-on, ducking down and bracing his spear against the ground, causing the horse to run itself through as it reached him. He rolled away and retrieved a dagger from his belt before falling on a Tusynian that had foolishly turned his back to their line.

Michael healed everyone again, his vision dimming as he knitted flesh and bone back together. He realized that they were all slowly being pushed toward one another. He had lost sight of the Stent lines, and those Penitents that had survived so far were being corralled into a tight circle, surrounded by Tusynian soldiers and mercenaries.

He could tell that they were all getting exhausted and worn down. Michael’s healing could only keep them standing for so long, and eventually they’d start taking lethal hits he couldn’t bring them back from.

Michael raised his sword hand and sent out all of his focus on a massive burst of healing, trying to bring them all back to full strength. He roared as his hand glowed like a small sun for just a moment, and all of his allies were restored.

“Target the healer!” came a yell from the enemy lines.

That was what he wanted.

Michael moved in front of everyone else, meeting a charging mercenary and bowling him over with his shield before cutting down an aelf that drove a dagger into his side. He kept his healing going constantly as he let all of his training take over. He blocked a spear with his shield spell before cutting down a Tusynian soldier and shattered a dwarven skull by slamming his shield down onto his head. All of the nearby enemy forces had singled him out, letting his allies catch their breath and take advantage of their focus on him. The enemy were all surprised by his ferocity, but eventually they began to gang up on him.

The dagger in his side was joined by several arrows in his back, a sword in his shoulder, and finally a spear through his hip pinning him in place. He kept slashing, keeping himself healing even as his limbs became leaded, and darkness clouded his vision even further. A man with a greatsword wearing blackened full-plate with a light blue cape stepped toward him and raised his sword.

The warlord moving toward Michael stumbled as a bullet hit him in the shoulder and forced him to spin. The mercenaries next to him were blasted to pieces as two Fireballs exploded simultaneously in their lines. In that brief reprieve, Pyotr, Davi, and Crick surged toward him, cutting down more of his mercenary accompaniment.

Lee and Iqbal attacked the man in black armor and were swatted aside like flies as he moved toward Michael.

Michael was trying to remove the spear from his hip so that he could move but wasn’t able to. He changed his attention to the pain, feeling it in full, the weight of it in its totality. Every broken limb and cut and arrow. He sent it all to the soldier in black. The warlord stumbled back and raised his sword in a defensive stance as if reacting to a blow.

Iqbal and Lee took that moment to rally and attack him again, their swords scoring deep cuts in his arm and one across his face. Ogun moved in to support them along with Pyotr, and eventually the man took enough blows to fall. Davi turned his attention to Michael and tore the spear free from him before throwing it at a charging soldier with enough force to impale him into another one that was behind him.

Michael sent out another pulse of healing, mending his own muscles enough to allow him to stand, and the others all formed a circle around him, along with a handful of other regular Penitents that had survived and even a smattering of regular Stent soldiers that had gotten separated from everyone else. Michael could no longer fight—his exhaustion made it impossible to even stand—but he kept up his healing. They all had arrows, broken spears, and swords jutting from them, but Michael kept them standing.

He couldn’t see anyone dying in the chaos, but he felt it the moment his healing wasn’t enough. He felt Ogun lose his left hand, Prakash have his head cut in half longways, and a Stent regular have his heart run through by a spear. He prayed to the Divine for them even as he kept healing and his consciousness started to fade.

The Stent lines made it back to them, but it wasn’t through some quick and chivalrous charge. It was a brutally slow slog. Michael could see the tide turning slowly and began to ration his healing. He ceased his own and only healed those who were about to go down in the fight. A mended heel or restored eye to keep them going. When the Stent lines had fully enclosed them, he let out one more burst of healing and lost consciousness.