Smoke hung thick across the pass, forcing Beorn to narrow his eyes before he could make out anything beyond it. Even before the thunder of three hundred horses reached his ears, he felt it through the stone beneath his boots.
Below the shelf, Harr's front rank still held the line behind the stakes. Rifles stayed level. Faces were blackened with powder, dirt, and blood. Every man watched the stretch of open ground Beorn had marked with a stick of charcoal three days earlier. They had not needed another reminder since.
Beyond the smoke drifting from the mouth of the pass, he caught the outline of the guns and Cedd's line beyond them, though the haze swallowed most of the detail. The eastern slope curved behind a shoulder of rock, completely out of sight, exactly where Col had posted his own pickets to guard it.
Three separate fights were unfolding across the battlefield.
From where Beorn stood, he could truly watch only one.
