The Battle of Harken Field began at the ninth hour with the thundermakers.

The barbarian batteries opened from the ridgeline positions that every previous engagement had taught them to occupy, heavy weapons firing in the staggered sequence that sustained continuous bombardment. The dwarven-forged balls struck the Threian formation's center at eight hundred paces, each impact a concussive event that scattered soldiers and cratered the ground and produced the psychological effect that thundermaker fire imposed on infantry formations: the knowledge that the weapon firing at them could not be silenced because the weapon's ammunition was supplied by forges that never stopped producing.

A thundermaker ball struck the ground three paces in front of the king's center formation and bounced, the iron sphere skipping off the packed earth at the angle that the ball's spin produced, the skip carrying the ball through the second rank at chest height. Four soldiers in the ball's path were struck. The first took the ball in the shield and the shield shattered, the arm behind it broken in three places, the soldier thrown sideways into the soldier beside him. The second took the ball in the breastplate after the shield's absorption had reduced its velocity, and the breastplate held but the impact drove the soldier backward off his feet with the force that a bowling ball produced when the bowling ball weighed forty pounds and traveled at the speed of sound. The third and fourth soldiers were struck by the fragments of the first soldier's shield, the iron pieces traveling with sufficient velocity to penetrate the leather beneath their armor's gaps.

"Close the distance!" The king's command carried through the formation with the authority that a Sixth Realm monarch produced when the command was backed by the power that the Sixth Realm provided. The command was not merely loud. It was reinforced. The king's Sixth Realm energy laced the words with the specific harmonic that combat commanders at the higher Realms used to project command authority across battlefield distances, the harmonic that every soldier in the formation felt in their chest as physical pressure that overrode the instinct to seek cover and replaced it with the compulsion to advance.

The formation advanced at the double pace, forty-two thousand soldiers closing the distance between the Threian lines and the barbarian positions, the advance conducted under the thundermaker fire that the distance's closing was designed to shorten.

* * * * *

The shamans struck at six hundred paces.

Not the Seventh Circle shamans. Not yet. The lesser shamans, the Fourth Circle practitioners whose numbers the barbarian force maintained in quantities that matched the Threian battlemages' Third and Fourth Circle contingent. Twenty-two lesser shamans on the ridgeline's flanks, their chanting producing the ground manipulation effects that the previous engagements had demonstrated: liquefaction beneath the left flank, root entanglement on the right where the tree line's proximity provided the organic material that the shamanic entanglement spells used.

The Threian battlemages responded. The Third Circle practitioners cast their counter-spells and the shamanic field absorbed the counter-spells and redirected them, the familiar pattern that every Threian mage had learned to dread. Frost spells meant to solidify the liquefied ground froze Threian soldiers' boots to the earth. Fire spells meant to clear the entanglement ignited Threian supply wagons behind the advance.

The Fourth Circle battlemages pushed through the redirection. Their spells were stronger, their incantations more precisely structured, the mathematical precision of academy training providing the resistance that the shamanic field's natural chaos could not fully absorb. Fourth Circle frost bolts reached the barbarian positions at reduced power, the bolts' energy attenuated by the shamanic field but not eliminated, the ice striking the barbarian lines with enough force to scatter individual warriors without the formation-shattering effect that full-power delivery would have produced.

"The Fourth Circle is getting through!" A battlemage captain's report, delivered with the specific relief of a practitioner whose spells were reaching targets rather than returning to sender.

"Barely," Fairfax said, from the command position. His Fifth Realm senses read the magical field's dynamics with the perception that the Fifth Realm provided, the awareness of energy flows and redirection patterns that lower-Realm practitioners could not detect. "The shamanic field is absorbing approximately sixty percent of the Fourth Circle output. We are landing forty percent. The barbarians are receiving the other sixty as redirected ammunition."

"Then we need higher Circle output."

"The Fifth Circle mages are engaged. The Sixth Circle, His Majesty and three practitioners, are being held in reserve for the Seventh Circle shamans. When the Seventh Circle shamans enter the field, the Sixth Circle practitioners are our only response."

"And if the Sixth Circle is not enough?"

Fairfax did not answer. The question's answer was the answer that the magical classification system provided: the Seventh Circle exceeded the Sixth Circle the way the Sixth exceeded the Fifth. The gap between Circles was not linear. It was exponential. A Seventh Circle practitioner operating at full power against a Sixth Circle practitioner was the engagement whose outcome the classification system predicted with the specific certainty that exponential power differences produced.

The advance reached four hundred paces. The boomstick engagement began.

The barbarian lesser shamans' numbers were the numbers that the barbarian force maintained because the shamanic tradition produced practitioners the way the Threian academy produced mages: in cohorts whose size reflected the tradition's investment in training rather than the tradition's selectivity. The Fourth Circle and below shamans were the tradition's standard output, the practitioners whose capabilities were the workhorses of the barbarian military's magical doctrine, the practitioners who did the sustained work that battles required while the Seventh Circle shamans held their power for the decisive moments.

The sustained work was devastating. Twenty-two shamans chanting simultaneously produced the combined effect that twenty-two practitioners' power generated when the power was synchronized in the harmonic patterns that the shamanic tradition used for collective casting. The ground liquefied across a two-hundred-pace front. The roots from the tree line reached across fifty paces of open ground to entangle soldiers' legs and weapons. The air above the engagement thickened with the humidity that the shamanic atmospheric manipulation produced, the moisture interfering with the boomstick powder's ignition and producing the specific misfires that humid conditions created in black-powder weapons. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The junior Threian practitioners, the Third Circle battlemages whose academy graduation had been months rather than years ago, cast their spells and watched the spells curve back toward them with the specific horror that young practitioners produced when the thing they had been trained to do produced the opposite of the thing they had been trained to expect.

The Seventh Circle shamans watched the Fourth Circle engagement from their ridgeline position with the patience that Seventh Circle power provided to its wielders, the patience of practitioners whose capabilities exceeded the battlefield's current requirements and whose entry into the field would be the entry that changed the engagement's dynamics from the Fourth Circle contest to the contest that the Seventh Circle's presence defined. Their chanting continued, the deep harmonic sustaining the atmospheric manipulation that their power provided, the downdraft's potential held in reserve behind the lesser shamans' active engagement the way a commander held a reserve force behind the main line.

The two shamans were old. Not just elderly. Old in the way that Seventh Circle practitioners were old, their bodies sustained by the Circle's power past the natural lifespan that the Circle's absence would have imposed, their experience measured in decades of shamanic practice that the Circle's longevity allowed. They had been chanting since before the battle began and they would chant until after the battle ended, their stamina, the stamina that the Seventh Circle provided to practitioners whose power was the power that sustained itself through the natural energy that the environment contained.

The Threian battlemages could see the Seventh Circle shamans from the positions where the Fourth and Fifth Circle practitioners operated. The seeing was the seeing that magical perception provided, the awareness of power signatures that the academy's training taught its graduates to detect. The Seventh Circle signatures were the signatures that the battlemages' training described in the context of theoretical threat assessment rather than practical encounter, the power level that the textbooks discussed and that the practicum did not include because the practicum's instructors had never encountered Seventh Circle power and could not simulate what they had never experienced.