The liches have failed, thinks Urkemkhufu, and now it is time for me to do my work.

There was a man named Neithkhufu, once, a great archer and servant of the gods. In an age beyond ages, he played the games of hunt and war and politics and drank life's pleasures to their dregs. In the end, fearing that though his goddess had not abandoned him his acts of war and tyranny would see him damned, he accepted the fate of all leaders of Osirion in that age, and his lungs were removed and placed in jars, and he was wrapped in bandages, and rose again.

He did not count the millennia before the whispering servant in his cloak of mirrors appeared to him, and told him that his gods had not abandoned him, but the world, and there was a goddess who would accept him and restore him to the full power and glory that he truly deserved...

His bow is pale, not wood but metal, a substance found in the ruins of Belkzen by the great necromancer himself that strikes true against any armor, and his arrows are of bone and fletched with a black swan's feathers. A different rune is carved on each, the name of that which it is to kill.

He casts his spells.

He takes aim.

He looses.

The arrow falls out of a clear sky and buries itself in the heart of Ioan Bălan, master of cavalry of the Second Army.

Ioan Bălan has his own spells of protection. His bodyguard falls from his horse, his lance tumbling in the dust.

The second arrow goes through his chest as well, though it's hardly as lucky a shot.

Another paladin by his side falls.

And then the arrows fall thick and fast as rain, and each shot strikes true and each brings another man of his bodyguard tumbling down, until he and the last fall together and his banner sways and falls.

Another man will pick it up the moment that he can - but the banner is swaying.

And the archer, wrapped from head to toe in his shroud of silver mail, will set another arrow to his bow and pick another target.

How are they doing that, what's the counter - well, kill the archer, that's the counter, but Iomedae can neither do it nor order it. She takes off flying without a plan beyond reaching that banner; maybe she'll think of one on the way.

All the clerics who'd cast Shield Other on their commander are dead, but there's enough left that one of them can throw up a Wind Wall to stop the arrows coming from that archer's direction, something they hadn't been doing because they'd previously been winning the archery duel.

A necromancer brings it down with a single spell.

Is that so? Try taking this one down.

The necromancers will do their best!

They're really not sending their best.

(Soon. In the next few minutes, probably, unless he thinks to do the right divinations first, unless he knows one she doesn't know how to confound -)

Once again wizardry fails. Urkemkhufu takes off into the air, circling to a position to find better aim on one of his targets.

(Iomedae won't have any trouble leaving the bridge because there's now a company of dwarves holding it. The undead are still leaving it as a tempting opportunity to flee, but the dwarves have axes pointed in both directions and very no-nonsense opinions about people who rout instead of fighting. Dwarves may break eventually, but they break last.)

Not all the cavalry are as weak as the zombies. The undead may have little worthwhile horse to turn against their foes, but with a wall of bones rising to block the free riders' flight and vicious words and spells of command to redirect them, they can be turned against the Taldane horse at their moment of disarray - and with them ride the true undead horse of graveknights and spectral riders and dread cavaliers riding skeletal wargs, and at the head is Racher Coronesti with the runescarred axe that he bore when he was mortal, Racher Coronesti the kingkiller with his cloak of fingerbones, one joint from one knuckle of every lord or marshal of Taldor he has killed, Racher Coronesti who prayed to every god to give him vengeance on Taldor and was finally granted undeath. He wears the armor of a hero and bears a blood-red shield, and his steed is a steel bull with only flames burning in its dead eyes. For the true knights of Tar-Baphon are few, but they are very, very strong.

And as the graveknights' charge gathers momentum, the Taldane horse are in disarray, because their commander and his second and half of his guard have just been shot down -

No.

Taldor still has vastly superior numbers, they just need to stay in formation and meet the damned thing at the head; flying in she can see it all clearly and it would be a winnable fight even if she did not have the perfect glowing certainty that they will win this battle or Arazni would not have been sent to aid them in it, that with them is not just hope but grand sweeping inevitability.

The person to charge right at Coronesti the kingkiller might die - probably will die, really - but the Empire will live, and the world will live, and the Age of Glory will come.

There's a horse still running with the banner, its rider dead. She lands on it. All the men nearby will abruptly share her absolute and blazing conviction. Sure, kingkiller, let's do this.

She likes speeches, usually, but under these circumstances - "CHARGE!"

It's tempting to protect Iomedae from her decisions but she won't get stronger, that way. 

Drawn by Iomedae's magnetic army, the cavalry swings to follow her, forming its own spearhead to break through the lines of the undead, firing last arrows as they do -

He can't get a bead on her, the wind wall is still in the way -

Another Taldane champion. What else is his axe for, if not for her? "DEATH TO TALDOR!" His own horse is forming its own speartip, but slower, more raggedly, the better undead are heroes not knights -

Iomedae has a sword, which is the wrong weapon to have for this fight, but also Aroden gave her an unfamiliar spell this morning, and when He does that He always has a reason. She casts it and - yep, a radiant beam of light materializes in her hand, afire but not in a way that burns her, and as her fingers instinctively tighten around it they find purchase, even if it's not clear what they're gripping. She raises it to the sky and it lights its way directly to the heavens, visible for miles around.

Then she steadies it and levels it at the enemy, because they're fast approaching. Smite Evil.

When two wedges of cavalry charge at each other, spurring their hoses on at canter or gallop and with lances readied, they don't normally collide. Horses are smart, they don't want to die and it's very hard to run them straight into a wall, and their riders are much the same, for it is very easy to be brave on the training ground and very hard to be brave when a lance is aimed at your shirt. The question is which horsemen don't break first.

Nonsentient undead have no sense of self-preservation. Everyone on the other side is bathed in the aura of an extremely powerful paladin, and more than that in the hands of a genuinely unusually charismatic general. The sellswords peel off, where they can, and everyone else braces for lances to collide and looks to put their horses alongside, instead of in front of, another.

Racher is used to lords who think that their lance outweighs his axe. He'll take one hit and deal out double, and roars defiance in the face of today's Taldane marshal!