"As you say."

Leareth frowns intently at the scry, picking a place to put his Gate. A couple of the dyheli seem to be harnessed to a sort of sledge, dragging it along the thin snow behind them - or maybe a litter, it's bundled up well enough that it's impossible to tell for sure if there's a person on it, but it seems plausible. A casualty sufficiently important to attempt an evacuation, maybe? They're currently dragging the sledge over to the Gate but not bringing it through. 

They don't have time to, because Leareth gets his Gate up, ten yards from the line of soldiers attempting to carry unmoving gryphons without hands, and surges through, already reaching to shield - 

As they sense the Gate-energies building, about five seconds before Leareth steps across, one of the mages snaps something in Mindspeech to the human currently bound to the sled-litter. 

Nayoki tries to fight the compulsion, to twist it into literally anything else, but she can't. 

"Do not speak!" she screams as they uncover her face and she senses a second shielded mind, presumably Promise, crossing the Gate. And, at the exact same time: :DO NOT SPEAK: 

Oh for fucks's sake.

Promise launches herself into the air and zooms for Nayoki.

What. 

Leareth has very fast reaction times, trained over millennia worth of mage-battles, and he gets a shield up and an attack out at the source of the shout and set-command within a fraction of a second, well before his mind registers what's happening - oh no gods it's Nayoki, what, how–

Nayoki's sledge is suddenly on fire, because fire is the shortest-preparation-time attack that Leareth can get off when startled, but this doesn't stop the compulsion from tightening on her mind, and she can't fight it, and - 

:STOP. DO NOTHING: she set-commands Leareth. 

Leareth's shield vanishes and he crumples to the ground.

His Gate, unfortunately, is still up, because taking a Gate down is an active motion and he's just been set-commanded not to do anything. 

Every single soldier in the army is suddenly trying to attack both of them! 

Promise is a harder target because she's in midair swooping toward Nayoki, and also they - can't? A dozen people are still capable of harming Promise, but they don't know which dozen they are, and are scattered around at random throughout the troop-formations, and so Promise's flight is unmolested. 

Leareth, however, is now well separated from her and an easy, defenceless target, and most of the soldiers recognize his face from the emergency briefing. 

Someone blasts his Gate. 

His talisman-shields catch some of it, which is the only reason it doesn't kill him instantly, but it does send him thundering into unconsciousness. 

Promise lands. She puts out the fire. She looks over her shoulder and heals Leareth, she's had plenty of time to look at him so she can do it under these conditions. She waves her hand in front of Nayoki's face, trailing words in fairylights: Ignore the compulsion and then in case that doesn't work tell me I may speak.

Oh thank the gods - she's still tied down to a sled and now she's burned too, but the fire didn't have that much time to get at her. "You can speak!" she gasps out. "I - set-command - have to..." She starts trying to remove it but they take a lot longer to remove than to place.

Promise tries and fails to reply. She can heal Nayoki, though, and look over at Leareth to see if he needs another heal.

Leareth wakes up sprawled facedown on the ground, with some dirt in his mouth. He feels unhurt but he can't - move - can't cast - can't do anything, he can barely even have thoughts. 

He is also still under attack from pretty much the entire army, including several dozen mages of various species, and within seconds his shields are entirely destroyed and he's gone from unhurt to dying. 

Several of the soldiers who are capable of harming Promise have now realized this fact by testing it. Only one of them is a mage, and not exactly the best combat mage in the world. He throws fireballs at her. The others start sprinting her direction, with weapons or just their natural teeth and claws drawn. 

Nayoki works fast. "About a minute left," she gasps to Promise. 

Promise heals Leareth again. Gets up in the air a bit and in case anyone's looking at her makes another light-order drawn huge across the sky, STAND DOWN.

Her flight attracts attention and then the letters get around half of the soldiers still moving to stand down.

The rest seem to realize what must have happened, and determinedly are not looking up or anywhere in her direction. Leareth is still getting pummelled by a dozen mages at once, and now also has a kyree on top of him doing its best to rip out his throat. 

Promise zooms back Learethward. Nayoki can evidently work from a distance or they would not have this problem.

She sticks her arm between the kyree's jaws and when it's brought up short she sits on him, throwing another heal on the pile.

Now Leareth is conscious again, for whatever it's worth when he can't - anything - he's not even capable of a goal-directed train of thought right now, and he's incredibly disoriented - there's a weight on him making it kind of hard to breathe, but at least the constant onslaught of horrible pain seems to have gone away. 

The soldiers attacking him are so confused! They can't aim any attacks at Promise, who is now right on top of Leareth; they don't even seem capable of trying attacks that might hit Promise a little bit by accident. Which pretty much restricts them to sending levinbolts at his feet or trying to get in close enough to test whether they can pick her up as long as they don't hurt her. All this while also attempting to avoid looking at Promise. This makes aiming hard. 

A very very nonplussed kyree blinks at Promise and then attempts to back up away from her. 

Aaaaaaaaah now he's being repeatedly electrocuted, which is apparently allowed right now, maybe because his winter clothing is preventing it from getting to Promise and her undamaged shield-talisman would hold it off anyway. 

She can scoot a little closer to his feet and put up a HOLD sign but mostly she's waiting on Nayoki at this point and healing him whenever he gets hurt.

:Done: Nayoki sends the instant she has the last of the set-command out - it wasn't a very hard one, the compulsion let her have that much leeway, though it forced her to cast the one on Leareth at maximum strength and getting it off him is going to be a bitch. 

She starts trying to free herself from the sled. :Should I try to get us out of here: 

"HOLD," Promise hollers at the top of her lungs. She starts trying to get names out of the kyree since they're closest.