To the great surprise of the Schirs, the paper slices at their hooves and hands; the added foot- and handholds might make the climb easier, but they come out of it already bloodied into the face of more spears, which stymies them for a few crucial moments. The defensive line contracts, bowing under the weight of fending off attacks from all directions even as their senses revolt on them, but enough of them survive that the lines don't buckle before the fans can get rid of the gas and equalize the fight. Her own efforts play no small part in this; her sword glows like a beacon, driving back the dark wherever she goes, and it proves able to cut through weapons and flesh alike without the slightest concern for a Babau's acidic skin. Any attempts with paper meet a far more ignoble fate, but it only slows the efforts on the Babau and the other demons have no such defenses - the attack falters wherever her attention turns, and before long the surviving demons are pushed back far enough that the vanguard can step onto the rocky ground of the far side.

That's their cue! On the far side of the river, trumpets blast as archers step up their shooting and cavalry thunder across the bridge to join her.

She sticks with the bridge even after she's got it anchored to the bank, to manage it if they set it on fire again and shore up anything they hack to pieces, but when she's not trying to build a bridge at the same time as everything else she can run around much faster. Handholds can break off the bridge as suddenly as they appear once they've done their stabbity jobs. Her sword can spend some time with her full attention.

Then she can have a front row seat to the yet more frantic efforts to dislodge the beachhead before the reinforcements arrive. It's perhaps an exaggeration to say she's irreplaceable here, but she's certainly very helpful; her rendering the bridge extremely difficult to climb allows them to almost entirely ignore one angle of approach, and once she has the time to give it her focus her sword proves its worth very quickly. Whenever she flares it, it goes from driving back the darkness to outright overcoming it, and while the demons can replace it when she stops it's time their most dangerous combatants aren't spending fighting. The added sturdiness is a comparatively smaller factor, but with the intensity of the fighting currently ongoing it almost certainly proves decisive for someone.

 For a few moments it looks like the demons' efforts might eventually prove successful regardless, but then cold iron lances start speeding into the melee and the abyssal advance turns into a retreat. It probably wouldn't make much to turn that into a rout, but even as things stand they're almost certainly going to be able to run down most of the escaping Dretches.

Why not make it a rout? She's not done gloriously stabbing demons yet. Some of her people probably still have third cousins they haven't told about how cool she is.

The faster groundbound demons are about as fast as the fastest humans, which is to say that they absolutely cannot escape either Kybele or the cavalry that rides with her in the short run. They can and do scatter to make her job harder, but in a sense that's also a win; a demon that goes fleeing off into the waste at top speed is unlikely to reconvene with its fellows any time soon even if it does escape, and it's not like she could fully abandon the bridge to haul after them anyway. The rest of them do their best to make tracks, prioritizing terrain the horses will have a hard time following, and abandon their slower or less lucky brethren to the crusaders.

The flying demons get away just fine, of course, but despite their individual power they were never anywhere near the majority of the forces involved.

The army continues to stream across the bridge, but by now they're mostly not needed for direct combat and can set about securing the position and collecting bodies. The living ones go to a hastily pitched medical tent for channels as triage permits, while the corpses are laid out for their fellows to identify. They're still close enough to Mendev that it's possible to send them back in the empty wagons to be buried, outside the reach of petty cultist necromancers, and some of the veterans of the fourth crusade are determined to make the most of that while it lasts.

Can she find Irabeth not-busy for thirty seconds to ask her what the etiquette is about the dead, does she need to say a few words or anything?

"If you mean the funerals, the priests will handle their last rites, but I don't think it would be impossible to attend or anything. If you mean speaking to the troops... today went well enough I wouldn't say it's necessary, but I doubt some reassurance and encouragement would go astray."

"Anything more specific than that? People - think about death extremely differently where I'm from."

"... Most people don't want to die. They've got things they want to do, people they care about, and are often scared about what comes next - most people aren't strong enough to get advanced warning of what the judge thinks of them. So as their leaders, our job is to make sure they know we aren't going to throw their lives away or demand they take risks we won't follow them on, and then the priests help make sure that they end up somewhere worth going and don't come back as unquiet dead. It's harder in other places and campaigns, since war is usually evil, but we're lucky at the wound."

Not that they're lucky about anything else, but at least there's one upside to make up for even the enemy grunts being superhuman.

Ky nods. "Where and when are funerals to be held?"

"In Mendev, for the ones on record to send it back to their family; here for the rest of them. I'd expect it's about an even split, maybe a bit more of the latter category - the first ones will be tomorrow evening."

"Tomorrow evening," Ky repeats, making a note of it.

And then it's off to congratulate anyone she saw stabbing a demon or hears about having stabbed a demon or really done anything helpful, good show.

That's really ego boosting, both in the normal sense of being recognized by your commanding officer and in the more direct case that she was right there next to them with all of her flashy magic while they were doing it. Some of them visibly puff up, while others turn bashful or praise her own work.

In the interest of not forcing her to keep holding up the bridge forever under the weight of their entire supply chain, they're going to bring about a third of the forces, including their specialists in fort assaults, to march up the west bank while the rest of the army sticks to the east. Dividing up your forces like that can be a moderately risky move if there's another army in place to try for a defeat in detail, but if they had one of those they would be using it to contest the bridge with their apparently ample warning and the crusade's elite troops will be able to reinforce across the river in an emergency anyway. 

And the upside is, they get to approach depleted garrison in formation and envelop it rather than try and march their men through the water under fire into the teeth of a demonic line and then take down a fort. Demons, what do you have at Villareth's Ford to stop them?

In light of the changing tactical realities, our most mobile forces will be breaking the encirclement to operate as an army in being. 

Their ability to run away from fights has always been the second most annoying part of fighting flying demons, since it makes them really difficult to pin down even when you have them dead to rights. Not quite as bad as the ones that can teleport, of course, but at least you don't get to see them soaring off into the distance as you approach.

Still. If all the most powerful demons have bailed, the enemy morale is going to be shit. If they make it look like there's still a path to safety that they haven't closed off?

Half of the ones still there will take it.

Close the net in in front of them. Knight Commander, how do you feel about another heroic victory where we outnumber them twenty to one?

Don't have to tell her twice, well done Baroness. She'll charge in with her blades and lay waste.

They're not really fans and do their best to escape, kill the attackers, and make the entire situation unpleasant with clouds of noxious gas, to varying degrees of success. Ten to one is rather a lot, though.

And then it's time to take the fortress, which is now down to a quarter as many demons as they were expecting to face three days ago and can barely man the walls. Does Kybele think she's up for something like a staircase, or should they plan to stone shape the walls down?

She can do stairs, ladders are a touch quicker and easier though.

Ladders should work fine, as long as they send some of the more lightly armored troops first.