Something strange has been going on in Karal's mind over the last few weeks, or maybe months. Maybe since the first weeks of the war, the last time he's gotten enough sleep. Sometimes he knows people are there even though he couldn't have seen or heard them; sometimes he knows what they want, but that surprises him much less. Sometimes things move that shouldn't have moved, or a strike is turned aside by nothing he can see. Mostly he isn't sure he's really noticing anything - he tells himself they're completely normal things he's too exhausted to figure out the explanations for. He's heard the warnings, but... if his God wishes him to turn himself in to the new priests to be burned at the stake, He's going to have to be clearer about it, because there's no longer anyone Karal trusts to ask about such things, and there's no time to think about it. No time to think about whether this war makes sense, either, or about whether whoever is leading them now is doing the right thing - it was inevitable that Kadrich would swear to fight, because he's never wanted anything from life more than the chance to prove himself, and just as inevitable that Karal would swear to his father to follow and serve him, and neither of them would take their oaths back even if they could, so there's nothing left to choose. Just the struggle to get his lord and their people through this alive - not himself, he'd gladly give himself to the fire if only that would help, but he doesn't think it would.
They're told to push the attack again, in some nameless wooded hills, for no reason that makes any sense - except that the war isn't really between the soldiers, it's between the mages and the priests, everyone knows that, and the rest of them are only here to give them something to do. They attack anyway, and do better than anyone could have expected, tired out and undersupplied as they are. Until lighting comes out of the clear sky, and Kadrich falls, screaming--
And the strangeness in Karal's mind breaks, and power rushes out. It doesn't just hurt, it feels incomprehensible, at the same time closer than his own body and strangely distant - but if he doesn't care what it's like or how much it hurts, doesn't care that his legs aren't holding him up and his vision is swimming, he can make- it- move-
He can throw everything he has into the air over Kadrich's fallen body, to hold off the Valdemaran mage's power for a fraction of a second - and feel his attempt at protection swept aside like a child's first thin wooden shield.
He can feel Kadrich die.
He flings the dregs of whatever power is still in him at the Valdemaran soldiers who rush in past the bodies, uncoordinated despair and fire - but there's barely anything left, and he only wants them away from here. He cannot bring himself to care if they take the next hill, or the one after that.