Hinterland

A CROWN OF AN ANCIENT KING

Perryl’spoisonous blade pressed against Tylar’s chest, pinching through his cloak. He held the blade off by sheer trembling muscle. Rivenscryr crossed against the daemon’s sword.

Pinned against the wall of the hide tent, Tylar could not maneuver. His legs shook. Even the hand that bore Rivenscryr had begun to gnarl as the venom inside him spread. The exertion only sped the corruption.

“Perryl…” he begged.

If he could somehow reach him…

But the pale face remained impassive, no anger or fury, simply certainty. The face of a predator in a dark sea.

Then a momentary flicker passed through the fire in the daemon’s eyes, like a brush of wind. Tylar shoved with his remaining strength.

Perryl went stumbling back, plainly disoriented.

Something had happened.

Free, Tylar lifted Rivenscryr. He judged how to use the moment. Flee or attack. Overhead, rain pelted the tent, beating against it like a hide drum. With his body weakened, he could not match swords with Perryl.

In that moment of hesitation, a splash of fire nosed under the tent flap and wiggled inside. Pupp’s molten form hissed with rain. Fiery eyes took in the scene, and he trotted blithely to the room’s center.

The ghawl retreated another step, spooked by the appearance. Pupp’s fire and light stripped some of the shadows from Perryl, revealing cloak and pale skin. Again Tylar saw the strange translucent oil that was his new skin, squirming beneath with dark snaking muscles.

Revulsion filled him anew.

Perhaps with Pupp’s help…

But the creature seemed to have come with another purpose. Pupp trotted to Tylar, molten spikes bristling. He carried something in his mouth. It shone brilliantly, lit by Pupp’s fiery tongue.

Once near, Pupp spat it at his toes-then vanished away.

Tylar stared at what lay at his feet. A black diamond, not unlike those that adorned a shadowknight’s sword. His own knightly blade lay on the floor, abandoned after cleaving off Krevan’s arm. And in that one breath, he understood. Only one stone brought Pupp to life.

Brant’s stone.

He stared between the diamond and the abandoned sword and understood. The stone was somehow meant to adorn Rivenscryr. But it wasn’t by wits alone that he came by this insight. In his grip, the sword’s hilt seemed to ooze tighter around his fingers. It grew warmer. He had felt such stirrings before in the sword, but never such a muscular spasm as this. Tylar sensed the sword’s lust for the stone-to complete itself.

Tylar bent his one good knee.

Perryl must have comprehended the danger and surged forward, his indecisiveness burnt away by fear. Tylar reached out and slammed the hilt of his sword atop the stone. He felt the pommel open and bite into the stone.

As the contact was made, all the air in the room blew outward, rattling hide walls and roof, sucking the wind out of Tylar’s chest. Perryl was blasted back, cloak whipping.

Rivenscryr blazed for a heartbeat in that airless moment.

Then all the weight and substance collapsed back.

Walls and roof sagged. Air fell atop them. Tylar felt as if the world had grown smaller, squeezing tighter around him. He remembered Miyana’s description when she held the stone, a gathering back of what was sundered.

Tylar felt an echo of it. He gained his legs, less aching. The hand that had gripped Rivenscryr had straightened its bones, allowing him to hold tighter, more certain. He wasn’t cured. His knee was still frozen in scarred bone. His side still burnt with fire. But somehow the stone in the sword had gathered Meeryn’s aethryn closer to its naethryn, the two remaining fractions of the god of the Summering Isles. And in that moment, like Miyana, the naethryn found comfort enough to rally, to stave off the spreading poison a little longer.

Straightening and raising the brilliant sword-Rivenscryr whole and united-Tylar faced the daemon lord. He took a step forward, but Perryl sensed the change in balance here. Already shaken by whatever had flickered through him, the daemon swept up his cloak and spun into the back shadows of the tent.

Tylar pursued him, but his leg remained hobbled, slowing him. By the time he reached the back, he found only darkness.

The daemon had fled.

A scream burst from outside.

The others…

Tylar turned back to the tent flap and dodged through it. He almost tripped over Krevan’s body, sprawled in the mud, soaked by rain and blood. Tylar knelt long enough to check for signs of life. He placed a palm on the man’s chest. He breathed. Alive. No ordinary man would have survived, but Krevan was Wyr-born, possessed of a living blood. It sustained him, but barely. He would need some attention.

But not now.

Tylar surged up, drawing more shadows. One of the ghawls unfolded out of the darkness with a screech. Perryl had fled, but he’d left his dogs behind. Tylar easily blocked the thrusting black blade and parried to the attack. He slid the newly forged Rivenscryr through the creature’s gut.

It was like shoving a red-hot iron into cold swamp water.

Flesh exploded with a sickening wash of foul steam and corruption. For a moment, as Tylar yanked his sword out, a tangle of black tentacles followed, bursting out of the wound, writhing in the air. But they did not belong in this world and shivered into a sludging collapse, taking the cloaked body with them.

Tylar spun away. He aimed for a glow beyond the edge of the rock pinnacle, where he had left the others. With a speed born of shadow, he reached the others in two breaths. They clustered around a dying fire, a pack of ghawls nestled tight about them. But like Perryl, these seemed directionless, still held off by even this feeble fire.

Such caution would not last forever.

Tylar swept up to them and through them, cleaving a swath of death. Bodies fell in a wash of fetid steam, tentacles flickered like black flames, then died away. A pair of ghawls fled in opposite directions, mindless with terror, plainly intending to lose themselves forever in the hinterlands. All others lay dead around the fire.

Except Perryl.

Where had he gone? Off to the rogues?

Tylar stared out at the spread of black water. Rain pebbled the surface, but the downpour was already ending.

Calla appeared at his side, her face a mask of worry. “Krevan?” she managed to ask, though she feared the answer.

Tylar nodded. “Alive. By the tent. But he needs help.” He pointed. “Grab the giant and get him to carry Krevan back to the fire.”

Calla ran to obey.

Rogger came up to him. “So you fixed your sword.”

Tylar glanced over to him.

“We sent Pupp with the diamond,” Rogger explained. “Figured his fiery form would pass unmolested through those skaggin’ ghawls, while we didn’t dare.”

Tylar turned the blade, examining its brilliant length. The deaths of the daemons had failed to douse the blade. It required no replenishing blood. Made whole by the diamond, the blade now abided. The stone held it firm in this world.

“But how…?” Tylar finally muttered. “The diamond…”

“You can thank Brant and Dart for that,” Rogger said. “Dart for her special eyes, Brant for his insight. Those two make a nice pair.”

Tylar noted them standing hand in hand. Then counted the others. Someone was missing.

“Lorr,” Rogger said, noting his search. “He was slain protecting the young ones.”

Dart stumbled closer to the water. “But he fell right there,” she said, pointing to the shallows near the bank. “Now he’s gone. Could he still be alive?”

Hope rang in her voice.

But in answer, something dark surged up in the water, humping black scales, then vanishing back into the depths.

“Taken,” Brant said, coming up and putting his arm around Dart. He understood what was written in the ripples. “Nothing goes to waste in the forest of the world. It is the Way.”

Dart covered her face, but Brant plainly found comfort in such an end. And maybe he was right. Lorr had been a creature of the forest. It was only fitting he should return to it again.

A scrape of leather on stone drew their attention around.

From the nearby pinnacle, a handful of women descended on ropes, landing lightly. They were all that was left of Meylan’s tribe. One stepped forward. Tylar could not say if this was Meylan or another.

“Wyrd Bennifren,” she said dourly. “We spied him falling.”

She swung around and headed toward the camp.

Tylar had forgotten about the Wyr-lord. Bennifren had gone off to fetch a repostilary for Tylar’s humour. He had no idea of the strange man’s fate, and normally he wouldn’t care-but there were the promised maps.

“Keep the others by the fire,” Tylar ordered Rogger.

The thief nodded, adding wet wood to the fire.

Tylar set off with the women. They led the way into the nest of tents. Bodies were strewn everywhere, blackened by the burn of the ghawls’ swords. It had been a slaughter.

They found Bennifren’s milk mare collapsed face-first in the mud, just as blackened. One of the women knelt down and heaved the body over. Beneath the charred remains, still swaddled, lay Bennifren, pink and hale, sheltered and hidden by the dead woman.

One arm lifted weakly. He gasped and sucked air, plainly only moments from suffocation. His eyelids flickered open, wet with tears. He breathed deeply for several breaths, then coughed a meanness back into his eyes.

His gaze found Tylar.

“Find the rogues…” he seethed sibilantly.

“I’ll need the maps.”

His eyes flicked to the woman who freed him. “Meylan, fetch them for him.”

So the woman was Meylan. How the Wyr-lord could tell the women apart was a mystery to Tylar. Meylan ran off, while another gathered their lord up into her arms.

“And what about our bargain?” Tylar asked.

The Wyr-lord turned to him. Perhaps he was still rattled, or perhaps it was a generosity born of fury, but Wyrd Bennifren finally relinquished a debt. “It is forgiven…” A hand reached out and tiny fingers clutched the edge of Tylar’s cloak. “But only if you free those rogues. Make the Cabal suffer…make them pay.”

It was a bargain Tylar accepted gladly.

“Bound and done,” he promised.

Dart stared at the strange craft, lent to them by the Wyr.

She stood on the bank, chewing on the back of her thumb, nervous. It looked like a small flippercraft cleaved open through the middle, leaving only the bottom half intact. The flitterskiff was a shallow-keeled boat lined on each side by six long bronze paddles, but these required no oarsmen to row. It was a mekanical craft that ran on alchemies of water.

“And Air?” Rogger asked as he knelt beside the boat, examining one of the paddles. He ran a hand along its double-hulled side. The alchemies ran between the hulls.

She had seen Rogger test it under the guidance of a squat Wyr-man, one of the few survivors. The thief was to be their pilot. None of the Wyr could venture where they intended to travel, to where seersong bent the will of those Graced. Like Eylan, they would be easily captured by the song. Even Krevan had to be left here under Calla’s care. He would be a threat once within earshot of seersong.

They readied to leave.

Tylar clasped Krevan’s good shoulder. His other was cross-wrapped in a large bandage. Dart had learned that the pirate owed his life to his Wyr heritage. Krevan had been born without a heart. Through his veins ran a living blood, a blood that had refused to flow out those same veins when his arm had been cleaved away. Still, he would need time and rest to heal.

Tylar turned to the pirate’s swordmate. “Keep him safe, Calla, until we return.”

“I will,” she said sternly.

Malthumalbaen helped push the flitterskiff off the bank and into the water. It had sat rather crooked in the sand, a rough landing by Rogger, but it was his first attempt.

The giant held the boat for Brant and Dart to climb aboard. Brant gave her a hand, and they found a bench near the front. The skiff was large enough to hold a good dozen. So they had plenty of room, even with a giant on board.

Rogger hopped in and crossed to the bow, where foot pedals and a wheel sat before a scooped wooden seat. He sank into it, rubbing his palms.

Tylar left Krevan’s side and splashed into the water. Grabbing the starboard rail, he struggled a bit, confounded by a bad leg. Malthumalbaen helped him with a push on his backside. Tylar straightened once aboard, his cheeks slightly flushed.

With the sword at his belt, Tylar certainly did seem somewhat more solid of foot-but he still hobbled. While Rogger had learned to wield the flitterskiff, Tylar had tested his new sword. It would be best to know its abilities before venturing into unknown territories.

Applying a bit of force, he found the black diamond could be removed from the pommel, but once free, the sword’s blade vanished, and the stone returned again to black rock, both snuffed out. The attempt disturbed them all, especially when Tylar gasped as his body crumbled into further ruin. Still, it took only another drop of Dart’s blood to ignite the stone and feed it back to the pommel. The gold melted over it hungrily, and the silver blade sprouted anew. Tylar’s body also straightened a bit.

Not much, but enough.

But Dart had overheard him with Rogger. The poison still spreads. Some poison born of Chrism’s blood. The sword and stone may stave it off somewhat, but I can feel my bones’ ache leaching outward.

Another reason for haste.

The gift of the flitterskiff was gladly accepted. It would speed them where they needed to go. They also had the Wyr maps and knew the straightest path to an island deep out in the flooded forest, where the rogues were snared.

The Wyr maps were vital.

The flooded forest was a maze of soggy hillocks, slower mossy mires, rocky outcroppings, flat expanses of open water, and twisting currents within the larger breadth of the floodwaters.

Tylar limped to Rogger’s side. He leaned on the back of the chair.

“Are you sure you won’t run us straight into a tree?”

Rogger glanced back. “Do you mean I’m supposed to avoid those?”

The boat suddenly rocked. The bow’s nose rose as Malthumalbaen clambered aboard. He looked ill at ease. The flitterskiff was all air and water. Born of loam, he looked little comforted by this means of travel. Or maybe he had witnessed Rogger’s bobbling struggle with the strange craft out in the water.

Malthumalbaen sprawled in the skiff’s stern, filling the space, one hand on each rail.

With everyone aboard, Tylar took the bench behind Rogger and pointed forward.

“Let’s go.”

“Hold tight!” Rogger twisted a knob to open the flow of alchemies.

The seat vibrated under Dart’s rear. She peeked over the rail as the paddles began to beat, churning water, wafting them forward. Then they beat faster and faster, blurring away. The force of the churn drove them forward- then up. The skiff rose to the tips of its fluttering paddles, lifting the keel free from the drag of the water. Unfettered, the craft sped like its namesake: the flitterfly. It buzzed over the water, skimming the surface with its paddles.

They raced faster than a horse could gallop.

Leaning close, Rogger took care to keep an eye on the trees. As directed by the Wyr-man, he stuck to the flattest water, avoiding rocks and floating logs with careful turns of the wheel.

“Do you have to go so skaggin’ fast?” Malthumalbaen groaned.

Rogger called back. “While we’ve got clear water, I’m burning alchemy. But according to that Wyr-master of the boat, we’ll be wishing for open water before we reach this island.”

Tylar shifted forward, speaking in Rogger’s ear. Dart could not make out his words, but from all the pointing, Tylar was directing Rogger’s path as keenly as possible in this watery wood.

Dart sat back. Her hand rested in Brant’s. She hadn’t planned to put it there, but there it was. They watched the passing hinterlands together. The moons had appeared again as the rains ended and the clouds blew apart. The greater moon had joined her sister, casting enough light off the water to see fairly well.

But strange luminescences glowed in the dark. Glittering green mosses appeared, like those in the dry wood, and also red shining molds on tree trunks, and glowing yellow puffs that exploded out at them as they passed.

But beauty in the hinterlands also hid horror.

“Don’t breathe any of that,” Rogger warned, nodding at the glowing puffs. “It sets in your lungs and births worms that will eat their way out.”

Dart sank lower in her seat, glad now for the craft’s speed.

Still, the Wyr-master proved right. Within half a bell, the trees grew closer and closer, bunching around them. Rogger was forced to slow. Their keel sank back to the water as the alchemies were trimmed.

Their speed remained swift, but not the maddened flight of before.

Rogger sped them through the thickening woods. As the trees grew closer, the way darkened. Rogger circled around one of the spars of rock that jutted out of the landscape. Here the waters grew sluggish as the currents of the floodwaters eddied around the pinnacle. Thick rafts of algae and weed choked the slower waters and stifled the paddles.

They were forced to proceed no faster than a man could row, lest they risk breaking some of the paddles.

And still the trees grew taller, the canopy thicker, blocking all moonlight.

Tylar lit a small torch to check his map.

“I could use one of those up front,” Rogger griped. “I can barely see past my nose, let alone this pointy bow.”

Brant squeezed Dart’s hand and let go. “I’ll do it,” he said and scooted down the bench.

He collected one of the larger torches, lit it off of Tylar’s brand, and moved forward to join Rogger. Brant steadied himself with a hand on the port rail and held the torch high. The firelight stretched across the water.

Able to see, Dart glanced up. The canopy overhead was draped with giant striped vines. The firelight played along their bellies, making them seem to shift and slide. Then a scaled head snaked down out of the twist, hissing to reveal fangs as long as her outstretched hand.

The firelight stirred others, warming their scales.

Dart squeaked in alarm, sliding off her seat to the planks below.

Other eyes noted what roosted in their rafters. One of the serpents uncoiled and slid out of the tangle, crashing to the boat’s center with a writhe of muscles, as thick around as Dart’s leg.

She grabbed the rail, ready to leap into the water.

But Malthumalbaen sighed, snatched the snake by the tail, and whipped it over his shoulder, as if tossing away a gnawed bone. Its coils splashed into the waters behind them.

He returned to resting his chin on his fist.

“It’s only a little snake,” he mumbled.

Rogger eked more alchemy through the mekanicals. With a whisper of paddles, they sped out from under the serpents’ nest. Clear of the pinnacles, they found a less clogged section of the flooded forest, where the currents were swifter.

Brant kept his torch burning.

Dart eventually calmed enough to return to her bench.

Rogger guided them through a watery maze of rocks and hillocks. “Straightest path, my arse,” he grumbled.

Tylar checked the map to the territory. He looked far from convinced that they were on the right track. He looked up and frowned. “If we could see a few stars…”

Despite the dangers, Dart appreciated the occasional handsome view that opened up. A long lane of water lilies that balanced tall-stemmed flowers atop green pads as wide around as Dart was tall. Hanging nests of violet-breasted swifts, so tightly packed that they looked like grapes on a vine. As their boat passed, the birds took to wing without a single peep. But their passage set their hollow nests to bumping against each other, sounding like tuned wood pipes, wafting out a beautiful warbling.

Up ahead, a tall tree swung into view, rising in distinct tiers as if trimmed by the hand of man rather than random growth. Brant’s flames revealed thousands of small blooms, white as snow against the green leaf, all tucked in for the night.

As they swept closer, Dart watched one bloom open its petals. A fat little head beaded out toward them, eyes reflecting crimson. The petals spread wider to reveal wings.

Not hanging flowers.

Bats.

As their earlier passage had fluttered the swifts from their nest, the firelight did the same here, shaking the bats from their roost in a single explosion of wings. But unlike the swifts, the bats weren’t fleeing.

“Torches!” Tylar yelled.

The flock swept toward the boat.

Malthumalbaen moved forward, rocking the boat, to grab two brands. Dart snatched one. In a breath, fires flared across the boat. Unfazed, the bats struck with needle-toothed fury. They landed on shoulder and arm, chest and leg. Teeth bit into skin, claws dug through cloth. Malthumalbaen was assaulted the worst, being the tallest and largest target.

Or maybe it was that he held two torches aloft.

Dart remembered how firelight woke the bats.

Maybe it angered them, too.

Testing this thought, Dart swatted a bat from her neck, then plunged the flaming end of her torch into the water. The fire died with a hiss of steam. The flurry of wings shifted away from her. One bat on her arm leaped toward the giant, despite the greater danger of his slapping hands and massive pinching fingers.

“It’s our fire!” Dart called out. “The flames goad them to attack!”

The flames were quickly doused. Malthumalbaen threw his last brand far behind the boat. It flew end over end, blowing brighter by the passage, trailing embers. The flock of bats took wing after the flying torch.

They all sank down into the darkness, scratched and bitten.

“Those mites are far worse than any snake,” Malthumalbaen grumbled, sucking at a wounded finger.

They continued onward without torches.

“It shouldn’t be far,” Tylar finally said, rolling his map, squeezing the scroll tight in his hands.

Proving his word, a glow appeared through a tangle of woods ahead. Tylar motioned Rogger to slip out of the clearer current in the flooded wood and edge more slowly through the choked channels. It would be easier to hide their approach among the heavier bushes and low branches.

As they left the swifter current, the waters thickened with weed and algae. Rogger cut the alchemy to a trickle, drifting more than powered.

The glow shone from directly ahead.

“Does anyone else smell that?” Rogger whispered, nose pinching.

“Brimstone,” Tylar mumbled, followed by a hushing motion.

Rogger drifted them closer, nosing them through bushes. He finally stifled the alchemical flows completely. Malthumalbaen propelled them from there on, reaching to tree limbs and bushes to pull them toward the glow.

“Far enough!” Rogger warned in a whisper.

They all shifted forward, weighting the bow down. The giant stepped back to steady the trim.

Dart scooted up beside Brant. Through a break in the foliage, the view opened to a monstrous sight.

An island rose from the center of an open expanse of water, a lake within the drowned woods. Six giant pinnacles rimmed the land, each tilting slightly outward. It made the entire island look like a half-submerged crown.

Dart saw that the inner surfaces of each pinnacle had been shaved flat. She could just make out etched pictures and symbols drawn upon the smoothed surfaces. It reminded her of the small circle of stones at the Wyr camp, covered with ancient writing.

Between the spires of the crown, low stone structures ringed the island. And in the center blazed a massive fire, shaking with green flame, shimmering off rock and stone wall.

“It’s an old human settlement,” Rogger said.

“Taken over by the Cabal,” Tylar whispered. “The location is not random or mere opportunity. The Cabal sway their human allies with a false promise of an end to godly tyranny. What better stronghold than one of our old settlements, ripe with sentiment and history?”

“Why does the water boil and glow out in the lake here?” Dart asked. “Is it more Dark Grace?”

Dart stretched to view the extent of the boil. All around the island, circling it entirely, the water trembled and bubbled. Steam wafted in shimmering sheets, high and away. Here was the source of the brimstone. A deep crimson glow shone from the depths.

“No,” Brant said, “it’s not Dark Grace. I believe it’s a flow from Takaminara, like the burn that cut a swath through Saysh Mal. She sends her molten fingers out into the hinterland.”

“But why? Is she protecting the island?”

Rogger answered. “More like protecting the world. I wager if she had the chance, she’d melt the island to slag, but that green fire must be fueled by the rogues, keeping her at bay. There is little else she could do. Takaminara’s influence beyond her realm is limited, and she is only one god against who knows how many rogues here.”

Faintly, Dart heard a few sweet chords echoing across the waters, a forlorn note full of power. Seersong. But Tylar seemed unaffected. The stone, whetted and wedded to the sword, kept him safe.

Tylar stirred. “We’ll have to move swiftly across the boiling water. Ride high and fast, and beach well up the strand. If we move now-”

A scream rose from the island, piercing with a wail of horror.

The force of it blew back the steam in a cold wash, turning steam to water and splashing it outward. As leaves dripped, they watched something rise out of the green fire, lit from below, though fiery in its own right. It twisted like smoke into the air, finally unfurling massive black wings. A cloak fell from its form and into the waiting flames.

“Perryl,” Tylar moaned.

“He’s been ilked into a wraith,” Rogger said. “A wraithed daemon.”

The beast screamed again, not quite with the force of his birth but fierce enough. Flapping high into the air. The power that welled from him could almost be tasted on the air.

“But who ilked him?” Dart asked.

Rogger answered. “Remember who wields this font of Dark Grace. A god who is well familiar with wind wraiths.”

“Lord Ulf,” Tylar said.

Rogger nodded. “He makes his final move.”

The end came with a thunderous crack.

It shook Stormwatch.

“The Shield Wall!” Kathryn cried out and hurried to the fieldroom’s window. Despite the terror, there was also a measure of relief. They had been waiting for the past bell, balanced between certain doom and frantic hope. A thousand plans had been proposed and discarded. Their only true defense was fiery pyres laced with alchemies devised by Gerrod and his fellow masters. But they had too little flame and too much territory to protect. More strategies were waged, to no avail.

So when the ice finally came, Kathryn could not dismiss a measure of relief, ready as ever to make this stand. She had kept the tower for this long night, against wraiths, against witches, against daemons.

Now she must stand fast against a god.

She peered out the window, joined by Gerrod on one side, and Argent and Delia on the other. Father and daughter stayed close. Too late perhaps to know each other truly, but not too late to be near.

Across the yard, as Kathryn watched, a large section of the Shield Wall caved inward, cracked from crown to root. A wall that had stood for four millennia.

Why this show of power? Why not simply freeze them out?

But Kathryn remembered Ulf’s cold countenance. She knew it wasn’t bluster here, some magnificent display to his might. That was not Lord Ulf. He meant to tear Tashijan down, wall by wall, tower by tower, brick by brick.

She remembered his words: There is no way to weed this patch. Best to burn it and salt the ground.

He meant to accomplish that end. It was why he built his ice all night, gathering the cold for this final assault. None would live-but more important to Ulf, nothing would stand afterward.

Another crack reverberated through the cold air. Another section of wall fell. And through the breaches, his ice flowed. Like a mighty exhalation from the storm’s heart, an intense cold blew into Tashijan. The outer towers frosted over. Stone shattered with mighty pops. One wall of the Ryder’s Tower burst as if struck by a fist. Its crenellated crown toppled with agonizing slowness, tilting, sliding, then crashing into the snow.

Kathryn heard echoes of annihilation coming from the other sides of Tashijan. Lord Ulf struck on all fronts. He bore his ice in a tightening noose around Stormwatch.

Kathryn tore her eyes away. The others did the same. Bearing witness would not save them; it would only instill despair.

After all the pickets this night, there remained only one more line to hold. “Sound the Shield Gong,” she said.

Gerrod nodded and headed out to pass on the word.

It was their only plan.

All of Tashijan would gather in the Grand Court, in the heart of Stormwatch. The central Hearthstone was already aflame with alchemies. Pyres burnt at every door. They would make their last stand there.

All around, stone crashed and mortar moaned.

Kathryn turned to Argent and Delia. “Get to the Court,” she said. “I will keep vigil for as long as possible.”

“It is my place to be here,” Argent said.

“Your place is at the last picket, Warden. With your people.”

Argent’s eye shone toward her, once again seeking some argument. Argent to the end. But a hand touched his shoulder.

“Father…let’s go…”

The fire dimmed to something warmer as he turned. He touched the fingers on his arm and nodded.

“Be swift,” Argent said to Kathryn.

She bowed her head in acknowledgment.

They departed, leaving her alone in the fieldroom.

Kathryn crossed to the window. She peered out at the fall of Tashijan, as stone and ice fought. She remembered the offer Lord Ulf had set before her. To escape with the heart, to flee and not look back.

Well, I’m looking, she said silently. But never back over my shoulder. I will face you full on.

And though she saw what swept toward her, she did not despair.

She still held out one hope.