The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Nineteen

The Battle of Gilson’s Hole

The skies opened just after breakfast. Old archers put their bowstrings in waxed linen bags and then put the bags under their hats. Young ones copied them.

The sound of axes never stopped.

A little after nine, the order came to mount.

Cully mounted slowly, all the aches in all his joints fuelled by tension and pure fear.

They rode east through beech trees, forest giants widely spaced with almost no underbrush-here and there, a wicked patch of hobblebush, and occasional openings, sometimes of grass but more often a thicket of raspberry and bramble. Cully rode at the captain’s elbow, and they moved at an astounding speed through the woods, on a road just wide enough for two fully armoured men on big horses to pass-quickly. The road went on and on; one mile, and then another.

In the second mile, they came to the woodcutters-terrified men from the valleys to the south and east. And their guardians.

Golden Bears.

The column flinched, almost to a man and woman. And beyond the bears were irks-hundreds of them, tall and lanky and evil-looking, with mouths full of teeth and hands full of weapons.

Cully made himself ride on. The great Golden Bear to his left-whose yellow eyes were level with his own-on horseback-grinned. It said something that almost sounded like Alban.

Cully grinned back.

Behind him, Flarch grunted. “Fuck me,” he said. “Did you hear the bear?”

Cully shook his head, still shaken.

“It said, ‘Get some.’”

Cully’s nerves got the better of him and he laughed, a little too high and loud. Men looked at him.

Off further to the left, a white stag broke cover. On its back was the most beautifully equipped knight Cully had ever seen.

“The Faery Knight!” men called. Some of the company men cheered-and many of the farmers.

The Faery Knight-who looked more poised and magnificent than the captain had ever managed-trotted his enormous stag to where Ser Gabriel waited on his riding horse. They clasped hands.

“Well met,” said Ser Tapio. “Now what do we do?”

“Push east as fast as we can until we can see the Unicorn,” the captain said. The Unicorn was a towering spire of white rock that rose alongside Buck Pond Mountain. “Then, if all goes well…”

Ser Tapio smiled a knowing smile, and they rode on together, their households staying as separate bodies for the first mile of broken ground, and then gradually intermingling. The faery knights were irks-most of them were slighter than men, and their armour far more old-fashioned. Most had bronze byrnies instead of steel habergeons and many wore leather defences where the men had steel plate, more cunningly formed. But the irks had their own breed of horses and a few stags and massive caribou that seemed to take the woods in easier strides, and they were festooned in charms and runes that few of the men and women could emulate.

They passed along the south shore of Big Rock Lake. From time to time the captain checked a wax tablet, and Cully saw, at a brief halt, that writing appeared in the wax, and he shook his head.

“They have started to attack the fort line,” the captain admitted to the Faery Knight.

“Ahh,” Ser Tapio replied. “Better than I feared. I worried we were hunters beating for a stag long since run away.”

The captain shrugged. “Every mile we do this, our forces will be better at cooperating.”

Indeed, along the front of the long, long column, bears and irks shared the skirmish line with Gelfred’s men. To the north and west of the road, once the lake was passed, the column was paralleled by the movement of a long line of boglins who crossed the Wild the way ants cross a difficult area of pebbles, all touching. It was chilling and inhuman to watch, and most of the company stopped watching. But it did make them feel protected.

The woodcutters extending the road shuddered, and some had to control trembling and actual terror as the boglins passed, or when a pair of fell hastenoch clomped by, their squid-like mouths writhing horribly.

Many flinched when a troop of Outwallers ran along the new road for a few hundred yards-all moving in their endless war-lope, a near-silent flash of red paint and jingle of silver hawk’s bells in the light rain.

Noon came. The scouts of all races pushed out, and the men dismounted, and the pages took the horses.

Nell held a hand for the Faery Knight’s stag. It didn’t even have reins.

“Go with the nissse young woman,” Ser Tapio said. He smiled at her, showing his fangs. He rolled neatly off his saddle, a stunning display of acrobatics.

“Show-off,” Ser Gabriel said. He dismounted with an ordinary turn and slide on his breastplate.

Morgon Mortirmir appeared from the white banda, and Toby passed him forward. Toby was the captain’s field chamberlain-he decided who got into the inner circle and who could wait. Mortirmir looked excited.

“My lord,” he said. He grinned, and stared openly at the Faery Knight, and the beautiful-horrifying-irk woman in brazen armour who stood at his shoulder.

“Oh!” she said. She put a brass hand to Morgon’s cheek. “The power!”

“Handsss off, Lilith!” Ser Tapio said. There was some laughter from the irks.

“Yes?” the captain asked. He had a garlic sausage in his mouth and another in his hand.

“My lord.” Morgon shrugged. “It’s difficult to know where to begin… I’ve solved the horse plague.”

Toby’s face suggested he was regretting allowing the young man to interrupt the captain’s lunch.

“Really?” Ser Gabriel asked.

“Yes. It was under my nose all along. Brutally simple.” He shrugged. “In fact, I was right from the first-all a problem of magnification. You see-”

“Morgon.” The captain’s eyes were kind. “I’m about to face a major battle. I need to prepare. You have the ability to stop the horse plague?”

“Instantly.”

“Bravo. Share it with me and every other hermeticist.” He smiled softly. “Then leave me alone, please.”

Morgon looked shame-faced. Nonetheless, both men’s faces became slack for a few seconds.

The captain returned first. “You really do learn something every day,” he said. “Tapio?”

Again he vanished into his palace, and Toby fetched water-the captain always returned from the aethereal hungry and thirsty.

The Faery Knight shook his head.

“Interesssting,” he said. “Leave it to men to make sssomething of nothing. Sssomething horrible.”

“I don’t really see men as to blame for all the ills of the world.” Ser Gabriel shook his head. “But come-let’s right them, e’er we quarrel about them.”

Ser Tapio smiled. “You are a wight after my own heart,” he said.

The rain fell steadily-not a heavy storm, but a long, soaking spring day. The air was cold enough the men’s breath could be seen and that of horses, and bears, and other things. When they started again, they soon passed the last of the road, a hundred men all cutting together.

A young, bearded man loped from the woodcutters and stood in the captain’s way.

“Sorry-my lord, but my da and a whole lot of our folk-they went south, like, and we’ve lost ’em.” The young man shook his head. “Da said somewhat of cutting the path back to we. An’ I said-”

“Gelfred?” the captain said. “Lad, we’ll do our best to find your da. You and yours are the furthest forward. Keep cutting! The Prince of Occitan is somewhere behind us. I need this path to be his signpost. What’s your name?”

“Will, my lord.”

“Will, keep your people together and keep cutting.” He glanced up-he and the Faery Knight exchanged a look.

“The Unicorn is almost due north,” the Faery Knight said. “I don’t need to see it, to see it.” He smiled and showed his fangs.

The captain turned back to young Will. “Turn the path south now, Will. You’ll be safe enough behind us, then.”

“Aye, my lord. But find me da?” the young man asked.

Will Starling, tall and stark in forester green, clapped the man on the shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he said.

As soon as the column turned south, the way became much more difficult. It took them an hour to pass south of a single overgrown beaver meadow, and only when they emerged back into a country of big trees and open spaces did Cully realize they were now riding south. The rain was lighter.

There was a long peal of thunder in the south. Then another.

Then Gelfred burst out of cover to the front. He waved both arms to the east and south.

The captain reined in, pulled out his ivory slate and wrote quickly.

Horns blew to the front.

Ser Tapio paused his stag.

Gelfred cantered up. “Just past the edge of the ridge-thousands of them.”

“How far-exactly?” the captain snapped.

“Long bowshot,” Gelfred said. He was spanning his crossbow as he turned his horse.

The captain sat back in his saddle. His eyes went three places-to Ser Michael, by his side; to Gelfred; and then, for a longer time, to Ser Tapio.

“Ganfroy!” he said, without further consultation. “Sound ‘form your front.’” He paused and listened to the flawless call. “Sound ‘change horses.’”

Ser Michael turned and began to pick his way rapidly to the north. Ser Milus was doing the same to the south, after he’d mounted his new charger.

“I want to attack,” the captain said. His face said he was in agony. It was all taking too long. “We need the ridge top, or we should retire to the last ridge.” Indeed, they were going downhill-the terrain descended in a series of gentle and steep ridges like ocean waves, all the way to the Albin River six miles away. “But we can do this, right here.”

“This, too, we share,” Ser Tapio said. “I agree.”

The woods were open. The rear of the long column was badly hampered by the marsh and bog around the old beaver ponds, but thousands of animals crashing through the woods make their own road, and it was not as hard at the back as at the front.

“Your people are already on the flanks?”

“Mostly to the west. I will go there. Send me a hundred knights when I wind my horn three times.” Ser Tapio smiled. “You have far more knights than I.”

“Done,” Ser Gabriel said, and they clasped hands. The Faery Knight waved one arm, and bells seemed to ring, and all his knights simply rode away. They were as fast as swallows changing directions-and then they were gone.

“Ser Bescanon-take thirty lances and hold them in reserve for Ser Tapio.” Ser Gabriel’s eyes registered his acceptance of the order and moved on.

The ridge to their front was full of horns. Around them their small army poured from column into line. The company troops did it well, despite the trees-they simply flowed into place. New men were slapped on the back or pushed. There were enough veterans-just-to get the line formed. Ser Milus’s white banda was almost half newcomers, and the red banda not much better. Only Gelfred’s green banda was all veterans.

Cully saw the captain still scribbling. There was fighting off to the left-well away to the left. Horns.

“I think we’ve found their whole force,” the captain said. “I’m sending Sauce for our reserves.”

He was smiling.

Cully hated that smile. “Reserves?” he asked.

The captain smiled that nasty smile. “Haven’t you wondered where my brother’s been, all this time?” he asked.

Cully began to cheer up.

They heard the hollow axe sounds all morning, from the west and south. Hartmut flinched every time the sound came clear. All he could imagine was a long line of forts running all the way across his path-

Before noon, the Dead Tree Qwethnethogs and the scouts of the Huran caught a band of axemen and destroyed them.

After that, there was no holding the army, and it flooded forward into the low hills, up each ridge on its steep face, and then a shallower descent. Hartmut didn’t know the country, but he knew the general lay of the land.

He was concerned at how quickly a few miles of wilderness swallowed their whole force. By how open the woods proved to be.

It was more alien than anything he’d seen.

But Thorn seemed content with their route, and they pressed forward. It was terrible walking for the men-the sailors and the brigans-but Hartmut put them deep in the column so that the great daemons, the stone trolls and the other forest folk could make a trail for them. At last they broke out of the lowlands and into the higher ground with bigger trees, and every step they climbed seemed to rid them of the clinging hobblebush and the terrible alders.

Cunxis, one of the warlords of the Dead Trees, appeared out of the light rain, his feather cloak making him almost invisible until he chose to be seen.

“Thorn-they are right here! A whole army!”

Cunxis was intolerably excited; his red crest stood up, engorged with blood, and his teeth all but glowed white.

“Where?” Thorn demanded. There was a very faint sound of horns-above them on the next ridge. Further north.

Ears of many shapes pricked.

Without any order being given, the whole host began to flood up the ridge, led by the daemons of the Dead Tree Clan, followed-and sometimes outrun-by a thousand Outwaller warriors. The column had only been moving on a path ten or so creatures wide, crushing the underbrush as they moved, and now it gathered speed-but there were bands and bands, stretching away down the last three ridges…

Hartmut spat. “Halt,” he roared at his own human auxiliaries. They halted-and creatures flowed around them.

The enemy-Outwallers and daemons-got to the top of the ridge first.

The captain swore-palpably.

“Don’t halt!” the captain roared, when the line faltered. Even in the rain, the feather cloaks and the slick skin-and sheer size-showed the fearsome enemy. Everyone had nightmares of the daemons at Lissen Carak.

The ground was actually becoming more broken as they climbed the ridge, and on the narrow front where the daemons emerged from the rain, there was naked rock and a steep slope.

“Household-dismount,” the captain called. Cursing-no knight likes to fight on foot-the veteran knights swung off their war horses and handed them back to pages-and in some cases lost only a few strides.

“Stay open,” the captain ordered. He was on foot, and they were going up the slope-the steepest.

Heavy rocks came down on them. A daemon lobbed a rock as big as a man’s head, and Chris Foliak died, his head crushed.

His squire pushed forward into his space and they continued up. Lord Wimarc slammed his face-plate closed as a smaller stone broke his nose.

Stones were not their only weapons. The daemons had heavy axes. They had halted, and stood waiting near the crest-and Outwaller warriors started to leak around their edges.

The household went up the last few yards with their archers loosing at very close range-most of them already at or behind trees as big as the columns that supported a church roof.

The daemons stopped the captain’s household cold, and didn’t give a foot’s breadth. Nell fell there, cut almost in two by a daemon’s axe, and Toby saw the captain go down-struck in the chest by a rock-he rolled, and got to his feet before Toby could take any action. Then Toby missed his guard and caught most of a blow-his helmet did not fail, but his head moved too far, he screamed and fell, and the captain’s ghiavarina was everywhere for a few seconds. A daemon fell-another rolled forward, tripping on its own tangled guts.

“Back!” roared the captain.

Toby had never seen the company stopped. He could not, at first, believe it, and Cully, safe behind a tree at the base of the slope, had to pull the stunned boy out of the line of rocks now falling as the daemons taunted the beaten company.

The household retreated slowly, dragging their wounded. The rest of the company was not retreating-in some cases, like Ser Michael’s lance, they had won the race to the crest.

“Was that Nell?” the captain asked Toby.

“Yes,” Toby spat.

The archers continued, working through their livery arrows at a stunning rate. The thrown rocks were not enough answer, and their shafts began to tell. The daemons were suffering. One of their shamans tossed a working.

The captain unravelled it.

“Listen,” the captain said to Toby. “Listen to the horns.” He smiled.

Toby heard only the sound of desperate combat: horns, and horns, steel and shouting, and screams. Nell-Chris Foliak… He had never felt so tired. So beaten.

“Ready everyone?” the captain called. “Fast as you can to the top. Everyone kill one. This is it.”

Toby looked around. What did he hear? They were going again?

The captain stepped out from behind his great tree and a stone hit his left arm. He raised his right and blew a long call on his horn.

The beaten household got up, or came out from behind their trees.

The captain was already a third of the way up the slope. He was flying over the rocks like a faery horse. Toby decided to try not watching his footing and jumping-in full plate armour-from rock to rock.

It was insanely foolish.

He fell, and his breastplate took the force of his fall on a sharp rock-rose, and jumped.

He could no longer see the captain, but suddenly, above him, there was a great beaked face.

Sometimes, you have to go up the hill first.

The irony was that he was fairly certain that this part of the battle was already won. He could hear the red banda’s horns, and even Michael’s shouts-from the ridge crest. He’d guessed the enemy would be on a narrow frontage-at first.

That didn’t change the tactical reality that he had to hold the whole ridge crest to win. It was bad luck that the enemy had led their force with their very best assault troops.

The logic was unassailable.

But he’d blown their first chance, and now he had to lead from in front, and very possibly die.

He thought-in no order, and all at once-of Harmodius, of Amicia, of Blanche, of his mother, and, of all people, of Ser Tapio.

Win or lose-he could die here, and that was fine.

He began to run.

He had a plan-he had a plan for everything, and if he hadn’t been labouring to breathe inside a pig-faced bascinet while climbing a cliff in armour, he might even have assayed a laugh, because he hadn’t made any plan at all for Blanche, and she was a new world of delight and happiness that he didn’t think he could ever grow used to.

Planning. Over-rated.

But he had planned not to use his powers until he met Thorn, and he found, here, on a naked rock slope with a hundred giant daemons ravening for his blood, that he really didn’t want to lose another friend.

He leapt to the left-landed well, on a big spike of glacial scree-and flicked with his left gauntlet, opening his first of seven sequenced attacks. He’d layered days’ worth of ops and stored the results in Pru’s ever-faithful mind. He didn’t have to enter his palace or speak a trigger.

Daemons died. Some simply lost their feet at the ankle. Their shaman revealed himself to cast-first a strong shield to prevent a repetition, and then a concussive hammer spell, very simple, very hard to shield.

Gabriel turned to working with the ghiavarina, and reached out through the dangerous terrain of the aethereal, found him, and took him. He subsumed the daemon even as the creature shrieked, begged mercy, and collapsed.

We are the monsters, Gabriel thought. At least, I am. Kill my page, you fucks?

Up he went, and the scythe of his thought reaped them.

In the aether, he roared.

Come, Thorn. Let’s be done with it. Come, Thorn, and die.

It was all death.

To Ash, all deaths were of equal value. It was, in fact, going much as he had envisioned, and he rode the success, smiling at the little stumbling blocks. The boglins died, storming the first wall-very satisfying. Men died, and cave trolls died, and the sweet, honey taste of the Golden Bears-they died.

The vanguard held for one assault and then melted under the onslaught of a truly talented mage, and even Ash registered dimly that he ought to be aware of this one, and then the thought slid off the hardened surface of his mind, and he was waiting, lurking, his empowerment and achievement nearing completion, the ant apotheosis he’d scryed as the key to his next victory-to a cascade of endless victory. A way around the others. The path, at least, to freedom, and perhaps even-victory.

Death. Another and another five and two more and ten.

He felt the limit pass, and he, for whom joy was beyond the void, felt a flash of something very close…

Thorn felt his dark lord’s rising elation and he rode it, even as he felt the cry for help from Cunxis and even as the flanks of his still-moving force began to lose the crest line and fall back. Almost none of his vast army was yet engaged. They poured up the third ridge like water running uphill, their once narrow front broadening organically as every creature strove with every other to reach the front.

But Ash was already there, like a lover on the edge of climax and demanding completion, his ravings pouring undiminished into the wilderness Thorn had created around the egg in his mind.

Come, Thorn, came the voice of the Dark Sun.

It was now, or never.

I come, he said. He translated-he let go the thing he’d held so long, changed his innermost process, abandoned the armoured body he’d created for the one of will and essence he preferred-there was a burst of black light…

Toby slammed his war hammer on the thing’s taloned foot. There was nothing else to do, and he had to trust to luck and good armour.

His hammer struck, and the daemon, hampered by fear of whatever was killing his mates, missed, and Toby was up-he swung again and missed wildly, and the daemon was down on one great saurian knee and flicked his axe one-handed. The blow caught Toby at the edge of a cover, and turned him-now he was bleeding under his arm.

Both cut, almost together.

Toby’s steel hammer, now powered by two hands, cut the more vertical line, covering his own head and delivering a powerful blow to his adversary-just as the captain taught. The blow struck, almost untouched-the daemon took it over the left eye.

And fell.

Toby paused for too long, incredulous. But above him on the slope, the great wardens were turning their backs and fleeing. To Toby’s left there were new movements, but they flashed in the watery sunlight-men in armour, already at the crest-some on horses.

Ser Michael had taken the crest.

Toby saw the captain, then. He stood in a guard, facing empty air. He was just a few yards short of the crest, his great spear held low.

He was alone.

And then, he was not.

Thunder cracked-everywhere, as if a thousand bolts of lightning had struck simultaneously. And a tower of black smoke, as tall as the spire of a village church and lit from within by a dark red fire that also spread like angel’s wings on either side, and rose to form a crown, or a halo.

Thorn towered over the Red Knight.

His staff came down, a direct blow in the real, and the Red Knight parried, a rising cover with the haft of the ghiavarina even as he stepped hard to the right.

To Toby’s eyes, the heads of the two weapons, entangled in the interaction, burst into white-hot flame.

In Gabriel’s consciousness, Thorn only threw the physical blow to cover his hermetical assault. It was not contemptuous, this time, and there were no theatrics. Six nested workings collapsed like an avalanche of brilliantly woven ops on his armoured form.

He played them all. In one virtuoso employment of every tool, he stood with Prudentia and unloosed every protection, amulet, and prepared defence save one, and they unrolled-sword of light to parry a bolt of darkness, the timing perfect, the counter already flowing-the net, burned, the assault on will undermined, the flood almost damned, the envelopment counter-enveloped and a second counter initiated, and the pure, white fog of ops batted away-mostly-

Absorbed.

He was hit in three places-not every counter had been perfect, but armour and runes kept it from being mortal, and he was on his feet, the spear still in his hand.

There was no thought. He cut with the spear-

Thorn covered with his staff, took a hit from the slightly delayed counter to the bolt of darkness working, and staggered, wounded.

He drew something from his waist as Gabriel’s elemental counter-envelopment engorged itself on Thorn’s first working and blew back into him. The sorcerer lost the thread of his casting and-

The Red Knight’s first formed working in the aethereal was just too slow-everything, every defence, had been pre-deployed, and now he was on his own. He was too slow-Thorn, twice wounded, managed to cast again and Gabriel’s elation was punctured as he was staggered by Thorn’s brilliant eclipse working-something gave in his side-

Thorn’s staff slammed into his arm. Armour crumpled like tin, and the bones of his forearm snapped-

Prudentia continued to spin, rolling the next working into completion awaiting only the trigger.

Pain rose like the roar of the rain and the rolling drums of thunder in the Red Knight’s side and arm, but he was above it.

In a moment-Blanche, her hand, the darkness-he abandoned his plan.

His right hand twirled the spear in a long feint, reversing his grip.

“Fiat Lux,” he cried, unleashing the working that had taken too long-

Thorn turned his massive working with a healthy respect and a massive shield-

But this time, the working had been the feint. The spear completed its turn, the grip reversed, and the Red Knight cast-with all his might-the Wyrm’s spear into Thorn’s unprotected groin.

On the other side of the ridge, Hartmut saw the intense strobes of light through the rain. To the right and behind him, the whole of Thorn’s horde was rolling, flowing, in one continuous carpet up the slope of the last ridge.

The battle-if it was indeed a battle-was less than fifteen minutes old. Even his knights flinched from the massive detonations that marked the centre point of the conflict, and the steady flow of wounded daemons did nothing to encourage him.

“Thorn!” Hartmut bellowed.

He had no answer but rain, and a triple detonation of lightning-three fast flashes that imprinted on Hartmut forever the hideous ripple that was the rising beat of a single, impossibly large wing. And around the wing-the wing as big as the centre of an army-were bones. Bones stripped in one single instant of sorcerous domination of their flesh. Daemons and Outwallers, men and beasts, knights and horses-stripped to bones in one heartbeat.

And from it rose-

One wing. It was long, and a deep blue-black, shot with veins of softly glowing purple black, and it moved.

It moved with an elegant lethality.

Ser Hartmut was still having trouble with the scale, and doubted his eyes.

The rising wing’s passage knocked him and his horse to the ground.

Mag rose to her feet.

“Here he comes,” she said aloud. Which was interesting, as she was alone. There was not another soul-damned, blessed, or otherwise-in the first line of forts.

Just as she had arranged. Lord Wayland and the Grand Squire and their troops had withstood two assaults from an almost unimaginable horde of unsupported boglins. The northern Brogat levy had fought-with her hermetical support-until they had filled the marsh to the front and all the ditches with dead monsters.

Now the enemy was massing on the far side of the marsh-readying another assault. And Lord Wayland’s men were delighted to obey the order to march for the rear, the higher, safer ground.

Mag stayed. Mag had her own plan.

“Here I come, John,” she said, as if her love were right there, with her.

Like the whisper of rain coming on a summer’s day, he came-a black cloud, a coalescing.

Mag rose on her tiptoes and poured fire into the formation of the monster miles to the north. She loosed her working in the aethereal in the moment that the thing was moving to the real and had a presence in both. It was taking shape-not, as she had hoped, being born, but leaping, fully-fledged, into the world.

Mag stood alone at the centre of an empty fortress of earth and wood, and let slip all the bonds that bound her power. She knew no university laws, and had no memory palace, and her access was direct and uncompromising.

Blue fire leapt into the sky.

Across the swamp, an entire nest’s worth of boglins-an uncountable, crawling mass-prepared the last assault across the low ground. They had rafts and ladders and great hoardings of wild bramble and ropes of vine and grass, and among them were two years of the full crop of the Wild. They had been left with their Exrech to watch the Hillmen-and eat them. And then, when the army’s flank was secure, and their cousins had made a path with their bodies, to storm the forts.

No Hillmen had come.

Almost five miles to the south, the Hillmen had forded the Upper Albin at first light, slipping and cursing on the wet stones and watching the distant tree line for the ambush that they would, themselves, have launched. Late in the crossing, a handful of irks opposed them, and Kenneth Dhu died with an irk’s arrow in his throat. But the big men in their long byrnies got across and scoured the bank, and then they started moving, not west towards their allies, but almost due east and a little north, as if marching to Morea, ever deeper into the marshy low ground. Behind them, the surviving animals of the drove moved with them, parallel but on the eastern side of the river, where there was an old drove road. The horse-boys and a handful of old borderers moved the cattle herd.

When they came opposite the best ford for twenty miles, the Hillmen had already cleared it, striking into the ambush from the flank. Tom Lachlan never shouted his war cry, for his people did their work so suddenly that he never bloodied his sword.

“Now for it, lads,” he said. “Bring the beasties across. Now we avenge Hector.”

And indeed, now they were in the very country where great Hector had fallen, the same streams, and a cloud of faeries came with the morning rain and followed them, flitting about among the long horns of the cattle.

Donald Dhu was stony faced, but he kept running his thumb along the edge of his great blade, and Tom knew a man who’d marked himself for death.

“He was a fine boy,” Tom said.

“This is a daft plan,” Donald Dhu said. “You’re as madcap as your cousin.”

Tom Lachlan frowned. “Tell me that at sunset,” he said.

“It’s that Red Knight of yours,” Donald Dhu said.

“I can thole him,” Tom said.

“Ca’ ye, just? E’en if he’s killing off your own folk to save his?” Donald Dhu glared, eyes red-rimmed.

Tom didn’t snarl. He might have, once. Now he simply looked. “Donald, darlin’, you’ve lost yer fine boy and that’s a cryin’ shame. But if you go on like this, I’ll split yer round head, myself.” He nodded sharply, and drove his horse forward, giving the other man his back.

No man laughed-but Red Rowan and Daud the Cow shouldered their axes and followed Bad Tom, and soon enough the whole force of the Hillmen was pushing as fast as could be managed through the tangled edge of the marsh and swamp.

Two hours later, the beasts pushed out of the swamp. They were, in fact, at the very edge of the grassy meadows where Hector had left his herd a year before. Tom sent two of the younger warriors to have a look, and dismounted, settled his back to a tree, and had a nap. There was a big storm higher in the mountains, and they could hear the snap of lightning, the roll of thunder.

Tom awoke to the feeling he’d slept too long. But his men, almost a thousand of them, were well rested and had eaten a meal, and now he got them mounted and moved the herd back west-now along the line of the old road, through the open woods on either side.

The storm in the hills began to rise to an epic intensity, and it became clear-suddenly, in one single and titanic triple detonation-that this was not nature’s hand, but the power of sentience.

“Tar’s tits,” Donald Dhu swore.

“Move them along,” Tom yelled, and gave a shout. A hundred men took it up-a high-pitched noise between a keen and a yell-and the cattle began to move faster. Here and there, a younger animal, pushed by a stronger, fell, and the herd began to fan out over more forest.

Tom wished for wings, so he could fix a location for himself-but then, as if granted a dream by a god, he saw a giant maple tree with a vast bole and a huge bulging projection-a tree he knew well, that his people all called the Forest God. The tree was ancient and the bole a landmark well-known, and he grinned.

Something fell gave voice. It was shrill, and high, and utterly without pity for man. It shrieked of the dark when there were no stars, of aeons of time before the hand of man came to mar the earth-and even the Hillmen were afraid.

Most of them.

Although that shriek was a mile away or more, Tom Lachlan drew his great sword.

Then he turned to the horse-boys in the drag, raised his horn, and blew.

They answered with shouts, horns, and whips.

In twenty beats of a man’s heart, the herd went from swiftly trotting individual beasts to a live thing of great mass, and a single will. It was panicked.

It ran.

More than a long bowshot wide, filling the woods from side to side, the herd ran west up the line of the road.

Ash rose, delighting in the rush of damp air beneath his wings, free for the first time in an aeon-embodied, and full of power and vitality-and cast a working almost contemptuously into the mortals to his front as he cleared the ridge, and destroyed half a thousand years’ worth of N’gara irks. The red of his fire and the footprint of his destruction rooted the company and terrified even his own army.

He remembered breath, and he breathed.

He turned, almost lazily, and Mag’s blue fire struck him in the side, under his right wing as it rose for more altitude-

His scream killed. His rage was palpable-red fire swept along the ridge. Men died-Cuddy and Tom Lantorn and Dagon La Forêt and Tancred di Piast, boiled to death in their armour, killed almost instantly as a hundred company lances died. Then his wound turned him south and east and his rage-fire passed over the red-crested daemons and into a cohort of trolls and down the helpless ranks of Outwallers preparing to retake the heights, eliminating them in four heartbeats the way a forge eats coal.

But Mag’s fire still burned him. It did not stop-it was not a simple missile of elemental fire, but a master craft of cold anger and human subtlety by a woman who could plan and execute every stitch in an embroidered coverlet. She had not forgotten anything.

Shaken, Ash banked, and went for her. In the aethereal, he reached for her and found-another golden wall. He roared, and threw pure ops at her-great uncontrolled balls of the stuff, and she stood his assault undiminished, and then struck him again.

This time, he had her measure, and turned all but the slightest singe of her strike.

Four miles were nothing to his great wings-less than a minute. But for a minute she stood the whole force of his will, the whole of his wrath, the overwhelming and yet impotent force of his unchanelled might.

For that minute, Mag’s fire burned in his side, and she struck back six more times, at an increasing tempo.

Almost, he was afraid.

But in time-seventy beats of his great wings-he was above her, and in a single hiss of his bright breath she was burned to ash, her shields overcome, her will extinguished.

He had come far down in the air, from the heights above, and now that he was almost at the level of the river he could see the rout of his rearguard-something had smashed his boglins flat.

But there were always more of them. The woods were still full, despite the triumph of some maggot lordling and his cattle, and he turned on one wingtip and roared his destruction into the upper camp, and Lord Wayland was burned, and the Grand Squire was badly scorched, and two hundred knights and half a generation of Brogat farmers died, breathing fire into their lungs.

He winged back over the battlefield west of the Hole and breathed again, and a generation of Hillmen cattle died, roasted. And then he turned to find the men. In his rage, he turned, and burned, losing altitude with every strike, until his vast wings blotted out the sun and he seemed to skim the very tops of the trees.

Tom Lachlan raised his sword over his head as the dragon appeared like a dark storm over the treetops, and suddenly there were faeries all about him.

The dragon was bigger than a castle. It was longer than the biggest building in Liviapolis-and it flew, like a great warship in the air, and it pushed before it a prow of invisible terror consequent to its size. Red Rowan and Willie Hutton, hard-faced killers, fell on their faces, Daud the Cow’s great axe fell from his nerveless fingers, and Donald Dhu cursed God, but Tom Lachlan raised his head.

“By the oath we swore to you, Wyrm! Now I demand ye! Avenge my kin! We stand inside the Circle!” he roared.

His voice was unheard in the wind of Ash’s passage-unheard, but not unfelt. He stood his ground, almost alone, against a creature a thousand times his size. But all around him came the faeries-a rush of them, like a coloured wind-and they suddenly flared like fire in new birch bark-exploding in all directions.

Hector’s voice said, Avenge me.

It was merest chance-or the will of God-that the dragon had just spent its breath, and was inhaling-and looking for a far more fearsome foe than the single, puny man. His great wings beat, he raised his head, and he flinched, unwitting, from the burst of colour and potent souls that the faeries mimicked-and his armoured belly almost touched the ground along the road as he tried to rise.

Bad Tom leapt from the back of his horse as high as he could reach, and his great sword, given him by the Wyrm, struck. The winged faeries bore him up for five beats of his great heart. The wound should have been no more than a flea bite to a man, but Tom’s arm was strong and his eye sure, and the great blade went deep and cut forty feet of belly flesh as the dragon swept on.

Tom fell to earth and rolled. Then he was back on his feet, sword over his head as great gouts of black blood fell to earth. He roared, “I hit the thing!” and then, “Lachlan for Aye!”

But the dragon had a new prey in his mind, and swept away. Because in answer to Tom Lachlan’s call, another great dragon was rising over the battlefield.

There was nowhere on the battlefield of Gilson’s Hole that men like Nita Qwan, moving carefully from tree to tree on the ever expanding envelopment of Thorn’s column-or boglins, like Sleck, now trying to keep his feet in the push to save the ridge top, or irks like Tilowindle, trying to make sense of the death of everyone about him, or bears like Flint, paw to claw with a stone troll at the very crest of the great ridge-nowhere that they could not see the two dragons rolling in massive aerial combat over the battle below and around them. Ash glowed black, and a blue fire still burned, undimmed by Mag’s death, and the smaller, sleeker Wyrm of Ercch, steel grey and brilliant scarlet, turned inside Ash’s bulk.

Both vast behemoths breathed, and the sky caught fire.

Thorn grunted as the Red Knight’s spearhead penetrated deep into his fiery shadow form, and he stumbled.

Then, with a twist, as the Red Knight prepared his last working, Thorn tore the spear from his cloak of shadow, dripping fluid, and cast it aside.

“My heart is not there, either,” he said, but his voice was ruined, and he stumbled forward.

“Simple lightning,” Gabriel said to Prudentia.

She obeyed. The statues whirled and the astrological signs lined up.

“Watch,” he said.

Catching up the thread he’d saved for weeks-the connection that had tethered Thorn to his great moth-Gabriel passed his simple working down it, like water down an aqueduct to a thirsty town.

“Like to like,” he said.

Thorn shuddered as the damage ripped through him under his shields, and fell, and his great wings of fire smote the earth, and the leaf mould caught-smoke rose from his ruin, and there was a scream like that of a woman giving birth and when Gabriel pushed forward Thorn’s form had vanished. But his staff fell with a sharp clatter, and his fiery wings burned a moment longer and then went out.

Gabriel put a hesitant foot on the staff-unsure of his victory-in the very moment that Ash struck the Faery Knight’s end of the line. The great serpent’s fire fell to earth and all but blinded him, and then he’d raised his shields-three of them-and covered the household and part of the red banda as the monster’s fire swept the ridge, killing a fifth of the company in four beats of his heart and then sweeping unchecked into the south. Gabriel was knocked to one knee by the sheer power of the bombardment of ops. But then the dragon turned away south, and he pushed his tired legs to lever his armoured body up. He could feel the sweat of fear like a cold, slimy hand on his back and guts. Something was wrong.

He was a few strides from the top of the ridge, and he ran forward, scooping his spear off the ground and discovering-to his shock-that his left hand was-gone. Along with much of his forearm. Simply-gone.

He fought the shock. It was all shock-the size of the dragon, his hand…

At the top, he could see.

At his feet writhed the vast bulk of an army still many times bigger than his own-already beaten to the ridge top, it had just been flayed by the dragon, who had cut a wider swathe through his own unprotected ranks than he had done to the company. His army had islands of hermetical defence-the Faery Knight, Duchess Mogon, Harmodius, Lord Krevak, Morgon Mortirmir and the Red Knight himself had all covered portions of their line.

“Oh, my God,” Gabriel said aloud. Even as he spoke, the dragon was struck-burned blue, and turned away, flying down the ridges and south.

To Mag. Gabriel knew what she had done-what the inevitable outcome must be-and he stood, transfixed, for most of the minute in which she held her own against a god. He watched the dragon dwindle, the fire burn, and saw each beat of the thing’s mighty wings as a sign it had failed to take her.

And then he awoke-he must use the time she gave, or it was for nothing.

“On me!” he roared. “Ganfroy!”

Ganfroy was a broken doll cast down on the rocks, never to rise again. His trumpet was bent under him.

Gabriel raised his own ivory horn and blew.

And they came.

Danved came, his sword broken in his hands, and he stooped and plucked a stone-headed war hammer from the corpse of a red-crested daemon. Bertran came with the standard and Francis Atcourt and Phillipe de Beause followed him. Cully came and Toby pushed himself off a rock and Cat Evil and hollow-eyed Diccon who had loved Nell and knew where her corpse lay, and Ricard Lantorn, painfully aware his brother had burned to death almost at his side, and Flarch, and Adrian Goldsmith and even Nicomedes-they all came and forced themselves into ranks, even as the pages brought forward the horses.

On the left, he could see Ser Michael, pointing down the hill. On the right, Ser Milus had lost half his lances in a single, devastating moment, and the white banda on the right had halted-shocked.

Milus went into the charred corpses of his men, and took up the pole on which the company’s old Saint Catherine had hung. And by some virtue-some working, some ancient rune-it still hung, so that when he raised it, grey ash flew, and the silk banner licked out like a tongue of flame.

There was a thin cheer. It was not much of a cheer, but in the circumstances-

Gabriel ran forward, ignoring the loss of his left hand. There was no pain, and very little blood. So far.

He turned, and raised his spear-and pointed it, one-handed, into the enemy below.

“Now!” he said. “Thorn didn’t beat you and the dragon couldn’t kill you, so now we are going to WIN.”

And instead of waiting for the enemy to come up the ridge, or even to see the result of the aerial combat, the company and their allies went down into the maelstrom of battle under the shadow of death and, when they struck, the monsters flinched.

Hartmut couldn’t take his eyes from the two dragons.

The rise of their great monster should, surely, have been the end of the conflict. But now-now, as their enemy came down the ridge to his waiting spearmen-he saw how much devastation the black dragon had wreaked. In stealing flesh, he had all but destroyed the vanguard that should have formed the left of the line, and his fire had blasted the daemons on his right and a thousand other creatures.

Thousands of boglins were locked in a vicious, chitinous battle at the crest of the ridge to his far right, and there-at the ridge’s steepest, stoniest top-great bears and stone trolls were locked in the static agony of melee.

To his own left, the enemy’s irks had begun to crest the ridge, and from beyond them an Outwaller arrow fell harmlessly among his men.

Despite everything, it was still in the balance. His men were well ordered, and fresh enough.

“Up the hill!” he called. “Straight into them.”

The brigans levelled their spear points, and began a slow march up the hill. The sailors loosed a volley of bolts.

He was facing men. He could see them-good plate armour, and good swords, and he grinned. Nothing about men ever made him afraid, and he drew his sword. As it burst into flame, his people cheered. Ser Cristan pointed at the burning sword and roared a challenge. Ser Louis began to move his mounted knights to fill the open ground to the left-to clear the enemy Outwallers.

Hartmut thought-I have them.

To his left, the enemy Outwallers began to sprint forward. They were bypassing him, which gave him an instant of puzzlement, and they were moments from being overrun by Ser Louis and the cavalry. But even as the sailors poured another withering volley into the armoured men on the slopes above, they paid a terrible price as the longbow arrows fell amongst them…

Hartmut’s face furrowed as he frowned.

It was too late to avoid the combat.

But there was a banner behind the savages-blue and yellow check. Occitan. And another he didn’t know, and another-a line of mounted knights coming on his side of the slope, moving easily through the open woods behind the line of Outwallers, led by the Prince of Occitan.

He cursed God, and led his men into the company.

In the captain’s clever plan, the levy of the northern Brogat should have been enough, and the Royal Guard enough again, to hold the higher ridge and block the road. But the captain had never imagined the sheer horror of the dragon’s breath, nor the packed legions of boglins. When the north wall was lost, the timbers charred and the men seared to meat standing to the last, Rebecca Almspend and Desiderata stood for three long minutes in the centre of the camp, back to back, and killed anything they could see, wielding power in ways neither had ever directly attempted. Almspend’s power had been that of a scholar, and the Queen’s that of a lover. Until today.

Desiderata hurled power, praying aloud for a gleam of sunshine and watching, horrified, as the embodied Ash darkened the sky above-but he was locked in a death grip with his rival, and she threw only one lingering golden bolt to penetrate his hide before returning to the rising tide at her feet. A behemoth, tusks red, crushed men and tents, and behind it a line of hastenoch trampled those who fled and those who stood their ground with equal vigour. The barghasts swooped on any prey that pleased them.

Blanche Gold watched the ruin of all their hopes, and stood with a short sword by the little King’s bed. She had no great power with which to fight dragons, and she had no ops to loan her Queen. So she guarded the wet nurse and the babe, and when the north wall fell, and the things came, she killed them.

And again, Pavalo Payam saved her. Again, as before, he appeared before she was wholly done, when she had killed two boglins and had one fastened to her left thigh-he cut through the wall of the tent, and his sword moved with the easy, economical flow that she remembered-that it was almost worth the pain to see again-and the creatures died. He cleared the tent, ignored the shrieking wet nurse, nodded to her-and continued out the back wall.

Blanche stood and shook for a moment, and then realized she was bleeding on the Queen’s bedding, and took action.

But as she pressed a spare shift to her thigh, there was a roar-so long it seemed as if it came from ten thousand men, and not just a thousand.

Ser John Crayford watched the north wall lost, and cursed. Mostly, he was cursing a certain arrogant young man who’d had all the answers the day before. But also his own instinct. The size of the dragon trumped any kind of preparation.

Ser John had his own knights-a handful. And the Morean cavalry, which had been beaten badly a few days before. Ser Giorgos Comnenos. Ser Christos.

He shook his head, and turned to Ser Christos. “I must try to save my Queen,” he said.

Ser Christos saw the rout, the collapse, the chaos in the middle of the camp. A thousand peasants were being flayed alive in seconds. He glanced at Ser Alcaeus, who’d seen it all at Albinkirk. And Ser Giorgos, who’d seen it at the Inn.

Ser Alcaeus looked at Ser John, and the look shared their absolute knowledge.

One-way trip.

Ser John would have liked to say goodbye to his Helewise. He’d have preferred to catch more fish in a hundred brooks-to live forever, just stroking her back or hearing her say his name, to see the red-gold flash as the trout took a lure.

“Fuck it,” he said. He smiled without mirth. “Wedge. Two wedges.”

Ser Christos and the Moreans could form a wedge very fast.

The two men touched gauntlets. “Save the Queen,” Ser John said. “I will try to clear the wall.”

Ser Christos thought a moment. “Then let’s make this worth our lives,” he said. He shouted a series of orders at the Moreans-the virtually untrusted Moreans-who were standing, untested, on the southernmost walls.

The Moreans took their hodge-podge of weapons and began to form their taxeis in close order. There were Nordikaans and mountaineers and dismounted city cavalry. There were stradiotes and old, veteran infantrymen from Thrake, and young camp servants who’d scarcely ever touched a weapon.

“They will not run again,” Ser Giorgos said. “Neither will we. Let’s go.”

Ser John was almost happy.

“Let’s make a song,” he said, like the northerner he was.

The two wedges had little space in which to gather momentum-and the camp was an utter shambles. But there was not enough cover for the boglins to stand a charge of heavy horsemen.

The wedges cracked open the front of their wave of terror, and the close-ordered Moreans crashed into the disorder they created. The big axes began to swing. The spears licked out, and the shields remained tight, and a thousand boglins died. And still, the Morean infantry line pressed forward-step by step.

Ser Christos led his men brilliantly, and his sword was like a living rod of lightning, and a great wight died on it, head opened to its mandibles in a single mighty blow. And his wedge drove deep into the centre of the camp, where the hooves of his horses dealt more death than any weapon of man. At the edges of the squadron, men fell from horses tripped by tent stakes and died horrible deaths, consumed still living by myriad enemies, but the wedge itself trampled the enemy to a sticky ruin and cut their way to the Queen, where Ser Ranald’s dwindling Royal Guard opened ranks to let them in. Exhausted men all but fell to the ground in the respite the cavalry gave them-men who had swung an axe or halberd for ten solid minutes, and felt as if they’d aged two years.

Ser Alcaeus asked no permission, but grabbed the Queen and threw her over his saddle. Beside him, men did the same for her women-the three still alive-and the babe. Ser Giorgos pulled a tall woman with bright gold hair onto his crupper and found that she had the King of Alba in her arms.

The line of Morean infantry was inexorable and despite men lost, the phalanx appeared untouched-men fell, and were stepped on. The spears and axes rolled another pace forward.

Boglins are living creatures. They seek to live.

Many began to seek life through flight.

Ser John Crayford cut his way to the north wall. He led his men along the relatively open ground that had been the camp’s parade-he cleared the west face of the Royal Guard’s square, buying men time to drink a sip of water, or merely take a breath-and then he struck the full, packed mass of the enemy in the north-west corner.

He broke his lance, and drew his sword. The boglins were small-too small for a short weapon-and he had to reach down to kill them. His charger did it better than he.

On they plunged, and for the first time in many years, Ser John remembered the joy of combat. The pounding rhythm of the gallop, the surge of near perfect exhilaration to see the men on either side of him, the feeling of oneness with his horse.

The feeling of a living thing coming to pieces under your weapon.

He got his horse onto the ramp to the north wall. Behind him, his banner moved, and still he cut-his charger killed-and they were up on the earthen bank of the wall.

All the ground down to the burning first line seemed to be teeming with enemies. Like a termite’s nest, kicked.

He wished for a mighty adversary-a wight, or a cave troll. But instead, he simply fought well-carefully, as was his wont-and cleared the wall a few steps at a time, minding his horse’s safety, and killing.

And killing.

And killing.

In time, he could not really raise his arm. His horse was bleeding-and sluggish-and had boglins fixed to it like leeches. Ser John couldn’t smile. But he might have, given time. In the centre of the camp, the Morean phalanx had cleared the Royal Guard. One glance told him the Queen was safe. His charger-game to the end-stumbled. And there were no more miracles.

“Goodbye, Helewise,” he said out loud. Then he rolled off his saddle into the monsters, and killed until they finally dragged him down.

Miles to the north, Harmodius stood almost alone. The battle line had swept over the ridge in front. He had nothing to do with that, and in fact-such was his mood-would not willingly have killed any living thing except a dragon.

He watched the two vast predators duel. After an initial, vicious encounter with power and talon, they had taken to making long, bloody passes-each circling for altitude and speed, and then coming back together again. He could follow them in the aethereal as well-where the whole of the place was an increasing fog of falsehood and spent ops. Harmodius had never seen power used on such a scale, and for the first time in his long life he sensed that a locale might itself be drained of potentia. Certainly something was happening in the aethereal that was beyond his experience. He watched it.

To the south, he saw it-in the misty aethereal-as Mortirmir opened up.

That was humbling.

More potentia drained. In the centre of the hermetical combat, in the real, trees-late spring trees-began to lose their leaves. And then to die.

And above them, the rainy day began to turn to storm. Harmodius saw it happen-as if nature abhorred the fighting and strove to extinguish it. More and blacker clouds were rushing in. The rain grew stronger.

The Queen still lived, a banner of gold to the south.

The Faery Knight still lived, to the west, and Mogon, to the east.

Harmodius watched, and waited.

Morgon Mortirmir had no reason to be cautious. And a great deal of youthful arrogance that was, on this day and in this place, well-earned.

He killed.

He pounded Thorn’s horde with balls of fire and when a shaman or a fledgling hedge mage among them showed his talent, Morgon concentrated his efforts until that target was dead-and went back to flensing the unprotected.

Around him, the white banda-all but broken by the dragon and stricken by its losses-re-purposed themselves as his bodyguard. He was content with that. He moved when he had to-clearing away the last schiltron of irks covering the flank of the Galles-and then, because they were intermixed with the company, passing over them to grind cave trolls to sand.

Nothing could stand before him. He offered no mercy. He unleashed workings no practitioner had ever considered, because so few men of his power had ever been willing to walk in front of an infantry line. He broke shields and baffled visions. He mimicked darkness and light. He raised phantoms, and then, bored, dropped lines of fire that broke ranks.

Eventually-horrified-the Wild threw everything it had left at him-power and creatures alike. Instead of concentrating their efforts on flanking the company and winning the battle, the Wild responded instinctively to Power.

Ser Gavin rode easily by Prince Tancredo as they cleared the ridge, moving from west to east-crushing knots of resistance-and then Sauce came.

“We’re in it!” she roared. “Come on!” When no one moved faster, she said, “We’re dying! Get a fucking move on!”

Gavin ignored the prince’s sputtering outrage. He raised his lance. “Lead us!” he called.

Sauce turned her horse. They rode side by side for long minutes, and behind them, the Occitan knights and farther down the ridge, Lord Montjoy’s western knights formed a long, thick line.

Riding sideways on a hill always tempts a horse to descend, and over the next third of a mile they went too far down so that, when they came to the edge of the main battle, the banners of the Galles were high above them, almost due north. The company’s Saint Catherine could just be seen, and a big, black banner and, farther along, a bubble of gold that seemed to move and cast fire.

Gavin turned to the prince. “Your grace, we must charge. That is my brother’s standard.”

The prince looked up the hill-scattered with rocks, and overhung with trees of every side.

“This is not the ground,” he said slowly. And then shook his head.

“Yes,” he said suddenly. “Form! Form on me!” he roared in Occitan, and a hundred knights rode to his side-men fell in the rush to join their prince.

To the west, some of the Count of the Border’s better disciplined men were higher on the ridge side and better formed. Sauce rode at them, waving. To her shock, a crossbow bolt hit her breastplate-and whanged away into the trees. She rocked in her war saddle and turned her helmeted head to see a line of crossbowmen-she ducked, far too late.

Her horse died. She fell-one long fall and two bounces…

She rolled to her feet and drew her dagger, the only weapon to survive the fall, and turned to face the three men who came at her, all with swords.

“C’est une pucelle!” shouted one. He laughed.

They all laughed. And in that laughter, they became all the men she’d ever hated. Two moved to flank her, and her hip hurt, and the earth was rumbling and the rain suddenly felt so hard-

Sauce moved. She got her back against a downed tree and rolled over it, kicking high, and then she was between the two who’d tried to go around her. She rammed her dagger into the side of one’s head-in, and out-and her knee crushed the second man’s testicles as her gauntleted hand broke his nose and one finger penetrated his left eye. She let gravity take him, but kept his sword, and turned.

The crossbowmen were winding. The third man was two paces away-at a dead run, buckler raised.

Sauce rolled her right wrist and her borrowed sword’s point came on line. It went between the man’s buckler and his sword-he’d had poor teachers-and went into his neck almost to the hilt. Sauce used the dagger as a crowbar to scrape him off her blade, dumped his screaming near-corpse to the ground, and ducked behind the log as the crossbows came up.

She had the satisfaction of seeing Ser Gavin’s knights sweep across the back of the line of crossbowmen, uncontested. The ambush had caught only her.

She heard Gareth Montjoy’s war cry, and saw the border knights charge.

The crossbowmen were steady. They loosed, and immediately spanned, and a dozen knights’ saddles were empty.

Sauce crawled under the log as the crossbowmen began to span again, and ran, bent double, in plate armour-no mean feat.

There were thirty-no, more than fifty of them.

Sauce ran, light-footed, through the hobblebush and gorse, and they finally noticed her.

Ten paces out, and one had his weapon reloaded.

He aimed it. It was enormous, and she had no tree to save her, so she rolled forward like the acrobat she had once been. The ground was soft-too soft-and she scissored her armoured legs to get over the roll-she was not dead, but up again.

She got in among them as they began to draw their swords. The more experienced of them simply ran-they could not face Sauce and a charge from a line of knights. But the sword killed one, and the dagger another, and then the ground rumbled, the earth shook, and suddenly, Sauce thought to fall flat.

A horse kicked her in the back plate.

And then the charge was past her.

She got up.

She looked slowly around, and then popped her visor.

And stood, and shook.

“That was stupid,” she said to no one.

Then she started walking to where she could see Saint Catherine gleaming red in the rain. To her left, a beautiful horn played three ringing notes. Almost in front of her, a company of Gallish knights met the Occitans head-on.

A beautiful horn sounded three long, clear notes.

The brigans-big, well-drilled men in heavy armour-were giving ground one grudging step at a time. The company now had the hill behind them, and they scented victory. Neither force wanted to lose any more men. There was an endless, nightmare intensity-a spurt of violence, a single killing like a murder, and then sullen heavy breathing. Perhaps they all feared the dragons had taken the issue out of their hands. Perhaps they merely wished to live. But they-the island of professional soldiers of both sides in a vast battle of beasts and amateurs-had slowed to a desultory slaughter.

Toby became aware, at some point in the fighting, that his knight had just one hand, and was fighting with, of all things, a curved falchion. He had a moment to breathe-one of the captain’s little workings had just killed a dozen men, and Toby-like every man-at-arms around him-chose to grab two breaths instead of pushing forward into the gap.

He burrowed to the left, to get back into the spot behind the captain. His spot had been taken by-of all people-Diccon, a virtually unarmoured boy who now wielded the captain’s heavy spear.

“I’ll kill ’em all,” Diccon gasped.

He had two wounds, both bad, both showing white bone.

The brigans gave a few more steps.

Off to the right, there were war cries, and shouts-even through the rain. A red banner showed for a moment.

The captain turned back and flipped his visor open. “Ser Bescanon, bless his black heart,” he said. He stared into the rain as if by will alone he could see through it.

“You should step out of the line,” Toby heard himself say.

The captain smiled. “I should,” he agreed. “But I won’t.” He flipped his visor down and crouched slightly, as he always did when he fought. “Come on, you bastards,” he shouted through his visor.

Twenty lances heard him, and moved forward.

The Fairy Knight ordered Bescanon’s charge, and it had the smallest effect. At first.

Bescanon trotted his thirty lances over the crest and looked down on the maelstrom. He looked left, where the Faery Knight, outlined in lurid green sorcery, sat a rearing stag like a horned centaur. His knights-the survivors of the dragon’s breath-and all his people were locked in death grips with the very centre of the enemy line-a huge behemoth, tentacled hastenoch, too many imps and wolves and a wing storm of barghasts.

Bescanon pointed his wedge at the side of a swamp creature, couched his lance as if in the lists, and slapped down his visor.

“Charge,” he called.

Sauce saw the company banner and the charge. Bescanon-she knew his coat armour-vanished into the titanic melee to the west of the armoured brigans. She kept moving, trying to reach the banner-the Saint Catherine-and she prayed as she walked. She had the oddest position-a spectator in the midst of an enormous battle. Both sides seemed to have spent their reserves. Even Morgon Mortirmir merely glowed with protective energy. No more missiles rained from his fingertips.

In the time it took to power a tired, armoured leg over a log, it began to change.

Bescanon’s small force killed two hastenoch, gored by lances in their unarmoured flanks until they fell-and the war horses pounded the imps to red meat, although a few fell in turn.

Then, suddenly, something gave-and the Faery Knight shot out of the melee and into the churned and boggy grounds behind it. He turned his great stag, red to the fetlocks, and began to harry the behemoth. And then the edges of the melee began to collapse, and men-who had been fighting savagely, hand to hand-came out of the trees to the left, with painted Outwallers amongst them, shrieking war cries.

Arrows began to strike the behemoth, even in the pouring sheets of rain. And almost, the great monster might have been a victim-something from the art on the rocks at the edge of the inner sea, or perhaps some cave all in the south. Ringed by irks and men, it took blow after blow, and trumpeted its rage and sorrow-to die alone, far from kin, to be tormented by these tiny predators, to fall for so little gained-

Its tragic trumpet-call pierced the rain and sounded for every creature that died in the mud that day.

And then it fell, and the Faery Knight was free. Like the bursting of a dam, his Wild Hunt spilled over the ridge at last, and fell into the flank of the mounted melee where fully armoured Occitan hacked uselessly at fully armoured Galle. The Jacks-those that survived dragon’s breath and behemoth’s tusk and irk’s spear-found themselves in the flank of the Gallish knights and poured arrows into their horses… wet arrows from damp strings.

The Galles began to die.

The Faery Knight rode-almost alone, a vision of scarlet and white-across the back of the fight-he rode hundreds of paces, almost at arm’s length from his foes, along the back of their hordes, and his own household knights flitted at his side, faster than a breeze in the woods. The rain masked them, but Sauce thought she’d never seen anything so fine, and the Red Knight thought the same, and Ser Gavin, intent on his own fight, and Morgon Mortirmir, were awed even after everything they’d seen.

The Faery Knight’s handful seemed to skim the ground-along the wide, shallow trough of the fight, and then suddenly, turning like a shoal of bright minnows, up and to the left-up, and into the rear of the cave trolls where they fought Flint’s people for the highest projection of the ridge. Up, and there was a flare of sorcery-and eldritch fire that played on the hills like holly in yule, white and red and green, as he sprung his last surprise, Tamsin’s fire stored against need.

And Morgon Mortirmir made one last effort, running clear of the back of the company line, raising his hand, and loosing two workings…

The cave trolls broke. Some fell broken to pieces, others ran, the earth collapsing under them, only to mire in the wet ground at the bottom of the valley and trap them to die there.

Flint’s bears, and Mogon, still tall in her cloak of feathers, gathered their survivors. The Faery Knight and his remaining riders placed themselves between them, and together they crashed down into the valley, destroying the last hope Thorn’s Wild levies might have had.

Everything else ran.

Leaving only Hartmut.

The brigans fought on, unshaken, and it seemed to Toby that they all must die-of broken hearts, burst lungs, and rain.

He was no longer fighting with skill. He hit men with the haft of the spear, or simply poked at them, and they at him.

The captain was still making parries and throwing blows. But even he was slowing, and his blows became more feeble. Finally Toby caught a glimpse when the captain’s sword went into an aventail-and came back, having done no damage.

But the horns, and the roars, were different. Toby had the spear locked under another man’s arm, and he couldn’t reach his dagger, and his life was in peril-and there was cheering. The other man pushed him down, wrenching his arm-dislocating his shoulder-and Toby went down, face-first, into the mud. But the cheering went on and Toby was determined not to die, and in a paroxysm of exhausted muscles he rolled over, dagger in hand.

The captain had put his sword in the other man’s eye. He pushed the corpse to the ground.

And then, the Black Knight was there, mounted on a tall black horse.

A space cleared. The brigans wanted no more fight, and yet were too proud to yield. But something had changed-the cheers were everywhere.

“I am Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus,” he said. “I challenge you-face me, or be thought craven.”

Toby could only just see him-a huge figure in black armour. With a sword that burned like a torch, and made a faint sound, like running water.

Ser Gabriel coughed. But then he sighed and raised his visor. “Ser Hartmut,” he said.

“No!” roared Ser Gavin, and Ser Gabriel was thrown roughly to the ground. Gabriel looked up, somewhat surprised.

Ser Gavin towered over them on a sweat-besmothered war horse. His small axe dripped blood.

“My fucking brother has defrauded me of every worthwhile fight I should have had this spring,” he said. “I’m Ser Gavin Muriens, Ser Hartmut, and I insist on being the one to kill you.”

Ser Hartmut growled. Behind him, his men were flinching away down the hill.

Hartmut didn’t speak further. He reached up and pulled his heavy great helm off his back and over his head. Then, as his horse fretted, he took a heavy lance from his squire and sheathed his fiery sword.

He charged.

Ser Gavin had no lance.

He charged anyway.

Hartmut’s lance tip swooped down, and Gavin caught it on the haft of his little axe-his hand went out under the lance as the two horses crossed noses, and he caught the outside of his opponent’s bridle in his left hand.

The black horse twisted, attempting to right its head.

The reins snapped.

Gavin’s axe shot out-and struck Hartmut in the helmet. The blow did not damage him, but the Black Knight fell straight off his horse.

Gavin brought his mount around. Hartmut got to his feet-favouring his right leg-and drew his sword, which burst, again, into fire.

“An attack on my horse?” he said. “What a cowardly act!”

Ser Gavin laughed. “It is always comforting to take cover behind the rules, isn’t it?” he asked. “Especially if the rules always benefit you.”

“Dismount and face me!” Hartmut called. “Or be branded a coward.”

Gavin showed no sign of dismounting. “You mean, get off my war horse and face your magic sword?” he asked.

The brigans were throwing down their weapons.

“You make a mockery of knighthood!” Ser Hartmut said.

Ser Gavin laughed. “I think, Ser Hartmut, that you killed my parents. I think that you have hidden behind a shield of pretence for your whole life. And now, I think you’re going to die, and no one is going to call me base, or coward, or knave-no one at all. In fact, I suspect only my version of this fight will ever be heard.”

Gavin’s smile was terrible.

Then, he dismounted.

“I hold you in contempt-as a knight, and a man.” Ser Gavin tossed his reins to Jean, Bertran’s squire.

The Black Knight raised his sword, and attacked.

He struck air.

Gavin was fresh, and he simply evaded the other man’s blows. Hartmut had fought for hours. Gavin let him swing. He ran-he skipped. He mocked.

At some point, Gabriel turned his head away.

Hartmut cursed, and cursed in Gallish, and swung, and swung, and stumbled. Behind him, De La Marche’s sailors surrendered, the last force still fighting in the whole of Thorn’s host.

Someone-later, men said it was Cully-tripped the Black Knight. He fell heavily, and for a moment, he lost his sword.

His great helm had tilted across his eyes. He roared his frustration, pulled the lace with armoured fingers and threw his helmet at Ser Gavin, who casually struck it to the ground with his little steel axe. Then he stood-a big man in black armour, wearing a steel cap over an aventail.

“I thought of this fight a long time,” Ser Gavin said, conversationally. “It wasn’t you I wanted to fight. But you’ll do to make my point.”

“Shut up and fight!” Ser Hartmut barked.

“You want rules to protect you when you are weak, and no rules to slow you when you are strong.” Ser Gavin took a gliding, sideways step-

Gabriel’s heart was in his mouth.

The long sword licked out-a heavy feint, the false blow of a man who fears no riposte.

Like the flight of an arrow, Gavin stepped into distance, flicked his axe, and buried the spike in the middle of Hartmut’s face.

The Black Knight fell.

Gavin turned to his brother. “It should have been de Vrailly,” he said.

Harmodius felt the rain slowing with the tempo of the combat. He felt it when Mogon accepted the surrender of the survivors of the Dead Tree and Flint took the bended knees of the Big Nose irks. Down at Gilson’s Hole, the Hillmen pushed into the rear of the boglins-already hesitant-and broke them, and the little creatures melted away into the marsh and ravines.

Harmodius was not searching for them. He was searching for why they were still fighting, and eventually, as Ash turned high in the air, so high that the aethereal was thin and the emperyeum began, and savaged the Wyrm of Ercch; as Hartmut fell dead; as Bad Tom stepped up onto the ruined north wall of the Royal Camp, and the last fighting tapered away…

Harmodius found Thorn.

Thorn was a small shadow-in the aethereal, he was merely the shadow of a shadow.

“I knew you must still live,” Harmodius said. “Your bound creatures are still fighting.”

The shade of Richard Plangere, once so powerful, merely whimpered.

Harmodius took him, and tenderly-almost-entered into his palace. Thorn lacked the strength to prevent even that. Harmodius plundered his memories ruthlessly, in a single heartbeat.

“Why?” Harmodius demanded.

“I tried to escape him,” Plangere said. “Please-my boy-let me go. All I wanted was the Wild. And the freedom to study.”

Harmodius studied the damage. “Yes, my teacher. What Ash did to you was terrible.” He frowned, and then hardened his heart. “But because of you, half the women of Alba are widows tonight. Go to hell, or wherever traitors go, and be accursed.”

“You know the truth!” Thorn screamed. “I betrayed no one!”

Harmodius shook his head in the real. “You betrayed us all,” he said. “And not just man. If it is any consolation: I will try and undo what you have done.”

“You will merely become me, you fool.”

“I think not,” Harmodius said. And then, like a creature of the Wild, he subsumed his foe.

High in the aether, Ash felt his puppet die. His foe was mortally wounded, but Ash had to turn and let him flutter to the ugly reaches of earth. He considered it all-the fire, the rain, the ruin, and the death.

He gazed upon Harmodius, who stood in the aethereal, untouched, and ready-deadly, powerful, and possessed of all Thorn’s knowledge, newly learned. And he looked at the others-the golden aura of the despicable Queen, tool of the false Tar, and the fallen Wyrm’s toys… He loathed them all.

But blue fire still burned, and the Wyrm had struck him twice to the bone. And that sword-some child of man had struck him with something-horrible. Even an insect bite may fester.

Ash had never been one for a reckless gamble.

So he pivoted, so high above the battlefield that only a few could detect him, and let out a long shriek of triumph and derision.

One of the two eggs, which Thorn had carried and nurtured for so long, burst open, and a cloud of black spores filled the muggy, damp air, and burst into leprous, malignant life. The other hatched.

Ash would have chuckled, but breathing was difficult and he was too high. He turned west, and began to glide. He could do so, without effort, for a thousand miles.

The Wyrm fluttered as hard as he could, with one wing mostly shredded and the other full of holes.

It was a long way down. After a while, he spun, and lost what little control he had-lost consciousness-and fell.

Harmodius watched the victor glide away into the shadows of the far west, even as the other fell. The fall was long-the heavens were very high.

Higher than I thought.

Gabriel was at his door, and then in his head.

“He covered us, for hours. Can you save him?”

Harmodius chuckled grimly. “Save him? I’ll dance on his grave.”

Gabriel paused. “Listen-you are the closest thing to a teacher I have had in a long time. I want you to think of something. Today we are still standing because bear and irk and man stood together. Some irks and many men are deeply evil. What of it? We-whoever we are-we choose to believe that we can stand together. The bishop is no fool, Harmodius. This is murder.”

Harmodius watched the dragon fall. “I did not kill him,” he said.

“Are we an alliance of all the peoples of this sphere?” Gabriel asked. “Or are we just another set of Powers?”

Harmodius grunted.

“Save him,” Gabriel begged.

Harmodius cursed. But he reached out, into the real, and gave without stint. He gave until trees died-gave more when Gabriel gave him his reserve.

He poured in his ops, and then, daring, he used Amicia’s as well.

Master Smythe awoke with his head on a linen pillow. He opened his eyes.

And met the eyes of the beautiful nun. He had never met her in human form, but he knew her well.

“I am not dead,” he said.

Amicia smiled. “No,” she said. “We saved you.” She pushed a lock of hair back inside her wimple. “Only fair, as you saved us.”

Master Smythe lay still for a long time, savouring that. He understood-with terrible clarity-what had been done to him. He had no right arm.

Not in the real.

At the next bed, another beautiful human woman stood by the bed of a tired, dark-haired man. Master Smythe knew him perfectly well. And his brother, who stood with yet another beautiful woman-dark-haired, where the woman by the Red Knight was pale.

“Gabriel,” he said. “You lived. You won.” He sat up a bit-an odd motion, unsuited to human form-and then turned and smiled at Gabriel’s brother Gavin. “Who are all these beautiful women and what do they see in you two?” he asked.

The blonde woman turned away, drawing a sharp breath.

Gabriel extended a hand and caught hers. “This is Blanche Gold, and I have no idea what she sees in me,” he said. “Stay,” he said to her. “I have no secrets from you.”

Gavin laughed. “Steady on, Blanche. I’ve never heard him say that to anyone.” He grinned. “Master Smythe, this is Lady Mary, once known as ‘Heart Heart,’ and now my betrothed.”

Master Smythe managed a wriggle that might have been taken as a bow.

The women sat. Master Smythe thought that they both had remarkable dignity, and made a note to court them. Perhaps one at a time.

He smiled.

Gabriel sat up. “I think won is too strong a word,” he said, ignoring his brother. “We are still standing.”

Master Smythe took a deep breath and savoured the experience of being alive. “The first alliance of the Wild and men,” he said. “That is a victory, is it not?” He paused. “Where is Ash?”

There was a tiny shudder in the fabric of the aether.

“Harmodius says he’s to the west.” Gabriel frowned. “That is what I mean. Nothing’s finished. The north of this kingdom is wrecked. Ten thousand are dead-and what of the Wild’s losses? Twice that.”

Blanche put a hand over his mouth. “Stop saying such things,” she said. “We won.”

“I can’t take any joy in it,” Gabriel said. “I thought it would be over.”

Master Smythe sighed at the ways of men. “Nothing is ever over.” He smiled at the beautiful women, who ignored him. “We can do so much together,” Master Smythe said. He meant it to sound portentous.

The other man raised the stump of his left arm. “We could buy gloves together,” he said.

Master Smythe lay back, and laughed. “Humans are terrifying,” he said quietly.

The next day, the Red Knight-the Duke of Thrake, and the Queen’s Captain-was dressed, carefully, by his leman and his squire, and then put-somewhat ceremoniously-into those parts of his armour that were still presentable and were light enough for him to wear.

Armed, and armoured, he left the hospital tent raised by the Order of Saint Thomas, to where Ataelus, his war horse, untouched and unused through the great battle, waited for him with fondness and was rewarded with an apple.

Then, with some help from Bad Tom, Toby and Ser Michael, he managed to mount.

Tom rode by his side. He wore the full harness and surcoat of the primus pilus of the company.

Out there, on the ground in front of the tents, waited the army.

Gabriel didn’t flinch from his duty. He accepted the cheers, and then he rode slowly along the ranks. He felt curiously detached. He knew the butcher’s bill-but he still kept expecting to see men where they were not. Ser John Crayford, Count of Albinkirk, would never again lead the Albinkirk Independent Company. There was no company to lead, and the Captain of Albinkirk was dead. Nell was not by his side, and Kit Foliak would never buy another gold embroidered sword belt. The north Brogat levy was led by a man he’d never met, a northern knight. Lord Gregario was in one of Amicia’s wards, with the Grand Squire in the next bed.

There were thousands gone, and the dead were all about him, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d begin to think that Nicholas Ganfroy was just at his elbow. Or Cuddy, killed in the last of the fighting with the Galles, or Flarch.

Gelfred was so badly wounded that even Amicia despaired for him. It was Sauce who took his salute, and Long Paw who rode by his side as he inspected the green banda at the right of the line-Amy’s Hob was dead, and Will Starling was lost and presumed dead. And more, and their losses were not the worst.

In the white banda the scars showed-a new generation, dead, in a single dragon’s breath. But where Morgon had stood, the company lived-there was Milus, and there George Brewes. And Gonzago D’Avia and young Fitzsimmons. And many men Milus had recruited and he’d never met-Moreans and Occitans, and even some Galles.

And the red banda-luckier. Still decimated, but only just. Ser Michael sat like a rock on his war horse, Attila, and gave him a crisp salute. Men all along the line were cheering.

Some were also coughing.

Gabriel ignored them. He smiled as much as he could, and passed among the men he’d known for five years and more-the ones left alive. Parcival D’Entre Deux Monts. Gavin Hazzart. And there was Wilful Murder, and there, Robin Hasty, and there, still alive, No Head. And beyond, just barely sober, Oak Pew. She coughed hard and spat something in her hand. Daniel Favour. Ser Ranald. Smoke. Adrian Goldsmith. Ser Bescanon. Ser Danved, talking even now, and Ser Bertran, still silent. His squire, Jean, was grinning, and Petite Mouline in a new red arming coat was beaming, brimful of happiness.

He walked his horse to where Wilful Murder sat. “You, and Cully, Tippit, and No Head and Long Paw. And some knights and squires. I guess we still have a company.”

Wilful looked at Tippit, a few files away, and a small smile creased his aging face. “We could use some fucking archers,” he said. “Ones not like some awkward sods I could mention.”

It shouldn’t have mattered.

But they weren’t all dead.

He finished his inspection of his own company, aiming for that polite level where every man feels his polishing was not in vain and no one feels he’s dying on parade, and then he moved off to the left, to the Moreans, who were in many ways the heroes of the hour and were cheering like fools. There he saw Janos Turkos, soon to be knighted, and Ser Giorgos Comnenos, who had saved Blanche, with the help of the Ifriquy’an, Ser Pavalo. And Count Zac, back where he belonged at the head of his easterners. Beyond them stood the Royal Guard, which had never felt the breath of the dragon and yet looked as if they had, and all the Occitans and western levies under Prince Tancredo and Lord Gareth, none of whom seemed to have polished anything. The Royal Foresters were not on parade. The Redmede brothers had taken the Jacks and the Foresters into the woods together, pursuing the broken enemy, trying to make sure that the victory had consequence.

Gabriel began to inspect at a fast trot.

Just the survivors amounted to nine thousand men.

At his shoulder, Tom Lachlan waited until he came to the end of the line of men. There, on the other side of the camp, stood a motley horde of other things, led by a magnificent knight on a white stag. By him stood Pavalo Payam, the Ifriquy’an, and Harmodius. They looked bored.

“You won,” Tom Lachlan said. “Just take it in and let go.”

“I-”

“Let go,” Bad Tom said. “Drink hard. Ha’ a tumble wi’ your lass. Make up some lies to paste over what you mislike. It’s fewkin’ war, whether there’s great dragonish Wyrms or just a wee huddle o’ stupid men, tryin’ to steal yer purse. Let it go.”

Gabriel turned and met Tom’s eye.

The Faery Knight saluted with a flourish. “Thisss isss the mossst foolisssh of human traditionssss,” he said. “I have no glory in war. Let’sss go sssomewhere, and sssit in the ssshade. And drink. And sssee all your pretty peoplesss.”

Gabriel frowned. “It’s all to be done again, like a lesson learned wrong.”

The Faery Knight shrugged. “I have a few sssenturiesss on you, little captain. It isss alwaysss to be done again.”

But he didn’t leave then and there, and they all bowed to the great duchess, Mogon, who stood with the Queen.

The Queen was frowning, the rarest of expressions on her face.

“Your grace?” Gabriel called.

She nodded. “What are they all shouting?” she asked. “My Archaic is not that good.”

Gabriel had been deaf to the cheers-they oppressed him. And there was Blanche, smiling at him, and he blew her a kiss, to the delight of a thousand farmers and camp followers. There was Lady Mary Montroy, and there was Lady Rebecca Almspend, and the Earl of Towbray whispering in the Queen’s ear.

The cries-the cheers-grew more coordinated, and Ataelus showed his distaste for the noise, turning a curvet and nipping at Tom’s horse.

Bad Tom looked back at Ser Gavin. By him, Ser Alcaeus was smug. The Morean grinned.

“They’re shouting ‘Ave, Imperator,’” Ser Alcaeus said with intense satisfaction.