“We’re in it,” he hissed. “Boys, drop!” Ilianora clamped the cap on the lamp to extinguish it, to buy them a minute or two. But four more arrows, and the shouts of a force thrashing up the left flank of the rise: It would be only a moment before they were captured.

The moon cruelly opened her eye from behind the mounded cutouts of cloud, and they could see the silhouettes of soldiers against the steel-white water of the lake below.

“We’ll plead neutrality, see where it gets us,” said the dwarf, dragging at Ilianora’s hand to pull her to her knees. “Boys, you imbeciles, get down!”

Being lower down, the soldiers were at a disadvantage, but they were trained. Ilianora could see the crossbow aiming, could see the glint of bayonet. They swarmed-thirty, forty, fifty-a half mile out. The sound of crushing underbrush, the strum of advancing men. “Hie, on the narrow,” cried one; the voice was businesslike as it carried, like a professional herder of cattle. “Hist, second volley,” called another. “Grade and scale,” said someone nearish; “Bloody unlikely,” came the reply. A shot rang out.

“We fly no emblem!” cried the sergeant-at-hand, but another shot muddied the sound of his words. “Fucking hell, we offer no resistance!” he yelled, irritated enough that his voice rattled into a falsetto shriek.

The Clock had other ideas about this. The great dragon head lifted from its mechanical sleep and rotated like a swan, and eyes with a dull carmine spark shifted in the dark. The leather nostrils dilated and the tin scales scraped upon one another as the armature of the wings stretched like two sails in the woods. It was, perhaps, just enough to cause the closest EC Messiars to halt, as they tried to work out what huge creature waited, glowering and creaking in the dark. The light shifted.

“Keep going!” cried the sergeant-at-hand to his pony-boys. “Mischief is having her own say!”

The nostrils flared. Coils of steam-grey smoke fell out in slow hanks, unrolling as they dropped, thickening like gelatin beads in water. Within a moment, the Clock was shrouded in a fog that smelled of yeast and mud.

“Grade and lower!” cried a commander. “Pox on my eyes,” cried an advance scout, quite close; they could hear him breathing and swearing, and he fell to the ground.

“I mean to keep on,” said the sergeant-at-hand. “Walk the way forward, Miss Trip-Through-the-Trees, and pluck our way out of here, strand by strand if you must.”

The hilltop was smeared with fog, no less troublesome to Ilianora than to the Emerald City division, but she’d had the advantage of reaching the summit before their attackers, and she had seen a bit of how the land went. Along a ridge, and then down a scalloped recess; she could get them that far. She reached out and plucked a wry song out of the struts of the forest. A pizzicato progress. The company kept close behind her, and the dragon trawled a breathy cloak that did not quickly thin.