With a frown of skepticism she unsheathed Skuldraig and touched it to the strand, expecting the blade to slice right through. It did not. She tried again harder but it only glanced off. “Jacksmoke!” she said, slashing at it harder and smiling in wonderment. “How’d you do that?”

“Knitted it with glyphs for strength,” he told her.

“You should use those on your next skin too.”

“For true,” he agreed, “for you never know when a lass may try to slit your throat.”

“Ach!”

“Tie it round you. Go on. I’ll be holding the other end, you ken, until you come back out.”

She bowed her head and tied the cord round her waist over Bellatrix’s tunic, and when she looked back up, her smile was gone. “I’ve never had such a shiver,” she told him quietly.

“Nor I.”

They shared a solemn look until Magpie broke it, chasing all anxiety from her eyes and saying abruptly, “Here we go.” She tugged the tether hard to test her knot and said, squaring her shoulders, “Hang on to me, Talon.”

“I will. Blessings, Magpie.”

Then, with the warriors following silently, she turned and walked in among the dead trees. She felt the presence of many spiders lying in lurk. Very many. She hadn’t gone far before one plunged down at her on a silk tether of its own. She dove and had to scramble aside as it nearly landed on top of her. She stabbed at it and it burst like the bagful of venom it was. As its eight spindly legs danced a frenzied death, she stood and prowled on, deeper into the Downs.

The fissures in the dead earth widened, their edges crusted with congealed poison and the bones and wings of dead things. The Blackbringer was down in one of those cracks while spiders boiled up and out to do his bidding.

Dark deepened.

Magpie dodged another spider, and it skittered past her toward the advancing Rathersting. She heard a pop and gush as it was dispatched. Another came and she slew it and watched its fat bag of a body shrivel as its venom drooled out. She shuddered in disgust. It seemed impossible she owed her own wings to these vile things, but so it was, and for that reason the Rathersting suffered them to live, century after century.

But not this night. Looking back, Magpie saw many dark shapes spring down onto the warriors, and a frenzy of slaying ensued. She killed two more herself, felt the sizzle of their poison on her hands and arms, and whirled back toward the black cracks in the ground, her senses reeling wildly, trying to stay alert to everything, all around, as night fell.