‘Watch your mouth, Telra. Now, stay close and let’s find the captain.’

Pausing to wave on those soldiers directly behind them, Arkandas led Telra to the right, across the advance. When the arrows did not come, as the soldiers closed on the forest’s edge; when the Deniers simply melted back another dozen or so paces, keeping their distance and taking cover behind tree-falls and boles and heaps of snow, Telra knew what was coming. Captain Hallyd Bahann seemed oblivious of the tactic being employed against them. Telra felt a burgeoning of fear and growing dread. Someone had organized the bastards. A mind was at work against them. And we’re walking right into this.

‘Lieutenant—’

‘Save your breath, Telra! We’ll get to him – see? There he is. We’ll—’

The arrow that buried its obsidian point into the side of Arkandas’s neck was burning along the last third of its tar-smeared shaft. Impacts thudded against Telra’s wicker shield and she shrank down behind it, even as the lieutenant made a faint gurgling sound, before sinking on to her side, lying almost within reach, her boots kicking at the snow as if trying to run.

Flames now sent smoke up from the facing of Telra’s shield as still more burning arrows hammered into it. Fuck.

Looking down, she met Arkandas’s eyes and was startled by the strangely languid blink the lieutenant gave her, before the life behind those eyes flickered, and then went out.

Soldiers were screaming and shouting around her. Flaming arrows flitted like sparks through the gloom. Bearers with their shields aflame flung them away, scrabbling for their swords and the smaller bucklers they carried, and the arrows kept coming, finding flesh.

Backing up, hunched down, she looked to find Hallyd Bahann and saw, amidst the chaos, the captain’s shield man, Sartoril, his cloak burning, the shafts of three arrows jutting from his back as he stumbled towards cover.

‘Sound the retreat!’ Telra shouted. ‘Withdraw!’

Someone stumbled against her and she turned to find Corporal Paralandas. ‘Telra! Where’s the lieutenant?’

‘Dead,’ Telra replied, pointing six or so paces ahead. ‘Where’s Farab and Pryll? We’ve got to get the squad together and pull the fuck out of this mess!’

‘Hallyd?’

‘Sartoril’s done and the captain’s nowhere in sight. Probably face-down in the bloody snow.’

Paralandas wiped at the snot glistening on his upper lip. ‘Saw thirty or so rushing the enemy. None of them made it twenty paces. Telra, there’s easily a thousand of them in front of us!’

‘We’re cooked,’ Telra agreed. ‘Follow me – we’ll round ’em up as we can.’

‘Retreat?’

‘Damn right we’re retreating!’

Arrows hissed past as the two soldiers, scrabbling and sliding in the snow, began pulling back.

* * *