The kraikon’s sword crashed down. Shields buckled. Screams rang out. Swords chimed against bronzed flesh but found no weakness. Jag-headed maces found better fortune, but first had to crack layered armour plates and thick corrosion. Soldiers’ wisdom was that you never knew the strength of a foe before you had to face him yourself. For the first time, Viktor truly appreciated the valour of those Hadari who’d gone willingly into a kraikon’s path.

“Keep on! Keep on!”

Even as he bellowed, Viktor knew the command would do no good. His advance had stalled. Even if they made it to the line of Prydonis and Sartorov shields, they’d do so in laughably piecemeal fashion.

It needed something else. Something provocative.

The ground shook beneath a kraikon’s lumbering tread. Viktor threw himself aside. A down-thrust sword churned the turf. Three knights hurled themselves at the construct, hacking and hammering at its legs. A massive hand swept them aside.

The kraikon blotted out the sun, sparking memories of Davenwood – where one had almost crushed him flat. But there was something else, wasn’t there? Something about that battle . . .

“Viktor!”

Josiri’s impact bowled him clear out of the kraikon’s path and into the trunk of a willowy hayadra. As the construct turned about, a second kraikon thundered past from behind, magic crackling from a wounded shoulder. It struck the first with the hollow boom of a ship slamming into a quay.

Viktor pushed away from the tree. A glance behind revealed that Josiri was not alone – the hearthguard had come with him. “You were to wait until we’d cleared a path!”

“There’s no more time. That’s the last of Elzar’s kraikons. If you’ve something planned, we need it!”

But there wasn’t a plan, was there? Only an idea, half-glimpsed amid the motionless kraikon of the lunassera charge. A tactic of desperation.

“Viktor!” Josiri cried again.

Two more of Ebigail’s kraikons descended on Elzar’s last, embattled construct. Fists rose and fell as they pummelled their estranged brother.

Pushing Josiri’s impassioned pleas to the back of his mind, Viktor let his shadow slither free.

Captain Horden strode through the weeping and huddled prisoners. Constables set as guards shied away from his approach. They didn’t want to be there. They didn’t want to be part of the unfolding madness. Horden didn’t blame them.

He reached the base of the pyre and drew a brand from the brazier. Flames spluttered impatiently. Two more deaths to join the constables he’d sent against Essamere, not knowing Lady Kiradin had held back the blades of Prydonis and Sartorov. All to save his sons.

“You’ll never be free of her,” gasped Sevaka.

Unable to meet the accusation in her eyes, Horden glanced away.

“It’s almost over.”

“Not for you. You broke. She’ll break you again. And she’ll despise you more each time.”