Ark lifted the whistle to his lips and blew a note of total silence. But far behind the peaks of ice, and wrapped in branches that wriggled and twisted like snakes, sat a woman deep in the hollow of a tree who heard the note, as did every creature she cared for.

“Help us!” murmured Ark, at the same time aware of shining splinters eating up the distance toward intended targets.

Look through the glass darkly, said Fenestra. She hadn’t looked hard enough. By allowing such alien weapons into the conflict, the envoy had lost honor and thereby brought on darker consequences.

All this, in the gap between one breath and the next. Maw was here and its troops were about to meet all that the Ravenwood could offer in return.

Ark’s head turned to the west. They were coming as they had always promised. Now! The moon was blotted out as the sky suddenly filled with screeching shadows. A beating, flapping mass of black, far louder than the single, suddenly vulnerable flypod. And they were led by one bird, soaring through the slipstream.

Every eye turned upward.

“Blimming heck! It’s Hedd and his gang!” shouted Mucum. With all that blood, it was a wonder they hadn’t come before. But would the perfume drive them wild? No one knew if they were friend or foe.

Ark had no time to worry about Dendran fears. The ravens of Arborium still needed his guidance. The boy reached out to Hedd, felt the keenness of that savage but noble mind, saw his intent but worried for the consequences. He pleaded with Hedd to ignore all instinct. The lead raven had to convince the rest of his furious flock. For once, they must not go for the injured, but for those who caused the injuries. As if in answer, the flock wheeled and turned.

For a brief moment, there was panic in the soldiers’ eyes. With their armored vests and infrared visors, all they saw was a bunch of oversize birds flying toward them. Feathers against high-velocity rounds. Easy!

They turned their transparent weapons to the skies and let off a volley that would have cut a regiment of Dendrans in half.

And indeed, many of the brave birds fell at that first assault. Ark felt each death like a body blow. He saw the dimming of their eyes and even worse, the memories of their long, airborne lives spilling into the cold air around them. But their companions continued to fly, sharp and precise, their claws turned out to rip these interlopers into bite-size gobbets of flesh.

Weapons, far more advanced than anything Arborium had ever seen, clattered onto branch lines and plummeted toward the ground, spinning around in circles like the useless lumps of forged glass that they were.

And as for the Mawish force? They had been inoculated against gas. But there was no protection from razor beak and scything claw.