The master board—really, an old lute hermetically re-worked to respond directly to impulses from the aethereal—began to emit the notes that meant “alarm.”

“Some kind of attack coming in,” he said tersely. The language of the impulses was still too limited.

Ser Milus gave an order, and the great red company standard was waved back and forth.

Immediately, the column began to deploy. Morgon was far towards the back, well located to see the mountaineers struggling to spread out to the south, looking for cover—the Outwallers running down the banks of the Meander to the north on the same errand, each block covering one of the column’s flanks.

The wyverns came in from the south. They were wary—they flew very low. Given how close they all were to the Circle of the Wyrm, Morgon was surprised that they dared at all.

There were a dozen of them—sleek shapes that flew along the edge of the hills to the south and west of them. Without the warning they’d have caught the whole column in march order, but instead, every archer had an arrow to his string.

But the leader of the wyverns was old, canny, and had much experience of men. And his instructions had been admirably precise. He circled to the east, his own band riding the same drafts he did, well closed up against being located too fast. They circled the last hill and swung out across the valley of the Meander, and Morgon saw the company archers begin lofting arrows—some men loosed far too early, but most of the archers were veterans, not just of war but of this war, and held their shafts.

From the baggage near the rear of the army, crossbow bolts flew.

The great winged creatures banked, coming in along the axis of the column and manoeuvring in the still air to make themselves poorer targets.

The company—deployed to the right and left of the baggage—raised their bows almost together as Smoke chanted ranges—and loosed.

A brave and untried young wyvern crumpled under forty heavy impacts and crashed to earth, bouncing once and ploughing a furrow in the sandy soil until its corpse crashed into a wagon whose oxen were still harnessed. The oxen rolled their eyes and bolted heavily, passing along and then through the archers’ line on the left of the road.

Two more wyverns fell victim to their hate and their feeding desires, disobeyed their chieftain and attacked the disordered archers. In heartbeats, Jack Kaves was dead, and his partner Slacker, and a dozen more archers were wounded and down.