But the travel time in the air was very short—less than a hundred paces separated them now—and Gabriel was committed. He moved all his shields to the front, and charged. In the real. He didn’t have the ops to make a long fight in the aethereal and he sensed that Morgon couldn’t hold for long enough to convert potentia.

The second volley from the Umroth was like a blizzard of black light on his visor and then he was through, still alive, and he bore the full brunt of all the coercion that the Necromancer could summon.

His plans were in shreds, his people defeated. Bad Tom died, pointlessly, of plague; Sauce crucified by triumphant monsters, Michael eaten alive, Blanche was torn asunder, Kaitlin’s baby ripped from her womb, Petrarcha, his old grey hair brown with his blood, thrown from a cliff to ravening hordes as tides of monsters rippled over the world in the utter defeat of the last attempt of the alliance . . .

. . . and Ariosto came through the Umroth’s wave front of fear and resistance, his wings beating at the ragged holes he tore in their hermetical shields. Talon and blade slashed at the hermetical reality; and Gabriel remembered the power of his metal hand and, dropping his reins and trusting his mount, rained white fire into the Umroth from above. Ariosto’s talons ripped the stinking, rotting hide from the back of one as the light from a second’s fiery death backlit its end, and a third towered over all, trying for mount and rider with its saber tusks and finding only sky.

Down he stabbed, down and down, his mount steady between his knees as if Ariosto trod on earth and not on air, moving with his every twist, rising when the tusks came up. The two of them were deep in the herd, under their shields; and there was a line of fallen Umroth behind them. A golden light seemed to suffuse them both.

Their adversary stopped trying to face Mortirmir in the aethereal and threw everything at the man on the griffon. It went for the other threat. The one in the real. The one that could fly.

It was afraid.

The left-hand falconet fired.

The ball struck an Umroth in the middle of its skull. Black ichor sprayed, and the massive thing slumped like an ox struck by a butcher’s mallet. The bronze machine rolled back, belching smoke, and the sponge went in; the ballet of loading began, uninterrupted by the tusks of impending doom.

“One more!” Duke yelled. “One more and run!”

The rammers spun their implements; the round shot went down the long bronze throat.

“Jesus Christ Almighty. Jesus Christ Almighty. Jesus Christ Almighty,” muttered one of the loaders over and over.