Master Nikos came up, still mounted on his mule, still looking more like a schoolmaster than a great mage. With him were two Morean magisters and half a dozen wardens who moved as if in a trance, all in step.

Tapio watched their doom in the valley below.

“He has beaten us,” Redmede said.

The grammarian frowned as if dealing with a student guilty of plagiarism. “That’s too bad,” he said. “Because he hasn’t beaten me. Or I should say, us. And that is a very important thing.”

As if to emphasize his words, a torrent of red-brown fire fell on the shield above them and made no impression.

Tapio looked up. “I am tired of rain,” he said. “I want to fight in the sun.”

Tapio had his own powers; he was the Faery Knight. So he reached into the heavens, and he rolled back the clouds as if they were a carpet.

And the sun broke across Loomsack Mountain.

The sun fell on his shoulders and made his armour glow; it fell on the elk, and they raised their heads; it fell on the Jacks and made their cotes seem white again. It fell on Mogon’s people and made their red crests burn like fire, and it was so bright that it made the stone trolls, trapped between Mogon and the ballistae, quail, and then ponderously turn and look for easier prey.

It fell on the enemy bogglins across the Cohocton, making their eyes light like jewels; a wight, in white chiton and bearing a pair of heavy swords, seemed to glow like an angel. But she wasn’t fighting; she was inhaling, over and over, her four-jawed mouth hinged slightly open. Her horde hesitated.

Under Tapio’s eyes, Mogon’s column burst across the ford to safety, covered by the constant fire of the great crossbows, and covered by a flood of Tamsin’s workings; a mix of illusion and terror and subtle enhancement and a tidal wave of confusing scents thrown into the wave front of the bogglins.

“We will never make it across,” Redmede said.

Tapio nodded. “You are a good ally,” he said, “and never did I do a better thing than to make you my friend. I sssay we go north, and eassst. One fight, to smash through Asssh’s people. They will be thin right there . . . they all pool together for the fight at the ford.”

Redmede followed the gesture the irk made with the haft of his long axe.

“If’n you’re wrong . . .” he said.

“If I am wrong, William Redmede, we will die like heroesss and Tamsssin will mourn for a thousssand yearsss,” Tapio said.

“Bess, too.” Redmede shrugged. “Not a thousand, though. Maybe five.”

Tapio’s high voice shrieked with real laughter. “Come, friend,” he said. “Let usss sssave what can be sssaved.”