Down in the ford, Gavin Muriens was on foot, his horse dead; his squires mostly dead. They had failed to hold the ford against the trolls and Gavin had gone down; had taken too long to rise out of the icy water and found his banner down. He was perhaps ten paces from the north bank, at the very edge of the ford, with his back against a boulder as big as a house.

Gareth, his charger, was dead in the water before him, the rising river washing over his high-backed green saddle. But his axe was still hanging from the cantle, and Gavin leaned forward and fetched it, and the feel of it in his hand reassured him. He still had his shield; he settled it, tugged at straps, and prepared to die.

There were more than a dozen cave trolls in the ford, killing his people; mostly stragglers and camp followers.

Gavin watched while his thoughts came together. He’d been unconscious; had taken a blow to the head.

But on the south bank, he saw the ballista loose a bolt, and saw it strike a cave troll squarely, breaking the thing’s outer shell of stone and unmaking it. The ballista told him many things: that the south bank was still secure; that Gregario had won his fight; that the chaos in the fords was not all disaster.

His spine straightened.

Behind him, there were horns. He knew them for Mogon’s horns.

The cave trolls had noticed him. Slowly, like ships turning into the wind, two of them came for him, their heads swinging almost in unison, and Gavin wondered if Ash was concentrating on him.

Cavalry axe versus cave troll. First lesson. Don’t even try it.

It was only ten paces to the bank, but Gavin wasn’t sure of the footing and he wasn’t too sure of his legs, either.

But when the first troll came on, he decided he had to make a fight of it and not just wait to be crushed against the rock, tempting as that seemed in his current state.

His intention was to pass forward like lightning, and throw a crushing blow to his adversary’s ankle before the second cave troll emerged from behind the first to pulp him.

What really happened was that his first step forward snagged on Gareth’s reins, rippling under the water, and he fell face forward in the bloody water. But the water was shallow, and the cave troll’s blow went too far and thudded into Gareth’s corpse, and Gavin slammed his ironbound shield’s point into the arch of the troll’s foot, chipping stone and costing the thing its balance on the slippery rocks.

It fell with a choked roar.

Gavin got his left knee up and chopped with his axe, down into a flailing arm. He powered forward onto the thing’s chest, and buried his axe in its brow ridge, and the red glare of its eyes went out forever.