And now all her voices were committed, and yet it seemed to her that more voices were there than should have been; she felt, for a moment, as if she could hear Anne, dead two days, and even Helewise, murdered so long ago . . .

In nomine Patris . . .

“Ash is attacking Harmodius and the will has thrown itself on the gate,” Tamsin she said. “You must try now.”

Gavin closed his eyes. “It’s broad daylight,” he said.

“Nonetheless,” she said.

He looked around. He’d moved a mile north of the ford, to the low ridge, more a fold in the earth, that looked out over the valleys that ran like fingers into the Adnacrags; there was the West Kanata, and there, the Lily Burn.

Just for the moment he held the initiative, and he had the north road through the farms along the river, which ran west to Lissen Carak, ten miles distant.

As best he could see, there was a major force to his north, and slightly east; centered, he was told, on Mistress Helewise’s manor house; thousands of not-dead and a veritable mountain of worms, and beyond that, tens of thousands of bogglins who had come through the woods from Lissen Carak in the night.

And there was another force of them in the low ground beyond the Lily Burn. A huge force that no one dared scout, but Tamsin guessed it was many times larger than his own.

And a third force right along the Cohocton.

And a fourth force on the south bank.

And a fifth force covering the siege of Lissen Carak.

Gavin grinned in the near assurance of having, for once, done something right. His adversary, like an impossibly rich man, was squandering his fortune on a dozen projects; Gavin, like a miser, had gathered all of his in one place.

Oh, my brother. How I wish you were here to help me decide this.

What if this is our only throw of the dice?

Where the fuck are you?

To Lord Gregario, he gave a wave. “Go with God,” he said.

Gregario nodded. “We’re really doing this?”

“Right now,” Gavin said.

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Irks and wardens had set a trap on the road—a carefully sited ambush in deep old woods. But they were westerners who had not faced the Alban chivalry before, and both horns of the ambush were smashed by knights charging through the woods, moving almost as silently as hunters so that the ambushers had only a few heartbeats to see the glint of metal before the avalanche of steel and horseflesh fell on them.

Lord Weyland rode down one side of the road, and the Grand Squire down the other, and they cleared the woods for hundreds of paces.