“No,” the prior said. “I’m sorry, but I must get into the abbey tonight. Everything depends on it.”

Gavin shrugged. “We can’t lose the rest of your knights.” He looked over his shoulder.

Another young knight was cut down.

“Stop it!” Gavin roared.

The slim figure in the black cloak who was working on the prior’s wound moved a hand.

“Ser Gavin,” she said. “Hard Hand. We must win through to the abbey or we will lose everything.”

“My lord,” Grazias said. “My lord. The dragon.”

Gavin turned, looking back along the forest road toward Albinkirk. The trees were mostly bare of foliage, and through them he saw a looming black shape, and then the bright sparkle of the dragon’s fire.

Judging from the position of the thing, it was setting fire to Penrith.

The loss of Penrith would collapse his center.

Gavin looked around—at the prior, at the tall woman by the prior, at Grazias and at his own knights and at young Orcsbane.

“Right,” he said. He bowed to the woman, and saluted the prior.

“Grazias,” he said. “Give me the other sword.”

“Other sword?” Grazias said. But he put his hand on it—the great black sword of Ser Hartmut.

He held the scabbard, and Gavin reached out and drew the sword.

“Time to fight fire with fire,” he said.

He wheeled Bess on her back hooves, so that the great mare spun like a top, and he put her head at the bridge. But he didn’t charge. Instead, he trotted up to the bridge, covered by the Order’s shield, and the shaman on the far bank launched a forked attack that was wasted on the golden leaves of the defence.

Gavin came to the tangle of dead knights and let Bess pick her way around it.

He reined in at the base of the bridge.

The antlered man came and stood at the very crest of the bridge. He . . . very emphatically he, with a parody of manhood between his heavily muscled legs, raised his great steel axe and shouted. His shout was echoed by irks and bogglins and by the wyverns who had begun to circle overhead like huge carrion crows.

Gavin saluted with his sword, and it burst into flame.

“Do you think your puny magic can harm me, mortal? I am a Son of Ash! I am immortal! Your day is over, and my master will make a new earth.”

Gavin listened, but his attention was not on the monster’s words, but on the sounds from the north: the ring of steel, and the round of horses, and a trumpet playing a particular set of notes.