By the time that darkness was falling across the snowy fields at the base of the ridge, she had fought all day, resting her choir the way Ser Shawn was resting knights, but now the battle was approaching the inevitable climax and she was being forced, like a tiring swordsman, to resort to her last tricks.

She pointed at Sister Elisabeth, and the left choir, on note and on tempo, joined the Ave Maria.

Now she had both choirs in. Now there would be no rest until the end.

Miriam knew that the end was coming. She could see it; like a checkmate in chess, the inevitability inescapable. But she could postpone it as long as possible, in hopes of a miracle.

Gabriel, where art thou?

She dismissed Gabriel, and any dreams of glory, and focused on prolonging her own agony.

Beneath Ash’s mighty wings, chaos reigned. He stooped, ignoring a hail of darts and arrows, and breathed again on the ruins of Penrith, and the steeple of the church fell, the stone cross crashing to earth, and the flame of his breath burned among the foresters. Harald Redmede died there, and John Hand, and a generation of Alba’s best woodsmen. And then another of the antlered men led the bogglins forward, and crashed through the handful of men still able to face them, taking a few to eat alive and destroying the rest, scattering fire and lightning.

Ash’s magnificent wings beat, and he stretched out his neck in glee. The army of men was broken; his slaves poured through the ruins of Penrith like the waters of the sea through a broken dyke.

Command of the Alliance Army had devolved to Alcaeus. Lord Mont-joy had taken his knights and charged into the maelstrom behind Penrith. He’d said he was going to try to stem the tide, but he left Alcaeus with the impression he hoped to die well before the collapse became general.

Alcaeus smiled a bitter smile. It was a very Alban attitude. But Alcaeus was not Alban; he was Morean; he had seen many bitter defeats, and many hollow victories, and his people resisted the impulse to glorious self-destruction. Moreans endured. They were patient.

He watched for as long as it might take a priest to say a hurried communion prayer. He watched the dragon breathe fire into the ruins of Penrith; he saw the knights strike home, rocking the enemy back; then he saw them slow, unable to face the heat of the burning town, as the enemy began to leak in around them.

The dragon passed along them, and again his fire lashed men; hundreds died.

But then the dragon turned suddenly, his long, terrible neck curling north and west, and the titanic wings beat, and the vision of hell passed suddenly west, wings beating so hard that the wind raised a curtain of snow.

Alcaeus watched the dragon depart with narrowed eyes.