But the woman in the abbess’s chair was unbowed. Her clear voice rose, and Ash could not stop it. The will slid off her mind like a child attempting to climb a wall of glass, and the dragon’s assault did not move her. And the choir began to join her, a voice at a time; some trembling, some strong.

Ash was raining fire on the abbey, and the walls were falling, turned to rubble, but the chapel stood, and Desiderata stood, and then the gate, which had slid open the width of despair, slammed home again with the strength of hope, and the wards, empowered, sprang back.

Far off in the valley of the Cohocton, beyond the Lily Burn, Ash’s great assault had stopped. On a field littered with dead knights and broken crossbows, the men of Thrake stood their ground, and then, in the darkness, their foes backlit by the wreck of Penrith, they locked their shields and began to press forward, step by step, hampered by the dead—a line of dead bogglins like the storm wrack left by a typhoon—step by step, and so great was the press of their enemies that even the hymn to the Virgin sung by five thousand Moreans could not overcome the weight of it, and they, too, stalled.

Then the city regiments charged, the Tagmata who had trained so unwillingly with the sell-sword who was now emperor, and then, into the balance, 1Exrech led the “free” bogglins, who had held the lower slopes of the ridge all day and now pressed home a slight advantage, and somewhere in the flame-lit hell of Penrith, the “Son of Ash” died, humiliated by the duchess, and the enemy line began to fail.

It was no victory. The enemy, disciplined or undisciplined, simply flinched back in the darkness, and no man, no irk, no bogglin, sought to follow them beyond the firelight of the burning town. But Mogon was not dead; her circle of knights was rescued, against all hope, and as the snow began to fall, Alcaeus came up from the victorious right and Gavin approached from the left. There was Tamsin, her emerald gown tinged with soot; she had bags under her eyes and lines on her face like an old woman, and the small choir that followed her all looked aged beyond their years.

With her was the Patriarch of Liviapolis. Alcaeus fell to his knees in the snow, and Gavin thought it politic to join him.

He shook his head. “No, none of that,” he said. “I have come to do what I can, against the direct command of centuries of tradition.”

“Since noon, he has kept us in the battle,” Tamsin said. “Never have I felt so much love for any Christian.” She smiled, and her fangs showed.

“Nor I for any faery,” the Patriarch said.