The Prince of Occitan was there in person. It would hold, or all the world would fall.

And behind him were the suburbs and walls of Albinkirk, and the enemy had made two attempts on it since darkness. So the enemy held a huge semicircle, from Penrith to almost Southford. Gavin was surprised, and pleased, to find that the enemy’s army was almost countable; he reckoned it not in numbers but in frontage. Today they’d stretched Ash’s forces over almost fifteen miles, and in that kind of fighting, good armour and good training had repeatedly overcome ferocity and predation.

But now they were being pushed into shorter lines. Tomorrow, Ash would come with his terrible fire, and Gavin would have no response.

“What I want to do,” the Green Earl said, “is attack.”

“Attack?” Gregario asked. “Aren’t we a little thin on the ground?”

“It worked today,” Gavin said. “Listen, if 1Exrech turns around and faces the other way, he’ll be looking out toward the walls of Albinkirk. He could cut the enemy off; force Ash into a fight under the walls.”

“Where our folk are protected from most of his sorcery,” Gregario said.

Mogon nodded. “How do you people deal with this cold?” she said slowly. “I should have stayed in the burning town and spent the night killing bogglins. Freezing to death seems a poor way to go.”

A cup of steaming apple cider was put in Gavin’s hand.

Lady Tamsin was smiling like a girl at Christmas. She grinned at him, her fangs showing.

“You look better,” Gavin said.

“Wait,” she said.

He drank the cider. “Anyone want to comment on my attack?”

“It’s an excellent idea,” a voice said.

Gavin knew that voice. He rose, cold forgotten, and whirled into a steel-clad embrace.

“You bastard!” Gavin said, pounding his brother’s back.

“Probably,” Gabriel said.

At Lady Helewise’s manor house, the duchess and Sauce had a brief discussion, and then the scarecrows formed with crossbowmen on either flank and crunched off across the snow, headed north. Almost immediately they came across irks and bogglins, also moving. Sauce threw in some of Conte Simone’s knights, and the thing was done; the bogglins fled, and even the irks ran, panicked, scarce believing what had suddenly come at them out of the snow.

They fled away north, into the eaves of the great wood along the Lily Burn, and there they rallied, for they were a great host all by themselves, and there they prepared to counterattack.

But Galahad’s sentries were alert, and his camp turned out, unaware of how close they were to the center of events. The fugitives tried to overrun the men and bears by sheer numbers. The fighting along the northern Lily Burn became general in the frozen dark.