This time the bogglins raced in, heedless of losses or terrain. They skittered over the carpet of their own dead and straight onto the spear points of the Brogat Levy. Below Gavin’s position, men and irks were dying again. His exhausted troops, manning the barriers and thickets, lofted clouds of arrows and stood their ground with sword and axe in hand. A hundred bogglins had fallen for every man; in some parts of the line, a thousand bogglins had fallen for every irk. But the second attack was pressed with more enthusiasm, and the drowned bodies in the swamp were now so thick that the next wave could cross dry-shod.

Off to the right, Mogon’s wardens and Golden Bears had lost less than a hand of their creatures, but even there every bear’s fur was matted and the wardens’ crests already deflated with fatigue. Along the first defence line on the ridge, the stacks of dead bogglins were already so high that the line had to be abandoned.

Out in the marshes, the dead were so thick that the course of the stream had been altered.

The Army of the Alliance was unrolling every scroll on war, and playing them out—ambushes, incendiaries, raids, dashing charges, destructive volleys.

Gavin looked out over the infinite fabric of his foes, and tried to wall off the rising tide of despair.

“Millions,” he said aloud. “But we are slaying mere thousands.”

Tapio smiled grimly, showing his fangs. “Millionsss are made of thousssandsss,” he said. “Hisss lossses are ssstaggering.”

Gavin shook his head. The tide had risen high; the sea of bogglins had swamped the first line entirely and were now facing the second, two hundred paces higher on the hillside. The sound was loud and constant; screams, war-cries, the despair of men wounded and eaten by bogglins, the equal despair of a bogglin whose carapace was penetrated; a week to die or a month, the creature was nonetheless already dead.

And then, like the changing of the light or the dissipating of the morning mist, the great assault failed. It did not fail suddenly; but inch by inch, bogglin by bogglin. Ash could take their minds and conquer their wills, but there came a point when flesh and blood conquered sorcery. Even bogglins had a scent sign for self-preservation.

The sky was turning blue overhead, and smell of bogglin blood was everywhere.

And so the tide went out for a second time.

“Blessed Saint Michael,” Gavin said. Across a nine-mile-wide battlefield, his people had held.

Far away to the west, almost lost in the mist, something rose into the air.

“Here he comesss,” Tapio said. “Pray to your godsss, or whatever else ssseemsss bessst to you, friendsss.” But Tapio was grinning. “We have hurt him.”