With every step, he seemed to resemble himself more: a man who believed and doubted; a man who had given his oath and had no faith. He wanted to stop hurrying and demand answers. But Cloras had reminded him of a different truth. If Father Skurn could not end the fighting, everyone in the bay was doomed.

Leading his companion and the priest, he went on.

Slivers of silvery light began slanting through the snow-caked branches. The moon was rising. He had no other way to measure time. This day already felt interminable.

Ahead of him, a greater brightness filtered past the trees. It came in long flares and stutters, moments of hard whiteness among briefer instants of deep night. The Decimate of lightning. The enemy was still fighting. But no cannon answered the bolts. The soldiers and gunners were not fighting back.

As he crossed from the woods onto the bare rock that formed the rim of the cliff, he left the trodden snow behind. The incessant turmoil of winds there left only the uneven knuckles of ice. The ground’s hands clenched the bay’s edge like fists.

He was within twenty paces of the precipice.

Father Skurn caught up with him before he had gone half the distance. Cloras lagged behind, as weak as a shadow in the moonlight and the glare of sorcery.

Side by side, Mattwil and the priest looked out over the thrashing waters.

Skurn cheered at the sight, a shout of satisfaction. He clutched at his chest with one fist, brandished the other.

Mattwil needed a moment to understand that the encroaching ships were not attacking the emplacements and guns, the cliff, the defenders. Not now. As black as the waters where they sat, the vessels struck at the sea itself. Shafts of lightning as crooked as branches and yet as precise as knives flashed down to pierce the depths. Far below the surface, sorcery burned, destroying what it hit. He could not see boulders shatter and scatter, juts of new reef fall apart, bulging foreheads of granite split: the seas obscured them. But he felt the violence in his bones.

This was how those ships had broken through the outer reef. Now they were clearing the way for the craft that carried the enemy’s hosts.

By wan moonlight and dazzling theurgy, Mattwil glimpsed the ruin of the first and second terraces; the debris of guns and stonework. A few of the cannon remained in place. They may have been inaccessible. Worse, falling rocks had damaged some of the medium guns on the third level. The unharmed cannon would be difficult to reach.