Fie wanted to fight. She wanted to drag Jasimir to the gates of Trikovoi herself. She wanted to tell Tavin she’d done it, she’d kept the oath.

She wanted to see Pa again.

The earth shuddered.

At first, she thought thunder had rolled off the mountainsides. But that was wrong: the blue skies were only mottled with smoke.

Then she thought it might be more skinwitches. But that too was wrong: Tatterhelm dragged on his reins less than five paces from the prince, and twisted in his saddle to peer into the murky road behind him.

And then Fie saw the tusks.

They broke through the billowing smoke like warships through fog, a landslide of muscle and coarse fur. Weak sunlight picked out the steel spikes bristling the deadly bone arcs of each tusk, the plates strapped to every massive skull and trunk and leg, the razor-sharp lances lashed in clusters within reach of their riders.

Fie had seen mammoths before. At a distance. In a pasture. She had never seen them ridden to war.

She couldn’t tell if the Vultures had, either, but at least they had the sense to scatter when the mammoth riders charged.

Tatterhelm’s mount reared and whinnied. Fie heard a growled curse. He kicked at the horse’s sides until it dropped and shied toward them. Fie’s heart lurched as his hand swiped for the prince—

And a spear thudded into the road one hair away from his fingers, its shaft reverberating like a warning rattle.

Tatterhelm cursed again, turned his mount, and fled into the cover of dust. In a heartbeat, every Vulture rider and skin-ghast vanished from the road.

Fie slumped back with a broken laugh, red swimming in her vision. She didn’t know if the lightness in her chest came from relief or blood loss.

She’d done it.

She’d brought the prince to his allies.

A mountain of a shadow rumbled nearer, fading in and out of sight. A mammoth. A rider, spear still in hand.

“Master-General Draga,” the prince said stiffly from somewhere above her. “How did you know?”

“You lit a fire the size of Gerbanyar, Highness,” his aunt answered from even higher. Fie could scarce pick her form out of the blur, but she sounded like the sort of woman who enjoyed riding mammoths full tilt at a pack of Vultures. “And even if you hadn’t, I was warned to expect your arrival.”

She pointed her spear to the gates behind them.

Fie reeled about, heart in her throat. Had she missed it? But Tavin hadn’t—he couldn’t have gotten the message out—

A black thread of smoke spooled into the sky, lit from Trikovoi’s plague beacon.

“Oh,” Fie said.

And then, eyes shuttering, she fell to the dirt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CROW MOON

“She’s coming around.”

“Am not,” Fie grumbled into unyielding dark.