“They will,” Gwenna replied grimly. Whatever Bridger managed above the fork, there were enough logs already in the east channel to form a dam once the current packed them in densely enough. It would be a treacherous crossing, to be sure. Logs would shift, and Urghul would die, but they were coming.

The line of archers, so pathetic to begin with, looked like a group of slack-mouthed farmers shown up from the countryside for the village fair, except they were about to be shooting at people instead of straw butts, and if they missed, they died. A few of them were glancing over their shoulders, as though thinking of running. Gwenna had been gnawing the inside of her mouth so viciously that it had started to bleed. She spat the coppery blood out into the mud, and tried to think. Great generals could win impossible battles, but she wasn’t a great general. She was barely Kettral, and a declared traitor at that.

“Are you contemplating the beauty of the northern forest at dusk?” Pyrre asked.

“I’m thinking, you miserable bitch,” Gwenna snarled, fury at her own impotence spilling over toward the Skullsworn. The woman had done nothing since they arrived but drink beer and make her mocking little cracks. “Why did you even come here?”

Pyrre took a contemplative pull on her tankard before responding. “You may recall that the choice was this or a quick, inglorious death among the pines.”

“Well, this goat fuck is shaping up to be pretty quick, inglorious, and deadly, too,” Gwenna said. The Flea had left her the command, and now everyone from Andt-Kyl looked likely to die. Worse, instead of figuring out a way to stop it, here she was trading barbs with a woman who actually relished slaughter, who would look with joy on the deaths of children, men, and women, a whole town full of folk who, until two days earlier, couldn’t imagine that war’s hammer was about to descend upon them. “You should have saved yourself the trip,” Gwenna spat. “You and me both.”

“On the contrary,” Pyrre said. “Here, I have the comforts of human society as I face my god. The bond of a sisterhood in arms.”

“Bugger your fucking sisterhood.”

Pyrre frowned speculatively. “I was picturing a different type of sisterhood.”