It still looked like the villagers might hold, unless you glanced over to the far bank and saw the army pressing forward, unnumbered, spilling endlessly out of the shadows between the trees. The loggers were tough, but they weren’t trained soldiers. Everyone had a breaking point, and when they broke, it would be a slaughter.

“Annick will pull them back,” Valyn said, praying that it was true. The sniper had a good mind for tactics, but it wasn’t at all clear she cared whether a few hundred loggers died on Urghul spears. She might have decided on some coldhearted sacrificial gambit known only to herself. “Annick will pull them back.”

Talal pointed. “There.”

The villagers were withdrawing. Not a rout, but a purposeful, single-file retreat westward through the village square and over the bridges joining the two islands. Annick stayed. Pyrre stayed. A few dozen hard-looking men and set-jawed women stayed, too, loosing arrows grimly into the massing horsemen, holding them while the others pulled back. The retreat seemed to take days, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before the loggers from the barricade had backed across the middle bridges onto the western island.

Meanwhile, scores of Urghul had gained the bank of the eastern island, their horses wallowing up through the mud flats or rearing at the barricade. That barricade was high enough to hold off the mounted riders for a few more moments, but it was going to be a close thing for those covering the retreat. A few Urghul had already dismounted to haul haphazardly on the logs. When they’d pried open a gap, the island was lost.

“Gwenna better have those central bridges rigged,” Valyn said, his whole body tight as a bent bow. He ached to be down there, fighting shoulder to shoulder with his Wing against the Urghul tide, doing his part to hold back the menace. His fist clenched and unclenched mindlessly, searching for something to seize, to smash. Everything about holding his own position felt wrong, but if he descended, all reasonable hope of killing il Tornja went straight into the shitter. He could feel the claws of rage and readiness sunk deep in his flesh, tearing at him, but it was this moment that he had trained for. Discipline, Hendran wrote, is the mind’s leash on the body.

“She’d better have those bridges rigged,” he said again, forcing his fist to relax.