Tucking her wings for another dive, Liska dropped lower, in amongst the airborne crowds of troops. She waited until she was almost in the thick of those waiting for their turn to dive, then began screaming at the top of her voice.

‘Beware! Gorgaunt coming! A flipping great gorgaunt! Can’t you see it?’

‘Move, cub!’ A hulking male pantherine, limbs bulging with muscle, swooshed past her, sending her spinning in his wake. Another followed, pausing to growl at her, then a third.

This one, she recognised by its torn left ear. It was Selka, the warrior who had helped her.

‘What are you doing here?’ Selka growled. ‘You’re supposed to be resting!’

‘Selka, the tunnel!’ Liska flapped madly, trying to keep level with the hovering pantherine. ‘A gorgaunt is coming through! You need to drop rocks on it!’

Selka turned her cat-eye gaze to the tunnel entrance and saw the arm of bulging, stinking fungus trying to gouge its way through. She yowled in anger and changed her path, flying straight through the ranks of shapewalkers.

‘Bombardiers!’ Liska heard her shouting. ‘Bombardiers to the tunnel!’

As Liska watched, twenty or so cockatrices broke away from the swooping and diving flock, heading down to the spot where the Shield Mountains met the swampy Stubbings. They pounced on the soft ground, raking it with their curling, clawed feet, then taking to the air again with hunks of muddy rock clutched beneath them.

Flapping hard to gain height, they flew in line above the tunnel and let their loads drop. Boulders and shards of razor-sharp granite tumbled from the air, smacking against the mountain and bursting into splinters. Some hit the gorgaunt’s gargantuan arm, thudding into it and breaking off clumps of stringy, fungoid flesh. Liska had a glimpse of gaping, meaty gashes that quickly filled up with the same gloop that the seepers were made of. She thought she heard roars of pain from deeper in the tunnel.

‘It’s working!’ she shouted, although nobody could hear her.

For a moment she considered flying down, finding a rock and adding to the barrage. But then she realised she would only be able to lift something small. To the gorgaunt it would be like getting hit by an acorn.

Perhaps she could swoop and bite at a seeper instead? The air was thick with bigger, faster creatures, but maybe she could find a space . . .

She was just about to slot into the attack line, when she heard a chorus of roaring coming from behind her. Turning in the air, she saw the shapewalkers from the Noon Fort, her home, flying in to join the battle. A pride of manticores with their lion bodies and dragon wings and, behind those, the griffyxes. Her family would be somewhere among them.