He saw the city, no more than a hundred metres away. The fighting looked to have spread into the streets and lanes and squares. Banners flew the standards of Lord Styron Strand and his underlords. Amron saw them in flashes, the steel-horned goat of House Darring, the Manson hornets with their godsteel stingers, the Fallow axeman in a field of stumps. They were fighting back. At one breach a swell of them came boiling out to join Sir Torus Stoutman and his host. Further east, Sir Lambert Joyce was battling with the Green Harbour men, their banners rippling in the cold wintry wind. He glimpsed a black tide of Mantles crashing against a wall of gold and red, saw the Ironfoot leading a charge of Graves and Taynars. And west…west…

There were shapes out there, in the snow. Shapes coming around the hills. A great blur of them, of men it looked. But who? he thought. Who?

A spear came flying from below, puncturing the smaller dragon in its flank. The beast roared and reeled away, releasing Amron’s leg. The king slashed with his dagger, again and again. More spears pierced the air. “Avoid the king! Avoid the king!” One missed him by inches, driving up and past him to deflect off the dragon’s thick hide. The din of thumping wings made a fearsome racket. Smoke billowed about him, seeping in through the seams of his armour, through the eyeslit and vent holes of his faceplate. The king coughed, spluttering. His eyes watered and stung. Blinking, he lashed out again as more spears pinged and bounced. The beast was tiring, his weight too much…but suddenly there was another grasping at him. He had a sensation of movement as the battlefield ghosted by below him. They were taking him, flying him away. To Eldur, he thought. They’re going to fly me all the way to Eldur…

He shut his eyes and focused. His arm was locked tight in the dragon’s grip, but he still clung to the hilt of the Frostblade. Its magic required movement, but not always. Ice, he thought, summoning its power, and from its edge came a sudden blast of frozen air. The dragon gave a hiss of alarm, grip weakening, and Amron Daecar seized his chance. He heaved, ripping his arm free, and slashed out.

And suddenly he was falling.

The mists engulfed him. He could hear the din of battle below. He fell three metres, five, eight. Then a hard juddering impact struck him in the legs, a dragon flying by, charging him. His armour clanged loudly and he went spinning into a dizzying fall.

A searing agony tore through his right thigh and left shoulder, a thousand daggers stabbing at once. He screamed. The blow had knocked the Frostblade loose. Spinning, he saw it, tumbling away into the masses below.

No…

Then it was gone, lost, as he spun away and saw only sky. By flashes he saw it, sky and earth, sky and earth, as he fell head over heel, tumbling. The ground was fast approaching. Pain ripped through his shoulder and thigh, blinding. He saw a dragon coming and braced. The collision was terrible, a hard shoulder to his chest. He flew sideward twenty, thirty feet, his head rattling in his helm, and crashed down to land amid a clot of foes.

At once the blows came, steel smashing and stabbing wildly at his armour. He could hear the rough Agarathi, the shrieking battlecries. He struggled to his feet, swinging out with his dagger to clear them away. The pain in his shoulder was unbearable. His right leg could barely bear his weight. A dragonknight pushed forward, all in black and red, and thrust hard with his spear. The tip took him in the gut. He twisted as it scraped across his armour, reached out and snatched it away, spun it around and skewered the man in a single motion. His brothers roared and piled on, trying to stab through the tight seams between his plate. He swung the spear to hold them off but there were too many.

Their weight pressed him down, overwhelming him. Dimly he could hear men coming to his aid. His crippled leg gave way. Mud splashed up as he fell. The world was all scraping and shrieking and hate, as they tried to get at the weak meat behind the steel.

You let my city fall, he heard Amron the Bold say. You have not yet earned the name. He thought of his dream, of Vesryn arriving at Varin’s Table. He imagined the Steel Father watching him now, and his brother, and his father and his grandfather and his namesake, and all the great men who came in between. This is how I die. A cripple in a steel suit, crushed and suffocated.

Darkness consumed him. The mass of bodies was blotting out the light. He got his right hand beneath him and pushed up, but the enemy swarmed anew, pressing him right back down. The pain was so intense he could barely think. He heaved again, but it was no use, the agony had stolen his strength. He blinked, trying to stay conscious. The edges of his vision were closing…closing…

Sudden shouts rose all about him. Agarathi words he did not know. From his right side a roar spread, of voices united, and a chorus of battle rang out. The press weakened atop him. Light pierced the swamp of bodies. Men were shouting in a dozen different tongues. There was a great rumbling voice, deep as a mine shaft, and Amron glimpsed a giant rush into the fray swinging an enormous stone club. Others followed after him, monstrous men in furs and pelts, grey-skinned and bearded, driving the Agarathi back.

Amron got to a knee. Hundreds of new combatants were rushing by him in a flood. He blinked, lifting his faceplate to rub the mud and smoke from his eyes.

Then a voice roared behind him. “Steel Lord! No, it cannot be you? Ha! It is! What are you doing down there? Get up, get up!”

Amron remained on his knee, trying to catch his breath. His vision was blurred by pain but that voice…He peered at the big figure all in white. He could not believe what he was seeing. “Stegra? Is that…”

“Who else? Of course it is me!” The Snowfist marched toward him and pulled him up to his feet. He was dressed in his snowbear cloak, armoured beneath in layers of thick hide. His skin was milk-white, his beard a drift of new-fallen snow, his eyes an icy blue, clear as a spring. “Where is your frosty blade, Lord of Daecar? You need it, I think, in this snow.”

Amron was at a loss for words. “I…it fell…” He gestured away, but did not know where the blade could be. The city was away now to the east. To the west a great host was pouring through the low snowy hills, thousands of them, the strangest army Amron had ever seen. There were tribesmen, Snowskins and Stone Men and Deadcloaks and Crowmen of the Crag, soldiers and rangers from Northwatch, common men mustered from the distant lands of the north, from Lakeside and Hornhill and the deep places of the Banewood, fierce forest men bearing woodaxes and crofters with sharpened hoes, farmhands with pitchforks and fisherfolk with their spears and nets. They came in their thousands, tens of thousands, Amron saw, a great vast march of men and even women flowing down from the north. Amron gaped to see them all. “How? How, Stegra?” is all he managed.

“How is a big question. One word, but a big question. The asking of it should come later, my friend. Yes, later, once these fire people are gone.” He hefted a long godsteel blade. Stegra had Bladeborn blood in him, Amron knew, from some ranger long ago. He turned his head. “Svaldar, Hammerhand, keep going! There are fire men to kill! Go! Put them out!”

Amron saw them, the tribesmen he’d travelled with. Svaldar son of Stegra and Arnel Hammerhand, Wagga the White and Briggor the Big and Jorgen Half-Eye and others. They rushed right past, Svaldar leading them on, and with them went Crowmen in their black feather cloaks and Deadcloaks in their pelts, the giant Stone Men, lumbering and bellowing, many a match for Sir Taegon in size and some of them even larger. Against this new force the enemy were wilting, many of them turning to flee back down the pass, and even some of the dragons were flapping away.

“Ha!” Stegra bellowed. “You see. I raise my blade and they flee before me. I knew these flame men were weak. Fire does not like snow, my friend. Now where is that blade? I want to see it again.”

Amron did as well. He turned his eyes across the battlefield, searching. Then a hand came down on his shoulder and he turned to look into the face of Lord Robert Borrington, the scaly burn scars that mottled the right side of his face twisted by his grin. “Well now, there’s a man I’ve longed to see.”

“Robert.”

“Amron.” The Lord of Northwatch tugged him into an embrace; he’d always been greatly more garrulous and tactile than his older brother Randall. Amron grimaced in pain as he felt the jolt go through his left shoulder. “Ah. The pain is still with you, then?”

Always. And worse than ever. He only nodded. “Is this your doing? This army?”

“In part. Mostly it was down to the snow.”

“The End Fall,” the Snowfist put in, suddenly serious. “The free lands are buried, Lord of Daecar. Even us Snowskins had to flee. The Ember of the Red Storm was seen. It heralds the last days. The battle for the dawn, as Shrikna said.”

Amron did not know what that meant. He would have time to hear of it later. He scanned the field. More foemen were fleeing. From the city he could see black and red and gold in retreat, see Lord Styron’s host emerging to chase them down. Dragons were screeching and flapping away as flights of arrows and bolts filled the sky.

Amron limped back into the thick of it, a shambling wreck, his armour scratched and stained and covered in mud. Amron the Bold, he thought. Amron the Broken. Ahead, he saw a group of men crowding around something, and hastened toward them, led by the whispers. The Frostblade lay half buried in the mud, the shard of a god’s heart slick with blood and filth. Amron breathed out in relief to see it. As he bent down he almost fainted from the pain, but as soon as his fingers touched the hilt…as soon as he felt the connection, the bond….all his ails were gone.

He stood, restored, tall and mighty, the fire in his veins replaced by ice, driving the pain away. The sensation was more powerful than ever, the contrast acute. He drew a long deep breath, trying not to dwell on what would come after, when he gave the blade up. That time was near, so very near now. Living without it had become an unbearable thought.

But he would give it up when he must. I will, he told himself. I will.

He turned to the men gathering around him, a pocket of calm in the chaos. “Clear the enemy from the city. Drive them from the field. Harry them if you can. But beware the dragons, they will seek to defend their retreat.” He nodded. “Go.”

Shouts rang out as his orders were passed on. The warhorns blew long and low as riders mustered to give chase. Just then, Wolfsbane came cantering through the fogs, snorting and swishing his mane. Amron smiled, wondering how many men he’d slain, and climbed up into the saddle.

Lord Robert was still afoot. “And where will you go?” he asked him.

Amron turned Wolfsbane toward the city. “To see my daughter,” he said.

56

“We need to go back,” Gerrin warned, wiping his bloody blade clean on his cloak. That blood was thick, viscous, black, like no blood they had ever seen. “We’re not prepared for this. And there’s no way out of this cave.”

The old knight’s eyes strained to see through the dark of the cavern. This one had no luminous moss, no glow worms and flickering fireflies, no phosphorescent fungi, nothing. Just those giant insects, Jonik thought, clinging fast to Mother’s Mercy. They had come upon a nest of them, some strange, overlarge species of beetle with long pincer-legs, thick-armoured shells, roving antennae and hellish faces with a thousand beady little eyes. The largest were as big as dogs; no great threat to them when they came one at a time, or even ten at a time, but should a hundred of them come scuttling out of the darkness, they might have a problem on their hands. Jonik could hear them now, squeaking and chittering in their holes and crevices. This entire cave was their home, he realised. They had slashed a score of them dead, but there were many more out there, and those noises sounded like the bugs were making a plan, communicating. At any moment they might come storming out in force and overwhelm them, and Jonik was not about to be defeated by a beetle.

“Fine. We’ll track back and find another way,” he said, acceding.

They moved away slowly, eyes swaying through the gloom all the while, searching for movement. The beetles seemed satisfied to let them go, quieting down as they reached the mouth of the cave and stepped back into the tunnel. Once there, Gerrin turned around to lead them hastily on, Jonik behind him, Sir Owen watching their rear should the bugs mount a sortie and seek vengeance for their fallen kin. They went like that in silence, snaking back up the passageway, ducking where the ceiling narrowed, climbing when the way grew too steep. Ten minutes later, they emerged back into the large chamber above it.

They took stock there, considering their next course. There was a little more light in this cavern. On one wall a curtain of vines draped down, peppered with growths of glowing fungus, and that gave illumination enough for them to see. “What were they?” Sir Owen asked, peering back down the tunnel. His voice was thick with disgust; Sir Owen Armdall had no great fondness for things that crept and crawled. “I never knew insects could grow that large.”

“They are creatures of the old world,” Gerrin told him, giving his blade another wipe on his cloak. “Everything was bigger back then. They…” He cut himself off with a curse. “Damn this sticky blood. It’s ruining my cloak.” He turned his eyes around, spotting a trickle of water leaking down one wall, and walked over to wash both blade and cloak clean.

Jonik went to follow; Mother’s Mercy needed a shower as well. Through the walls, he could hear the water moving, rushing like blood through this boundless body of an underworld. Gerrin said it had all seeped down from above, through stone and soil, due to all the rains, and everywhere the walls were dripping and wet, glistening darkly against the glowing moss and fungi.

Sir Owen came over to join them, wetting the hem of his cloak to wipe his sword clean. He cringed at the foul smell of black blood and innards. “So, where now?”

“Up,” Gerrin said at once. His voice was a weary grunt. “It’s past time we go back. We told Harden three days.”

Jonik could care less what they told Harden, in truth, much as he liked the old sellsword. They had gone much too deep and much too far to go all the way back now. “We keep going,” he said, in a voice that brooked no dissent on the matter. “If Harden wants to go for help, let him. We have a duty to fulfil and going back will only waste time. And we don’t know how long we’ve been down here. It’s probably been longer than three days already.”

Down in this maze beneath the earth, it was impossible to say when the sun set and moon rose, whether it was dusk or dawn, noon or night. They only had their instincts to guide them, and Jonik’s told him that three-day window had elapsed some time ago.

“Harden is not our concern, Gerrin,” he went on, misliking the old knight’s sullen silence. “If he’s got any sense, he’ll give us more time. Three days was never going to be enough.”