DareWing soared his command into the sky above the eastern Icescarp Alps. His sharp eyes scoured the landscape below him, but there was nothing but the plunge of icy black cliff and the drift of frost.

Nothing lived here, apparently.

South? No, best to check the eastern regions before he sallied south, thus DareWing led his command — deadly jewel-bright silence — over the flat plains between the Icescarp Alps and the coast of the Widowmaker Sea, an area that had once been, before the wasteland encroached, the approaches to the unmapped northern tundra of the Avarinheim.

"The Demonic hordes have not travelled this far north," DareWing eventually said to the Icarii-wraith flying beside him. "We may have to —"

And he stopped, stunned. Behind him a low buzz of unworded comment rose from the Strike Force. There was a pack of something moving south towards the wasteland, but it was not what DareWing and his Strike Force had thought to encounter.

"Stars in heaven," DareWing whispered. "Skraelings!"

"Skraelings!" DareWing said again, hardly able to believe what his eyes told him were there.

Skraelings?

Hadn't Azhure destroyed all Skraelings?

But no, she hadn't. Only the ones in Tencendor itself. The unmapped tundras in the extreme north had always had a breeding population of the creatures, and DareWing supposed that now the forests had gone, they would almost naturally drift south.

Evilly curious and perpetually hungry creatures that they were ...

The grey wraiths were moving slowly through the snow, perhaps about a dozen of them, and concentrating so hard on their journey they had not yet noticed the Strike Force.

DareWing motioned one Wing after him, then very gradually began a downward spiral that would eventually bring him to the Skraelings' backs.

As he drifted lower, DareWing stifled another exclamation. A small rabbit was bounding through the snow before the Skraelings; one of its ears was missing, and its fur looked as though it was streaked with pus.

One of Qeteb's creatures, then.

The Skraelings are in league with Qeteb! And that thought did not surprise DareWing overmuch, either, for the Skraelings had ever sought someone to lead them in their perpetual quest for misery.

Well, this was one group that would never make it as far as the Maze.

Again DareWing motioned with his hand, and the Wing behind him lifted silvery bows from their back, and filled them with arrows fletched in feathers the same colour as their individual wings.

Dare Wing's hand dropped, and the arrows flew.

Most found their mark, although they did the wraiths little damage. The arrows flew straight through their grey insubstantiality, and the only wraith that dropped was one who'd turned at the sound of arrow flight and had been skewered through the eye.

"Aim for their eyes!" DareWing shouted, cursing himself that he'd not remembered this fundamental rule of the Skraeling hunt. "Aim for their eyes!"

But the hunt was harder now, for the Skraelings had dispersed, scattering over the snow and ice, blending in so

perfectly with their surroundings that the Icarii found it difficult to distinguish them.

The rabbit, however, had turned to snarl and snap at the Strike Force members now wheeling overhead, and one of the Icarii sent an arrow thudding into its side.

It toppled over, screaming thinly.

The Wing had now dispersed to deal with the Skraelings individually, and DareWing hovered above the action, shouting advice and encouragement, but mostly staying out of the way. The Icarii needed no aid to do what they'd come back to do: exact revenge and clean the wasteland of the corruption that tainted it.

Much higher, so high they were but specks in the sky, the remainder of the Strike Force hovered, waiting, and hungering for the time when they, too, could loose their arrows.

Another Skraeling fell, then another, then three more in quick succession.

DareWing permitted himself a smile of quiet satisfaction. These might only be Skraelings rather than the Demonic hordes, but they were a start, they were a start...

Something frightful suddenly, stunningly, appeared in the sky to DareWing's south.

He did not see it at first, but rather, became aware of a change in the rabbit, still noisily involved in its dying on the bloodstained snow.

It was still screaming — but in triumph, not pain.

DareWing stared, and then the looming figure to the south caught his attention.

He looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.

A gigantic serpent wriggled its way through the sky towards them. It had wings, two pitiful feathered contraptions just behind its head, but was flying more through the sinuous undulations of its body than the motion of its wings.

It was grinning.

DareWing recognised Sheol instantly. Despair radiated out from her in waves, but underlying the despair was a far more sinister power. DareWing knew she would be difficult to deal with.

He breathed deeply, calming himself, then motioned the Wing back to join the rest of the Strike Force.

He stared an instant longer, then flew after them.

Sheol grinned even harder. The pretty flying things, no doubt toys of the StarSon, were afraid.

She redoubled her efforts to reach them.

The translucent, jewel-bright creatures massed above the first of the peaks of the Icescarp Alps, an undulating cloud of colour and silvery nothingness, but Sheol ignored them, concentrating instead on their leader, a dark-visaged and winged man dressed in a ridiculous white tunic and considerably more fleshy than his command.

"Greetings, fool," said Sheol pleasantly, as she wriggled near. "You must be one of the StarSon's acquaintances."

She'd moved very close now, and her form rippled and changed until she resembled a cross between a dragonfly and a fairy.

She was exquisitely beautiful, and exquisitely threatening.

DareWing felt flames spread along his wings.

He reflexively panicked, then regained his equilibrium. He could deal with this. He imagined himself plunging into the Iskruel Ocean until the frigid waters closed above his head ...

The flames fizzled out, and DareWing soared a dozen paces further into the air.

"Very good," said the dragon-fairy. "I am impressed. Perhaps I shall just capture you for Qeteb to play with at his leisure."

Dare Wing's feathers fell out.