The Wight Nights got held up fighting giant spiders, while Courtney and the Sparks broke off to fight a bear the size of a Narmeeri elephant. Ben the Stalactian got the business end of a centaur’s lance in his throat, and the Stormriders disappeared amidst a crowd of clambering goblins.
A wave of kobolds rushed in from the left, yipping like a hundred pint-sized dogs. Jain gave Clay a prod with her bow. “Get on, Slowhand. We’ve got this.”
He lingered long enough to see the first dozen critters get a faceful of arrows before taking off after Gabe. He passed Barret on the way—the old merc and his two remaining bandmates were facing down a snarling, snub-nosed warg.
Once, Clay thought he saw the glint of Lastleaf’s scale slipping through the throng, but when he looked again the druin was nowhere in sight.
“Rose!” Gabriel shouted, but his daughter was too far away to hear. Her refugees were set upon by a mob of screeching white imps that reminded Clay of the rasks on the Cold Road, only smaller.
Clay could see Gabe’s daughter clearly now, distinguished from those around her by two things: her hair, which was dyed a bloody red, and the fact that she fought like a Kaskar berserker who’d walked in on her husband in bed with her sister. She held a glowing scimitar in either hand and was whirling, twirling, eviscerating everything within reach.
Or not quite everything, Clay saw, though he could scarcely believe his eyes. There was a druin by her side, lean and lithe, wielding a longsword he employed almost exclusively in her defence. His hair was the washed-out green of a shallow summer sea, swept back behind tufted silver ears. He was taller and broader than Lastleaf, and he moved with strange, strategic economy, as though the battlefield were some vast Tetrea board and he’d anticipated every move.
The two of them—Rose and, Clay presumed, Freecloud—seemed invincible. The imps hit them like surf against a high bluff and broke almost instantly.
The Infernal glared down at the creatures scurrying into the safety of his shadow, then turned its bottomless black gaze upon Castia’s refugees and the pair leading them.
“Fuck!” Gabe swore.
“I’ve got him,” said Larkspur. She launched herself skyward, leaving Ganelon frowning amidst a flurry of black feathers.
Clay glanced over. “She’ll be fine,” he said, and found himself believing it.
“I know,” said Ganelon, but his frown deepened anyway.
Gabriel urged them on. Clay took position on his right, Ganelon the left. Moog moved in their midst, while Matrick brought up the rear. They were alone now, the five of them battling through a maelstrom of claw and tooth. Arrows buzzed overhead like midges in marshland. Clay was roared at, screamed at, spat upon; he was jostled, kicked, pummelled, shoved—all the while doing his best to cover Gabriel’s flank as his friend carved a path through whatever lay ahead.
Moog had a wand in either hand, both of which launched bolts of violet light that took erratic routes to their targets but never, ever missed. Matrick plied his knives like a parade drummer, his rhythm so fast his enemies didn’t know he’d murdered them until their god asked them if they took milk in their tea. Ganelon killed with a brutal efficiency that humbled even Gabriel, because Gabriel left wounded in his wake, while Ganelon left the dead in pieces.
Clay was amazed at how little his back hurt, or his arm, or the ribs he’d broken fighting Larkspur’s thralls. His face wasn’t throbbing as it had been earlier. He was weary, of course: Every breath was bought with a gasp, and his heart hammered like a blacksmith late for supper, but he felt … good. Really bloody good, all things considered.
Strangest of all was the utter absence of fear. He’d been very afraid this morning. Afraid the wizard’s plan wouldn’t work, that the dragon would kill them. Afraid of going through the Threshold and coming back empty-handed. The Heartwyld Horde, in all its abominable might, had been the scariest thing he’d ever seen—aside, perhaps, from the look on Ginny’s face when she hit her head on a cupboard door he’d left open by accident.
But now … all Clay felt was a sense of profound certainty, as if things—dire though they seemed—were exactly as they should be. He was among friends, shoulder to shoulder with his bandmates, who just so happened to be the four best men he’d ever had the privilege of knowing.
As individuals they were each of them fallible, discordant as notes without harmony. But as a band they were something more, something perfect in its own intangible way.
So no—he wasn’t afraid. He was, in fact, grinning from ear to ear, basking in the music of the men around him, listening with bittersweet sorrow as the end drew near.
Clay saw Larkspur close with the Infernal. She banked wide as its whip thrashed droplets of frost from the air, then dipped below a swipe of its massive sword. Her scythe came spinning round, but the demon was armoured in hoarfrost so thick that Umbra did little more than strike icy sparks from its carapace.
The titan’s minions were scattering in every direction. A torrent of imps crashed into Saga, and Moog went down, disappearing beneath the press of pale bodies. Matrick lagged, shouting the wizard’s name and wading through imps like a man who’d lost his dog to a river’s swift current.
Clay stepped in front of Gabriel, planting his feet and squaring his shield against the impish tide. The creatures were hardly bigger than children, stooped and scrawny, with horns curling back from pinched faces. They bore no weapons but sharp teeth and wicked claws, and while most were too fearful to harass Clay and the others, those that got close attacked them savagely.
Peering over the rim of his shield, he watched as Larkspur dove again. The Infernal’s mouth yawned like a portal into the Frost Mother’s hell, unleashing a freezing gale that blew the daeva backward. She spun out of control, wings pumping madly as she fought to right herself. Clay could see frost coating her armour, crusting her wings. She faltered in flight, but managed to shake the rime from her feathers and—
The whip hit her.
Larkspur’s scream was cut short as she froze solid, plunging earthward like an icicle struck loose from an eave.
Clay looked immediately to Ganelon. Distress was plain on the warrior’s face, but he clenched his jaw, said nothing.
“Go get her,” Gabe told him.
Ganelon glanced over, incredulous. “You can’t—”
“I can,” said Gabriel, grinning. “Of course I can.”
Ganelon appeared as though he would object, but instead he nodded, turned, and began hewing a path toward the fallen daeva.
The Infernal was advancing on Castia’s refugees. Already its whip was falling among them, entombing every victim in an icy crypt.
“Rose!” Gabriel hollered, and this time his daughter looked up.
“Dad!?”
“Rose!” Gabe tried to step around Clay and was nearly swept away by rushing imps. He growled a curse and fell back behind.
Clay tried to push forward, but the enemy were too many, too deep to give way. It was all he could do to stand his ground.
“Dad!” He heard two voices call out. The first was Rose, desperate and disbelieving, but below that, faint as a whisper, was another.
Tally.
In his head Clay heard his daughter murmur sleepily: You would come if it was me, right, Daddy?
If it was you …
His knuckles went white on Blackheart’s grip. His jaw clamped down on a scream until the scream pried his teeth apart and came out roaring. He set his broken arm inside the bowl of his shield and heaved against the current with the stubborn resolve of a plough ox yoked to the moon.
If it was you, Clay had told her, as the glimmer of candlelight constellations moved across her face, then nothing in the world could stop me.