Bjorn shook his head in anger. "We send our fools north, and the Dragonspawn sends its armies south."
"There are other, more deadly icebrood, too," Eir reminded. "They're mindless beasts of ice. There's no reasoning with them. Only shattering them."
Beside her, Silas nodded. He was a thin norn in the twilight of his fighting days. "So, for the ones that look like norn, it's arrows then, yes?" he asked, hoisting his short bow.
"Yes. We must kill as many as possible on the tundra before they reach the forts, but if the horde is great, the battle will push past the forts and reach the bridges to the hunting hall." She glanced at the rest of her militia. "Then there'll be plenty of work for all of us."
There was no more time for words. The group ran onto a bridge that stretched from Hoelbrak out to the fields beyond. At the end of the bridge stood a wooden defense-work that already bristled with warriors, including Knut Whitebear and his handpicked warriors-the Wolfborn. More norn streamed in each moment.
Eir led her group past the cluster of fighters to a thinly defended ridge and gazed out on the darkening northern fields. Mottled moss and torn lichen stretched to the misty distance, beneath towering mountains of ice.
"I don't see anything," Silas said, squinting.
"There," Eir replied.
Out of the mist emerged a brutal horde. A dozen appeared at first, no match for the hundred norn along the ridge. But more came with each moment. Soon the icebrood were as many as the defenders, and then twice their number.
"Are they hardened yet or newly turned?" Silas asked. "My eyes are thick."
"Most look newly turned," Eir said. Indeed, the enemy were covered with a thin crust of rime, though their eyes were dead things.
"Arrows, then!" Silas said, hoisting his short bow and holding it somewhat shakily.
"Yes, Silas," replied Eir as she lifted two arrows and nocked them on her bow and drew back. "Wait until they reach the red lichen, so that you can see them and your bow can reach them." With that, Eir let fly, and both shafts soared out above the ridge and climbed the sky, seeming to sail forever. They vanished in the darkling air, but a moment later, two of the distant figures fell, pinned to the ground. Even as they dropped, she loosed two more shafts, and as they skimmed the sky, she unleashed two more.
Four down. Six. Eight. Then other archers began to fire. In their dozens, the icebrood were falling, but in their hundreds, the invaders bounded over the bodies and kept on coming. When they reached the red lichen, Silas shot his shaft, and it found its mark in the forehead of an ice-caked foe.
"Not hardened yet!" Silas shouted. "Bring them down!"
Now their foes were close enough to hear, and what a howling sound they made! They had been driven mad with the desire to serve their lord.
Eir had already sent fivescore arrows, and she drew the last two from her quiver and buried them in a pair of icebrood. The rest crashed on the ridge like a tidal wave.
"Wolf, guide my work," Eir murmured. Her eyes glowed with battle and her hands glowed with axes. She swung them overhead in a storm of steel.
An icebrood, newly turned, flung himself over the ridge and came down with a swinging axe. "Die!"
Eir leaped back from the blade and brought her own around to split the creature from shoulder to hip.
Another dead man leaped the ridge and bounded toward her.
Her other axe fell and broke the man like bread.
"Fall back!" Eir cried. "Give them room to land."
The crafters complied, stepping back while mauls and axes and swords rained down.
Eir was in the midst, her knives and chisels now slung on her fingers. They flew as if she were carving wood instead of frozen flesh. They flayed skin and muscle from bone.
Beside her, Garm leaped to latch onto throats and bring down more of the enemy.
Bjorn meanwhile pounded the icebrood as if they were iron.
Olin and Soren fought back-to-back, cudgel and pry bar wreaking havoc.
Which left only Silas, the weaver, who had felled two of the creatures before they reached the ridge.
Now two felled him. One ripped out his belly while the other smashed his face.
Eir heard Silas's scream and turned to ram her chisels into the back of Silas's attacker. The steel sank to her fingertips, and red foam bubbled hot from the wounds. The rime-covered norn, gasping, rolled from Silas. Garm clamped onto the neck of the other icebrood and shook him like a rag.
Eir looked down at the weaver, her old friend. It was too late. Silas was gone.
Face and belly-he was gone.
Eir roared, her blades flinging out to slash the throats of two more icebrood. They fell beside her as another came on-a man with hair like a horse's tail.
She knew this man, though his face was smashed, his nose canted to one side, his teeth gone where some great fist had struck him. His flesh was sealed in ice. His eyes were white, filled with the fury of the Dragonspawn.
"Bear, guide my hands," prayed Eir as she strode toward him.
It was just as it had been back in the sunlit courtyard. It was a storm of steel, slicing away what was not Sjord Frostfist. As she worked, she became the Bear-transforming so that the work of chisels became the work of claws. The only difference, this time, was that she carved flesh instead of wood.
Soon, the bloodied bear stepped back, and only pieces were on the ground before her.
That's how she fought the rest of the battle. That's how she avenged Silas and defended Hoelbrak.
When the battle was done, the defenders had prevailed. Even so, it seemed as if the Dragonspawn had won.
Back in her workshop that night, the bloodied woman stripped away her armor. She poured steaming kettles into her bath and washed the battle away. Dressed in a simple tunic, she used the water to bathe her wolf as well.
Wet and weary, Garm retreated to his blanket. He drifted into fitful sleep, haunted by the monsters he had fought.
Eir, though, was haunted by something else. She wandered among her army of statues, at last reaching the one where she always stopped. It was an aged norn male, his once-proud figure stooped a bit, his head bald, his eyes enfolded in rings. But a hopeful smile was on his lips.
"We stopped them, Father," Eir said simply, looking down at the statue's feet. "I wish others had stopped them for you." Her hand strayed into his, carved of stone and cold. She had carved that hand, had known it so well from holding it just this way when she was a girl-before the icebrood came.
"I'm going to kill the Dragonspawn, Father. I'm going to kill the Dragonspawn and the Elder Dragons themselves."
CAT AND MOUSE
Logan Thackeray knelt beside a boulder and glanced back, motioning for the other scouts to vanish into the rubble field. They did. Logan smiled. With dun-colored leather armor, the scouts could move like ghosts through this blasted landscape. That was fortunate, since they were stalking a company of charr.
Logan cupped a hand to his ear and made out the distant thunder of clawed feet. Brown eyes flashing with anticipation, he slid to his stomach and crawled out across a shelf of stone. Just ahead, the shelf dropped away. Logan crept to the edge and peered down.
Below lay a deep, narrow canyon, a passage through this arm of the Blazeridge Mountains. About a mile to the east, the charr were on the march. They looked like beetles in their glinting black armor, scuttling along the base of the canyon.
Up close, though, charr were huge. Five-hundred-pound brutes. Muscle and fur and fang. They had faces like lions and horns like bulls, barrel bodies and bowlegs, clawed hands and feet. Ravenous. They'd already stolen all of Ascalon-all except for Ebonhawke-and they were determined to take that fortress, as well. They were marching to intercept a supply caravan from Divinity's Reach, but they hadn't figured on Logan and his scouts.