Ash knew it had to be Frida.
Sighere wanted to take the job of course, but only Frida was small enough. Ash had only just learned the trick of shifting the air and light around her to fool human eyes. It was difficult to do it for herself; to include another person – and that person’s armour – would take all her concentration and will. Ash argued with Bluebell that she could do the mission alone, but Bluebell would not have it.
‘You will be busy. You need somebody strong and armed with steel by your side.’
So it was Frida.
The two of them set out on swift horses in the deep twilight before dawn. Clouds had cleared, stars shone. They arrived at one of the passes outside Blicstowe when the sky was pinking but the shadows were still murky. They continued on foot a little way, in the wooded tangle along the road and between the fields, not speaking, staying close. Only when Ash saw the beginning of the earthworks up to Blicstowe did she turn and encircle Frida in her arms and reach her mind around them.
The giants had said it was like stirring the air, up and down from crown to toes and back again, in a continual movement, that holding the rhythm was the most important skill. With both of them standing still, the rhythm was not so hard to find. But once they started moving – steps in time with each other as they had practised – it grew more difficult. If the rhythm became disrupted, if Ash dropped her concentration, she and Frida would suddenly be visible. In the half-gloom, perhaps they would not be easily spied from the watchtower, but Ash did not want to take any chances.
They started up the hill, then into the first flanking ditch. Here Ash sat them down, checked carefully around her, then let the spell down. A few deep breaths, a nod to Frida, and they were up again, scrambling up the ditch towards the next one. They repeated this over all four flanking ditches then began to trudge towards the northern watchtower, at the main gate. Bluebell had said it would provide the best view back over the town. Unfortunately, it was also the best view out over the approach to town. Ash’s muscles contracted as she pulled Frida hard against her, keeping the rhythm of the spell moving up and down over them.
Finally they were on the lip of the hill. The tower guard would only see them if he looked directly down, so Ash dropped the spell, took a quick, shallow breath, and settled into the familiar magic she knew. With her mind, she reached for the big stones in the tower. Felt them begin to rumble, and knew the tower guard would feel it too. One of the stones shot half out of its mortar at knee height, and Ash stepped up on it. Then another, two feet further up. It had to be quick now. She could not perform this magic and hold them in invisibility. The stones shoved themselves under her feet as if they were sentient.
The bells began to ring.
Loud, clanging, discordant. An arrow whizzed past her ear.
‘Keep going!’ she called to Frida. Pressed against the tower, balanced on one foot on a stone step only three inches wide, Ash turned her face up to see the archer pointing his bow directly at her.
She did not even need to think for the wind to slam him against the post of his gatehouse. An arrow came from the other tower now, but she was climbing into the gatehouse and ducking low beneath the wooden barrier. Frida had drawn a bow and was shooting back, and the guard opposite took an arrow in the throat. She dropped her bow and ran her spear through the heart of the guard on the floor at their feet, then heaved his body up and over the edge.
The bells at the other towers were ringing now.
‘Do what you must,’ Frida said. ‘I will keep you safe.’
Ash nodded, then turned her gaze on Blicstowe.
She bent her will to encompass all the elementals around her. Earth and wood, fire and water, bone and hide. An inventory of textures and feelings, searching among it for kindling and fire oil … there, the first fire. Not yet lit. She was ahead of them. Whipping the oilskin off with the wind, she crunched the moisture out of the air with her mind and speared it inside the kindling until it poured out of the wood, filling the huge bronze pan. Now it would be unlightable. She went searching for the next one.
Footsteps. Running. Closer and closer.
‘Here we go,’ Frida said, moving to the top of the stairs.
Ash closed her eyes, shut out everything but the feel of the elements. She found another fire; again it was unlit, but she would not give them a chance to light it.
Beside her, very close, the sound of combat. Weapons ringing, armour clanging. A body falling backwards down the stairs. An axe thumping into a wooden shield. An arrow neared, but by now the elementals were alive and doing her bidding. Before she even thought it, the air bent around the arrow, carrying it harmlessly out the other side of the gatehouse.
Now she had her rhythm. Find and flood the fires. All over Blicstowe. Every fireplace in every home went cold, every woodpile at every back door leaked water, every jar of fire oil on a shelf unmixed itself into unlightable parts.
‘Ash!’
Ash opened her eyes, whirled around in time to see Frida driven back into the gatehouse by two raiders. Ash slammed one away with the wind, but the other already had Frida on her back. She could not stop the descent of the spear as it travelled directly into Frida’s ribs.
Ash cracked the wood above them, and the ceiling beam of the gatehouse crashed into the raider’s face, knocking him back down the stairs and taking two other raiders with him. She crouched next to Frida. Blood pulsed out of her, onto the wooden boards.
‘I’m sorry,’ Frida managed.
Ash scrambled for the right thing to say. ‘I finished,’ she said. ‘Because of you. You saved Blicstowe.’
Frida looked as though she wanted to smile but it came out as a grimace. ‘I didn’t want to die yet.’
Ash could feel Frida’s spirit tugging against its bonds. ‘Fear not the hall of your ancestors,’ Ash told her, but then whatever was left of Frida was gone.
No time for sorrow. Ash stood and pulled the air around her; so much easier as one person. The sky was growing light, the sun only minutes from breaking the horizon. She edged down the stairs, towards a group of raiders who were running at the gatehouse. They shouted at each other in confusion. The bells still rang, in the distance.
Ash crept past them, horror hot in her throat. Surely they would see her. So many of them. She could see them and sidestep them, but they were not aware that she passed them.
Then one of them stopped, looking curiously down at the ground. Ash paused, looked back.
Saw her bloody footprints on the pale grey flagstones.
She kicked off her shoes and began to run, and did not look back.
Bluebell had not wanted Ash to unlatch the gates, which would be closely guarded. Willow knew that the most likely way they would be breached was by somebody who knew the secrets of the city’s fortifications; presumably that was how she had made her own way in. No, the giants could breach the gates. War was violent and walls and gates fell by force. But, as Ash knew too well, Bluebell’s concern was for the civilians trapped in the city while that violence played out.
Ash made her way through the familiar streets of Blicstowe to the sacred oak that grew in the Children’s Garden, a green space her father had conserved when his daughters were born. It was a favourite place for mothers to take their children, a welcome respite from the narrow spaces and layered noises of the city. But the familiar shape of the oak was no longer there, and Ash let the invisibility spell go and paused at the edge of the garden to try to make sense of what she saw.
The sacred oak had been cut down. Its wood had been sawn into planks, and it seemed as though a chapel was being built with those planks. The familiar trimartyr symbol of the triangle had been carved all over its stone foundations. Anger boiled in her guts.
Their plan, already so tenuous, seemed doomed to fail now. Nonetheless, she reached into her apron and withdrew the chunk of rock that Rowan had given her the night before. Renward had chiselled it from a dolmen in the forest; the strange swirling pattern that had worn down through centuries was still visible on it. The grass was cold under Ash’s feet as she crossed the garden to the stump of the sacred oak. She touched the remains of the tree and a great sadness passed over her. This is what trimartyrs did; it wasn’t enough to believe in Maava, they had to destroy all other beliefs. Ash gently laid the rock upon it.
Pieces of sacred things. Surely this wouldn’t work. If it didn’t, only Ash would be here to keep the citizens safe during the siege. She hadn’t even been able to keep Frida safe.
Ash withdrew into the shadows of a yew tree and waited for the sun to break the horizon. It was strange to be here in Blicstowe, after all that had befallen it. The quiet was eerie. Usually at dawn traders and collectors and herders would be moving around town, with carts and buckets and chickens and goats. But the town had been emptied of its ordinariness. Fear clung to the alleys and eaves.
The clouds began to light yellow from underneath. Somewhere, the sun was breaking the horizon. Ash watched her makeshift crossing and hoped so hard her chest hurt.
Then the breeze seemed to shift and Rowan appeared. Behind her, as though stepping out of a fold in the air, came more of the Ærfolc. Little and lithe, bristling with bows and full quivers. Ash counted them with her eyes. At twelve, no more came.
‘So few?’ Ash said to Rowan.
Rowan looked behind her. ‘The crossing was too weak; I could barely prise it open.’ She returned her attention to Ash. ‘Where are your shoes?’
Ash thought about Frida and felt a pang of guilt for the petty irritation she had often felt for the woman. ‘I lost them.’
Rowan sensed Ash’s sadness and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come with us,’ she said. ‘It’s time.’
Rowan and her archers were light on their feet, barely making a noise as they moved around the city. Rowan indicated with a flick of her wrist where they should deploy themselves. On the roofs of chapels and homes, on thatched peaks and on flat wooden storehouses. With less than half the number she had hoped to bring through, Rowan had to spread them thin, and they surely all knew by now they might not make it out of the besieged city alive.
Their mission was simple. Once the fighting began at the gates – the army was several hours behind them – they were to pick off any raiders sent to assassinate civilians. Originally they’d had another plan – take civilians to the makeshift crossing and send them through to safety – but Bluebell would know by now, surrounded by the remaining eighteen archers, that the crossing hadn’t worked properly and everyone was trapped in Blicstowe.
Rowan and her band were a damage-mitigating force. While she knew this was noble and right, she itched to be near the action, fighting alongside the giants. Leading her own army with Heath.
At last only she and Ash were left unassigned. Rowan faced her aunt in the shadowy overhangs of a building. ‘What will you do?’
‘The same as you. Stay and help.’
Rowan considered Ash. She reminded her of Rose, but younger, slighter. Yet Ash had immense power in her blood. Rowan could sense it dimly. Even though Ash was kind and gentle, it made Rowan feel a little afraid.
‘Where will you go?’ Ash continued.
‘Close to the battlefront,’ Rowan answered diffidently, aware that she would probably receive a lecture about keeping safe.
‘As your aunt, I feel I should counsel you against it.’ Ash laughed.
‘You won’t be able to talk me out of it.’
‘I wouldn’t, Rowan. I also have a thirst to be close to the battle. Between the two of us …’
‘We could bend the course of victory,’ Rowan replied, grasping Ash’s hand.
‘We need height and a view of the gates,’ Ash said.
Rowan tried to remember the city from above, as she’d seen it in her brief vision looking for Snowy. ‘I think I know somewhere.’
Straining her hearing for approaching footsteps, Rowan led Ash as close to the town square as she dared to creep.
Skalmir woke to bells. Not the tuneful kind that had rung out over Blicstowe the day he had been married. The urgent clanging of alarm.
His heart leapt. After weeks of fear and uncertainty, they were coming to liberate Blicstowe.
Bluebell was coming.
Thrymm, who had taken to sleeping on top of his legs, pinning him to the narrow mattress, stirred and sat up with her ears pricked. As an old war dog, she knew what such bells meant. All around the dim infirmary, men were sitting up and looking towards Thorkel. The old healer, who had already been awake, dressed and tending to his patients, said something in his own language. It did nothing to settle anyone, but they stayed in their sickbeds nonetheless.
Skalmir remained prone, determined to pretend he could not hear the bells. His mind whirred. Should he run? Up until now, he’d imagined his disappearance would create too much suspicion; that throwing himself on the mercy of some unknown citizen of Blicstowe would bring too many people into danger. But now, now they were on the verge of being liberated …
Frustration crushed down on him. He was still weak, his bones not knitted. The affairs of the world played out beyond the walls of the infirmary and he was excluded from it.
Thrymm jumped off him and started to follow Thorkel around, whining softly. The restless bells rang on. Skalmir rose and dressed and began his morning ritual of helping with the night pots, serving the oats. He strained to hear the sounds of the gates being breached, but heard only distant shouting. Ten minutes passed, twenty, and Skalmir began to wish he really was deaf so he would not have to hear those awful alarms ringing.
Then they stopped, and the silence that followed swelled against his ears.
All around, the men in the infirmary visibly relaxed, even laughed with each other nervously. Then the door flew open, letting in weak daylight. Skalmir had never seen the man who stood there before, but knew him instantly as King Hakon. His grisly face was famous. In his large fists, he held several spears.
Thorkel hurried over to him, and they began to speak in urgent voices. Skalmir focussed carefully on his tasks, wishing he could understand.
One by one, Thorkel took Hakon around the infirmary to some of the soldiers who were closest to recovery. Hakon barked at them and handed them spears. He was recruiting. He thought that Bluebell’s army was on the way. He needed as many bodies in the melee as he could find.
Finally, Hakon dragged Thorkel over to where Skalmir stood. A conversation ensued. Skalmir played deaf, but he could easily hear the suspicion in Hakon’s voice. Thorkel spoke quickly, explaining. Hakon glared at Skalmir with his single hostile eye, then left with the five barely healed soldiers behind him.
Skalmir returned his attention to the porridge pot. Thorkel caught him by the elbow.
Skalmir gave him a questioning glance and Thorkel pulled him gently into the very corner of the room. Thrymm followed curiously.
‘You will have to go,’ Thorkel said, in a heavy accent, but in Skalmir’s tongue.
Skalmir shook his head, still trying to pretend deafness, but Thorkel tightened his grip on Skalmir’s elbow.
‘I know you are not deaf. I have long suspected you are a Thyrslander, though your appearance tells me you were not always one.’
Heart thundering, Skalmir confessed. ‘I was found on a doorstep in Netelchester when I was a babe,’ he said. ‘I do not know my heritage.’
‘With that height and that brow … your people must be from the central north of Is-hjarta. It is where my wife was from.’ He managed a pained smile. ‘You look very much like my son Helgi, who died before his nineteenth birthday.’
Despite the fear and the pressure of time, Skalmir smiled too. He had heard Thorkel say the word ‘Helgi’ many times, but had thought it an Is-hjartan word, and not a name. ‘Is that why you have been so kind to me?’
‘A man does not become a healer to be unkind,’ Thorkel said.
‘You ought not have risked yourself.’
‘It is done now, and you must take your dog and go. Hakon suspects that –’
The door opened again, and Thorkel leapt back. Hakon had returned, and this time at his side he had a small woman in a severe trimartyr scarf. Skalmir recognised her as Arna, daughter of the smith from the high street, a woman famed for knowing everyone else’s business. He knew immediately what would happen.
Hakon spoke to her. ‘Is this a Thyrslander?’ he asked.
She nodded, and Hakon strode towards Snowy. ‘No weakling without ears would be allowed to serve us! Did you think me a fool?’ he shouted, then rounded on Thorkel. ‘Why did you believe for a moment he was one of us? Are you out of your senses?’
Before Thorkel had a chance to answer, Arna appeared at his elbow. ‘There’s more, my lord Hakon.’
Skalmir willed her not to say it. His eyes flicked to Thorkel, who had moved away and crouched next to Thrymm, arms protectively around her.
‘This is not any Thyrslander,’ Arna said, a sly smile on her face. ‘This is Skalmir Hunter.’
‘And who is Skalmir Hunter?’
‘Bluebell’s husband.’
Hakon turned, his eye fixed on Skalmir’s face. The dim light, the hot horror in Skalmir’s blood, made his face seem more monstrous. ‘You will come with me,’ Hakon said slowly, straining over intense emotion.
Thrymm whined as Skalmir was dragged out of the infirmary into the square where the army gathered, readying for war.
Bluebell stood with her eyes closed, the sun on her shoulders and an army swelled past one thousand soldiers having crossed the final fields towards Blicstowe. She gave herself a moment, quiet in the mind despite the din of armour and weapons and drums and voices. She imagined them from above, as though she were a bird with no investment in the outcome.
Hakon would know they were coming, so the flanking ditches would be full of archers and spears. But he would not have sent his best men, because he needed them inside the city. The combined forces of Thyrsland would surge through the earthworks easily, leaving only blood and bodies in their wake. Then her army would split into three. Two siege wedges for the north and west gates, ladders and rams being carried behind the shield wall. These were her secondary forces; she and the giants would take the main gate and try to keep the battle around the town square, the market, the king’s compound; away from civilian houses. If the other bands got through, they would circle the ice-men and drive them to the front, where they were impossibly outnumbered. Quick and simple.
Or so she liked to tell herself.
‘My lord?’
Bluebell opened her eyes.
Sighere was smiling at her. ‘What do you see when you close your eyes?’
‘Victory,’ she said, returning his smile.
She turned and gazed at the neat rows of soldiers with their gleaming weapons; the coloured banners catching the sun on a brilliantly cloudless morning; the giants with their clubs and shields and burnished helms. Heat rose in her blood and skin. She recognised this feeling; it was the thrill of coming battle.
Bluebell raised her sword and shouted, ‘Forward!’
All around her, the flanks locked shields. She turned towards the earthworks, locking in with Sighere and the rest of her hearthband. Her legs pumped her forward. Ahead, in the ditches, a forest of spears went up.
Bluebell began to run and the deafening clang of a thousand armed warriors running behind her cracked the sky. The dogs sped ahead as she ploughed into the first ditch, slashing out against raised spears. The familiar whoosh of arrows sailing down from the second ditch had her raise her shield. An arrow thudded into the shield, and she had only a blink to drop it in time to catch the spear tip of a raider, soon dispatched and rolling beneath her feet. She struck out to her left, where Gytha had fallen back, slashing out at a raider’s thighs, then taking the killing blow to his skull when he fell to his knees. Sighere on her other side ran another through before the raider had time to strangle Hyld off him. Bluebell scrambled up the other side of the gully and glanced ahead, where the giants had already arrived at the second ditch. With a swing of her club, Nepsed collected four archers who went flying, only to land and receive the spears and blades of Bluebell’s army. To her left and right, the wedges were already forming and splitting off. Hakon’s force in the earthworks was already thin, but the giants halved it with ease. She and her army kept up the pace, filling the flanking ditches with blood. Her shoulders ached; she had lost track of Hyld. Sighere trudged ahead, Gytha behind, walking off a glancing blow to her hip. Bluebell gave the call for the shield wall to lock in again, more difficult now there were spears to dodge and bodies to step over.
Eight long seconds later it was in place. The third flanking ditch was empty, but here they were in range for the archers on the city ramparts. The shields went overhead; the two wedges split off to the smaller gates. Up over the earthworks. Arrows fell, some finding their way through the gaps between shields. The warriors knew to close ranks over the fallen and keep moving as one, up onto the wide path that led to Blicstowe. The final ditch was deep, and the bridge nowhere in sight. Here they were most vulnerable to archers. They scrambled forward and down, barely holding formation. The sky was suddenly full of arrows, landing all around her in the ground and in her followers. One skidded past her head so close that it nicked her helmet, sending a clang through her ears. ‘Hold formation!’ she shouted, even though it was all but impossible while scrambling out of the ditch. She would lose many here; there was nothing to be done but lose them and keep going.
The giants bent to help pull others out, and soon the army was swarming back onto the path, re-forming and taking their spears to the gates. The storm of arrows continued, but the giants batted them off as though they were embroidery needles. Bluebell ran ahead and stood at the gate.
‘Here,’ she called to the giants, indicating the place she knew the iron brackets did not meet each other; the weakest place on the gate.
The six of them lined up and, in perfect rhythm, began to shoulder the gate.
Once. The bang thundered for miles.
Twice. The walls shook.
With the third slam against the gate, there was a crack. Arrows flew down furiously. Bluebell crouched under her shield, tucked in a corner made by the external wall of the gatehouse and the gate itself.
‘Keep going!’ she called.
Another slam, and she heard the screech of metal.
Then another final, violent shove, and the gate split open. Gagel kicked it down and Bluebell brought her army, once more locked by shields, into her city.
Hakon’s army was waiting, and wasted no time in swarming down on them. Countless pairs of feet stirred up the muddy ground. They were inside the gate, but Hakon was going to make them battle to get another inch. The gateway was a choke point, and the raiders were doing all they could to use it for victory. Bluebell and her thanes kept the pressure hard on them. Her sword arm and her shield arm worked without thought, so used to the skirmish. She pushed and pushed, killed and killed. Sighere, Sal, Gytha, all of them did the same, the size of the army behind them buoying and inspiring them. But the giants made it easy, swiping raiders out of the way as though they were playthings. The line began to break, and Bluebell felt her foot strike the familiar flagstones of the town square. Victory on her tongue. Once the rest of the army got inside …
‘My lord!’ Sighere’s voice was urgent. Panicked.
Gytha had grasped her elbow and pulled her close, pointing. Upwards. In among the whirl of the melee, Bluebell stopped and stared in horror.
On the roof of her hall stood Hakon, completely exposed. He held Snowy by the back of his neck. The thought crossed her mind that if only she had some kind of magic ability, like Ash or Rowan, she could tell Snowy with her eyes that she was pregnant, that he would live on in his son Beorin. The sadness that filled her nearly winded her.
Hakon saw that she had finally noticed him and grinned madly. ‘Kneel, bitch!’ he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Kneel!’
Skalmir knew that Bluebell would not kneel. He knew that she loved him but her loyalty was first to her kingdom. In the violent horror of the moment, with the ground vertiginously far away, he worried for her. Would she blame herself when Hakon pitched him off the roof?
‘Let him go!’ Bluebell called.
Skalmir could see that Sighere and Sal had drawn close to Bluebell, were fending off attacks while she dealt with Hakon.
Hakon pretend-pushed Skalmir, whose stomach went hollow. ‘Let him go, like this?’
‘Hakon, if you kill him I will extinguish all of you. There will be no mercy, not for the sick or the injured, not for your stewards or cooks or even your dogs.’
Skalmir could see she was deliberately not meeting his eye, not sharing a last loving glance with him. He tried to memorise her face, but it was impossible to see it clearly with her helm on. She was lying about the dogs. She would never kill them.
‘Thyrslanders know no mercy anyway. Kneel, and I will set him free.’
Bluebell fell silent. Skalmir knew that she was about to refuse, and then Hakon would cut his throat and throw him off the roof, and Bluebell would see that over and over in her mind’s eye for the rest of her life.
He would spare her. He would jump.
Skalmir bent his head forward, slipping free of Hakon’s grip, the fore-feeling of the plunge filling his guts with air –
Thwack.
In an instant, everything changed, and at first Skalmir couldn’t make sense of it. Hakon had gone down on one knee, an arrow lodged in his thigh. As he did so, he tipped Skalmir. But instead of the sensation of falling, Skalmir felt as though the air had grown dense, elastic. It caught him. Hakon shoved against him with his shoulder but Skalmir still did not fall. Hakon, though, lost his balance and half slid down the roof, grasping at the thatching. Another arrow flew out of nowhere and lodged into the back of Hakon’s hand.
Skalmir’s toes stretched for purchase. The air that had caught him slowly pushed him back onto his heels, and then released him in a crouch on the roof. He grasped at its long wooden spine and searched with his gaze for where the arrow had come from. Rowan and Ash stood together on the roof of the granary, across the other side of the square. Rowan had her bow trained on Hakon, and Ash wore the enigmatic, black-eyed gaze that meant she was performing magic. Neither of them acknowledged Skalmir. Hakon, meanwhile, was trying to climb back up the thatching, but Rowan’s arrows kept landing around his hands, and then a gust of wind began to tug at him and he lost his grip. Hakon fell like a rag doll to the ground where Bluebell was waiting with the Widowsmith.
Before Skalmir could look away, Bluebell flipped Hakon’s broken body over with her foot, unwilling as ever to stab a man through his back, and plunged the blade into his heart. That was the end of Hakon the Raven King, Lord of the Crows, the first trimartyr king of the raiders.
The battle turned. Hakon’s men surged forward, howling their rage; the giants cleaved through them. Skalmir shifted around on his belly. The ladder Hakon had used to get them up remained in place, unnoticed as Hakon’s followers ran into the fray, howling for revenge. He ached. He was afraid. He knew that Willow was in the hall; he had seen her in her silver and white battle gear, looking like a deadly pillar of ice. Any moment she would step out and if she saw him …
He thought of Thorkel and Thrymm back at the infirmary, as the battle flared around them. When Bluebell’s army got that far, they would burst in and kill everyone inside.
Skalmir reached for the ladder, steadied himself on it a moment, then scrambled down. The battle raged on; he slipped away.
‘Hakon is dead,’ Maava said.
‘As you predicted,’ Willow answered, still on her throne. He was beautiful today; golden-haired and angelic and clean-shaven, as she imagined Avaarni might one day be. Not like rough, dirty Hakon. ‘Is it time yet?’
Willow rested her feet on the lifeless body of Arna, the latest victim of blood sacrifice she had used to make Maava manifest in her world. She had wanted Bluebell’s husband; she had wanted him so very badly, but Hakon had overruled her. He had a right to, as her husband.
But she’d secretly wished Maava would make him pay for it, and it seemed He had. She kept her eyes fixed on Maava’s face. His eyes smiled down at her. He was taller now, His head almost brushing the ceiling beams.
Outside, the alarm bells began to clang. ‘One of the other gates has been breached,’ she said.
‘Good. Soon they will all be here to witness it.’
She breathed deeply, fighting her sense of urgency. Trust Him. Trust Him.
Minutes stretched out. Her army were leaderless and would be fighting with their fear and anger, rather than their heads. The bells, the clash of spears, the cries of the dying. The sounds grated on her, made her feel as though all her nerves were exposed.
Then, finally, Maava said, ‘Come.’
Willow rose, strode to the doors of the hall and heaved them open.