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The ice wolves came on—baying as they charged.

Eir turned toward the first and smashed her axe through its brow. Metal crashed on ice, broke into the creature’s watery brain, and pulped it. The ice wolf fell at her feet.

“That felt good.”

Another wolf leaped for Garm’s throat. He dodged to one side, caught a foothold, and lunged back to fasten jaws on the icy neck. Garm bit down, and the whole head broke loose.

More ice wolves converged.

One clamped its jaws on Eir’s forearm, ice skirling on her steel armor, and a second lunged for her foot. She kicked, but the wolf held on, and she staggered unsteadily back.

Meanwhile, two other wolves circled Garm. One darted in to bite his throat, but Garm leaped atop it and smashed it to the floor of the cave, shattering its head. Even as it slumped, though, the other clambered atop it and bounded on Garm, shoving him to the floor.

But then steel pounded ice. Big Zojja struck the wolf’s head, and cracks raced through it. The head calved and cascaded down in a glittering shower.

“Great job!” shouted Snaff from within his golem, which was marching through the cave, kicking ice wolves to pieces with his massive feet.

Eir also kicked hard, breaking loose the jaw of the wolf that held her foot. Pivoting, she swung her axe against the creature that clutched her right forearm. The beast cracked and fell. Eir rained more blows on it until it shivered apart.

In moments, only the ice bats were left, dying like mosquitoes with each sweep of the golems’ hands.

When the bats were gone, Big Snaff strode jauntily up to his comrades and flexed his metal fingers in satisfaction. “Better than anything Klab could invent.”

“Better than anything the Dragonspawn’s seen,” Eir said with a laugh, kicking at the remains of an ice wolf. She gazed deeper into the cavern, seeing a throat of ice that descended into the glacier. “Let’s take this battle below!” Eir strode away at the head of the group. “I wonder what lies ahead.”

A few giant strides later, they saw. The ice cave descended through a water-smoothed throat into a deep, dark belly. Meltwaters had formed ropy lines of ice, and on that rumpled ice stood warriors.

Norn or once-norn, they were tall, garbed in armor and furs, bearing staffs and spears and swords. They might have been defenders of Hoelbrak except for the dead blue light that shone in their eyes.

“They are recently turned norn,” Eir said. “There will be no joy in killing them.”

The rimed norn, now icebrood, raised a deep-throated war cry and ran at the heroes.

Eir strode toward them and spread a gauntlet tipped in chisels.

Roaring, the enemy rushed her.

She raked fingers through the first one, spilling him on the floor, and kicked the chest of the second to flatten him and ran across him to the third, who received her axe in his head. Garm, too, tore through these warriors.

Killing them was like killing her kin.

The golems were especially deadly. The icebrood gushed beneath their feet.

It was a sickening triumph to break bones and burst veins. But Eir and her friends did their grim work. Garm shook them like rats. Snaff and Zojja bashed them with metal fists. And Eir ended them on her chisels.

When it was done, Eir and Garm and the golemic asura stood side by side, mantled in gore.

Snaff said quietly, “We killed them here so that they would not kill in Hoelbrak.”

Eir gazed around the dark cave. “We didn’t kill them. We ended them. The Dragonspawn killed them.” She peered deeper into the ever-descending cave. Another chute slid down into total darkness. “We’re very close. Already, we’ve destroyed his defenders. Now we’re poised to strike at the Dragonspawn’s heart and be rid of him forever.”

With that, she strode across the bloodstained ice and launched herself over the edge of the chute. Garm bounded close behind.

There was a moment’s pause as Big Snaff and Big Zojja looked at each other. Then Snaff ran forward and leaped over the edge, and his apprentice followed.

At first, it was just sliding—velocity and vertigo.