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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.