The battlements stretched out before Eirik.

  He stood at the highest point of the outer walls, where a watchtower rose another thirty feet above the fortifications. The wind whipped through his cloak, bringing snowflakes that struck at his exposed face.

  Beyond the triple walls, the world simply dissolved into white.

  Eirik raised his hands and focused.

  Ice formed between his palms, two cylinders of perhaps six inches in length, connected by a bridge of crystal. He shaped lenses at either end, grinding them smooth with careful applications of pressure and cold. The process took almost a minute, but when he lifted the construct to his eyes, the distant horizon came into sharp focus.

  The Khorath encampment stretched across the northern plain.

  Tents. Thousands upon thousands of tents, arranged in clusters. Smoke rose from countless fires, a haze that hung over the camp even as the snow fell. Horse lines extended for what must have been half a mile, sturdy northern stock.

  He adjusted the ice binoculars, bringing the nearest clusters of tents into sharper focus.

  Cavalry patrols circled the perimeter in overlapping patterns. Every few minutes, a fresh group would ride out to replace one returning. The rotation was seamless.

  Eirik counted tents until his eyes ached.

  Conservative estimate: fifty thousand warriors.

  The Sunless City's garrison numbered perhaps four thousand, including the reserves and the men too old or too young for frontline duty.

  Twelve to one.

  He lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes.

  The mathematics were brutal. Even with his powers, even with the General's legendary fortifications and the dragon, Twelve to one was a ratio that made conventional victory impossible.

  But that wasn't what troubled him most.

  He had walked through the city's markets that morning. They had been well-stocked—merchants haggling and calling out their wares, stalls piled high with fish and meat and winter vegetables brought up from cellars. Children running between the carts, the women haggling.

  It had all seemed well.

  But Eirik knew this was all but a show—done for the benefit of passersby, not with any real intent of selling.

  The granaries were emptying.

  He didn't have access to the official tallies which Corvinus would certainly possess. But the signs were there for all to see. The bread wasn't selling, and not for any lack of demand. The amounts were suspiciously consistent, as if someone had calculated just what they wanted to put up for sale. And the cats were thin.

  Cats were the first to know when food was running short.

  Eirik raised his ice binoculars once again, and focused upon the tactical deployment of the Khorath.

  They had put themselves in an unbeatable position. Their main camp was well back from arrow-range, artillery-range even, and protected by the distance which separated it from the walls. Forward outposts were scattered across the ground in between, small enough to be quickly abandoned but well-placed for sending word of any sortie.

  If the defenders of the city ever tried to sally out...

  He could see exactly what would happen. The forward outposts would fall back, drawing the attacking force deeper into the killing ground. The cavalry patrols would converge from multiple directions, attacking their flanks. And as soon as the defenders committed to a real battle, the Khorath would retreat—falling back just enough to remain out of reach, but bleeding the attackers with arrows and skirmishers.

  They wouldn't fight because they didn't need to fight.

  The triple walls—the magnificent fortifications Eirik had marveled at on his initial approach—were irrelevant. For all their design brilliance, they could not feed a starving city.

  Moreoever, he had to file the dragon away entirely. Whatever the General chose to do with that power was the General's business—Corvinus had made that clear enough. If Eirik was going to lift this siege, he was going to do it without borrowing anyone else's teeth.

  Eirik lowered the binoculars and watched as they resolved into mist.

  The wind howled along the battlements, bringing more snow. Down below, the city puts on a display of normalcy—smoke curling out of the chimneys, people walking the streets, the distant sound of hammers coming from a blacksmith.

  All of it would mean nothing if the equation didn't change.

  If they can't sally out, Eirik thought, then make them come in.

  But how?

  The Khorath had no reason to assault the walls. They could simply sit and wait, their bellies full, while the city slowly starved. Any provocation short of an existential threat would be met with the same patient withdrawal that had characterized their strategy thus far.

  Unless...

  Eirik's mind turned to the enemy camp.

  Forty thousand men. In the depths of winter. On an exposed plain with no natural shelter. They needed food, obviously. But food could be transported and stored relatively easily.

  What couldn't be stored was warmth.

  He raised the binoculars again, focusing on the camp's periphery.

  There.

  Timber piles. Massive piles of wood that had been cut into sections and placed at regular intervals throughout the encampment. Each and every one of these piles was under guard, surrounded by fires that burned night and day. The wood itself was being used at a visible rate—he could see workers bringing additional wood down towards the central tents as he stood there.

  An army needed fire in an environment as cold as this. And If someone were to hit their timber storage...

  He’d force the Khorath to choose between two equally bad options: assault the walls in desperation, or withdraw entirely.

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  Either outcome favored the defenders.

  He looked out over the Khorath camp once again, trying to locate the areas that would be used as their supplies for such an attack.

  But trying to locate them from where he stood would be impossible.

  The camp was too disorganized and too full of misinformation. What looked like random clusters of tents could be well-organized defensive positions. What looked like supply carts could be traps.

  He needed intelligence.

  And in ancient warfare, there was only one reliable way to extract intelligence from an enemy who didn't want to share it.

  Capture someone who knows.

  He turned away from the battlements.

  Eirik came out from beneath the base of the tower and into a street that ran along the inner face of the outer wall. Military activity was heavy here—supply carts, patrol rotations, messengers with urgent messages. He moved out of the way of a cart and continued down towards the keep.

  Then he stopped.

  A sound had reached him.

  Faint. So faint that it might have been his imagination. But his senses had become sharper with his elevation to Hail realm, and what might have been undetectable before now seemed as loud as a whisper in an empty room.

  A song.

  A girl’s voice, rising and falling in a melody that carried notes of profound sadness. He couldn't make out what was being sung, but he didn't need to. It was a sorrow so deep it had threatened to reside in his own soul.

  It was a sound that told him the body producing it was fighting against pain to produce each note.

  Eirik turned toward the source.

  The song appeared to be coming from a tower set apart from the main fortifications—a slender structure with arched windows. A garden, now buried under snow, that must have been beautiful in warmer months.

  Four guards stood at the base of the tower.

  Whatever was inside, the General clearly wanted it protected.

  The song continued, drifting down from somewhere high above. Whoever was singing had lived through something terrible and chosen to express that experience through melody rather than words.

  A prisoner? A patient? A noble tormented in their minds?

  Eirik decided it was better he didn't investigate further.

  His position was still informal. Corvinus had offered him a position as a Praefect, but he had yet to prove himself in battle. He had yet to prove himself worthy. He was a guest at best, a suspect at worst. Poking around guarded towers would ask questions he wasn't prepared to answer.

  He turned away.

  The song trailed away behind him as he walked.

  A presence.

  Not behind him. Above.

  His perception, heightened by his advancement, registered it. Someone was watching him. From a rooftop, perhaps, or an upper window. The angle suggested elevation.

  Eirik continued on his way.

  He did not reveal any sign that he had become aware of being noticed. But beneath the cover of his cloak, his hands began to accumulate the cold air surrounding him.

  Ice formed in a thin sheet, spreading across the rooftop from where he sensed the presence had to be. A layer of ice, polished smooth and frictionless.

  A thud. The unmistakable impact of a body hitting stone.

  Eirik spun and ran.

  He reached the base of the structure in an instant, leaping over a low wall and running to the access ladder to the rooftop. His boots thudded on the rungs as he climbed up, his heart pounding in his chest.

  A figure was disappearing over the far side of the rooftop. Eirik saw a flash of a hooded cloak as the presence fled from rooftop to rooftop.

  In an instant, he was gone.

  Someone in this city was interested in him. That warranted attention—but not now. Not when he had a raid to plan and officers to capture.

  Eirik descended from the rooftop and resumed his path toward the keep.

  ———

  Eirik moved through the darkness in a crouch. Behind him, the Talons followed in single file, their footfalls silent with the knee-deep muck that sucked at their boots.

  No one spoke.

  They had agreed on this before entering. The sally port—a drainage tunnel that expelled the city's sewage into a gully beyond the outer walls—was not designed for military use. The opening was barely four feet in diameter. Sound carried unpredictably through stone channels.

  Eirik counted paces.

  Three hundred since the iron grate. The tunnel should widen soon, opening into the collection basin before the final outflow.

  His hand found empty air.

  He stopped, raising a fist. Behind him, movement ceased instantly.

  Eirik extended his senses.

  The basin was perhaps thirty feet across, circular, with a domed ceiling that rose to meet a rusted grate overhead. Moonlight filtered through gaps in the metal.

  He pointed forward.

  Olaf and Kael slipped past him, moving to opposite sides of the basin. They pressed against the curved walls, checking sight lines, listening.

  Kael raised his hand. Clear.

  Eirik moved.

  The outflow pipe was at the far end—a horizontal shaft that led beyond the walls. According to the city's engineering records, it emerged in a gully two hundred yards from the outer fortifications.

  The exit point was screened by brush and accumulated debris, invisible from both the walls and the Khorath forward outposts.

  Their window was small.

  Eirik had spent the afternoon studying patrol rotations through his ice binoculars. The cavalry changed every two hours, with the outgoing patrol returning to camp while the incoming patrol swept a circuit of the perimeter before settling into their stations.

  For approximately four minutes during each rotation, a gap existed.

  A single patrol—eight riders—would be isolated from support. Too far from their camp to call reinforcements quickly. Too far from the next patrol for overlapping coverage.

  Eirik pulled himself into the outflow pipe.

  The smell grew worse.

  He crawled through accumulated filth. The tunnel seemed to compress around him, the walls narrowing until his shoulders scraped stone on both sides.

  Behind him, Olaf's breathing grew labored.

  Light appeared ahead—dim and filtered through tangled brush. He slowed, inching forward until he could see the gully beyond.

  Snow had accumulated here, piled in drifts by the wind.

  He listened.

  Wind. The distant whinny of horses.

  Eirik pulled himself from the pipe and rolled into the gully. He pressed flat against the frozen earth, vanishing into shadow. One by one, the Talons emerged behind him.

  Eight shadows in the snow.

  Eirik pointed to the ridge.

  Kael moved first, crawling on his belly through the accumulated drifts. He reached the crest and went still, one hand extended behind him.

  Wait.

  The hoofbeats grew louder.

  Kael's hand dropped. Now.

  Eirik rose and ran.

  They crested the ridge in a spread formation, each man taking a different angle. Below, the cavalry patrol had just begun its final circuit.

  Eirik's hands moved.

  Ice formed in the air before him—walls rising from the frozen ground like teeth erupting from pale gums.

  The lead rider shouted something in a language Eirik didn't understand.

  Too slow.

  A second wall rose behind the column, sealing them in a corridor of ice thirty feet wide and perhaps fifty feet long. The horses screamed, rearing, their riders fighting for control.

  Eirik was already moving down the slope.

  He shaped ice as he ran—spheres no larger than his fist, each one carved with Starburst and Rectangle.

  Impact detonation.

  He threw the first sphere underhand. A horse went down screaming, throwing its rider into a drift.

  The Talons hit the corridor from three directions.

  Olaf came over the northern ice wall, axe already swinging. His first blow caught a rider still trying to control his mount, opening the man from shoulder to hip.

  Kael had somehow circled to the corridor's far end and put an arrow through a rider's throat before the man could raise his bow.

  Jory, Silas, and Marsh formed a wedge at the corridor's mouth, shields raised, spears leveled. A rider charged them, but his horse skidded on ice that hadn't been there a moment before.

  The animal fell.

  Eirik stepped over its thrashing body and drove his blade through the rider's neck.

  Four down. Four remaining.

  One of the survivors was shouting orders—an officer. He had dismounted and drawn his sword, forming a defensive position with two others while the fourth fumbled with a signal horn as an arrow shot through his lungs.

  Eirik moved his hand again. Ice erupted outward in jagged spikes, catching the two flanking warriors and pinning them to the frozen earth.

  The officer dodged backward.

  Eirik closed the distance before he could recover.

  Their blades met once, twice—the officer was skilled, but he might as well have been fighting a god.

  Eirik stepped inside the third strike and drove his knee into the man's gut.

  The officer doubled over.

  Eirik's pommel caught him behind the ear, and he dropped.

  "Time," Eirik said.

  The single word carried.

  Olaf grabbed the unconscious officer and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Silas had already bound the hands of a second survivor—a younger man, barely conscious from a blow to the head.

  Two prisoners. Good enough.

  Eirik raised his hands.

  The Talons ran like wolves towards the gully that was two hundred yards away. Silas was slowing under the weight of prisoner, but Gedrick moved to take some of the burden without being asked.

  Eirik willed the ice walls to collapse. Before a major confrontation, it was best the enemy knew as little of him as possible.

  The wind was already doing its work. Snow drifted across the killing ground, filling hoofprints and boot tracks. The ice had sublimated almost entirely, leaving only wet patches on the frozen earth that would freeze solid within minutes.

  In the moonlight, the scene looked almost peaceful.

  Eirik turned and followed his men into the gully.