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*****

In the dawn mists, the ant-borne host moved across the ice, to the strain of the occasional oliphant, but other than that, in unnerving silence. As they got closer, I began to make out the emblems that they were wearing on their great helms. The stylized feet of birds. Runic symbols. The moon. A clenched paw. Another paw, clenched, with one finger upraised.

In front of them all, what seemed to me to be the biggest wolf of all, riding the biggest ant of all, and wearing the most polished and fearsome suit of armour of all.

It was a very unhappy coincidence that the symbol he bore upon his head-armour was the head of a roebuck. A very realistic looking symbol, at that. If he intended it to intimidate me, I had news for him.

It was working.

I began to murmur the same spell over and over, digging my paws into the slushy surface of the ice. I could feel it melting, but as I was looking up, I had no real indication of the kind of progress I was making. It did not seem like much.

The leader of the wolves, the one with my unfortunate counterpart mounted on his helm, rode out ahead of the rest of his colleagues. Raising a large, metal-enclosed paw, he bade them to stop, which they did. He advanced, alone. He left them about thirty paces behind as both he and his mount approached.

The sight of a massive, glossy insect snapping its thick mandibles at me forced an even faster pace from my casting. Other than my paws sinking into the ice up to my wrist, it didn't seem to be having much of an effect.

The great wolf brought his ant to a halt, and with ease and confidence slid off. He took the time to adjust his cloak and the hilt of the heavy weapon he wore at his side. Only then, with his wardrobe readied, did he step slowly and easily over to where I was crouched by the edge of the lake, murmuring.

Without lifting the visor on his helm, he listened to me mumble and mutter my incantation. He had all the time in the world, and I suppose he was curious. Eventually, a deep voice echoed from within his armour.

"Praying to your whore-goddess will avail you naught, thou weed-eater."

Under other circumstances, I might have snapped back at him something to the effect of yielding to his expertise in whores, but I had other things to do. I was able to feel that the ice around my paws was yielding, and beginning to get clearer and more pliable.

The great wolf drew his weapon, which was quite evidently a smith's masterpiece (as I reflected later -- much later). All I saw at the time was a weapon with a very long bluish blade, the tip of which was gently resting on the ice a few feet in front of my nose.

"Your devotion speaks well of you. Well, I shall send you to embrace her."

With that, I could see the tip of the sword swing up from the ice. At that point, a few things happened, very quickly. Some of this I remember, and some of this was told to me by others that had different vantage points, some as far away as the Gazers' monastery.

I do remember starting to shriek my incantation. Right after that happened, my paws plunged through the remaining film of ice. There was a loud cracking sound, and I could see the great wolf's metal-shod feet stumble in front of me as the ice under him was undermined.

I heard a very nasty whistling sound just above my ears and rack, as evidently his stroke went high. If anything, this made me scream the spell at the top of my lungs.

The next sensation that I, personally, had was being dragged away by my arms, while a whirl of colour danced before my eyes in total silence. We stopped after some distance, and as my vision cleared somewhat, all I could see was the violent churning of the surface of the lake.

Being deafened, I could only watch as I saw the last few cavalry-furs struggle among the remaining thin floes of ice. Eventually, an ant would skid, lose its balance, and both steed and rider would plunge into the lake.

And with all the armour being worn, and the stirrups being tightened in anticipation of battle, neither party would come to the surface again.

The rear-guard struggled to make the far shore, where it was every wolf for himself. A mixture of panic and frantic thrashing from the ants only served to snap away the ledge of ice that led to safety. The last few almost made it, but they were betrayed in the end. The last one made a particularly spectacular splash as his thrashing mount threw him.

In a few minutes, where before there had been a daunting force of possibly as many as three hundred heavy cavalry riders, no doubt the social and military elite of the Grand Duke's forces, there remained nothing.

As my hearing slowly and painfully returned from the pressure wave that had blunted it, some excited (and very frightened) squaddies related what they had seen from their vantage point in the hills to the east, above the lake. As I had screamed out the last iteration of the incantation, there had been a violent blue flash that covered the southern shore of the lake, where I had been and where the great wolf had been. The blast, which had been eerily silent, knocked me many feet backward, with both of my arms entirely covered in a bluish haze of light. Of the great wolf himself, there was no trace, save for his sword, which had been sent flying into a snowbank (where a squaddie with an eye toward the main chance grabbed it in the midst of my rescue). The great wolf's ant was bucking and reeling, covered in the same kind of bluish haze I had been in, only its agonized gronkings could, apparently, be heard for miles. As it thrashed its limbs about, the mounted wolves' first inclination was to immediately charge south, toward me, to avenge their leader. The sight of the leader's battle ant crashing through the ice with a burst of blue steam made them hesitate, and it was at that point that the ice, weakened both by the out-of-control spell and the pounding of the ant, began to smash up.

Their advance had been glorious. Their retreat, less so. Not that my retreat was much more dignified. The force of the spell had given me a nasty nose-bleed, had disintegrated the cloth upon my arms, and had also removed a fair bit of the fur there, too. Luckily, aside from a persistent and painful tingling in my paws and arms that did not stop for hours, that appeared to be the extent of my physical injuries.

As we were crossing the Mill River back into Imperial territory, the squaddies carrying me paused, and I looked over in utter disbelief at what they were looking at.

Silverbrush was visible in the distance, seated upon a very comfortable chair with a grand view of the proceedings. There was a table next to him, laid with a cloth, and I've no doubt assorted elements of breakfast were there. His feet were up on a pouf, and it was only a trick of the distance vision, which made me think he was wearing some kind of a fez like they supposedly wear in the Southlands.

"Mad bastard," one of my escorts said. The truth is a complete defence to libel.

Another fur fed me a few mugs of tea, since my paws weren't yet ready to grip. Meadow was the target of a half-dozen confused and excited squaddies attempting to report over each other, until she screamed at them to shut up and speak one at a time. That was eventually how I heard what had happened, which I just related to you above.

My fellow Blood Seal Bearer shook her head in amazement. "Goes to show you what can happen when you cast a spell like that under those conditions." She did admire the sword, which had a glossy obsidian hilt with inlaid silversteel runes. There wasn't a single one of us that could have swung the thing in battle, Aethelwulf included, and he was the largest of us.

After Meadow helped me change my coat, shirt and undershirt (and watched as I re-coloured it, a magick process that made my paws smart and sting again), I was promptly sent to bed while the day patrols went out.

I awoke to the sound of yelling and cursing. Struggling to my hooves, I found where my bow had been placed, and stumbled out of the dugout, to meet a vision of a Netherhell.

At fairly close range, I could see that Mossford, at least the hamlet proper, was on fire. The most visible sight was the great window of the Temple, where Fuma was cradling the world upon Her lap. It was brilliantly back-lit by the flames roaring inside the Temple, until with a mighty rush of air, the window shattered, to be followed by the entire roof of the Temple collapsing with a cascade of sparks and gouts of fire.

Millwright, whose station had been on top of the barracks, dashed past me. I managed to stop him and get some kind of a report. During the day, the wolves had managed to infiltrate the area with archers armed with fire arrows, and had put Mossford to the torch. All paws were engaged in a massive sweep of the surrounding area to flush out any of the enemy. While there had been some success in doing that, it was at the cost of losing every building in the village, barracks included, with the exception of the stable where Lightning, Thorn Platoon's cart-ant, was quartered.

Going into the stable revealed an even greater cost. There were a number of blankets, under which the forms of squaddies could be seen. Blankets that were drawn over the face. Other squaddies could be seen with a variety of wounds to the head and body, though at least one or two had to be told, sternly, to resist the urge to go out and rejoin their comrades.

I gave them fresh orders to go to the dugouts and guard them, and give the sword to any fur who wasn't one of us. That seemed to satisfy them, and they wobbled out with determination.

It's no use trying to draw one of those battle-diagrams that you see in the history scrolls. What occurred during the night of the third day into the fourth day of the battle was nothing more than an exceptionally violent street brawl. Meadow and I had our paws full organizing the surviving squaddies to perform systemic sweeps, and it's only because the snow resumed and the wind picked up with force that the Grand Duke's army eventually broke off the fight and retreated back across the Mill River, leaving quite a few of their number sprawled in the mud and ashes of what had been Mossford.

Still, though, if you factor in the size of the forces, and the fact that they had denied us the shelter of the village, the wolves had had a pretty good day after an awful morning. And there was no indication of what, if any, relief we were going to get. Monks from the monastery, carting away the dead, dying and severely wounded, said that little could be seen from the direction of Flourford, except smoke when the snow let up.

That fourth day passed quietly, in no small measure because of the resumed storm. Had the wolves attacked in force, they probably would have overwhelmed us. Meadow and Aethelwulf were virtually the only uninjured ones on our side, as I still had trouble gripping my bow. We had, perhaps, eight effectives. Auld Tom still had about a dozen of the farmers left, but all were sprawled in exhaustion on the floors of the dugouts. We had a few of the Lark's Rise contingent left as well. Twenty-five, all told.

That is what stood between the Grand Duke's army, and the way south and west to our comrades in Flourford and beyond. Twenty-five furs.

A thin white line.