Eir led her group past the cluster of fighters to a thinly defended ridge and gazed out on the darkening northern fields. Mottled moss and torn lichen stretched to the misty distance, beneath towering mountains of ice.

"I don't see anything," Silas said, squinting.

"There," Eir replied.

Out of the mist emerged a brutal horde. A dozen appeared at first, no match for the hundred norn along the ridge. But more came with each moment. Soon the icebrood were as many as the defenders, and then twice their number.

"Are they hardened yet or newly turned?" Silas asked. "My eyes are thick."

"Most look newly turned," Eir said. Indeed, the enemy were covered with a thin crust of rime, though their eyes were dead things.

"Arrows, then!" Silas said, hoisting his short bow and holding it somewhat shakily.

"Yes, Silas," replied Eir as she lifted two arrows and nocked them on her bow and drew back. "Wait until they reach the red lichen, so that you can see them and your bow can reach them." With that, Eir let fly, and both shafts soared out above the ridge and climbed the sky, seeming to sail forever. They vanished in the darkling air, but a moment later, two of the distant figures fell, pinned to the ground. Even as they dropped, she loosed two more shafts, and as they skimmed the sky, she unleashed two more.

Four down. Six. Eight. Then other archers began to fire. In their dozens, the icebrood were falling, but in their hundreds, the invaders bounded over the bodies and kept on coming. When they reached the red lichen, Silas shot his shaft, and it found its mark in the forehead of an ice-caked foe.

"Not hardened yet!" Silas shouted. "Bring them down!"

Now their foes were close enough to hear, and what a howling sound they made! They had been driven mad with the desire to serve their lord.

Eir had already sent fivescore arrows, and she drew the last two from her quiver and buried them in a pair of icebrood. The rest crashed on the ridge like a tidal wave.