It was late, and a whistling wind tumbled fresh snow out of the north. As he and his companion strolled south toward the little river that wound through the center of town, they appeared to have the night to themselves.

“You blundered your way into that predicament back there,” the witch said after a while, “but you extricated yourself deftly too.”

He snorted. “Were you peeking in the window?”

“I see that despite the excitement,” she said, “you’re still a little drunk. Otherwise, I trust, you wouldn’t speak to a hathran disrespectfully. Give me your hand.”

Wondering if she intended to rap his knuckles like he was a naughty child, he obeyed, and she clasped his hand in her own. Her touch was so cold, it startled him, though once again, he supposed he could attribute that to the general chill in the air. Her skin was nearly as white as the snow spilling from the heavens and blanketing the town.

She murmured a charm, and his thoughts quickened, while a hint of numbness fell away from his limbs. He had still been a little tipsy, even if he hadn’t realized.

Releasing his hand, she asked, “Better?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then we can confer like intelligent folk.”

“About what? Who are you?”

“Someone who hates seeing the champion of Rashemen cheated of his just reward.” They rounded a huddle of trees, sacred, in all likelihood, to some spirit or fey, and one of the old wooden bridges arching over the river came into view. She pointed with her staff and said, “Let’s talk in the center of that. The view is so pretty.”

And nobody, thought Bez, would be able to sneak up on them and eavesdrop.

The butt of her staff clicked on the planks, and the frozen river gleamed gray with Selune’s light. They stood at the railing and looked west, toward the point where the watercourse emptied into the lake, although Bez couldn’t quite see that far in the dark.

“Now you can introduce yourself properly,” he said.

“Unfortunately, no,” she replied. “That would be unwise.”

He cocked his head. “You’ll pardon a soldier’s bluntness if I say secrecy doesn’t inspire trust.”

“How much do you know about the history of Rashemen, Captain? The last time the learned sisterhood split into factions, the consequences were grim. No witch would want to be accused of fomenting another such schism.”

“And yet you are?”

The masked woman hesitated in the manner of one choosing her words judiciously. “You’ll have heard tell that Yhelbruna is well over a hundred years old.”

“Yes, although not the reason for it.”

“A gift from some fey, I believe. She doesn’t talk about it. But all you need to know is that long-lived isn’t the same as immortal. Her powers and judgment are finally failing.”

“What a shame. But how can you tell?”

“You know the Iron Lord told her to perform divinations to establish the truth of your report. Has she reported back?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Because she can’t make the rituals work. In fact, when she tried in the Urlingwood, the magic went horribly wrong, and another hathran died as a result.”

“Again, I offer my regrets.”

“As far as her judgment is concerned,” the priestess continued, “surely you don’t need me to convince you she’s grown peculiar and obdurate, as old people sometimes do. There was no sane reason to hold up your reward.”

Bez turned toward her, brushed snow off the railing, and rested one elbow on the spot he’d cleared. “If others think the way you do, then why not divest the old girl of her responsibilities-gently and respectfully, of course-and pack her off to enjoy a well-earned retirement?”

“Some would not agree with me. Yhelbruna’s past achievements blind them to the current sad reality. And even if everyone did …” The hathran sighed. “An outlander like you once told me we Rashemi are slaves to our traditions, and I see now there’s truth in that. Yet it’s dangerous for the land to have a failing mind in charge. And you, Captain, will never have your due now that, by whatever perverse, suspicious reasoning, she has decided you don’t deserve it. Whereas if the ‘old girl’ no longer stood in your way …”

Bez shook his head in amazement. “You’re asking me to kill her?”

“It’s your trade, isn’t it?”

“War is my trade, and as a general rule, it’s neither good for business nor particularly safe for sellswords to turn on their employers. Besides, mightn’t Mangan and the other hathrans take Yhelbruna’s bloody corpse as evidence the undead aren’t really gone?”

“Then don’t bloody it. Make it look like her tired old heart simply stopped beating, or she broke her neck in a fall. Or make sure the body’s never found. My friends and I can put about the suggestion that, upset over what happened in the Urlingwood, she went into seclusion to pray. The point is that when she’s no longer around to object, Mangan will give you the griffons.”

Bez grinned. “And some other hathran will have to rise from the ranks and take command.”

“I told you, my concern is for my country, not my personal ambitions.”

“Certainly.” Standing up straight again, he pondered her proposal.

Obviously, it carried an element of risk, but so did simply waiting around in Immilmar. The berserkers of the Griffon Lodge, their deer-man allies, Dai Shan, and Aoth Fezim’s familiar were all safely dead, but he couldn’t be quite as certain about the Thayan himself, or Jhesrhi Coldcreek and Cera Eurthos. Unlikely as it seemed, they could conceivably still turn up, or some busybody could discover by some other means that Mario Bez wasn’t really the savior of Rashemen but rather the man who’d slaughtered its true benefactors to steal the credit.

He drew breath to give his companion his answer, and then his eyes widened in surprise.

Apparently, as he’d deliberated, he’d briefly lost track of anything other than his own musings. In that moment, the witch had disappeared.

He looked at both ends of the bridge and all around. He still couldn’t see any cloaked and hooded figures, just a stray wisp of mist curling over the ice.

He snorted, mildly amused but annoyed as well. He preferred being the trickster, not the dupe, and it nettled him that the witch believed she could read him so well that she needn’t wait for a verbal reply.

Still, it wasn’t worth fretting over. Especially when there was work to be done, or rather, assigned.

He tramped back to the Owlbear Lodge, where all was now raucous conviviality, with some men booming out a song and other stamping, whirling, and tossing their blades back and forth in a sword dance. Looking in the doorway, he beckoned Melemer and Olthe forth as the witch had beckoned him.

The little warlock possessed a deviousness that lent itself well to assassination. The battleguard was a more forthright personality, but she’d follow Melemer’s lead if Bez told her to, and to say the least, it seemed unlikely that Yhelbruna could withstand both of them.

One of the constructs was a long-armed, short-legged giant with a bestial face that reminded Aoth of demons he’d fought in the past. Leaning forward on its knuckles, it had been standing motionless ever since he and Orgurth had first peered down at the Raumathari war band. But now, abruptly, gleaming in the starlight, it stood up straight and held out an upturned hand. Something black began to accumulate there either created in every sense of the word or drawn from elsewhere.

“There we go,” Aoth murmured.

“What?” Orgurth replied.

“I’ve identified their siege engine. Apparently, it needed to renew its power, but now it’s ready to resume the bombardment.”

“The undead already made one breach. I expected them to charge it already.”

“So did I. They generally don’t hesitate to make a run at the living. But their tactics are sound. The more holes they poke, the harder it becomes for the defenders to block them all.”