They came for a leashed wolf. They found a pack that had decided to stop being afraid.
The Circle's army reached Nightriver's western wall in the black hour before dawn, and it was everything Bael had feared: a tide of wolves under the broken-circle banner, more than we could ever field, disciplined and silent and utterly certain, because for four hundred years no one they came for had ever won.
I met them on the wall.
Not behind it. On it. Silver-eyed, seven months of a dire-blood child heavy under my strategist's leathers, with Dain Corwin at my right hand and Bael at my left and the whole Nightriver pack ranged along the stone behind me, and I looked down at the army that had eaten Ashfall in a night, and I did not feel small.
Their commander rode forward under a flag of parley. An
