February Update

I'm pleased to announce that Fimbulwinter will be available in audiobook form starting later this month. Thanks to Gregg Savage and Guy Williams for all their hard work making this possible. And yes, this means audiobook versions of Black Coven and Extermination are in the works.

Meanwhile, I'm now working on chapter 7 of Perilous Waif. Progress has been a lot slower than I would have liked, mostly because it takes a lot of work to do all the world building for a realistic far-future SF setting. I've found that I generally can't turn out more than one scene at a time, where with fantasy it isn't unusual for me to write a couple thousand words in one sitting.

So I've also started working on Revenant, the next Daniel Black novel. I'm currently on chapter 2, and I'll be experimenting with working on both books in parallel this month. Depending on how things go I may just write a chapter now and then when I need a break from SF, or I may end up making it my main focus while I continue Perilous Waif at a slower pace.

One way or the other, there should hopefully be more progress to report next months.

Status Update

My New Year's resolution this year was to actually publish a monthly status update consistently, so I suppose I'd better get the year's first installment out. This will be my first year as a full-time author, and I've got some fairly ambitious plans in the works. So in theory there should be a lot to talk about.

I'm currently working on chapter 5 of Perilous Waif, my new science fiction novel. This series is my attempt to resurrect the nearly-dead genre of hard SF (as opposed to the soft SF you mostly see today), by updating the conventions of old Heinlein-era stories with the advances of the information age. So this setting has genetic engineering, cybernetics, neural interfaces, robots, ubiquitous AI, nanotechnology and the internet to go along with the spaceships and exotic planets. It also has lasers, RKKVs, Casaba howitzers and other fun toys - one of my goals for the series is to write interesting space battles without having to pull any punches.

But I know all you Daniel Black readers are anxious for the next book, so let me assure you that the sequel to Extermination will be the next book in the queue. I'm taking some time to get all my plot threads neatly laid out and consistency-checked this time, because things are going to get a lot more complicated over the next few volumes. Oh, and as an experiment I'm probably going to release two versions of this book - one with lots of explicit scenes like the ones in Fimbulwinter, and another that's less explicit and does the traditional 'fade to black' on anything that isn't essential to the plot. I suspect I know which version will sell more copies, but it's always good to have experimental evidence.

So, my tentative release schedule for 2016 is Perilous Waif in the spring, the next Daniel Black novel in the summer, and a third book sometime later in the year.

Extermination Discussion Thread

As requested, a dedicated place for general discussion of Extermination.

Extermination Typo Thread

Please report any typos, misspellings or other errors you happen to find in Extermination in the comments below. This time around I'm going to try putting out a corrected edition every couple of weeks until I stop getting corrections, just to make sure I don't end up forgetting to do it.

In this book I was also experimenting with not exhaustively explaining ever little detail of how and why things happen, which some readers seem to have seized on as an excuse to complain about 'continuity errors'. I may go back and add a few sentences to make certain things more obvious, although I'm tempted to just leave it alone.

Extermination Released

I ran into a couple of last-minute formatting issues with the document, but Extermination is now in Amazon's publication queue. It will be available whenever their system finishes processing it, which based on past experience will probably take an hour or two for customers in the US. 

Extermination Teaser 3

When our men were finally in position Marcus, Oskar, Cerise and I all gathered on the roof of the keep. From that height we could see over the walls that fronted Kozalin’s harbor, and make out hints of what was happening on the far side of the city.

“From the signals we’re hearing, I think there’s a substantial army assaulting the walls,” Marcus said as he squinted into the distance. “The garrison is calling in reinforcements as fast as they can, but I don’t imagine they had time to get the walls fully manned before it started.”

“I can see people fighting on the wall in several places,” Cerise said. “Look, there are fires burning in the Trade District. That doesn’t seem like a good sign.”

I frowned. “I can’t imagine how they’d have gotten inside the walls that fast. Siege engines using incendiary ammunition, maybe?”

Marcus shook his head. “Light siege engines wouldn’t be able to loft a shot over the wall, and it takes hours to set up the heavy ones. It could be battle magic, but I don’t see why they’d waste it on that. As much snow as there is on the roofs there’s no hope of getting a fire to spread.”

“I think I’m going to have to check this out,” I said reluctantly.

“Probably best to put in an appearance,” he agreed. “We don’t want the prince to think you’re not going to contribute to the defense of the city.”

“You’re not going alone,” Cerise declared.

I frowned. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

Three days ago we’d fought an undead dragon together, and she’d stolen so much power from the thing that she’d sprouted wings and scales. She’d spent the last two nights doing long rituals to rebalance her magic, and sacrifice the power she couldn’t handle to her goddess. She was pretty much back to her normal appearance now, but she looked exhausted.

“I can handle a scouting mission, and a couple of short fights,” she insisted. “If it turns into a long slugging match you can send me back here with orders for the men. But I don’t want you out there with no one to watch your back when we don’t know what’s happening.”

“Fair enough,” I conceded. I certainly wouldn’t mind having her along. My magical defenses were a lot better than hers, but underneath it all I was just a squishy human. Cerise, on the other hand, had the physical vitality of a demon and a solid set of personal wards against non-physical threats. We were pretty much perfect for bailing each other out of trouble.

I studied the remnants of the causeway for a moment. The stone was badly cratered, and two long stretches had been completely obliterated. We weren’t going to get any vehicles over that. But I didn’t want to pull any troops away from the defense of the island anyway.

“We’ll take your bike,” I told Cerise. “Just the two of us. We can leave through the water gate, and find a boat ramp to get off the river and into the city. If the Conclave is sending reinforcements to the walls they shouldn’t be hard to find.”

She nodded. “Sounds like fun. But I want to have Corinna bring her war band over here and help guard the keep until we get back. Just in case the enemy has a way to get over walls.”

“That’s fine. I don’t think they’ll be needed, but better safe than sorry. Marcus, if you need us to come back fire off one of the mortars. The noise should be noticeable from anywhere in the city, I’d think.”

Cerise’s bike was a recent gift, basically a flying motorcycle that hovered a few feet off the ground on a levitation spell. It was just big enough for two people, and had a top speed somewhere well north of a hundred miles per hour. Cerise had fallen in love with it instantly, of course.

She gunned the thruster as we cleared the iron portcullis that guarded the water gate, and sent us shooting out over the still water of the harbor. I held on tight behind her, and wrapped my force field around us both.

“Hey, you made the wind go away!” She protested.

“Just making sure we can’t get ambushed easily,” I told her.

“Like anything could hit us at this speed? You worry too much, old man.”

“That’s because you never worry at all, crazy girl,” I told her. “I have to do enough of it for both of us.”

“Better you than me,” she retorted. “Okay, there’s a ramp we can use. Hold on!”

I discreetly grabbed hold of the bike with a bit of force magic, just in case. But Cerise drove with the same preternatural skill she displayed in any physical ability, slowing just enough to stay in control as we cleared the ramp and flew halfway across the wide cleared space beyond. A moment later we were back on the ground, already braking and turning onto the street that paralleled the water front.

The harbor gate was still open, although a platoon of spearmen stood ready to close it at the first sign of danger. Unfortunately they didn’t know any more than we did about what was happening. We left them on guard and sped across the Temple District towards the commotion.

Nervous citizens peered out their windows at us as we passed. This part of the city had already seen one major battle, and they weren’t eager for another one. Most of the buildings were intact, but here and there we passed a fire-gutted ruin or a structure with doors and windows smashed in. Signs of the battles that had already been fought here.

At least the streets hadn’t been packed with refugees, like when I first arrived in Kozalin. The death toll among the civilians would have been a lot higher if we hadn’t gotten them into shelters before Hel’s attack.

We passed through another gate guarded by a nervous platoon of the city garrison, and entered the Trade District. Here there was less damage, but there were sounds of fighting close at hand.

“Head for the noise?” Cerise asked. “Or do you want to look around for a command post?”

“Considering how my last conversation with the prince went, I’d say it’s better to avoid him for now. Head for the noise.”

The commotion grew louder as we neared it, and I frowned. The shouts and clash of metal were familiar, but there was a lot of other noise. Deep-throated bellows from something I didn’t recognize, and the occasional tremendous crashing sound. What was going on?

Then we came around a corner, and found ourselves face to face with the enemy. Cerise turned the bike sideways and skidded to a stop as we both stared.

A block away the street was filled with a mass of huge, gray-skinned creatures lumbering towards us on four legs. Their heads were covered with bony armor, with a short horn rising up from the snout and two longer, lance-like horns projecting forward above the eyes. There was a group of hairy humanoids waving spears and javelins perched atop each of the creatures, which were considerably bigger than elephants.

They spotted us immediately, and the front rank broke into a charge amid a chorus of howls and jeering.

“Oh, crap!” Cerise exclaimed.

She spun the bike around, and headed back the way we’d come. But I was still staring numbly at the enemy.

“That’s a triceratops,” I muttered.

“A what?”

“Dinosaurs. They have frickin’ dinosaur cavalry.”

Cerise snickered. “Are you jealous?”

“Yes!”

Our pursuers lumbered around the corner behind us. One of them tried to corner a little too fast, and ended up sliding across the packed snow into a shop that faced the road. The front of the brick and wood structure promptly collapsed, but the dinosaur pulled itself free of the falling debris without any apparent injury. So that’s what those crashing sounds were.

Damn. They had to be killing a lot of civilians that way, and most people would have a fire going in their homes. That explained the smoke, at least.

We could easily outrun them on the bike, but that’s not what we were here for.

“Get a couple of blocks ahead and then stop,” I ordered.

“You got it, Daniel. How are we killing these things? There’s too much light for me to shadow step, and my gun isn’t going to do much to an animal that big.”

“Pick off the riders,” I told her. “I’ll handle the dinosaurs.”

How was I going to do that? Well, first things first. I eyeballed the distance, and tossed my earth talisman down the street to land between us and the enemy. It immediately sprouted into a barricade of sharp iron spikes, spreading at my direction to fill the width of the street. Making it tall enough to physically stop a triceratops would take more time than I had, but I was pretty sure the beasts wouldn’t try to walk across something like that. If they did it would cut their feet up badly enough to cripple them, just like caltrops against normal cavalry.

Then I drew my revolver, set it for explosive rounds, and opened fire.

On that setting the bullets that my weapon fired were enchanted to conjure up a chunk of magma from the earth’s core when they struck something. The white-hot nickel-iron immediately exploded as it found itself no longer subjected to millions of atmospheres of pressure, flinging superheated metal everywhere with the force of a small bomb. It took a little less than a second for the enchantment factory in my weapon to create a new round, so I just held the trigger down and peppered them with a continuous stream of attacks.

The first blast struck the bony frill protecting the lead dinosaur’s neck, blowing a large hole in it and sending molten metal lancing into its back. It bellowed in pain, and charged at us. The second shot caught it right between the eyes, and then I lowered my aim and hit one of its forelegs with the third. It collapsed, throwing half its riders forward into the street.

The dinosaur next to it shied away from the crash, and then continued its turn right into a building when I shifted my fire in its direction. A couple more shots into its side and the beast went down, half-buried under a mass of broken wood and brick.

With the street mostly blocked by writhing dinosaurs their comrades had to slow down and work their way through instead of just charging us. I walked my fire back and forth across their formation, and it quickly dissolved into complete chaos.

Cerise pulled her gun from where she’d had it stowed, strapped to the side of the bike, and opened fire on the riders. As usual she picked them off with the inhuman accuracy of a Hollywood sniper, the big .50-caliber rounds blowing heads apart and punching gaping holes through their leather armor. At this rate we’d have the street cleared in no time.

Then a group of hairy forms dropped off the roofs to land around us.

A couple of them bounced off my force field, with a drain on my energy reserves that was far larger than it should have been. Another landed on the street next to us, and laid into my shield with an axe made of some glassy red substance. His first blow drained a gout of magic out of my barrier to strengthen the weapon’s enchantment.

Cerise flicked a blob of shadowy energy at him, and he dropped the axe to stagger back with a scream and clutch at his eyes.

“I love having unlimited power,” she commented with a grin. “I’ve got these guys.”

I laid down a barrage of force blades around our position before turning back to the dinosaur cavalry, hoping to take out this distraction quickly. They proved a little too durable for that, the blades slicing armor and inflicting deep wounds but failing to actually sever limbs. They continued beating on my shield, their crimson weapons shifting forms with every few blows. They tried axes, clubs, spears and even something like a morning star, ignoring their injuries as they tried to find a weakness in my defense.

But my amulet held deep reserves of mana to counter exactly this sort of attack, and it would take them several minutes to exhaust its energy and break the shield. Minutes they didn’t have, with Cerise standing safely behind my barrier laying down a barrage of black magic.

Her shadow rose from the ground to coil around her body, and she threw out a clinging mist that ate into their flesh like acid. Their shadows animated, catching at their feet and crawling up their bodies to strangle them. She threw more curses, blobs of dark magic that struck their targets in the face and crawled into their eyes. Or ate them, possibly. I wasn’t watching very closely, but the first guy she’d hit wasn’t moving anymore.

Most troops would have run away by that point, but these guys were in some kind of berserker rage. They howled in frustration, and tore into the barrier with frenzied intensity. But they didn’t seem to have a counter for Cerise’s curses, so I kept my attention on the remains of the cavalry force long enough to finish them off.

Another few dozen explosive rounds and the ones I could see were all dead. They’d never even gotten close to us, and by then Cerise had dealt with her opponents as well.

“We should do it like that more often,” she grinned. “It was pretty funny watching them try to get at me. I guess these guys must be those andregi the wizards were talking about.”

I took a moment to study the bodies. I’d heard the andregi described as ape-men, but really they looked more like Neanderthals to me. Over six feet tall, which was a lot bigger than the local humans, with barrel chests and heavily muscled limbs. Their legs seemed a little shorter than normal, and of course they were so hairy you could almost call it fur. They had heavy brow ridges, big square jaws and no facial hair at all, which was an odd-looking combination. Something about the shape of their skulls was different, too. Wider than a human, with lower foreheads that had a pronounced slope to them.

Their equipment was interesting. Elaborate leather armor that provided full-body coverage, but no shoes. Leather helmets, and long leather cloaks that looked thick enough to double as another layer of armor. Dinosaur hide, maybe? Whatever it was, the workmanship was quite good.

They had a lot of magic about them, too. Necklaces of beads, runes sewn onto their armor, bone ear and nose piercings, all anchoring a host of weak but useful charms. Little spells of protection and enhancement, and a much stronger one that seemed to be some kind of berserker curse. No wonder they’d just kept attacking, even when it was obviously hopeless.

The odd thing, though, was that none of them had a scrap of metal. All of their weapons were that glossy red stuff, which was heavily enchanted.

“Guess so,” I said. “Any idea what those weapons are made of?”

Cerise bent and poked at one thoughtfully. The enchantments had been bound to their wielders, and were starting to come apart now that they were dead. The stuff started to soften, the angular shapes of the fallen weapons slumping towards the ground.

“Oh! I get it. They’re made of blood.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

I touched an axe that was rapidly becoming a puddle. Yep, blood. Still alive until recently, too.

“Seriously. Kind of an interesting technique, actually. They must have some big ritual where they bleed themselves to make their weapons, and then they’d have to feed them periodically. But it gives them a handy store of extra vitality, and I bet they can steal power from enemies they kill. Absorb their blood to heal themselves, maybe copy their powers, stuff like that. Good thing they didn’t know how to do much with the magic they were stealing, or I’d have had to work a lot harder to kill them.”

“Lovely. I hate competent foes,” I complained. “Why couldn’t they just be a bunch of dumb savages with sticks and stone axes?” She snickered. “Aw, now what fun would it be to kill wimpy guys like that? This way we get a challenge.”

Extermination Teaser 2

We came to the double doors leading out of the habitat, and I set Elin down so I could wrestle one of the heavy sheets of iron out of the way. I’d made them sturdy enough that it would take siege engines to batter them open, just in case enemies ever got onto the island. Elin smoothed down her skirt and pulled up the hood of her warmth cloak in preparation for venturing outside.

I retrieved a heavy blanket from where I’d left it in the corner, and draped it around both of us. It had a warmth enchantment of its own, which let me put an arm around Elin without worrying about frostbite. Then I pushed the door open, and we stepped out into the teeth of a howling blizzard.

The snow had started to fall a few hours after our victory over the undead army Hel had sent to assist Mara’s attack on the city, and it hadn’t let up in the three days since. I was a bit worried about what that meant for the city, since there hadn’t been time to clean up all the enemy stragglers after we broke their last stand in the Temple District. Even subzero temperatures wouldn’t do much to an animated corpse, and there was no telling what mischief the survivors might have gotten up to with most of the city’s defenders trapped indoors. My own troops couldn’t even get into the city, since I’d been forced to blow up the causeway connecting my island to the mainland in order to keep an army away from my gates.

There wasn’t much I could do about it until the weather broke, so I’d concentrated on my own problems. I couldn’t afford to let a little bad weather completely shut down my operations, especially since this sort of thing was becoming depressingly common. So I’d been forced to spend some time making another round of improvements to the island.

We had to fight against the wind as we crossed the wide gap I’d left between the dryad habitat and the nearest covered walkway. Elin stumbled and leaned against me, her slender faerie form too light to resist the buffeting. I held her up and anchored myself with force magic until we were across, wondering for the hundredth time if I should enclose that route.

But leaving it the way it was ensured that the refugees we’d taken in during the battle on the docks wouldn’t accidentally wander into the building and encounter the dryads, and that was rather important. Word of their presence would get out eventually, but I wanted to be a lot better established before anyone showed up at my gate to ask what they were doing here.

Once we were across the gap the trip was a lot more pleasant. I’d built a roof over the little street that ran between the buildings on the western side of my island, made of conjured iron with large quartz skylights at regular intervals. There were gaps here and there where snow could still get in, but they were small enough that there wasn’t much wind. The self-warming enchantments on the road and buildings actually kept the temperature a bit above freezing, and there was a steady flow of foot traffic along the road.

The buildings were all heavy stone structures, designed to resist being broken into by any monsters that might somehow find their way onto the island. One thing I learned from watching zombie movies is that a shell defense isn’t good enough. If you’re facing a real threat you need multiple lines of defense, so you don’t lose everything to one mistake.

The traffic increased as we approached the tower that had been the first structure on my new island fortress, and passed inside. The keep was built like a lot of smaller office buildings, with a big open atrium in the middle and a skylight in the roof. Six floors of balconies encircled the atrium, with a stairway zig-zagging up one side and an elevator on the other. A few of my braver citizens had started to actually use the elevator, but most of them stuck to the stairs.

We took the elevator, and arrived quickly at the coven’s shared living quarters on the fourth floor. A pair of uniformed maids were waiting at the door to take the blanket, and offer us mugs of hot tea before ushering us back to the dining room where the daily staff meeting was held.

It used to be every other day, but there were too many things going on these days. I made a mental note that I needed to figure out a way to delegate more, but it wasn’t the first time I’d had that thought.

Avilla and Cerise were already there, of course, and the rest of the group wasn’t long in arriving. One amusing side effect of the fact that we met over lunch, and no one wanted to miss out on Avilla’s cooking.

Oskar and Gronir arrived together, already discussing something about sentry schedules. Oskar was a huge man, a blacksmith I’d recruited back in Lanrest after he threw together a spontaneous militia force to resist a goblin attack. He was still the leader of the island’s garrison, which I hoped to turn into a more professional force sometime soon. Gronir was almost as tall, with a runner’s build and a perpetual sly grin. Originally a poacher who’d been with a group of peasants I rescued, these days he was the leader of the little band of refugees who’d used Avilla’s magic to turn themselves into wolf people. The wolfen, as they’d decided to call themselves, had proved themselves amazingly useful in the days since then.

Next was Captain Marcus Rain, the leader of my actual military forces. Which currently amounted to the survivors of his original infantry company, a couple dozen professional soldiers we’d recruited since then, and a hundred or so recruits currently undergoing training. Not the most impressive force around, but the armored vehicles and magic weapons I’d been making gave them a lot more punch than any normal unit.

Elin still wasn’t used to being included in these meetings, but since she was more or less recovered from her recent ordeals I’d offloaded some work by putting her in charge of our people’s medical care. Her healing magic wasn’t quite as universally effective as mine, but there was simply no way I could make time to treat any significant number of people.

“So, Marcus, how are the new guns working out?” I asked as Avilla took her seat.

“Well enough, I suppose. The force blades will come in handy when our lines get overrun, that’s for certain. But I’d advise against adding anything else to the standard model. A trigger, a safety and the bayonet switch makes for about as many complications as some of our recruits can handle.”

“Fair enough,” I allowed. “We can always make anything else I come up with a separate piece of equipment, and that way you can control who gets it.”

Replacing all the guns I’d already issued had been a bit painful, but it was a necessary evil. The old version was powered by an enchantment that converted the matter of the gun’s stock directly to mana, and that wasn’t something I wanted too many people to get a good look at. If all my men carried one it would only be a matter of time before my enemies started getting samples. I wasn’t sure if it was possible to reverse-engineer the enchantment without at least a basic understanding of nuclear physics, but I didn’t want to take chances.

Besides which, it was also very difficult to build. I’d been experimenting with enchantments that made magic items recently, but that sort of thing worked best for low-powered items. Doing it with the matter to mana effect was only barely possible, and it resulted in a temperamental enchantment factory that needed constant maintenance to function. My prototype could turn out a few dozen guns in an afternoon, but only if I was there to run it.

To improve on that I’d taken the opportunity of being snowed in to sit down and work out a better process for making power sources. It turned out that iron was actually about the worst possible material to put the matter conversion enchantment on, which made sense when I thought about it. Iron atoms have the highest binding energy per nucleon of any atom, so of course they’d have the lowest energy yield. My new standard was to put the enchantment on a sixty-pound cylinder of granite, which produce five times as much energy as the same mass of iron. Not only was this a superior energy source, it was also big enough to be hard to steal.

Then I’d built an enchantment factory with a socket for the power source, and designed it to link the guns it made to the power source that was slotted into it instead of making them self-powered. The power links would stretch for several miles, which ought to be more than enough for operations in and around the island. So I could keep the power source under lock and key most of the time, and if I ever needed to send troops into the field we could load their power source into one of the armored skimmers to keep it nearby. While I was reworking the enchantments I’d also added a force bayonet to the design of the guns, with a switch to turn the blade on and off. Unlike my own force constructs I’d designed the blade to glow slightly, so that it would be obvious if it was turned on.

As a result, the new guns ended up with a complex but low-energy set of enchantments that could be replicated without any particular wear and tear on the factory enchantment. So I could now just turn it on and leave it to run for hours at a time, creating about fifteen weapons an hour indefinitely. In the last couple of days I’d produced two hundred guns, enough to equip everyone on the island who had even a vague idea of how to use one. Yay for mass production.

“Well, the farming program is off to a decent start,” I announced. “We should have a better idea of what the crop yields are going to look like in a couple of weeks. But as soon as the storm breaks Hrodir is going to need an escort into town to look for more recruits.”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to repair the causeway?” Oskar asked.

“Yes, that’s probably going to be my next project. I’m thinking I’ll elevate it to the same level as the gates, put walls and a roof on it, and then build a watchtower down on the shore with a heavy gate and portcullis. That way the next time there’s trouble in town we can maintain a secure line of retreat without endangering the keep.”

“It’s a start,” Cerise said. “But I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m not happy with our setup. Hel’s troops almost followed us right into the keep, and if they’d made it inside there was nothing between them and Avilla but a few flights of stairs. Not to mention that if we’d gotten back twenty minutes later they would have overrun Captain Rain’s position and stormed the gates in force. We need to do a better job of protecting our people than that.”

“That’s a fair point,” I admitted. “You’re right, that was a problem. How do we fix it?”

“We move all our noncombatants onto the island,” she answered. “Use the keep just for soldiers, and redesign the lower levels so an attacking force has more trouble getting through from the outer gate to the inner one.”

Avilla frowned. “But Cerise, I’ve only just gotten my kitchen properly set up and sanctified. You want me to move again?”

“I want you living right in the middle of the island, with at least two big walls and three or four sets of heavy gates between you and the monsters,” Cerise replied. “Do you realize how easy it would be for something like an ungol or a shade to get into the tower? The wards we’ve started on will help, but you know you’re supposed to put your residence at the center of your warding scheme. Not out here on the edge. I know it’s a pain, sweetie, but I don’t want to come home from a fight someday and find out you were killed in a surprise attack.”

“I suppose you have a point,” Avilla admitted. “The keep isn’t really designed to keep things private, either. I’m a little worried where we’re going to put dangerous things that we need to keep people away from. But still, that’s going to hurt. Unless we can come up with some way to move my claim, instead of abandoning it and building another one.”

“That would be tricky,” I mused. I’d never spent much time studying the web of magic that infused her kitchen, but it was pretty complicated. Although, come to think of it, maybe there was a better way to tackle that one.

“Well, I share Cerise’s concern,” Marcus put in. “Although I’ll also say that we don’t have nearly enough manpower to properly defend the island. We need at least two hundred men just to maintain solid watches and put reserve squads where they might be needed. If you want a good defense in depth with ample reserves you can double that.”

I winced. “I don’t know where we’d find that many men we can trust. Cerise, I don’t suppose you’ve had any word on what other groups we should expect?”

She shook her head. “I won’t get that kind of information unless we really need the advance warning for some reason. Although… hey, is it just me, or has the wind stopped?”

“No, you’re right,” Gronir said. “Maybe this storm is finally over.”

I stood, and opened the wooden shutters on the room’s only window. Sure enough the wind had died down, and the air was clearing. There was still a light dusting of snow falling, but even that was rapidly thinning out.

I frowned.

“That was awfully abrupt. You know, I’m pretty sure the enemy has been controlling these storms ever since the Conclave’s weather circle was killed. Why would they arrange for us to be snowed in for three days, and then suddenly clear away the storm?”

There were frowns all around the table now.

“I don’t know,” Oskar said slowly. “But I don’t like it.”

Elin rose from her seat, and peered out the window. “Nor do I. Look, Daniel, they didn’t just let the storm fade. There’s a stiff wind from the east blowing the clouds away, and the sky in that direction is completely clear. You can actually see the edge of the storm receding to the west.”

“That army of ape men was assembling to the east,” Marcus pointed out. “Perhaps-”

A horn blew in the distance. Then another, and another.

“Enemy at the gates,” Marcus translated the signal. “Damn it all. They used the storm to blind us, so they could approach unseen and catch us napping.”