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ARREN STOOD BEHIND THE MAIN PHALANXES ON A hillock. It had previously been an islet in the river that usually flowed through this valley, rushing and quick. But the water was gone.

All was going to plan.

He could see the Gods Army ahead on another few knolls, almost two hundred.

They were a messy knot, led now by Elo’s foul-mouthed veiga.

Sunk into the mud were the trebuchets she had requested, dismantled and then built again at the valley’s base as the water dwindled.

The clunky machines were designed for bringing down walls, not gods, but seeing as she had felled Hseth once before, Arren had little choice but to trust her.

It helped that she was, somehow, the reason they were all still alive.

She and the gods.

Perhaps Arren should have loosened his grip, gone back to the gods, asked them for help, or acknowledged that he could no more kill them than kill the sea or the sky. Perhaps so many would not have died fighting each other rather than preparing for this war.

But he could not, would not undo what had been done.

He would face the god as the king he was.

With his army, and their faith. They were ready.

He could see the glow of his people pooled around the valley basin, gathered up its slopes, waiting for their signals, believing in him.

He would try to be kinder, better. He would try to earn it.

‘Here they come,’ whispered Peta at his side.

Elo’s vanguard made its planned retreat, breaching the lip of the valley and sweeping down it under a veil of rain. Arren caught the blue of Elo’s lion, saw the stride of his horse, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, the Talician army came down after them: tens, hundreds, racing over the edge.

Too late did they see the arrayed armies below: Irisians in their scaled armour and perfectly arranged phalanxes, Middrenites in mixed units of knights and land army with their swords. Too late did they realise they had been led into a trap.

Hearth and home, flame and heart, Hestra whispered. We know this land better than she who has barely lived.

Lady Craier led the second wave, covering the backs of Elo’s riders. She came with her command along the valley sides, slamming into the narrowed spearhead of the Talician onslaught.

More kept coming, spilling and stumbling over the hill in the now pouring rain.

The Restish thundered down, losing formation and footing, their horses falling into the spiked pits the Middrenites had spent days digging.

Other northern allies fell to arrows from the Middrenite archers positioned all around the crests of the valley, led by Iuri Movenna.

The red invaders were easy to pick out, and slid like drops of blood down the green slopes.

Thunder rolled and lightning cut across the sky. Arren couldn’t hear the sound of the bells or the call of horns over the rattle of rain on armour, and the distant screams of the dying. He stayed where he had to, watching his war be fought.

Eventually, the enemy’s momentum slowed. Their commanders must have conferred on a different tactic that would not haemorrhage them so many fighters.

What now?

Then, he saw them beneath the belly of the storm. Statues of brass, dull, then bright as the lightning struck: fifteen gleaming statues of Hseth drawn to stand at the edge of the valley, all twisted in different shapes of beauty, dark metal binding them.

This was what Elo had warned him about. In response, Arren and Peta had moved their unoccupied shield blockades forwards, hoping to slow their advance.

The rain thinned, and Arren blinked away water as the storm edged away, and light burst down from the sun, sliding already past noonday. All the statues were hot and glowing, the grilles of their mouths bright with fire.

‘Hold steady!’ Peta bellowed with all the force of her lungs. ‘Await your orders!’

At some unseen call, the statues of Hseth’s flame and terror were shoved down the slope.

What would have been frightening on any field of battle was terrifying from the bottom of a valley. Fifteen giants of incandescent metal came careering towards them, trailing sizzling steam and smoke as they smashed down, tipping and rolling on the rocks and the slopes.

One fell into a ditch after only a few metres, but continued to roll and bounce, breaking open and sending shards of coal and broken metal shooting into Arren’s warriors.

Two more made it further before their wheels shattered.

One simply stopped, still flaming, while another rolled further, faster, and veered off course, taking out one of the Irisian units.

The blockades of shields buried in the muck were enough to break the wheels of two more that set fire to the grass where they fell, but that left eight.

Eight huge statues churning through, their coal-filled mouths open like a scream, or a howl of war.

Anyone unlucky enough to be in their path was obliterated.

Arren could just imagine the heat of the metal as they came close. Unbearable.

The mud of the riverbed stopped them before they hit the veiga, but the impact of the idols was devastating.

The Crolle battalion was in disarray, and two others were barely kept under control by their captains and commanders.

Some sprinted for the valley sides, and Peta blew on the horn harder, stronger. A warning not to run.

They fear , whispered Hestra. I fear.

Arren gritted his teeth. His head ached beneath his helmet, and his absent heart felt fit to burst.

Fear is not the end of all things.

Then he heard a call coming from the veiga, the gathering of godkillers. Not for him. Not for Sunbringer.

Hseth. Hseth. Hseth. Hseth. Hseth.