The vessel came down on the flat outside the walls, her six wings folding back one after another, snow blasting up around her in a white wall that took a while to clear.
"I will keep her warm," Alfred called down from the rail as they went. "Try not to die up there. I hate flying home light."
The walls were a patchwork of desperation. Timber lashed over stone, iron plate hammered across the gaps, ore carts turned on their sides and packed with rubble where a section had given way. Braziers burned along the top at intervals, and the men beside them carried crossbows, mining picks, and one or two swords that had clearly come off the dead. Every one of them watched the two figures cross the snow toward the gate.
No one cheered. Trafalgar had not expected them to. A month of waiting on a house that never came, two thousand of their own in the ground or not even that, and now the house arrived at last: two men and a ship.
