"Feng must be cra/y," Ragnarson mused. "Or wants to rid himself of his allies."
Liakopulos replied, "He's just stupid. He hasn't got one notion how to run an army."
"A Tervola?"
"Put it this way. He's not flexible. The pretty woman. Mist. Says they call him The Hammer. Just keeps pounding till something gives. If it doesn't, he gets a bigger hammer. He's been holding that back."
"I know." Twenty-eight legions. One hundred seventy thousand or more of the best soldiers in the world.
When Feng swung that hammer, things would break.
The legions came.
The drums began long before dawn, beating a cadence which shuddered the mountains, which throbbed like the heartbeat of the world.
The soldiers in the works knew. They would meet the real enemy now, dread fighters who had been defeated but once since the founding of the legions.
Ragnarson gave Blittschau every man and horse available.
The sun rose, and the sun set.
Hakes Blittschau returned to Karak Strabger shortly before midnight, on a stretcher. His condition reflected that of his command.
"Wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it," Blittschau croaked as Wachtel cleansed his wounds. "They wouldn't give an inch. Let us hit them, then went after the horses till they got us on the ground." He rolled his head in a negative. "We must've killedtwenty.... No, thirty, maybe even forty thousand. They wouldn't budge."
"I know. You can't panic them. You have to panic the Tervola." Ragnarson was depressed. Feng had broken his most valuable weapon. Blittschau had salvaged but five hundred men.
The drums throbbed on. The hammer was about to fall again.
It struck at dawn, from one wall of the canyon to the other. Stubbornly, systematically, the soldiers in black neutralized the traps and redoubts, filled the trenches, demolished the barriers, breached the palisades and earthworks. They didn't finesse it. They simply kept attacking, kept killing.
Ragnarson's archers kept the skies dark. His swordsmen and spearmen fought till they were ready to drop. Feng allowed them respites only when he rotated fresh legions into the cauldron.
The sun dropped behind the Kapenrungs. Bragi sighed. Though the drums sobbed on, the fighting died. His captains began arriving with damage reports.
Tomorrow, he judged, would be the last day.
The archers had been the stopper. Corpses feathered with shafts littered the canyon floor. But the arrows were nearly gone. The easterners allowed no recovery of spent shafts.
Mist was optimistic, though. "Feng has gone his limit," she said. "He can't waste men like this. The Tervola won't tolerate it. Soldiers are priceless, unlike auxiliaries."
She was correct. The Tervola rebelled. But when they confronted Feng they found....
He had yielded command to a maskless man named Badalamen. With Badalamen were two old-timers: a bent one in a towering rage, and another with dull eyes. And with them, the Escalonian sorcerer, Magden Norath.
The bent man was more angry with himself than with Feng. His tardiness had given Feng time to decimate Shinsan's matchless army.
Feng grudgingly yielded to the Pracchia. The transition was smooth. Most Tervola chosen to come west were pledged to the Hidden Kingdom.
At midnight the voice of the drums changed.
Ragnarson exploded from a restless sleep, rushed to his parapet. Shinsan was moving. No precautions could completely squelch the clatter.
Reports arrived. His staff, his wizards, his advisors crowdedonto the parapet. No one could guess why, but Shinsan was abandoning positions they had spent all day taking. Sir Tury Hawkwind and Haaken attacked on their own initiative.
"Mist. Varthlokkur. Give me a hint," Ragnarson demanded.
"Feng's been replaced," Mist said.
"Yeah? Okay. But why back down?"
"Oh!" Varthlokkur said softly.
Mist sighed. "The Power...."
"Oh, Hell!"
It was returning. Ragnarson decided he was done for.
The Unborn streaked across the night. Beneath it dangled Visigodred. After delivering the shaken wizard, it communed with Varthlokkur. "Gather the Circle!" Varthlokkur thundered. "Now! Now! Hurry!"
The monster whipped away too swiftly for the eye to follow.
Visigodred said, "Something is coming down the Gap. Creatures this world has never before seen. The ones Marco said turned Argon's war around. We can't stop them."
"We will!" Varthlokkur snapped. "The Unborn will! We have to." He, Visigodred, and Mist staggered. "The Power!" they gasped.
"Clear the parapet," Varthlokkur groaned, handling it more easily than the others. "We need it."
Kierle the Ancient arrived, followed by the Thingand Stojan Dusan. Radeachar rocketed in with The Egg of God. Ragnarson hustled his people downstairs.
He didn't want to stay either. There was little he dreaded so much as a wizard's war. But his pride wouldn't let him turtle himself.
Screams erupted from the canyon.
"They're here. The savan dalage" said Visigodred. "Varth-lokkur. Unleash the Unborn before they gut us." He threw his hands overhead, chanted. A light-spear stabbed from his cupped hands. He moved them as though he were directing a mirror telegrapher. The earth glowed where the light fell. "Too weak," he gasped.
Here, there, Ragnarson glimpsed the invaders. Some were tall, humanoid, fanged and clawed, like the trolls of Trolledyn-gian legends. Some were squat reptilian things that walked like men. Some slithered and crawled. Among them were a hundred or so tall men who bore ordinary weapons. They reminded him of Badalamen.
And there was something more. Something shapeless, something which avoided light like death itself.
Radeacher swooped and seized one, soared into the night. Ragnarson saw an ill-defined mass wriggling against the stars.
"Savan dalage," Visigodred repeated. "They can't be killed."
Radeachar departed at an incredible speed.
"He'll haul it so far away it'll take months to get back," Varthlokkur said.
"How many?" Ragnarson asked.
"Ten. Fifteen. Be quiet. It begins."
A golden glow began growing up the Gap.
All the Circle had arrived. They babbled softly, in their extremity even welcoming Mist to their all-male club. This was no time for masculine prerogatives. Their lives and souls were on the gaming table.
Radeachar reappeared, undertook another deportation.
Ragnarson briefly retreated to the floor below, where a half dozen messengers clamored for his attention.
His formations were shambled. His captains wanted orders. The troops were about to panic.
"Stand fast," he told them. "Just hang on. Our wizards are at work."
Back on the parapet he found the human sorcerers all imitating Visigodred, using light to herd the savan dalage.
The Egg, Thing, and Zindahjira concentrated on the remaining monsters.
"The men-things," Zindahjira boomed. "They're immune to the Power."
Ragnarson remembered Badalamen's indifference to Radea-char.
"They're human," he observed. "Sword and spear will stop them."
True. His men were doing so. But, like Badalamen, the creatures were incredible fighters, as far beyond the ordinary soldier of Shinsan as he was beyond most westerners.
"Arrows!" he thundered from the parapet. "Get the bowmen over there!" No one heard. He ducked downstairs to the messengers.
The struggle wore a new face when he returned. The Tervola had unleashed a sorcery of their own.
At first he believed it the monster O Shing had raised during
First Baxendala. The Gosik of Aubuchon. But this became a burning whirlwind with eyes.
Mist responded as she had then. A golden halo formed in the night. Within its confines an emerald sky appeared. From that a vast, hideous face leered. Talons gripped the insides of the circle.
The halo spun, descended. The ugly face opened a gross mouth, began biting.