die!'
At this, an irresistible impulse caught hold of the Warmark; frustration and rage boiled up in him. Without warning, he leaped onto the wall. He braced his feet to steady himself, and raised his fists defiantly. “Fleshharrower!” he shouted. “Vermin! I am Warmark Hile Troy! I command here! I spit in your face, Raver! You're only a slave! And your master is only a slave! He's a slave to hunger, and he gnaws his worthlessness like an old bone. Go back! Leave the Land! We're free people. Despair has no power over us. But I'll teach you despair if you dare to fight me!”
Fleshharrower snapped an order. A dozen bowstrings thrummed; shafts flew past Troy's head as Ruel snatched him down from the wall. Troy stumbled as he landed, but Ruel upheld him. When the Warmark regained his balance, Mhoram said, “You took a grave risk. What have you gained?”
“I've made him mad,” Troy replied unsteadily. “This has got to be done right, and I'm going to do it. The madder he gets, the better off we are.”
“Are you so certain of what he will do?”
“Yes.” Troy felt an odd confidence, a conviction that he would not be proved wrong until the end.
'He's already doing it he's stopped. If he's mad enough, he'll attack us first himself. His army will stay stopped. That's what we want.'
“Then I believe that you have succeeded,” Lord Callindrill inserted quietly. He was gazing over the wall as he spoke. Mhoram and Troy joined him, and saw what he meant.
Fleshharrower had retreated until there was a flat space of ground between himself and the hill. Around him, the army shifted. Several thousand ur-viles moved to form wedges with their loremasters poised on both sides of the space. There they waited while the Giant-Raver marked out a wide circle in the dirt, using the tip of one of the loremaster's staves. Then Fleshharrower ordered all but the ur-viles away from the circle.
When the space was cleared, the loremasters began their work.
Chanting in arhythmic unison like a mesmerized chorus of dogs, the ur-viles bent their might forward, into the hands of their loremasters. The loremasters thrust the points of their staves into the rim of Fleshharrower's circle, and began to rock the irons slowly back and forth.
A low buzzing noise became audible. The ur-viles were singing in their own roynish tongue, and their song made the flat, hard ground vibrate. Slowly, the buzz scaled upward, as if a swarm of huge, mad bees were imprisoned in the dirt. And the earth in the circle began to pulse visibly. A change like an increase of heat came over the rock and soil; hot, red gleams played through the circle erratically, and its surface seethed. The buzz became fiercer, sharper.
The process was slow, but its horrible fascination made it seem swift to the onlookers. As daylight started to fall out of the stricken sky, the buzz replaced it like a cry of pain from the ground itself. The Raver's circle throbbed and boiled as if the dirt within it were molten.
The sound tormented Troy; it clawed at his ears, crawled like lice over his flesh. Sweat slicked his eyeless brows. For a time, he feared that he would be compelled to scream. But at last the cry scaled past the range of his senses. He was able to turn away, rest briefly.
When he looked back toward the circle, he found that the ur-viles had withdrawn from it. Fleshharrower stood there alone. A demonic look clenched his face as he stared into the hot, red, boiling soil.
In his hands, he held one of the loremasters. It gibbered fearfully, clung to its stave, but it could not break his grip.
Laughing, Fleshharrower lifted the loremaster over his head and hurled it into the circle. As it hit the ground, its scream died in a flash of fire. Only its stave remained, slowly melting on the surface.
As the sun set, Fleshharrower began using his fragment of the Stone to reshape the molten iron, forge it into something new.
Softly, as if he feared that the Giant-Raver might hear him, Troy asked the Lords, “What's this for? What's he doing?”
“He makes a tool,” Mhoram whispered, “some means to increase or concentrate his power.”
The implications of that gave Troy a feeling of grim gratification. His strategy was justified at least to the extent that the main body of the Warward would be spared this particular attack. But he knew that such justification was not enough. His final play lay like a dead weight in his stomach. He expected to lose command of the Warward as soon as he revealed it; it would appall the warriors so much that they would rebel. After all his promises of victory, he felt like a false prophet. Yet his plan was the Warward's only hope, the Land's only hope.
He prayed that Lord Mhoram would be equal to it.
With the sunset, his sight failed. He was forced to rely on Mhoram to report the Raver's progress. In the darkness, he felt trapped, bereft of command. All that he could see was the amorphous, dull glow of the liquid earth. Occasionally, he made out flares and flashes of lurid green across the red, but they meant nothing to him. His only consolation lay in the fact that Fleshharrower's preparations were consuming time.
Along the wall on both sides of him, First Haft Amorine's Eoward kept watch over the Raver's labours. No one slept; the poised threat of Fleshharrower's army transfixed everyone. Moonrise did not ease the blackness; the dark of the moon was only three nights away. But the Raver's forge-work was bright enough to pale the stars.
During the whole long watch, Fleshharrower never left his molten circle. Sometime after midnight, he retrieved his newly made sceptre, and cooled it by waving it in a shower of sparks over his head. Then he affixed his fragment of the Stone to its end. But when that was done, he remained by the circle. As night waned toward day, he gestured and sang over the molten stone, weaving incantations out of its hot power. It lit his movements luridly, and the Stone flashed across it at intervals, giving green glimpses of his malice.
But this was indistinct to Troy. He clung to his hope. In the darkness, his calculations were the only reality left to him, and he recited them like counters against the night. When the first slit of dawn touched him from the east, he felt a kind of elation.
Softly, he asked for Amorine.
“Warmark.” She was right beside him.
“Amorine, listen. That monster has made his mistake-he's wasted too much time. Now we're going to make him pay for it. Get the warriors out of here. Send them after the Warward. Whatever happens, that Giant won't get as many of us as he thinks. Just keep one warrior for every good horse we have”
“Perhaps all should depart now,” she replied, “before the Raver attacks.”
Troy grinned at the idea. He could imagine Fleshharrower's fury if the Giant's attack found Doriendor Corishev empty. But he knew that he had not yet gained enough time. He answered, “I want to squeeze another half day out of him. With the Bloodguard and a couple hundred warriors, we'll be able to do it. Now get going.”
“Yes, Warmark.” She left his side at once, and soon he could hear most of the warriors withdrawing. He gripped the wall again, and stared away into the sunrise, waiting for sight.
Shortly, he became aware that the dry breeze out of the south was stiffening.
Then the haze faded from his mind. First he became able to see the ruined wall, then the hillside; finally he caught sight of the waiting army.
It had not moved during the night.
It did not need to move.
Fleshharrower still stood beside his circle. The fire in the ground had died, but before it failed, he had used it to wrap himself in a shimmering, translucent cocoon of power. Within the power, he was as erect as an icon. He held his sceptre rigidly above his head; he did not move; he made no sound. But when the sunlight touched him, the wind leaped suddenly into a hard blow like a violent exhalation through the teeth of the Desert. And it increased in ragged gusts like the leading edge of a sirocco.
Then a low cry from one of the warriors pulled Troy's attention away from Fleshharrower. Turning his head, he looked down the throat of the mounting gale.
From the southeast, where the Southron Range met the Grey Desert, a tornado came rushing toward Doriendor Corishev. Its undulating shaft ploughed straight across the Wastes.
It conveyed such an impression of might that several moments passed before Troy realized it was not the kind of whirlwind he understood.
It brought no rain or clouds with it; it was as dry as the Desert. And it carried no dust or sand; it was as clean as empty air. It should not have been visible at all. But its sheer force made it palpable to Troy's sight. He
