But shortly after noon, cursing himself, cursing the maggot-eaten soul of Scalvaia d’Astibar who had so nearly killed him nine months ago—and who had weakened him enough, after all, to be killing him now— cursing his Emperor for living too long as a useless, senescent, emaciated shell, Alberico of Barbadior confronted the bleak, pitiless reality that all his gods were indeed leaving him here under the burning sun of this far-off land. As the messages began streaming back from the crumbling front ranks of his army, he began preparing himself, in the way of his people, for death.
Then the miracle happened.
At first, his mind too punishingly battered, he couldn’t even grasp what was taking place. Only that the colossal weight of magic pouring down from the hill was suddenly, inexplicably, lightening. It was a fraction, a half of what it had been only a moment before. Alberico could sustain it. Easily! That level of magic was less than his own, even weakened as he was now. He could even push forward against that, instead of only defending. He could attack! If that was all that Brandin had left, if the Ygrathen had suddenly reached the end of his reserves.
Wildly mind-scanning the valley and the hills around for a clue, Alberico suddenly came upon the third matrix of magic, and abruptly realized—with a glory flowering out of the morning’s ashes in his heart—that the horned god was with him yet after all, and the Night Queen in her riding.
There were wizards of the Palm here, and they were helping him! They hated the Ygrathen as much as he! Somehow, for whatever incomprehensible reason, they were on his side against the man who was King of Ygrath, whatever he might pretend to call himself now.
‘I am winning!’ he shouted to his messengers. ‘Tell the captains at the front, revive their spirits. Tell them I am beating the Ygrathen back!’
He heard sudden glad cries around him. Opened his eyes to see messengers sprinting forward across the valley. He reached out towards those wizards—four or five, he judged, by their strength, perhaps six of them—seeking to merge with their minds and their power.
But in that he was balked. He knew exactly where they were. He could even see where they were—a ridge of land just south of the Ygrathen’s hill—but they would not let him join with them or know who they were. They must still be afraid of what he did to wizards when he found them.
What he did to wizards? He would glory in them! He would give them land and wealth and power, honour here and in Barbadior. Riches beyond their starved, pinched dreams. They would see!
No matter that they did not open to him! It truly mattered not. So long as they stayed, and lent their powers to his defence there was no need to merge. Together they were a match for Brandin. And all they had to do was be a match: Alberico knew he still had more than twice the army in the field that the other had.
But even as hope was pouring back into his soul with these thoughts, he felt the weight beginning to return. Unbelievably, the Ygrathen’s power growing again. Frantically he checked: the wizards on their ridge were still with him. Yet Brandin was still pushing forward. He was so strong! So accursedly, unimaginably strong. Even against all of them he was exerting his might, tapping deeper into his wellspring of sorcery. How deep could he go? How much more did he have?
Alberico realized, the knowledge like ice amid the inferno of war, the savage heat of the day, that he had no idea. None at all. Which left him only the one course. The only one he’d ever had from the moment the battle had begun.
He closed his eyes again, the better to focus and concentrate, and he set himself, with all the power in him, to resist again. To resist, to hold, to keep the wall intact.
‘By the seven sisters of the god!’ Rhamanus swore passionately. ‘They are regaining the ground they lost!’
‘Something has happened,’ Brandin rasped in the same moment. They had erected a canopy above him for shade and had brought a chair for him to sit upon. He was standing though—one hand on the back of the chair for support at times—the better to look down on the course of battle below.
Dianora was standing close to him, in case he needed her, for water or comfort, for anything at all that she could give, but she was trying not to look down. She didn’t want to see any more men die. About the screaming in the valley she could do nothing though, and every cry below seemed to fly upward and sheath itself in her like a knife made of sound and human agony.
Had it been like this by the Deisa when her father died? Had he screamed so with his own mortal wound, seeing his life’s blood leave him, not to be held back, staining the river red? Had he died in this kind of pain under the vengeful blades of Brandin’s men?
It was her own fault, this sickness rising. She should not be here. She should have known what images war would unleash in her. She felt physically ill: from the heat, the sounds, she could actually smell the carnage below.
‘Something has happened,’ Brandin said again, and with his voice a clarity came back into the maelstrom of the world. She was here and he was the reason why, and if the others could not, Dianora who knew him so well could hear a new note in his voice, a marginal clue to the strain he was enduring. She walked quickly away and then back, a beaker
