The preceptors of the Four Orders gathered around Patriarch Bergsten to consider options. ‘They’re members of our own faith,’ Bergsten told them. ‘Our disagreements with them lie in the area of Church Government, not in the substance of our common beliefs. Those matters aren’t settled on the battlefield, so I don’t want too many of those people killed.’

‘I don’t see much danger of that, your Grace,’ Preceptor Abriel said.

‘They outnumber us about two to one, Lord Abriel,’ Sir Heldin pointed out.

‘One charge should even things out, Heldin,’ Abriel replied. ‘Those people are amateurs, enthusiastic but untrained, and about half of them are only armed with pitchforks. If we all drop our visors, level our lances and charge them en masse, most of them will still be running a week from now.’

And that was the last mistake the venerable Lord Abriel was ever to make. The mounted knights fanned out with crisp precision to form up on a broad front stretching across the entire valley. Rank after rank of Cyrinics, Pandions, Genidians, and Alciones, all clad in steel and mounted on belligerent horses, lined up in what was probably one of the more intimidating displays of organized unfriendliness in the known world.

The preceptors waited in the very center of the front rank as their subalterns formed up the rear ranks and the messengers galloped forward to declare that all was in readiness.

‘That should be enough,’ Komier said impatiently. ‘I don’t think the supply wagons will have to charge too.’ He looked around at his friends. ‘Shall we get started, gentlemen? Let’s show that rabble out there how real soldiers mount an attack.’ He made a curt signal to a hulking Genidian Knight, and the huge blond man blew a shattering blast on his Ogre-horn trumpet.

The front rank of the knights clapped down their visors and spurred their horses forward. The perfectly disciplined knights and horses galloped forward in an absolutely straight line like a moving wall of steel.

Midway through the charge the forest of upraised lances came down like a breaking wave, and the defections in the opposing army began. The ill-trained serfs and peasants broke and ran, throwing away their weapons and squealing in terror. Here and there were some better-trained units that held their ground, but the flight of their allies from either side left their flanks dangerously exposed.

The knights struck those few units with a great, resounding crash. Once more Abriel felt the old exulting satisfaction of battle. His lance shattered against a hastily raised shield, and he discarded the broken weapon and drew his sword. He looked around and saw that there were other forces massed behind the wall of peasants that had concealed them from view, and that army was like none Abriel had ever seen before. The soldiers were huge, larger than even the Thalesians. They wore breastplates and mail, but their cuirasses were more closely moulded to their bodies than was normal. Every muscle seemed starkly outlined under the gleaming steel. Their helmets were exotic steel recreations of the heads of improbable beasts, and they did not have visors as such but steel masks instead, masks which had been sculpted to bear individualized features, the features, Abriel thought, of the warriors who wore them. The Cyrinic Preceptor was suddenly chilled. The features the masks revealed were not human.

There was a strange domed leather tent in the center of that inhuman army, a ribbed, glossy black tent of gigantic dimensions.

But then it moved, opening, spreading wide – two great wings, curved and batlike. And then, rising up from under the shelter of those wings, was a being huge beyond imagining, a creature of total darkness with a head shaped like an inverted wedge and with flaring, pointed ears. Two slitted eyes blazed in that awful absence of a face, and two enormous arms stretched forth hungrily. Lightning seethed beneath the glossy black skin, and the earth upon which the creature stood smoked and burned.

Abriel was strangely calm. He lifted his visor to look full into the face of Hell. ‘At last,’ he murmured, ‘a fitting opponent,’ And then he clapped his visor down again, drew his warlike shield before his body, and raised the sword he had carried with honor for over half a century. His unpalsied hand brandished the sword at the enormity still rising before him. ‘For God and Arcium!’ he roared his defiance, set himself, and charged directly into obliteration.

Chapter 8

To say that Edaemus was offended would be the grossest of understatements. The blur of white light that was the God of the Delphae was tinged around the edges with flickers of reddish orange, and the dusting of snow that covered the ground in the little swale above the valley of the Delphae fumed tendrils of steam as it melted in the heat of his displeasure. ‘No!’ he said adamantly. ‘Absolutely not!’

‘Oh, be reasonable, Cousin,’ Aphrael coaxed. ‘The situation has changed. You’re holding on to something that no longer has any meaning. There might have been some justification for “eternal enmity” before. I’ll grant you that my family didn’t behave very well during the war with the Cyrgai, but that was a long time ago. Clinging to your injured sensibilities now is pure childishness.’

‘How couldst thou, Xanetia?’ Edaemus demanded accusingly. ‘How couldst thou do this thing?’

‘It was in furtherance of our design, Beloved,’ she replied. Sephrenia was more than a little startled by the intensely personal relationship Xanetia had with her God. ‘Thou didst command me to render assistance unto Anakha, and by reason of his love for Sephrenia, I was obliged to reach accommodation with her. Once she and I did breach the wall of enmity which did stand between us and did learn to trust each other, respect and common purpose did soften our customary despite, and all unbidden, love did gently creep in to replace it. In my heart is she now my dear sister.’

That is an abomination! Thou shalt not speak so of this Styric in my presence again!’

‘As it please thee, Beloved,’ she agreed, submissively bowing her head. But then her chin came up, and her inner light glowed more intensely. ‘But will ye, nil ye, I will continue to think so of her in the hidden silence of my heart.’

‘Are you ready to listen, Edaemus?’ Aphrael asked, ‘or would you like to take a century or two to throw a temper-tantrum first?’

‘Thou art pert, Aphrael,’ he accused.

‘Yes, I know. It’s one of the things that makes me so delightful. You do know that Cyrgon’s trying to get his hands on Bhelliom, don’t you? Or have you been so busy playing leap-frog with the stars that you’ve lost track of what’s happening here?’