'Modahl! Grandfather! I wondered if you had been successful!'

Quickly the leaders of the Falthan army gathered around. Those not of Instruere had heard Modahl had apparently returned from the dead, and all marvelled anew at his appearance here in the Nagorj. They had also heard he was Leith's father's father, and now the two were together, young and old, the resemblance was plain. The set of their eyes, the shape of their jaws, the stubborn thinness of their mouths.

It must be true! And if it was true that he lived, perhaps it was also true that he commanded the Sna Vazthan army.

'Have you brought us soldiers?' asked Wiusago bluntly. His fellow commanders leaned forward eagerly.

'The entire Sna Vazthan army march behind me,' he replied in his deep voice. 'We number thirty thousand.'

Thirty thousand? Could it be? The numbers flashed through Leith's head: nearly one hundred thousand strong!

'I offer my regret that we could not leave any earlier, but certain elements at court tried to impede our departure,' said Modahl. 'It seems the Destroyer anticipated this stroke against him, and so set snares to prevent our army leaving at all, or at least delay its departure. A number of courtiers we thought were loyal have lost their lives, but they partly succeeded: we would have been entrenched at the Gap by now if it were not for their interference.'

'But here you are!' Leith cried, taking his grandfather's hand and beaming all around him.

'And we might yet hold the Gap against our enemy!'

The old man pursed his lips as he gazed on his grandson. As to that, we have reports that the Bhrudwan army is a few days east of the Gap. Exactly how far we cannot be sure, as our scouts had to return into the teeth of this storm. Two days, possibly three. We may not make it in time.'

'Then we must ride on,' growled Leith. 'We cannot afford to wait.'

'First you must meet my monarch,' Modahl replied with slow dignity. 'She cannot merely join your army. Sna Vaztha must be acknowledged.'

From the rear of the gathered leaders a voice rang out. 'Not like Straux! My army was stripped from me by my liege lord' - he made the title sound like a curse - 'and I am little more than his prisoner!' The King of Straux pushed his way through the generals and advisers, his snarling face a counterpoint to the serenity of the Sna Vazthan general.

'My queen was never a traitor to Faltha,' Modahl replied simply. 'Be thankful you were not the monarch of Sna Vaztha, for by now your royal remains would be decorating the Inmennost Gate.'

'Why should we have anything to do with Sna Vazthans?' the King of Straux persisted. 'They invaded and destroyed Haum, one of the Sixteen, and would eat us all up if we gave them a chance. We are employing a bear to drive out a rat!'

A pale shape beside Modahl drew a couple of steps closer, and lowered its travelling hood.

'This bear would happily take care of any rats the Arrow-bearer identifies for it,' came a woman's voice, and it was low, smooth as silk, but cold as ice. 'We seek nothing other than to protect ourselves, and all of Faltha, from the Bhrudwans.' She turned her large, flint-hard eyes on the King of Straux, who quailed at her stare. 'Who are you seeking to protect?'

Modahl spoke into the frigid silence that had formed between the two monarchs. 'Leith Mahnumsen, Bearer of the Jugom Ark and ruler of Instruere, may 1 present to you the Ice Queen of Sna Vaztha, the Spear of the North, the Diamond of her people, and the Mistress of our hearts.' Leith saw a swift look pass between Modahl and the queen, but could not interpret it. She held out her hand. Out of her view, Modahl motioned for him to take it in his; he did so, and raised it to his lips in imitation of his grandfather's gesture.

A coronet of gold nestled on her brow, set above an oval face, the palest Leith had ever seen.

Unless it was painted to be white, Leith could believe her to have no warming blood at all. Yet her lips were full red, and her eyes warm, sparkling with something that faded even as he began to speak. Her hair was done in ringlets, gathered away from her neck.

Peeping from under her travelling cloak was a jewel-encrusted robe. His cheeks coloured.

Wasn't the Sna Vazthan queen supposed to be old? Hadn't she acceded to the throne at least twenty years ago?

'Your majesty, 1 bid you welcome to the Army of Faltha,' he replied, as formally as his under-utilised Master of Protocol could have desired. 'You are a guest as long as you wish to remain.

My holding the Jugom Ark does not in any way imply my leadership over either you or your army.'

'Oh, but it does,' she replied coolly. 'And so it should. How could a mere queen take precedence over he who has been prophesied for a thousand years?' She laughed at his startled expression, the tinkling of ice falling from tree limbs. 'We might be many months' journey from the Great City of Instruere, but we are not provincials. We remember what makes us First Men. I make obeisance before the Fire of Life,' she said, and bowed to the Jugom Ark.

Leith's cheeks reddened again.

'Will you ride with us?' Leith asked, blood singing in his ears. 'We still have a few leagues to travel before we can make camp.'

'Very well,' she replied, and smiled. 'We must leave the road here and strike out eastwards.

Will you allow certain of my scouts to lead you? They were raised in the Nagorj and know its ways.'

People were raised here? Leith looked about him, at the dust overlaying the grey rock. Where would they live? How could they survive?

He nodded his assent to her in the way a king would acknowledge an ally, graciously and with a degree of condescension, occasioning another unspoken exchange between the queen and the commander of her army. He is everything you said he was, Leith imagined she said. And his expression replied: nevertheless, he will do well.

The Bhrudwan army made camp amidst a broad stonefield. In many places the ground was arranged in regular patterns, a courtyard paved for a giant, but Stella could not imagine the effort the stone patterning must have taken. Surely it had not been done by humans? The ground radiated cold. Despite the trappings of her white cage, the girl from northern Firanes could feel the chill seeping into her skin.

But she was given little time to concern herself with stone patterns or the temperature. For the first time she had been commanded to the Destroyer's own tent, and she feared what she might find there. She had no illusions as to what awaited her, but had been able to hold the terror at arm's length as long as it was somewhere in the future. Now, however, the future had arrived.

'Welcome, Stella,' the Undying Man said pleasantly, as to a neighbour who had accepted an invitation to tea. 'Please, take a seat.' He indicated a leather-covered couch - which must have been hauled all the way here by some lackey, Stella reminded herself. Don't be seduced by his cleverness. Resist him!

He was appallingly hard to resist. After having demonstrated such unremitting cruelty, she could not help but be relieved when he granted the smallest of kindnesses. So she found herself taking a warm flask from him, and eating a sweet of some sort, before her resolution had time to harden.

A short, weather-beaten man came into the tent. He hadn't announced his entry, so must have been expected. He muttered a few words to the Destroyer, who nodded; then the man withdrew.

'Forgive me a moment, pretty one,' the Lord of Bhrudwo said, spreading his hands. 'I have some business that must be attended to. You may wait for mein the annexe.'

Somewhat dazed, Stella went where he indicated, opening a small flap and taking a seat on a cane chair. The room was unfurnished save for her chair, a small pallet and an exquisite woven rug spread across the cold stone ground. It took her several moments to realise she sat in his bedroom.

Strange noises came from the main part of the tent. A cat? No, it sounded more like a wounded bird. She drew the flap aside .. .

It was a man - no, a boy. He lay face-up on the floor, back arched, limbs splayed out at unnatural angles, his matted ginger hair partly obscuring the many wounds on his face and scalp. This boy was the source of the noises she had heard.

'Were your forces still on the Sna Vazthan road when you left them?' asked the Destroyer in a voice no different to that which he had used on Stella. She could feel the compulsion in his words. The boy screwed his eyes closed and buried his hands in the rug, but words leaked out through clenched teeth: 'Yes . . . yes . . . still on . . . road . . .'

The grey-cloaked man bent over his victim. 'You've spied on us before. Did you report our position to your commanders?'

Grunts and squeaks came from the tortured throat, but the head nodded. Stella held her breath.

'You will return to the boy with the bright arrow and tell him we are holed up and unmoving, waiting out this windstorm. You will advise him that if he hurries he can be first to the Gap with his army.' The compulsion was unbreakable. Stella could feel the words burning themselves into her mind, and she was not the intended recipient. 'You will forget all about our meeting and the pain it has caused you. You believe you fell from your horse up in the rocks from where you spied upon us, and this fall caused your wounds.' He raised his hand. The boy screamed raggedly until Stella thought his throat must burst asunder, then swooned into unconsciousness.

The Destroyer turned to the annexe, and showed no surprise that Stella was watching. 'There are matters arising from this incident that I must see to. You will return to your litter and await my attendance on you.'

A few moments later Stella found herself stumbling unaccompanied across the stony ground, her feet steering her towards her hated silken home, without the slightest thought of resisting his awful compulsion. His power lasted until she drew the curtains closed, then she collapsed on to her bed, sobbing uncontrollably, the powerless plaything of a madman.

On the morning of the penultimate day the storm began to blow itself out, the sand settled from the air and Leith obtained his first look at their goal. Clouds like wet wool draped themselves over high mountains to the left and the right, but the way ahead remained clear, a narrow opening between the ranges with hazy greyness beyond. Still the wind blew from the west, driving them on; Kurr laconically described it as Bhrudwo sucking at them, occasioning a ragged laugh from the generals nearby.

'How far?' asked Leith, his Arrow blazing in anticipation. Beside him, the newly-returned scout rubbed the bandage on his head.

'A day and a half, lord,' he said quietly. 'If we hurry, we should be in the Gap by noon tomorrow, a full day ahead of our foe.'

'Thank you,' said Leith, genuinely grateful for the risks so many were taking in his name.

'Why don't you go and seek further treatment?'

'My wounds have been salved, my lord, but the doctors could do nothing for my headache.' A vein throbbed in his forehead as he spoke. 'Never have I been thrown from a horse that has been broken. I must have hit my head on a rock.'

Aware of the embarrassment this admission must have cost the red-haired lad, Leith waved him away and bade him find rest on one of the wagons.

Now the race entered its final frantic hours. The message flashed back through the ranks, rousing the late abed and setting the army marching a full half-hour earlier than usual. One or two sections of the vast army raised their voices in song, encouraging their fellows to expend their remaining energy. 'It does not matter what condition we arrive in, as long as we are the first there,' they told each other, and by mid-morning the officers and captains could do nothing to prevent the various factions competing against each other. Indeed, many of them condoned it. At the head of the army the generals despaired, and messages were passed seeking a more moderate pace but were misunderstood or simply not heeded. This was their one chance, after all, to establish a superior position, and every soldier knew how important that was. It might mean the difference between defeat and victory, life and death. By nightfall the chaos was complete. The army was mixed beyond sorting, and the ill and the lame lagged many leagues behind.

The Company spent the night talking with their strategists. The few men who had been through the Gap were summoned, and their wisdom compared. Leith thought of his father: Mahnum had been this way not much more than a year ago. But to his disappointment, his father could not be found. He was back with the wagons, some said. The young lord of the Falthan army forced down his unease, and concentrated on the advice being offered.

The floor of the Gap was paved with rough, stony ground, he was told. There were many places to hide an army, the best hidden under the banks of the River Aleinus, now incised in a stone valley to the north, and on the lower slopes of the mountains to the south. If they could occupy these vantages they could rush down upon their foe in a massive ambush that might end the conflict then and there. Some warned against this strategy as it involved dividing their forces, which was considered poor tactics, and others counselled against hiding on the slopes in case the weather turned to snow, trapping them there. On into the night the debate raged, but early on Leith made up his mind. The risk was worth it. Finally a consensus was reached.

The majority of commanders agreed with Leith, to his relief. Instructions were prepared and runners sent to alert the hundreds of captains needed to implement their strategy. One bold strike, Leith thought, and if our luck holds we break the Bhrudwans here on the Nagorj.

Early next morning the white curtain twitched open, and Stella drew her sheets around her, the only defence she could mount. But it was not the Destroyer who entered her litter. She gasped with genuine delight. Her visitor was the round-faced eunuch, back after more than a week away. Though, as she looked more closely, he appeared to have been ill. His skin had a grey cast, and hung in folds from his cheeks and neck. 'What has happened to you?'

she asked him.

He turned his eyes on her, twin vortices of despair, then opened his mouth. For a moment Stella did not understand. His throat worked up and down, and tears started from his sad eyes.

Then she looked more closely, and her hands went to her face in shock. His tongue. Most High, O Most High! His tongue had been cut out.

Tongues wagged freely as the Falthan leaders directed their troops. The sun had risen on a clear sky, blue, remote and cold, and the breath of man and horse steamed in a crackling frost.

The clouds had drawn back from the hills, exposing tall, snowcloaked spires, nameless peaks that together formed a forbidding wall stretching inward from the horizon to the left and the right, offering no way through other than the Gap. It was a scene of delicate beauty, like a glass sculpture.

'Not a place to fight a war, is it?' Modahl stood beside his grandson as all around them men from Instruere prepared for the final march. 'We've been lucky with the weather so far, but many of your men are not equipped for a northern winter. Let us pray the conflict is not prolonged, or you will be forced to spend your soldiers like fretas.'

Leith smiled at the old man. 'Is the queen well?' he asked shyly. The grizzled head bobbed in reply.

'Now for it, then,' said the young man to his grandfather. 'A journey begun nearly a year ago finishes here today. I just hope I know enough swordplay to keep alive.'

Modahl peered at him in surprise. 'Don't you know how to use the Arrow as a weapon? It's the talk of the camp: everyone expects you to wield that thing like a hero of legend. How can you not know?'

'He - I have spoken with someone who knows about the Jugom Ark,' he said, unwilling to betray his ambivalence about the bright thing in his hand. 'But he says there are limits to what I can do with it. Phemanderac promised to teach me more, but 1 haven't seen him in many days. I don't know what's happened to him.'

'Who have you seen?' the old man asked gently. 'Have you spoken to your friends? Your family?'

'Not you as well!' Leith growled. 'Why does everyone think my brother is more important than the coming battle? Can't I get on with the planning for this war?'

'Leith, I didn't say anything abouta"'

'And what of you?' All of Leith's tension on this day of days seemed to boil up to the surface.

'Isn't there someone you should be talking to? Have you even tried to speak to my father?' He could tell from the hurt on the old man's face that he had scored a telling blow, but he could summon up no joy at the sight.

The final march began, but the feet of the army did not carry them forward with the same swiftness as the previous day. Heads were raised, staring at the ever-widening opening in the mountain wall ahead of them, and many a man or horse stumbled on the stony ground as a result. The land became more and more broken, gentle slopes giving way to knife-edged ridges that had to be navigated around; then the badlands gave way to a grey rock plain. The Gap seemed so close in the clear morning air, but still tantalisingly far away.

Just before noon the vanguard of the Falthan army emerged from behind a ridge and found themselves at the foot of a shallow talus slope. Ahead lay the Gap, perhaps a third of a league away. Cheering broke out from those on horseback... but the sound died away to an echo, then to nothing.

Boiling down from the head of the slope came hundreds, thousands of small shapes, leaping lightly over the broken rocks, taking up positions of seeming impregnability all across the incline. Within moments it seemed that the whole slope seethed with them, as though someone had kicked over an ant's nest.

Emptied of all emotion, wrung out like a dirty cloth, devastated beyond belief, Leith sat on his horse and cried bitter tears as he watched the Bhrudwan army pour through the Gap and into Faltha.

CHAPTER 13.

THE SIEGE OF SKULL ROCK.

DOWN THE SLOPE POURED the Bhrudwan army, in almost complete silence. No yelling, no attempt to intimidate the Falthans. The Destroyer's army possessed a supernatural calmness, as if the Bhrudwans had practised for months for this moment, as if their victory was beyond doubt. As if they knew something. Their silence intimidated the Falthans more than any amount of screaming would have.

We've been tricked, Leith realised, lured here like mice to a trap. Somehow the Bhrudwans had known their army would arrive at the Gap first. How long had they been watching Leith struggling to form an army? Had spies reported on Falthan progress ever since his army left Instruere? Had they timed their own arrival to maximise Falthan exhaustion and despair? If we had known we would lose the race, we would have taken the journey much more carefully. The weight of over eight thousand dead settled even more heavily on Leith's shoulders, as it became clear they had died in vain. Had the misguidance of the Favonian landsman been a mistake, as his generals all assumed, or something more sinister?

'Get back from the slope!' a voice screamed in his ear, but it came to him as the crashing of waves on the shore, a noise without any meaning. 'They can roll rocks down on us! Back!

Back to the plains!'

'I don't want to retreat,' Leith mumbled, his hands and feet numb, his shocked mind a blur. It was cold, so cold.

'Bring the Arrow-bearer! Take his bridle! We can't stay here a moment longer!'

Other voices, equally frantic, joined the shouting. 'Sound the retreat!' 'Send word to the wagons!' 'No! We must find high ground!' 'Look to the Arrow-bearer!'

The rattle of pebbles drew Leith's misting eyes back to the stony slope. The nearest Bhrudwan was no more than a minute's hard run from him, and still more warriors surged into view over the crown of the slope. His gaze lingered on the brown-cloaked warriors, and he finally realised in the pit of his soul that they were indeed real, not a figment of his father's imagination. The journey had been so long, he had forgotten that one day it would have an end. The Bhrudwans were real, they held the Gap, and their swords were out.

'Look down there,' said the Destroyer, his one hand gripping Stella's shoulder, fingers biting into her flesh. 'Witness the fruition of my plans!'

'I can see twice as many Falthans as Bhrudwans,' she spat back at him, heedless of the punishment she might receive. 'They may have prepared you a trap of their own.'

He laughed cruelly, a mockery of her brave words. 'They might have a hundred thousand fools on the field of battle, but they are untrained, exhausted by their hurried journey here.

Dispirited, having lost the race to the Gap. My warriors are hungry for victory, while theirs are desperate to avoid defeat. They will not avoid it, this 1 prophesy. And you, my little tigress, will watch them die.'

He took his hand from her shoulder and something within her relaxed a little, as the trapped fly might relax when the spider turns his attention towards another victim in his web. 'Set the blue fire,' he commanded his servants. 'I must have contact with the Maghdi Dasht.'

Stella leaned out from their perch on top of a rocky outcrop, trying to see what happened below. Anything to distract her from the spider beside her. The Falthans were already in retreat, drawing back from the Bhrudwan advance even before they had engaged with their enemy, but even so the two armies were still closing. From where she stood the Falthans looked disorganised, the distant wagons still pressing forwards while the vanguard had turned back. The Bhrudwans pressed on unhurriedly.

It could all end right here, today. And with that chilling thought, she realised just how much she depended on a Falthan victory.

Leith came to himself. This was his army, and not all was yet lost. Perhaps, just perhaps, a victory won here today might lay eight thousand icy spectres to rest. His army's headlong retreat had nearly won them free of the treacherous, broken ground at the base of the slope.

Before them lay a wide plain packed with Falthan soldiers, some unsheathing their swords, others nocking arrows to their bows. Horsemen, pikemen, footsoldiers, all competent, all ready to fight. The sight settled his nerves. Leith lifted the Arrow high and his army roared in response to the flash of flame.