'Turn!' came a cry from somewhere nearby. 'Turn and face!' It was Jethart. Leith swung his horse around to face the Bhrudwans, and suddenly a great exhilaration rose within him. Death. Death comes running towards us! His heart hammered painfully at his ribcage. For a wild moment he went for his sword, desperate to strike a blow, then remem-bered the Jugom Ark. No one will be able to stand against me while I have this!

The first Bhrudwans came leaping over the last of the rocks and out on to the level ground.

Just as they closed within reach, a volley of arrows arced down from behind them and thudded into the Falthans, who instinctively jerked their shields up to cover themselves. In many cases this proved fatal, as the Bhrudwans drove in with swords and pikes. Piercing death from above and ahead.

Leith endured a dreadful thirty seconds as the fighters directly in front of him absorbed the initial impact of the Bhrudwan assault. His hope that the first line of defence would hold them evaporated along with his men, as they melted away in the face of fierce swordplay.

There had been some talk about where he should be positioned when the battle began. Some of his generals had argued that he was too valuable to risk on the front line, while others, obviously in awe of the Arrow, saw his value to the morale of the Falthan fighters as outweighing any risk. But there had been little talk of it in the past week during the punishing sprint across the Nagorj, when their hopes of taking the Gap had been so high. Suddenly Leith felt awkward and out of place, and wondered where he should be: he spun around but couldn't see any of his friends. None of the Company, none of his family, and only a few of his generals. Up until now he had gone into battle with the Company at his side. What was he to do now? Where was he to go?

The Bhrudwans pressed closer. Leith saw a Falthan nearby go down screaming with an arrow in his eye. His anger kindled, he raised the Arrow again and strode forward. His soldiers gave way before the fierceness of the blaze, and a path opened up to the Bhrudwan lines. From somewhere behind came the sound of his name, calling him back, but he ignored it. Time to measure the worth of this weapon, he decided.

Down came a volley of arrows, clattering off the shields of the Falthans - those fortunate enough to be carrying shields. Others cried in pain as they were struck. But not Leith: no arrows penetrated the bright flame of his own Arrow. In front of him men in brown cloaks rushed forward, then threw spears, twenty spears or more all aimed at him. They vanished in a crackle of flame, the spearheads falling hot to the ground. The Bhrudwans fled faster than they had advanced. Heartened, his men came up behind him. 'Follow!' he cried. 'Burn the enemy!'

'Burn them! Burn the enemy!' The cry echoed around the Gap. Leith pointed the Arrow, and willed flame: a jet of pure fire spat across the space between him and the fleeing Bhrudwans and enveloped a dozen or more browncloaks. A fierce yell erupted from behind him as the Falthans watched, exultant.

But their joy turned to terror as the flame winked out, revealing the Bhrudwans unscathed.

Leith had only a moment to realise the truth of Belladonna's warning. The Jugom Ark was no weapon. It could not kill. No, more accurately it could not kill Bhrudwans, could not harm anyone not of the Fire. He could hurt his own people, but not the enemy.

For a moment the Bhrudwans stood frozen, clearly astonished, then with cries of glee they drew their swords and charged the bewildered Falthans. Men reprieved from death by fire, now seized by bloodlust.

Behind Leith all but a few of the bravest of his men fled.

Cries of men and ringing of swords echoed across the valley. As yet only a small fraction of the two armies had engaged. The level ground was perhaps half a league in width, the northern third occupied by the swift-flowing Aleinus River. Phemanderac found a house-sized boulder, an erratic from one of the mountain ranges shaped eerily like a human skull, and clambered up the side of it for a better view of the battle. Surprisingly he felt exhilarated, not frightened, in spite of what Hauthius had written about wars. To watch this one at first-hand would surely earn him a scroll in the Hall of Lore in Dona Mihst.

There! A flash of light right where the armies had come together! Who was he fooling? He had not climbed this rock to watch the battle. He had taken this position to find Leith. Since the night west of Sivithar almost three months ago, Phemanderac had been afraid to speak to the Arrow-bearer, afraid of the feelings he carried for the clever, brave, naive fool who burned his heart like the Fire of Heaven. Jethart of Inch Chanter had taken the philosopher aside and charged him with telling Leith what he needed to know about the Jugom Ark, but he had not been able to do it. Every time he drew near . . . oh, it felt like a handful of hot stones churning in his stomach. He could not do it. And now Leith was out there, unaware of his danger.

Surely he knew? Surely he had been able to work it out? But deep in his heart Phemanderac knew that his stubborn northern friend would not have given it a moment's thought. Hurriedly the tall philosopher shrugged off his harp, placed it gently on the flat top of the boulder, then leaped to the ground.

The crash of the armies coming together shook Farr to the very core. He stood in the front line with the Fodhram, a place of honour given him by his laughing friends. They positioned themselves right in the path of the Bhrudwans clambering down the steepest part of the stone-slope. The advancing warriors, all of whom wore a red sash or bib, carried both sword and spear in addition to their shield; and just before they reached the Falthan lines they cast their spears down on the opposing army. But the Fodhram were ready for them. They knocked the spears away with their long-handled axes, then darted forward and began hewing at the arms and legs of their adversaries. Farr took his sword and, uttering a yell that would have turned every head in the Waybridge Inn back home, threw himself into the fray.

Immediately he was confronted by a squat man jabbing a curved sword in front of him as though poling a boat away from the shore. Farr fell back a step, drawing his man forward, then hacked at the sword hand, crushing his fingers against the hilt. As the man struggled to retrieve his blade, Farr struck at his unprotected neck. With a groan the Bhrudwan fell to the ground bonelessly, where he lay bleeding.

A great relief blossomed within the mountain man's chest. He had been afraid, he admitted to himself, deathly afraid he would find his courage lacking in the battle's fevered heart; afraid his skill would be found wanting; that at the crucial moment he would find himself unable to deliver the killing blow. Exhilarated, he cried out: 'Vinkullen! For Vinkullen and Wira Storrsen!' A few of the Fodhram rushed over to the fey foreigner, picked up his cry and began to lay about themselves in wide strokes, felling men wherever they swung, laughing and shouting all the while.

In the heart of the battle, Farr had come home.

Leith stood alone in the midst of a brown field, facing the oncoming Bhrudwans. His horse lay dead behind him, victim of a stray arrow from somewhere in the Falthan ranks. Sword in his shaking hand, he readied himself to strike and to die. He knew himself no swordsman.

Everything had depended on the cruel, faithless Arrow. 'Why didn't you tell me!' he shouted at the useless object in his hand, but it did not reply.

Everything moved with a terrible sluggishness, as though mired in mud. On came the Bhrudwans, dozens of them, swords raised, spears out, cautious but no longer afraid. A strange silence descended, the noises of battle merging into a kind of background murmur, like a flock of crows in a distant forest. The world narrowed to a few paces.

With a cry a handful of Falthan soldiers burst past him and threw themselves at the Bhrudwans. The ringing of blade on blade echoed in Leith's ears and across the field. One snarling Falthan fell, three Bhrudwans on him, stabbing, thrusting, hacking long after there was no need, making sure of the kill. The other four Falthans formed a circle around Leith, blades out, deflecting the Bhrudwan charge, defending, playing for time. One man grunted as a spear laid open his sword arm.

These people are dying for me! If you ever want me to listen to you again, speak now!

'Don't waste time thinking about what the Arrow can't do,' came the calm voice. 'Think about what it can do.'

Is that all! You owe me more than that! Another of his men was down, a spear in his side, death approaching, but still the man called out warnings to his fellows. Such courage! For a moment he considered letting the Arrow flame out -maybe I could melt their swords and spears - but his own men would burn as they tried to protect him.

'Get back! Get back!' he cried to his men. I can't do anything to hurt the Bhrudwans - not directly, anyway. But they may still think 1 have power. So they might believe their swords and spears are too hot to hold on to. He thrust aside his soldiers, bursting out of their protective ring with a roar. Immediately he let all his anger flow into the Jugom Ark, which went incandescent.

'You may not burn, but your weapons will!' he cried, even as he deflected a sword stroke.

Closer. He pictured in his mind the blades melting, the handles heating - and as he imagined it, so it happened. Illusion.

'Yes. More powerful than reality.' The voice sounded smug. Leith watched the Bhrudwans throw down their weapons in pain, then run from the field.

Leith could not contain himself, 'Look around you!' he shouted at the voice. 'People died to protect me! Why didn't you tell me this before?'

No reply came, unsurprisingly. He could almost hear the voice giving him a Hal-like explanation: I can only work through people. 1 sent my teachers to you, and you rejected every one. I wanted to tell you, but you were not willing to listen. So now people die.

'I don't accept that,' Leith muttered. 'You don't care how many die, as long as you and your precious plan remain safe.'

'We'll see,' said the voice softly, and to Leith's dazed mind it sounded more like a lament than a promise.

As Stella watched, men died. The dun-cloaked Bhrudwans, with their bibs of various colours, rolled right over the greys and dark greens of the Falthan vanguard. There were few Bhrudwans among the fallen.

To her left, near the base of the steepest part of the talus slope, the Falthans appeared to be doing a little better: the Bhrudwans had come down more carefully, and the defenders fought fiercely, with axes, bows and clubs as well as swords. Their numbers included some with bare chests and dark skins, she noted with surprise. But even they were suffering, mostly from the constant rain of arrows from archers carefully positioned at the top of the slope. Out near the centre of the battlefield the situation appeared far worse. Apart from little clusters of capable fighters, most of the leading Falthans fell within moments of their first engagement. Already the Bhrudwans had forced a wedge extending many paces into the lines of their foe, clambering over the bodies of the fallen in their haste to press home their advantage.

Her eye was taken by a flash of light somewhat to the right of the wedge's apex, standing out in the open. She looked more closely: there it was again. A man. No, a boy. Holding a burning torch.

Leith! With the Jugom Ark in his hand!

He had been seen by others far closer than she. A score of Bhrudwans, led by a man in a jet-black cloak, broke away from the wedge and began forcing their way towards the flashing light. Leith! Watch out! She did not realise she had spoken aloud until the figure beside her laughed.

'Don't worry, girl; unless he is very foolish or very unlucky he will not be killed. My Maghdi Dasht have strict orders to capture the bearer of the Jugom Ark alive. Soon he will stand at my right hand, as closely bound to me as you are.' And he laughed again, a hungry sound that seemed to suck light from the very sky. Beside his appalling darkness, the light of the Jugom Ark seemed very small and far away.

Jethart rallied his dismayed generals, calling them to his side. 'It is time to go to your own commands,' he said to them in a calm voice. 'Each of us will be most effective taking charge of his own people.' Without remaining to ensure his sugges-tion was being followed, he set spurs to his horse and made for the losian army, where the battle was thickest.

The man from Inch Chanter reached down and pulled his blade from its scabbard. He had not wanted this heirloom back. It reminded him of the evil times when his people and the Widuz fought incessantly, of the death of his elder son, of the disappearance of his only daughter, of the blood on his hands. Of the red harvest of unthinking deeds committed by a callow youth without regard for the ghosts that would come calling when finally he laid his weapon down.

His broad blade and its jewelled scabbard had hung on the wall of the town's meeting house, a sort of shrine for the young men to gather around, but Jethart had not been back to see it in the years since he'd placed it there. Then the northern stranger Mahnum came to town, fleeing the Widuz, and miraculously restored his daughter to him. Mahnum Modahlsen was a name well known to one who watched the affairs of western Faltha from his humble cottage. The son of Modahl claimed the sword of Jethart for his own and escaped the Widuz under cover of night, in pursuit of his son. A son who now carried the Jugom Ark and was widely proclaimed as the fabled Right Hand of the Most High.

Jethart was inextricably bound in the greatest story of the age, a tale greater by far than the border conflicts in which he had fought with courage and renown; and when a messenger from his old friend Kroptur appeared on his doorstep, suggesting he organise an unlikely iosian alliance and lead them eastwards, he could not remain aloof from it. He couldn't help thinking how foolish his ornate scabbard looked slapping against his age-mottled leg. Was 1 crazy to come all this way? Of course he had been. He should be sitting by the fire with his daughter and grandson. Yet his had been die counsel sought by all the great generals of the land, and now his was the responsibility. Someone had to redeem the situation, someone had to devise new tactics to meet those of their enemy. There would be no opportunity to sit in a comfortable tent and debate at their leisure. He would rally the hsian army, then find a way to turn this rout to their advantage.

Leith shook his head in weariness. He had entertained hopes of being a great warrior, striding across the battlefield, putting the enemy to flight. In his dreams the Destroyer burned as he wielded the fire of his Arrow, while his parents looked on. But quickly he discovered how difficult it was merely to stay alive.

He missed his horse. Down here on his own feet death hunted him from every direction.

Spears, arrows, swords, clubs, axes. He couldn't keep the Arrow burning all the time: the protection it offered depended on his own energy, draining him as well as endangering his soldiers. Leith alternated between periods of euphoria, unable to believe he was still alive, and times of pure fear, ducking roundhouse swishes, dodging stabs, operating on instinct. At one point during that hectic first hour he fought side by side with Perdu. During a brief lull he sent Perdu off to look for a horse and a shield; a mistake, as the fighting redoubled around him after the man left.

There were heroes on the field that afternoon, Falthan and Bhrudwan both. For a while Leith fought alongside a company from Straux, hardened warriors who asked him no questions about his powerless arrow. These men used staff and sword with the grace and efficiency of dancers. 'Left!' one shouted. The company swung left to meet a column of Bhrudwan pikemen, then dealt with them mercilessly. 'Right!' They engaged a troop of big men wielding broadswords, and in moments men from both sides littered the ground. In perhaps ten minutes of savagery they fought themselves to a standstill.

A huge Bhrudwan in an incongruous red bib barked a command, and the Bhrudwans withdrew. Too late for one. A smaller man, also with a red bib, found himself surrounded by Falthan swordsmen. He lurched first this way, then that, but his enemies would not give way.

Spinning on his heels he tried to force a way through, but as he spun his sword was chopped from his hand.

With a wild yell the huge red-bibbed Bhrudwan barrelled into the Falthans, bringing half-a-dozen of them down on top of him. His compatriot dashed through the gap to freedom.

Grunting with exertion, the huge man rose with three men still clinging to him, knives flashing. He made it all the way to his feet before slumping back to the hard earth.

The smaller man, rescued by this valour, shrieked as he saw his commander fall, and ran back into danger.

'Leave him!' Leith cried, realising what had happened. 'Leave the man alone!' Wordlessly the Straux warriors drew back, then turned in search of another battle, leaving the smaller Bhrudwan - a boy, really - to grieve over the body of his father.

And so the afternoon drew on. Leith had glanced up at the wan sun and found it had barely moved from when he'd last checked; then looked again a moment later and found it quartering towards the horizon. The smells and sounds were dreadful. Mass slaughter. Surely even surrender would be better than this. Even Perdu's return with a replacement horse did little to erase his horror.

An unsettling hum cut across the general noise of fighting, gradually resolving into a sort of low chanting, not quite sung, not quite spoken, a guttural rumbling that set Leith's teeth on edge. There! The strange chanting came from the weaponless man in the grey robe, cowled so his face was hidden, standing less than thirty paces away at the head of a column of Bhrudwan warriors. A raw, debilitating power lay hidden in the words; even though they were spoken in a language Leith did not understand, their intent was clear. Words of defeat, of despair. The words seemed to solidify on his skin, encumbering weights that made his progress seem as slow as swimming in mud.

A few Falthans threw down their weapons in the face of the strange assault: one such bowed his head as a spike-studded mace swung towards him. The crunching contact stove in the man's skull, and he fell to the ground, twitching out his life.

Whatever this is, it has to be stopped!

The Arrow in Leith's hand pulsed in time with the beating of his heart, weak and rapid. Just when it would have been most useful, there seemed no potency in it. Where was the anger he felt when last he was caught up in a battle? To his right a foot soldier went down with a spear through his stomach, collapsing on it, falling on the shaft so it drove through him, then rolling over on to his side in the throes of death. With wide, staring eyes the soldier looked up at the man who had slain him, his face contorted with pain, and lifted an ann in supplication as if calling on his adversary to undo what he had done. The Bhrudwan soldier reached out and took hold of the spear, then twisted it savagely: the resulting scream ended in a gurgle. A boot came down on to the man's torso, enabling the spear to be pulled out; then the boot kicked the body once and moved on. A man who had set out from Instruere, who had survived the journey through Vulture's Craw, had just become a body, a shell.

And now the hooded figure halted a few paces away. The incantation continued to roll from the man's tongue as he reached up and took hold of his hood, ready to lower it. The sense of menace sharpened.

At that moment someone leaped on to Leith's horse, landing behind him- Heart in his mouth, Leith turned to find Phemanderac. 'We leave this place now!' he cried in Leith's ear, reached forward, grabbed, then shook the reins and dug in his heels.

'Why? What happened?' Leith asked, rubbing his tingling arms through the sleeves of his cloak as they rode back through the ranks of his army. 'I should be seen where the fighting is fiercest!'

'No, Leith.' The philosopher's voice displayed an admirable firmness, betraying nothing. 'You think that you hold some kind of invincible weapon in your hand, but you do not. Yes, it will protect you from sword thrust or arrow shot, but you cannot use it against the Bhrudwans.'

'I know, Phemanderac,' he replied. 'I know!' Why did you wait until now to talk about this?

Phemanderac reined in beside a large rock, helped Leith to climb it, then carried on as though he'd not heard the Arrow-bearer's reply. 'The Bhrudwans are of Water, remember, not Fire like us. You will not be able to use the Jugom Ark to defeat your enemies.'

'I hadn't planned to, though Maendraga said the Destroyera"'

The philosopher kept talking, his voice urgent, his words hot, his eyes fervid. 'The value of the Arrow was ever its ability to create unity. It does not need any special powers to do that. Without the Arrow of Yoke we would never have gathered this great army.'

'Which is dissolving away even as we speak!' cried Leith. What is wrong with you, Phemanderac? Why can I see shame in your eyes? 'How can I sit here on this rock and do nothing?'

'Because you have no choice; because I won't let you down. Yours are the only handsa"'

'I know that! But we are losing! Mine might be the only hands left by day's end!' He shook the Jugom Ark in frustration, and it flared into sudden life, forcing Phemanderac to leap backwards.

'Can you not be more careful, Leith?' the tall philosopher complained as he clambered back up the rock. 'I might not be of the Sixteen Kingdoms, but I am of the Fire. The Jugom Ark will reduce me to a pile of ashes if I'm too close to you when you throw a tantrum.'

'You were supposed to teach me all about this Arrow.' Leith waved it in front of him, causing it to flame again, less violently this time. Still Phemanderac took a step backwards. 'Where have you been these last weeks?'

The Firanese youth and the Dhaurian scholar stood staring at each other on top of the rock, forgetting for the moment the battle raging below them. Falthan soldiers all around the battlefield looked up, saw the Jugom Ark uplifted high and took heart from it, throwing themselves back into the fight. By now all but the most rigorously trained and highly skilled warriors were exhausted, and most man-to-man encounters, if they were not resolved within the first few blows, degenerated into grappling matches; so that the living wrestled with each other amongst the broken bodies of the dead and the dying.

And all the while shrewd eyes watched the field of battle, waiting for the moment to put carefully-laid plans into action.

At some point in the battle Farr discarded his hopelessly notched sword. He now carried a long-handled axe in both hands, with which he hunted enemies. He had received a great deal of training in axe-handling in the past three months, occasioning much mirth, but had not felt comfortable with axes. No choice now. With a song of Vinkullen on his lips he ran from skirmish to skirmish, accompanied by a growing band of Fodhram, Fenni and Widuz warriors. They followed him in awe, recognising their friend was the most sainted of men, one who discovers what he has been born to do.

'Skegox! Skegox!' they cried approvingly as he swung the great blade at a mounted warrior, crashing through his armour and nearly cleaving the man in half. Axehaft assigned three men to keep spear-wielding Bhrudwans away from the battle-crazed northerner. Their task was necessary: a well-placed spear thrust could catch any two-handed axe where the blade joined the shaft, tearing it from its wielder's grip.

There is no prudence in the way he fights, Axehaft marvelled as he watched Farr Storrsen rain down a series of swift, uncultured blows on yet another hapless opponent. And no tired' ness in his arm. It took only four blows this time for the courage to drain from the Bhrudwan lad.

Two blows later the boy lay in a pool of blood, felled like a tree. The axe was ever a weapon of passion, and Farr Storrsen fated to wield it. The Fodhram leader hefted his own axe and met his next opponent. Still a grim business, though.

'Skegox, skegox!1 The cries echoed around Farr as he laboured. A small part of his mind was in shock, having beheld the effects of his labour, carnage spattered on his cloak and over a wide area of stony ground.

'Skegox!' His friends fought alongside him, he fought for them, every blow making him more worthy of their praise. 'Skegox!'

Here came a nimble man with a broadsword in one hand and a knife in another. Farr read his intention before he even began. Two or three thrusts with the broadsword were supposed to distract him, leaving his left side open for the knife blade. Farr went along with it, but when the man drew back his arm for the throw, Farr hacked it off.

There came a huge man with a mace, whirling it around his head. Again, Farr read the nature of the attack from the way the man-mountain brandished his weapon. Before his opponent had a chance to close he thrust the axe-shaft forwards, upwards, tangling with the mace and jerking the man off balance. Once he was down, Farr buried the axe in his chest, then turned his back on the man and his bubbling cries of rage and frustration.

Here came a group of older warriors with pikes, and the Fodhram decimated them with throwing axes, then left Fan-to harvest them like wheat. And there came another attack, rank after rank of soldiers ordered to the fray to take the place of those cut down. Farr's arms cried their pain, but he ignored them, knowing that a moment's relaxation would mean his doom.

As the afternoon wore on so his weariness grew, adding a sharpness, a knowledge of mortality, to his exultation.

In the middle of the afternoon, two, perhaps three hours after the battle began, the Haufuth managed to find Jethart, who had set up his tent beside the wagons. Without waiting to be announced he entered the tent and confronted the Treikan general.

'What is going on?' he rasped. 'Hundreds - no, thousands - of men have died out there today. I have shouted myself hoarse trying to organise the ragged bunch of fighters I commanded, but still they run off and impale themselves on Bhrudwan pikes as though they could stop the Destroyer's advance by making a wall of their own bodies. I can't stand any more of it! Are we doing the right thing?'

Jethart turned from his hastily-drawn chart of the battlefield, his soft eyes sad and full of compassion. 'We are doing well, for the moment,' he said quietly. 'The large part of both armies has yet to fight, however. Look at this,' he said, beckoning the Haufuth over to the table. 'See here? The Gap is not wide enough to allow more than a few thousand men to engage at any one time. The rest wait their turn.'

'And our losses? I don't want to watch one more boy go down with a sword in his guts unless I can be assured that we are winning!'

As to that, we have no real way of knowing. My tallymen suggest that we are losing two men to their one, which means, based on the numbers of the two armies, we are doing no more than holding our own.' The old man turned and gripped the Haufuth's forearms in his large, rough hands. 'What worries me is not the losses, though I am human enough to realise that each man lost is a tragedy. No, I am concerned that the Destroyer puts forth merely a show of his strength. Where are the dedicated warriors? Where are the fabled Maghdi Dasht? I know they exist, for I have heard tales of the prowess of the Maghdi attached to your own band.

Where are the wizards, where is the magic? I don't understand what is happening. We should have paid for our failure to win the Gap with twenty thousand lives before the end of this day, and yet our death tally is as yet a mere tithe of that. What is the Destroyer preparing? When will he unleash it upon us?' Jethart banged his fist on the table, spilling a half-filled bottle of ink on the corner of his chart. 'Go and find that out for me.

Then we can plan to counter him!'

Early in the battle Mahnum realised his place was not in the front lines. He was barely able to keep himself alive in the initial flurry of attacks, staving off a tall, broad-shouldered Bhrudwan only when the man twisted his ankle on a rock. Why do they not attack in formation? he kept asking himself all through the first hour of the fighting. Why do they spend their men so wastefully?

As soon as he was able he disengaged himself from the battle front and made his way back to the wagons, almost a league from the fighting. There a makeshift surgery had been set up, where the wounded were treated with whatever skill and kindness could be found. Leith should have made more provision for dealing with the infirm, Mahnum thought angrily as he surveyed the pitiful surgery. Yet another reason why he should have involved Hal. The Trader searched through the tents, knowing he would find his wife and elder son trying to help those who were suffering. This is my place for now. Oh, Leith! Why did you turn from your family?

The Lord of Bhrudwo lifted Stella to her feet, then took her chin in his hand. 'It is time for you to truly know the meaning of fear,' he announced, his lips peeling back from his teeth as though he prepared to savour a delicacy. 'The army of your peasant friend is thoroughly prepared. Now I will break them. And, as befits one who abandoned her friends, you will give the signal.'

His compulsion seized her. She called on every particle of her will, but could not resist him even for a moment. It was as though she had not even tried, so easily was she ensnared. She took his arm and lifted it high; and trumpeters positioned all along the crest of the talus slope blew their horns in a braying that shook the earth, sending stones rattling down the slope in front of them. The Undying Man closed his eyes, focusing his enormous power; and behind him the blue flame roared into life, climbing higher and higher, the hungry eyes and mouth glowing red.

For a few moments nothing happened. Lips pressed together, knuckles white with anxiety for her friends, Stella watched the slaughterfield below, until eventually she discerned movement in the front lines. Grey-garbed figures drove into the Falthan lines in two places. Where they walked, the lines melted like summer snow. Slowly, deliberately, each of the two breaches filled with Bhrudwan warriors, following the grey men. Further and further into the Falthan army the figures penetrated, cutting down their opposition, forming two columns behind each of the breaches. They continued their grisly progress forward, still unimpeded despite the best efforts of those who died opposing them.

What was their objective? Stella searched the battleground in vain, until her eyes rested on a small rock some distance from the front lines, midway between the two pincers that drew around it, enclosing it in a ring of Bhrudwan steel. There were figures on the rock - two figures - and one held the Flaming Arrow in his hand.

For many minutes Phemanderac spoke, driving home point after point with a clarity he had thought beyond him. A clarity born of desperation, he acknowledged grimly. If we are to ever see our homes again, this boy will have to learn how to control the fire in his hand.

'The Jugom Ark is attuned to your emotions,' he repeated patiently. 'Whenever you feel something strongly it bursts into flame, as you have already discovered. But, if you don't mind me saying, of late your emotions have been centred around anger, from what I hear. We have yet to see how the Fire responds to other emotions: hope, joy, love.'

For a moment the philosopher fell silent, then he continued. 'I don't yet know why you can handle the Arrow.' He scratched his head, trying to crystallise his thoughts. 'My study tells me that no Falthan can hold the Jugom Ark unless they have received the Gift of Fire; and that Gift has not been given since the fall of Dona Mihst two thousand years ago. Withholding the Fire is part of the punishment the Most High meted to the First Men. So the records say.' He paused, thinking hard. 'Thus the Most High spoke to the exiles, as recorded in the Domaz Skreud: "You have forfeited your right to the Water of the Fountain, and the Fire of Life will die within you, to be given to another generation. You shall be banished from the Vale, and for many years will have to survive alone in the world ere I visit you again with My Presence." So, unless you are in reality of Bhrudwan or losian parentage, you ought to be susceptible to the heat of the Jugom Ark.'