'Twelve,' she mumbled, as if this information was important somehow. No answer came from the person spooning small morsels of broth into her mouth, but a sudden splash of wetness landed on her forehead, then another. She forced her eyes open, forced them to focus on the round face, the poached-egg eyes brimming with tears, on the sad mouth from which would never come another word. With her good hand she reached up and caressed his face: with the touch her soul convulsed, and the inarticulate cry that had been held back for so long, reluctant to admit weakness or acknowledge defeat, finally found expression in a storm of weeping.

'Twelve,' she said again when the storm petered out. 'Twelve left, and no hands.' This seemed to make perfect sense to the eunuch, who nodded, his eyes sparkling with a dangerous light, as though he had been personally responsible for the reduction of the Undying Man and the destruction of the Maghdi Dasht. Twelve. She would keep count until there were none.

Leith and Graig embraced in the shadow of Inna Gate as the spring sun rose behind the City.

The Arrow-bearer explained briefly what had transpired, a bittersweet tale. Leith clasped the hands of his friend, and said with all his soul: 'How can such a victory feel so much like defeat?'

The young Nemohaimian swordsman had no answer, but his joy at finding his liege-lord alive was clear for all to see.

Geinor told them the story of the Southern army, and the captains of Faltha exclaimed in surprise when they heard how near to the Bhrudwans the southerners had made camp. 'They may not yet know of our presence,' Geinor added, 'as we are separated from them by a small rise. However, they will surely be expecting an attack this morning from some quarter or other.'

'As to that, how might we attack them?' said the Captain of the Instruian Guard. 'They hold our fighters hostage, and though we might regard the deaths of both captors and captives a good exchange if it rids Faltha of the Bhrudwan menace, I am reluctant to support any plan that sees defenceless prisoners cut down.'

'They are captives, defeated in battle,' said the Fenni clan chief through his interpreter-priest.

'They will have to take their chances.'

'Not while I give the orders,' said Leith firmly. 'This needs to be considered carefully.'

'But swiftly!' Geinor added. 'Be assured that the Bhrudwans will be preparing for our offensive, or readying one of their own.'

Graig spoke up. 'Then I suggest the Falthan captains come back to the camp with us, and meet the Saristrian admiral. He is a clever man, and might have devised a way to bring this stand-off to an end.' Leith smiled at the young man, still flushed with excitement at being given command of such a large force.

'The southern contingent now outside the Struere Gate can keep watch over Instruere while we are gone,' said Farr eagerly. 'We should strike now before our enemy has time to regain his strength. If we do not, we may end up little better off than when we first arrived at the Gap.'

'Well said!' cried Axehaft. 'And we have many deaths to avenge!' At this the losian generals let out a shout of agreement.

'Very well, then,' said Leith. 'Go and tell my mother and father we have gone to speak with the southern generals,' he told one of his messengers. 'We will be back some time later today, I have no doubt.'

An hour later the Bearer of the Jugom Ark was introduced to the Lord Admiral of the Saristrian Fleet, and they warmed to each other immediately. The admiral offered Leith the alliegance of his king and placed the Southern army at his disposal. Leith accepted, then promptly installed the admiral as its leader, thanking him for his heroic efforts. Accompanied by a few of their officers, the two men sat down to a late breakfast and spoke of their adventures, filling in time before the latest spies returned with further reports.

Soon they came to the nub of their meeting. 'I do not believe it will be possible to rescue so many prisoners without a full-scale engagement,' the admiral told Leith. 'If the battle goes against them, they will kill, or threaten to kill, their captives. It is certainly what I would do in their place.' Leith's eyes opened wider at the strong sentiment from this mild-mannered man. 'We may have to negotiate with them,' he concluded.

'But we have nothing they want!' Graig protested, then immediately corrected himself. 'I suppose that refraining from slaughtering them is a bargaining position of some kind.'

'I will not bargain with the man who slew my brother,' said Leith flatly.

'Not even to rescue many thousands of captives?' Geinor asked him gently.

'Not for any reason!'

The Haufuth stood, came over to Leith and put a hand on his shoulder. 'They do have something we want,' he said quietly. 'What would you grant them in exchange for Stella?'

At the mention of her name Leith went pale. 'I don't know, I don't know! Don't ask me to weigh her life against that of twenty thousand!'

'Perhaps the answer might come to us if we ourselves go to spy out their camp,' said the admiral thoughtfully. 'Oftentimes a sight of the battleground brings counsel when planning fails.'

The urge to do something, rather than just be an observer of events over which he had no power, began to take hold of Leith. 'Yes,' he said. 'We will go and look at their camp.'

Seven men lay hidden behind a clump of spring-green broom standing in isolation halfway down a bare slope. At the base of the slope, perhaps five hundred paces from the broom, lay the Bhrudwan encampment, tents laid out in a series of concentric circles centred around their shelterless, still-bound captives. As the seven men watched, a group of a dozen or so grey-cloaked men shuffled across the wide plain from the south, heading towards the camp.

Eventually they were absorbed into the morass of activity at the southern margin of the encampment.

The Bhrudwan sentries were clearly alert, and the Falthan captives well guarded. Foraging parties came and went from the camp, giving Leith some unease about their own position.

Adding to the disconcerting mixture of feelings brewing within him was the sight of a number of poles standing in the centre of the camp. Two of them seemed to have bodies bound to them.

'Let us assume we have no choice but to attack them,' whispered the admiral. 'What is the best way to go about it?'

'We charge straight down the hillside,' Farr replied promptly. 'If we concentrate our attack in one place, we can drive right through the camp and make a way for the captives to escape.

Given some good fortune I believe we could save most of them.'

'And if we are given bad fortune?' asked the admiral. 'What then?'

Farr pressed his lips together, refraining from an acerbic comment. Leith could predict the result of this strategy. A prolonged battle against a numerous and well-trained army. The death of all the captives, including executions staged to intimidate and dishearten the attackers. And no final resolution, unless the Destroyer had time enough to regain his strength.

Geinor cleared his throat. 'I would suggest a different course. We can take advantage of the cover this hill offers, and bring our force very close. Then we quickly encircle the Bhrudwans, cutting off their supply of provisions. In effect, we conduct a siege. Eventually they will be forced to meet our terms.'

'Tell me, Father,' said Graig, 'who will be the first to starve? Will the Bhrudwans keep the Falthan captives well fed while they themselves starve? It seems that your strategy is merely a slower version of that Farr Storrsen offers us.' Rather than taking offence, the old courtier smiled widely at his son.

'Is negotiation the only way, then?' said Axehaft the Fodhram plaintively. 'Will we end up bartering safe passage east in exchange for a portion of the captives, or might we be forced to give away some of our lands to them?'

'It seems we will have to assemble a delegation.' The southern admiral frowned, then shook his head. 'Either that or we wait to see what happens.' He began to talk over this possibility with the men from Nemohaim.

Leith leaned over and whispered in Farr's ear. 'What languages do the Bhrudwans speak?' he asked casually.

The Vinkullen man tilted his head, puzzled at the request. 'Well, the warriors we fought spoke in their own languages to each other; it all sounded like jabber to me. But I did notice that when soldiers wearing different coloured bibs came together, they used a variant of our common tongue. Why? What is important about how they spoke?'

But Leith had already turned away. 'Hold this for me,' he said quietly to Axehaft, and placed the Jugom Ark in the startled man's hands. Then, before any of them could ask him what he was doing, he broke cover and began to walk down the hill straight towards the Bhrudwan camp.

'Leith!' Graig hissed. 'Leith!' But the Loulean youth was either already too far down the slope to hear the words, or chose to ignore them. Consternation grew into panic behind the stand of broom: was the boy mad, or had he been compelled to reveal himself by some powerful spell?

Or did he have some grand plan, as yet unrevealed? Whatever the reason for his rash act, there was nothing the six remaining watchers could do. They dared not come out from behind their cover.

The Haufuth passed his hand over his sweating face. 'Don't any of you know what he's doing?'

He looked at their blank faces. 'He's going to exchange himself for the captives, that's what.'

'Then he goes to his death,' said the admiral sadly.

'Yes,' said the headman of Loulea in agreement. 'But 1 think that is exactly what he wants.'

Too long tossed by events, too much responsibility with no real power, far too long following the paths set before him by others. As they had lain there talking of more waiting, something within Leith rebelled. He longed for a pure, clean, simple act rather than the complicated swirl of politics and armies that had taken him across the world and back. An act that might redeem all the mistakes he had made and somehow set him free for the continued guilt of all the numbers in his head. If I can just rescue one, if I can reduce the tally by one, then I'll feel better.

A plan sprouted like a spring flower in his mind as he had listened to the discussion, and he acted on it without waiting for common sense - a cloak for cowardice - to crush its tender leaves. An enormous wave of relief swept over him as he picked his way down the slope.

Finally! To do something only he was responsible for, and that only he would suffer for if he got it wrong! And as the marred but still-beautiful face flashed in front of his eyes, the face of the one he sought to rescue, his stride lengthened.

'Halt!' cried a green-sashed guard. 'Identify yourself!' The man held a tall pike in both hands, and frowned down his long nose at the stranger who had approached the camp. The guard's partner leaned forward for a better look.

'Sorry,' the stranger said in an abominable corruption of the standard speech. 'Separated from my own troop. Lost in a thicket my bib of red. Seek permission to rejoin thema"'

'Rejoin them? You'll be thrashed for this, or worse! Better you had run off than return with neither sword nor bib. Just because Roudhos got himself burned doesn't mean discipline is any less stringent!' His partner laughed as the guard began to paint a picture of what would happen to the stranger when he finally reported to his captain. Leith waited patiently for the lurid descriptions to finish.

'Away with you, then! And mark this! The Undying One has returned with only a few of his precious Lords. I think something has gone wrong. If it has, the gods help anyone caught not in the right place, or not wearing the right attire!'

The willowy stranger thanked them in his awkward way, then scuttled off in the opposite direction to where the Red-bibs had set up their tents. About to shout after him, the guard was restrained by his fellow, who pointed out what a splendid story the fool's eventual punishment would be. 'Perhaps we'll see him decorating one of the posts like his master did.' And they laughed together before resuming their surveillance of the green fields and rolling slopes to the west.

Leith knew his survival depended on finding a bib, and then a job to do, in some other area of the camp, where he would be expected to speak in the common speech. He searched frantically among the ordered tent-streets until he came across a row of yellow bibs ready for washing, most covered in blood. Glancing around, he waited until there was no one in sight, then grabbed the least soiled bib, setting it over his shoulder and across his chest. What was the name of the man whose blood decorates this bib? he wondered. Just one of those whose number filled his head . . .

Now, to find a place where he could make himself inconspicuous . . .

'You!' a voice cracked like a whip. 'Yellow-bib! What are you doing outside your area?'

Leith spun towards the owner of the voice, a broad-shouldered man wearing a blue sash, who looked for all the world like the Captain of the Instruian Guard. His manner, however, was much more peremptory. 'Well? Do you have an explanation?'

His mind a blank, Leith sputtered: 'I was senta"'

'No matter! Unless your orders came from the Lord of Bhrudwo himself, you can forget them and come with me. The cursed clerks haven't given me enough prisoners, and the two I had digging the latrines are too bruised to carry on. Carrion!' He laughed at his joke, then poked a finger in Leith's chest. 'So guess what you'll be doing for the rest of the day, my boy!' And he hooked a broad finger in the top of Leith's jerkin and dragged him along the grassy path after him.

Thus the Bearer of the Arrow spent his imperilled afternoon alone in the Bhrudwan camp disposing of their waste. Though it was possibly the most unpleasant task he had ever done, he silently gave thanks for his luck, for none would approach him. His bib was no longer yellow, and his boots, well... From time to time his overseer came to check on his progress, and after the obligatory grumbling and stick-waving would move off to attend to other business. Leith's hands blistered, but he remembered the image of Stella attempting to climb the stairs in the Hall of Meeting and tried to disregard his pain.

Just before sunset Blue-sash the overseer came over to where Leith had started yet another hole. 'Time for you to go,' he growled, but there was a degree of respect in the voice. 'You've been a good worker. Would you like me to sign your form?'

'No!' Leith said sharply. What form? He forced himself to relax. 'No - I come for you to sign later. First this hole I finish, then sign form.'

The overseer shook his head at this stupidity, but what happened to the fellow if he was outside his area after curfew was none of his concern. 'Very well; come and see me when you are ready. There'll be extra pay for you.'

Leith smiled at the man until he had seen him off, then lowered himself into an extra hole he had dug, and pulled the cover over it. Noisome as it was, he would remain undetected until it was no longer necessary.

He waited patiently until night set in, spending the time wondering how his disappearance had been received. He'd not thought that part of it through. He only hoped that no one would decide to invade the Bhrudwan encampment for his sake. Then there would be more numbers . ..

And his parents would worry. He had not thought about them either. Already they had suffered far too much, with the loss of their elder son. As had Kurr.

He needed more time to reflect on the old farmer's story. As incredible as it sounded, it rang true. Hal's feyness, his giftedness, had come from somewhere other than the unremarkable North March of Firanes. Just who could the father have been?

As he began to think, an image, two images, flashed through his mind.

He handled this new piece of the vast puzzle with fear and trembling. Twin images: Stella limping up the stairs, crippled down her right side, no doubt as a result of the mistreatment dealt her by the Destroyer. Hal limping across a stonefield, crippled down his right side.

Could it be? But what had Kurr said about Tinei? She had been mistreated also. What had he said? Leith couldn't remember, though something told him the knowledge was vital. One piece more and I'll unlock everything.

He pulled his mind back from the brink. It was time to try out the idea that had been taking shape ever since the evening he spent in the Hall of Conal Greatheart. If the idea did not work, well, it was a long walk back to camp, and this fearful risk had been all for nothing. He took a deep breath, and was unable to stop himself glancing at his right hand, empty as it was.

Tonight he was not the Arrow-bearer. Tonight, if he was right, he did not need to be.

You spoke to me in the Great Hall of Fealty, he said to the voice in his mind. I didn't have the Jugom Ark with me then.

'True. And I spoke to you many times before you found the Jugom Ark in the first place. ' So the fire-dream I had in Foilzie's basement?

'Was not just a dream.'

I suppose I should thank you. Though I'm not sure what I'm thanking you for.

'As for that, think carefully on what you dreamed about. ' Fire? I didn't realise the Gift of Fire would be packaged in a vision like that. Tell me, how many people might have been saved if I'd learned to harness it earlier?

'You're not thinking carefully enough. What does fire do?' It bums . . . oh.

'Yes. The Fire of Life burns away the accumulated hurts and habits that stop people living. It doesn't add anything; it subtracts. It heals by drawing out poison. It is not a weapon. No one could have taught you to use the Arrow as a weapon. '

But - surely the Most High used it as a weapon!

You, of anyone, should know the Most High can use anything. But even the Destroyer could use the Fire to heal himself, if that was his true desire.

But why didn't the Fire heal me?

'Remember when you and your brother used to play in the bedroom back in Loulea? You shut the door so you could immerse yourselves in your private world. It didn't take long for the room to grow cold, did it? In the same way, the Fire burns brightly in one room of your mind, giving you the strength, for example, to command others. Would the Leith I knew a year ago have been able to do this? Yet some of your other rooms are still cold.' Leith laughed, an incongruous sound in such a place. Still, the same old Hal. Still speaking with the voice of truth, still always right.

'So you have realised that the voice is of the Fire, not the Arrow. What else have you realised ?'.

That 1 don't need the Jugom Ark to operate in the realm of Fire. That those not of the Fire can hold the Jugom Ark, though they cannot use it, because they do not have the inner flame. That they no doubt have their own inner strength, based on some other element. That the Arrow burns people of the Fire, those who have not received the Fire of Life, because it is like the Fire falling, burning away the realm of the flesh, as Kroptur would say. That the Jugom Ark is as Phemanderac said in the beginning: just a symbol. That I have been doing the healing, the illusions and all the rest by myself from the beginning. That I can continue doing them even without the Arrow;.

'And so?'

And so I can press ahead with what I plan to do without the Jugom Ark.

The voice laughed. 'You've been listening too long to your brother. We'll make a mystic out of you yet. Now go to it! You don't have much time remaining. And here's a word for you: do not be surprised if it turns out a little different than you envisage. More than one person stands to gain -or to lose - from what you do tonight. '

Must words of the future always be cryptic?

'They are as clear as any other words, but only with hindsight. Go, Leith!' There is never enough time to ask you about everything I want to know, Leith sighed as he pushed the cover away and eased himself out of the hole.

Full night lay on the Bhrudwan camp. The overcast above glowed silver where the moon-sliver hid. A few torches marked the entrances of officer tents, and in the distance the camp was ringed with watch-fires. That, and the pale glow from within an occasional tent, was the sum of light for Leith to avoid. He focused his mind, imagining he reached out for the Jugom Arka"

a"and immediately he could feel, as he had known he would, two other sources of Fire in the encampment. One large, burning with a flame at least the equivalent of the Jugom Ark, the other much smaller, enclosed somehow as though fenced by pain. He smiled with satisfaction, then turned to face the flames, which both lay in the one direction. O Most High, what if they're together?

He set off through the camp. The sources of the Fire were at the southern end, fine for their escape but dangerous now. How had Hal made the net he'd used to cover the Falthan army?

No matter. He didn't need it; he was practically invisible. The danger was in the noise he might make, not in being seen.

He stepped lightly across the cool grass, already coated with the dew of a spring night. Off to his right stood a large tent: flickering light inside projected grotesque silhouettes on to the woven walls, and the murmur of conversation came clearly across the intervening space, punctuated by gusts of laughter. Not there, no Fire there. Beyond the large tent he crept, slinking from darkness to darkness, making no noise. It was like being back in the Great North Woods, hunting foxes with his father; mustn't make noise, mustn't be seen. Down another long path, small tents to the left and right, gentle snoring coming from some, no sound at all from others. Make a deviation to avoid two men sitting outside their tent by a small fire, dicing and drinking together. Head for the tent at the end of the path. Draw nearer, nearer, still nearer: this is the one!

A thought crossed his mind. If I can sense the Destroyer, can he sense me? He hoped the Undying man was not also unsleeping.

Leith flitted across an open space in front of the tent, looking left and right in case someone approached - and almost ran straight into a black figure standing impassively, arms folded, as though waiting for someone. At the very last moment he threw himself to the side, landing heavily on the ground and winding himself on a tent peg. Glancing up, his heart seemed to lodge in his throat. The black figure had turned to face him, arms still folded.

'I can hear you,' growled a voice, 'but I can neither see you nor sense you. Come out, that I may determine your kind.' The head seemed to be focused on a point somewhere behind him.