haen

"Ready!" he cried. "Be ready!" There was a fifth shuddering, the strongest yet Eolair lost his balance and fell forward, tumbling down the hill until he rolled to a stop, his nose and mouth stinging and cold from the snow. He half-expected his troop to laugh, but they were staring wide-eyed up the hill past him. Eolair looked back. Naglimund's great wall, as thick as the height of two men, was dissolving like a wave-struck sand castle. There was a loud rasping of stone on stone, but that was all. The wall fell down into the banks of white with an eerily muffled sound. Great gouts of snow were thrown up everywhere, so that a fog of white flakes filled the air, obscuring all. When it cleared, the m'yon rashi had retreated. A hole a dozen ells across was opened into Naglimund and its shadows. Slowly, a sea of dark figures was filling that hole. Eyes gleamed. Spear-points glimmered. Eolair struggled to his feet. "Men of Hernystir!" he cried. 'To me! The hour has come!" But the count's troops did not budge, and instead it was the horde within Naglimund that came surging out through the breach, swift and uncountable as termites swarming from a shattered nest. There was a great clang of blade on shield from the Sithi ranks, then a flight of arrows hissed out, felling many of the first Norns rushing down the hillside. Some of the Norns carried bows as well, and clambered up onto the castle wall to shoot, but for the most part neither side seemed content to wait. Wth the eagerness of lovers, the ancient kindred rushed forward to meet each other. The battle before Naglimund quickly became a scene of horrible confusion. Through the swirling snow, Eolair saw that more than the slender Norns had issued from the crack in the wall. There were giants, too, creatures tall as two men and covered with gray-white fur, yet armored like humans, each bearing a great club which crushed bones like dry sticks. Before the count could even retreat toward his men, one of the Norns was upon him. Incredibly, though a helm hid most of his pale face and armor covered his torso, the black-eyed creature wore no shoes, his long feet carrying him across the powdery snow as though it were solid stone. He was swift as a lynx. As Eolair stared in amazement, he almost lost his head to the Norn's first sweeping blow. Who could faThorn such madness? Eolair pushed all thoughts but survival from his mind. The Norn bore only a small arm shield, and with his light sword was far faster than the Count of Nad Mullach. Eolair found himself instantly plunged into a defensive struggle, wading backward down the hill, encumbered by his heavy armor and shield, almost betrayed several times by treacherous footing. He fended off several blows, but the Norn's exultant grimace told Eolair that it was only a matter of time before his sinewy opponent found a fatal opening. Abruptly, the Norn stood straight, his jet eyes puzzled. A moment later he sagged forward and fell. A blue-fletched arrow quivered in the back of his neck. "Keep your men together, Count Eolair!

" Jiriki waved his bow as he shouted from up the slope. "If they are separated from each other, they will lose heart. And remember—these foes can bleed and die!" The Sitha turned his horse and spurred back into the thick of battle; in a moment he was obscured by snow and the twisting shapes of battle. Eolair hurried downhill toward the Hernystiri. The hillside echoed with the shrieks of horses and men and even stranger creatures. The confusion was almost complete. Eolair and Isorn had only just managed to rally their men for a charge up the hill when two of the white giants appeared at the top of the rise, carrying between them the trunk of a tree. With a choking roar, the giants came rushing down on Eolair's men, using the tree like a scythe to crush all who were caught between them. Bones shattered and red-soaked forms vanished beneath the churned snow. A terrified Hernystirman managed to put an arrow into one giant's eye, then a few more feathered the second until it was reeling. Still, two more men were smashed to death by the flailing tree trunk before the remaining Hernystiri dragged the giant down and killed him. Eolair looked up to see that most of the Norns were engaged with the Sithi.

Horrible as was the chaos of battle, the count was still compelled to stop and stare. Never since the dawn of time had such a thing been seen, the immortals at war. Those that were visible through the snow seemed to move with a ghastly, serpentine swiftness, feinting, leaping, swinging their dark swords like they were willow wands. Many contests seemed settled before the first blow was struck; indeed, in many of the single combats, after much dancelike movement, only one blow was struck—the blow that ended the fight. There was a sour skirling of pipes from atop the hillside. Eolair looked up to see what seemed to be a line of trumpeters atop the stone, their long, tubelike instruments lifted to the gray sky. But the piping noise came from some musicians in the shadows of Naglimund below, for when the Norns atop the wall puffed their cheeks and blew, what came from their tubes was not sound but a cloud of dust as orange as sunset. Eolair watched in sickened fascination. What could it be? Poison? Or just some other incomprehensible ritual of the immortals? As the plume of orange floated down across the hillside, the tide of battle seemed to surge and writhe beneath it—but no one fell. If poison, the count thought, it was of a more subtle sort than he had heard of. Then Eolair felt a burning in his own throat and nostrils. He gasped for breath, and for a moment thought he would surely choke and die. A moment later he could breathe again. Then the sky dropped down upon him, the shadows began to stretch, and the snow seemed to catch fire. Eolair was filled with a fear that blossomed like a great, black, ice-cold flower. Men were screaming all around him. He was screaming, too. And the Norns that now came surging forward out of the ruined shell of Naglimund were demons that even the priests had never dreamed. The count and his men turned to run, but the Sithi behind them, merciless and golden-eyed, were just as terrifying as their corpse-white cousins. Trapped! Eolair thought, all else subsumed in panic. Trapped! Trapped! Trapped! Something grabbed him and he lashed out, scratching with his nails to pull free of the horrible thing, a monster with a great yellow-tendriled face and shrieking mouth.

He raised his sword to kill it, but something else struck him from behind and he fell sideways into the cold whiteness with the monstrous thing still clutching at him, still clawing at his arms and face. He was pushed face forward into the freezing snow, and though he struggled, he could not get free. What is happening? he suddenly thought. There were monsters, yes, giants and Norns—but nothing so near. And the Sithi—he remembered how ghastly they had looked, how he had been certain that they intended to trap Eolair and the other Hernystiri between themselves and the Norns, then crush the mortals—the Sithi are not our foes!.. The weight on his back had lessened. He slipped free and sat up. There was no monster. Isorn crouched in the snow beside him, hanging his head like a sick calf. Although the madness of battle still raged around him, and his own men were snapping at each other and struggling brother against brother like crazed dogs, Eolair felt the terrible fear ebbing away. He reached up and pawed at his chilled face, then held out his gloved hand and stared at the orange-tinted snow. "The snow washed it away," he said. "Isorn! It is some poison they have blown at us! The snow washes it away!" Isorn retched and nodded weakly. "Mine has come off, too." He gasped and spat. "I tried ... to kill you." "Quickly," Eolair said, struggling to his feet. "We must try and get it off the others.

Come!" He scooped up an armful of snow, scraping off the thin sprinkling of orange dust, and staggered to a small knot of squealing, struggling men nearby. They were all bleeding, but most only shallowly from wounds made by nails and teeth: although the poison had maddened them, it had made them clumsy and ineffectual as well. Eolair smashed clean snow into each face he could reach. After he and Isorn had managed to bring some semblance of sanity back to the nearest men, they hurriedly explained and sent those they had rescued off to help others. One man did not get up. He had lost both eyes and was bleeding to death, staining all the ground around him. Eolair pulled the man's cloak over his ruined face and then stooped to gather more snow. The Sithi did not seem to be anywhere near as badly stricken by the dusty poison as Eolair and his men. Some of the immortals closest to the walls seemed dazed and slowed, but none showed symptoms of the unrestrained madness that had swept the Hernystiri. Still, the hillside was full of dreadful sights. Likimeya and a few Sithi were surrounded by a company of Norn foot soldiers, and though Jiriki's mother and her companions were mounted and able to deal deadly blows from above, one by one they were being pulled down into a mass of white hands that waved and swayed like some terrible plant. Yizashi Grayspear faced a howling giant who already held a crushed Sithi body in each hand. The Sitha horseman, his face as sternly impassive as a hawk's, spurred forward. Jiriki and two others had knocked another of the giants to his knees, and now hacked at the still-living monster as though they butchered an ox. Great jets of blood fountained up, covering Jiriki and his companions in a sticky mist. The limp body of Zinjadu, her pale-blue hair clotted with red, had been hoisted on the spears of a group of Norns as they ran back toward Naglimund's walls in triumph. Chekai'so and dark Kuroyi rode them down before they could bear their prize to safety, and each killed three of their white-skinned brethren, although both took many wounds. When they had slaughtered the Norns, Chekai'so Amber-Locks draped Zinjadu's corpse across his saddle.