Anheg sighed then. "I'd like to know what's happening to them back there at Thull Mardu," he said. "I don't suppose we'll ever find out, though."

"Not very likely," Barak agreed. "We'll all get sunk eventually, once we get out into the Sea of the East."

"We'll take a lot of Malloreans with us, though, won't we, Barak?"

Barak's reply was an evil grin.

"I don't really care much for the notion of drowning," Anheg said, making a face.

"Maybe you'll get lucky and catch an arrow in the belly."

"Thanks," Anheg said sourly.

An hour or so later, after three more Angarak positions on the riverbanks had been destroyed, the land along the River Mardu turned marshy, flattening out into a sea of reeds and bending cattails. At Anheg's orders, a raft piled high with firewood was moored to a dead snag and set afire. Once the blaze was going well, buckets of greenish crystals were hurled into the flames. A thick pillar of green smoke began to climb into the blue sky.

"I hope Rhodar can see that." The King of Cherek frowned.

"If he can't, the Algars will," Barak replied. "They'll get word back to him."

"I just hope he's got enough time left to make his retreat."

"Me too," Barak said. "But as you say, we'll probably never know."

King Cho-Hag, Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria, sat his horse beside King Korodullin of Arendia. The fog was nearly gone now, and only a filmy haze remained. Not far away, the twin sorcerers, Beltira and Belkira, exhausted by their efforts, sat side by side on the ground, their heads bowed and their chests heaving. Cho-Hag shuddered inwardly at the thought of what might have happened if the two saintly old men had not been there. The hideous illusions of the Grolims that had risen from the earth just before the storm had struck terror into the hearts of the bravest warriors. Then the storm, its intensity deafening, had smashed down on the army, and after that had come the choking fog. The two sweet-faced sorcerers, however, had met and overcome each Grolim attack with calm determination. Now the Murgos were coming, and it was time for steel instead of sorcery.

"I'd let them get a little closer," Cho-Hag advised in his quiet voice as he and Korodullin watched the veritable sea of Murgos advancing against the emplaced ranks of Drasnian pikemen and Tolnedran legionnaires.

"Art thou sure of thy strategy, Cho-Hag?" the young Arendish King asked with a worried frown. "It hath ever been the custom of the knights of Mimbre to meet an attack head-on. Thy proposal to charge the flanks puzzles me."

"It will kill more Murgos, Korodullin," Cho-Hag replied, shifting his weak legs in their stirrups. "When your knights charge in from either flank, you'll cut off whole regiments of the enemy. Then we can grind the ones who've been cut off up against the infantry."