The old Lord looked back over his shoulder, growled, then rose. He looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, then lifted his hand and sent what looked like a small blue star blazing into the air.

All up and down the wall, other stars answered.

A second star pulsed out from the command post, this one burning white-hot, almost painful to look at even in broad daylight.

Up and down the wall, Ehren knew, firecrafters were doing precisely what Gram was. The old Lord had his eyes focused on the ground in front of the wall, and a pair of legionares was covering him from any enemy attack. He concentrated for a moment, then pointed a finger down at the ground below and spoke a single harsh, quiet word. “Burn.”

A sphere of white fire leapt from Gram’s fingertip to the ground below.

For a long minute, nothing happened.

Ehren closed his eyes and pictured it in his mind. Bringing siege walls up from the earth required the moving of quality, heavy stone. But that wasn’t the only thing that could be moved. The earth was full of all sorts of interesting minerals. Gold. Silver. Gems.

And coal.

And oil.

Over the past months, the entire plain before the first wall had been seeded with the latter two. Coal had been raised to within inches of the surface—and the much more easily manipulated oil had been brought up to the surface layers of earth, until the ground fairly squelched with it. It was hardly noticeable, given how soft and damp the regular rains had left the ground in the past few days, except for the smell. And the vord did not appear to be bright enough to recognize it.

Oil-filled tubes had been crafted throughout the coal undersurface, with air holes made in them every so often. Then the crafters upon the Aleran walls dropped the fire directly down and into the mouths of those tubes, flames rapidly licking down them.

Thirty seconds later, there was a roar of sound, as the fire fed upon the oil and the air expanded dangerously, rupturing the earth and shattering the flaky sheets of coal into gravel.

Fire screamed and rose, and somewhere above there was the howl of wind, wind, wind. The four Citizens who had taken off were providing the fire with enough air to be born—a veritable cyclone, really.

When it finally did leap up, it was in a roar, and a small cloud of earth and coal and blazing droplets of oil flew up so high into the air that, even lying down, Ehren could see the highest crown of it.

“Bloody crows!” cried a legionare, half in terror and half in joy.