Memnanan rode over to them, right at the edge of the descent, as the Ila’s servants began to pass onto the downward trail.

“It’s bad news from behind us,” Memnanan said. “We’re hearing that vermin have moved in, right on the line. The priests absolve the living of the duty to bury the dead, and some have just sat down by the line of march. They’re out of water. The vermin take them. It’s all grim news back there. We’re losing the ones we’ve saved. For the god’s sake, Trin Tain, can we let them camp down there? The priests ask. How soon will there be water?”

“Two days,” he said. He lied. He had no idea whether they could make that speed to the tower, or what would happen, or how long they would be encamped and under siege from the heavens once the hammer came down. “A storm’s coming. There’s no chance up here. The Keran will establish their tents down below.” He added, calmly, “Your mother and your wife and your aunts have gone down with Keran tribesmen to watch them. Aigyan’s in charge, below. Get yourself under shelter once you get there and then set up tents to welcome in those that have just come down. Then give them the same word, everything calm, but push as hard as you can to get canvas up. We will lose lives. The hammer is coming down. It’s on its way now. I don’t know what may happen next.”

“It’s coming.”

“It’s coming,” Marak said. He grew calmer in saying it aloud, to a man who understood him. “There’s no other consideration.”

“The Ila wishes to talk to you, once we’re down there.”

“I’ll come when I can,” Marak said. The Ila was, at the moment, the least of his concerns. “Go down with her. Get off the cliff face. Give whatever orders make sense down there, and listen to Aigyan about the camp. I’ll be there.”

Memnanan left them, then, and all the while the sky weighed on their backs, heavy with disaster. The sunlight in a natural sunset had diminished to no more than a faint intimation of light, the sun long behind the western ridges. Below them the head of the column began to unload their tents, a little outward, but not that far from the cliffs, as he had said.

After Memnanan and his men the Haga began their descent: the trail was only wide enough for one at a time, one at a time, one at a time… for everyone alive in the world. For everyone who would survive.

The last of the Haga went down.

“Go down now,” Marak said to Hati.