Hati swung a hammer with him. Like others, like Tofi and Mogar and Bosginde, like Antag and his brothers, and every able man and woman, they wrapped their hands and worked and still bled… but in the mad, the makers swelled their hands with fever and activity. He and Hati healed as they bled, and as they exhausted themselves, strength came from somewhere. Villagers began to arrive, and young men and old, urged by the tribes, began to join the effort.

As for Norit, she wandered wherever she wandered in the camps, never quite out of their awareness, as the visions were constantly in their awareness.

Hammer, hammer, and hammer against the deep-irons, image of the hammer to come against the earth. Luz spoke to the mad, constantly, a nuisance that became, strangely, a reassurance that the tower still stood. They knew Luz was aware. They knew they were not forgotten, not yet, not now: death was coming, but the hammerblow was not yet on them.

Another tent rose, men and women pulling on the ropes, shouting together as the center poles came up and another canvas peak aimed at the uncertain heavens. Webbing went on, tied to the deep-irons, weighted with rocks where they could lay hands on them, to secure the frail canvas from billowing up in a gust.

The hammer-wielders advanced on another row of stakes, as women took another bundle cast from another packsaddle, and those villagers whose old and weak they had just scarcely sheltered joined them like the rest and took their efforts to another bundled tent, villagers unfurling canvas side by side with the tribes.

Another tent, and another. The camp spread and spread outward and sideways, onto every patch of sand that would take the stakes: the camp grew broader and deeper at a pace that had now the repetition of a machine, a pace that left the workers breathless, and a determination that continually sucked new workers into the frenzy. Any man, any woman who could unpack canvas or haul on rope surely became ashamed to sit still.

Still the new arrivals came down, and spread out, and kept spreading with that breathless speed—now and again a worker fell half-conscious on the sand, and lay with the weak, in a strange tent, cared for, given meager help, and two and three and four more newly arrived villagers took his place.