It was chaos; it was war. It was like all the other gate openings, and so Ash, like the great predator he was, used his powers sparingly, gnashed his great teeth at being a hampered god, took as few risks as he could, and waited his time. This was not the moment for wild abandon. This was the moment to use weight of numbers and just enough power to win the day.

There followed a rattle of workings and counterworkings; light and darkness, lightning and shield, boilings, wood snaps, metal fatigues, and a titanic struggle over the wind that, to Ash’s horror, resulted in a draw and a dozen small whirlwinds moving like crazed tornadoes over the battlefield.

If allegory can be held to describe, then the battle between Ash and Nikos was like an encounter between a bull and a wasp; Ash was infinitely more powerful, but the grammarian’s focus of will and structure of linguistic reality were so much more precise that, as long as the argument rested on structure, Magister Nikos could keep Ash at bay.

In the real, the sky pulsed with power and flashed, and flashed again. Even in the hell of the N’gara battlefield, the flow of ops had not been this heavy; the shields flickered, the colours played; blasts rocked them, or threw dirt and trees into the air; flames rained across the battlefront, and the air pressure changed constantly, causing the eardrums of every sentient creature to rattle.

But the shields held.

For the first time in nine engagements, the bogglins hesitated at the edge of the burned ground and would not cross, and Ash had to expend will to push them across. There were many bogglins, and in the hurry of battle, even Ash’s great compartmented mind could not pick and choose. The outpouring of his will was immense.

It had a cost.

And then the bogglins died.

But this time, Ash had chosen to use his wits and not a bludgeon, and while his bogglins died, he moved his irks and wardens and trolls to the east; a whole clan of his Qwethnethogs swam the Cohocton and started west on the south bank, determined to close the ford. His terrible cavalry of wardens mounted on hastenoch swung north, crossed an undefended beaver meadow, and came into the flank of the mountain defences.

The irk knights met them and stopped them high on the hillside, in a tangle of glacial boulders, and Syr Ydrik was wounded there and Tapio assumed direct command, ordering Syr Srylot and Syr Rinir to envelop the pain-maddened trolls. And the Jacks, waiting in ambush for just such an attack, shot into the flanks of the hastenoch and then charged to complete their destruction. It saved the flank, but distracted Tapio.