Tom Lachlan appeared in the command circle.

Mortirmir was on horseback, his feet out of his stirrups, his hands at his sides. He looked terrible, but the ops rolled off him in waves.

And then, very suddenly, his eyes opened, and he looked directly at Gabriel.

“There it is,” he said. “The will.”

Far off, almost at the edge of the gate, something was rising.

A mile is a long way. Across a battlefield, few things register at the range of an imperial mile; people are like a stain of colour, blocks of men big enough to take kingdoms are smaller than fleas. A fleet of ships can vanish in the haze, a mile away. A dragon looks like a bird, a mile away.

Something like a living mountain began to shamble erect. A mile away, it was huge.

His voice matter of fact, Mortirmir said, “That is it.”

“It’s in the gate,” Gabriel said.

“I think we’ve failed to put the facts together correctly,” Mortirmir said. “I’m willing to wager that it is stuck in the gate. Where the dragons trapped it, a thousand years ago.”

Gabriel was watching it in horrified fascination. “But . . .” He paused. “No. I see it. Its head is in Mistress Helewise’s back garden and this is the arse end.”

Michael smiled. So did Tom Lachlan, and Zac, and a dozen other men and women around the emperor.

“It’s trying to take control of the gate,” Mortirmir said.

Gabriel smiled. “And it hasn’t yet!”

“QED,” said Mortirmir. “Lissen Carak is still fighting.”

Gabriel’s bay turned in a circle as he looked around at his officers.

“Damn it,” he said with as smile. “We can win this, my friends.”

Michael glanced at Tom.

“Ye sound as if ye didn’ae believe it, your own sel’?” Tom asked. He laughed.

The horrendous compendium of worms writhed a mile away.

“Mortirmir?” Gabriel asked.

“My rede would be to press it hard in the real, as we did the Umroth. When it responds, I’ll . . .” Morgon shrugged. “I’ll hope to do better than last time.”

“Same massive wave of coercion?” Gabriel said.

Mortirmir shook his head. “The will is to the rebel as ten is to one,” he said. “But the will has never been a man, nor understands hermetical science.”

Gabriel nodded. “Form the choir. Get me Edmund Chevins.”

An hour later, and the army was halted in a rough semicircle facing the writhing titan at a range of roughly a thousand paces.

“It does appear pinned in place,” Mortirmir said. They had survived a probe of coercion; the casa, having experienced the mass despair before, stood their ground, gritted their teeth, and tried not to think.

Gabriel did the same as he witnessed, again, his abject failure on every front.

The gonnes rolled forward.

“Can you hit it?” Gabriel asked Edmund Chevins.

He bowed. “My lord, I expect we’ll hit it with every shot. It is . . . very . . . large.”