For long moments, the King believed that Rile had suffered a vicious defeat. He did not see his mistake until the horde emerged to feed. Rushing up and down the road, they sank their fangs into every cavalryman, the living as well as the dead, and gorged themselves.

The sight horrified Bifalt. In an instant, he realized that Rile had planned for this. Hells! He had even planned for Estie’s cannon. He had kept himself and his infantry at a distance so that they would not be struck by cannonballs and chain. Then he had released the horde to clear away the litter of bodies.

Meanwhile, his cavalrymen had accomplished their true purpose. They had lured Klamath’s men to reveal themselves. Spread out as they were, the riflemen now had no effective defense against the horde and the skirmishers, or the sorcery of the priests.

When the storm broke over the mountains, and snow began to fall, even the weather seemed to serve the Great God.

THIRTY-ONE

IT BEGINS

For two days, the snow fell, as gentle as dust, and as thick as a deluge. During that time, there was nothing to do because there was nothing to see. Even the globes of the Great God’s multitudinous priests were dimmed, visible only as occasional blurs of light. Of his other forces, the Farsighted glimpsed no sign. King Bifalt and the el-Algreb might as well have ceased to exist. General Klamath and his army were concealed. Queen Estie had told Klamath to retreat to the lower plateau. After the charge of the cavalry and its slaughter by the horde, he had made a different decision.

Apparently, sub-Commander Waysel had done the same. With Estie’s consent, Commander Crayn crept down through the storm to the lower plateau before Rile’s men could reach it. He returned to report that Waysel and the Queen’s honor guardsmen were dead. Immured in snow, Waysel’s command lay surrounded by a number of smaller bodies. Three of the siege-guns had been pushed off the rim of the plateau. Without cannoneers, the others were useless as well.

During those days, Queen Estie carried a burden of grief for her slain men. For her husband, she refused to grieve. She could not imagine what had happened to him, but she declined to believe that he had been lost. He was somewhere doing something necessary. Anything less would have been too much to bear.

Around her, a feeling of loneliness gripped the massive keep, a sense of isolation draped like dread over the world. The loss of the Knights of Ardor filled the air like the smoke of wildfires. People scurried everywhere furtively, or huddled in their quarters, as if the Repository were already under siege. Students and teachers forgot each other. The servants still had their tasks, but they flinched while they worked. Scribes left their desks to wander the halls, as aimless as ghosts.