Part of the sweat on the man’s face was sheer terror. Martin could feel the rage that would have flowed through him, even taste it, something like sucking on rusty iron. But the emotion chased itself around in a circle, like a hamster on a wheel at the other end of a reversed telescope. There if he needed it, but not really part of him.

“Nothing,” he said.

Everyone was looking at him. He could use the responses that mighthave-been.

“Nothing can be gained by panic,” he went on; it was what he would have said.

“Centurion Leiston, another maximum priority message. Launch gliders from all fields within reach.”

The man was in his late twenties, one of Martin’s inner circle; he looked up at the weather, calculated the risks, and nodded brusquely before dictating quickly to messengers who dashed off at the run. The ruler of Boise went on: “That blimp is not to escape under any circumstances. Category A rules of engagement. Do it.”

He turned his head. “Legate Koburg. The first auxilia of light infantry, I want some missile troops. And the rest of the Sixth.”

Martin drew his saber. “Sixth Battalion. Follow me!”

The men had heard the Natpol’s news. They roared their anger as they swung in behind his horse and began to double-time down the pavement in a slamming unison. Thunder flickered across the northern horizon, no louder than their feet.

“We’ll hold them as long as we can,” Nystrup said. “They can’t get at us more than two or three at a time in the stairwells. As man is, God was; as God is, so we shall be. Get going! Use what we’ve done. Make it count.”

Astrid raised her sword into a salute, and turned. The Rangers followed her, each giving an instant to the same gesture. Ritva leaned against the stairwell wall for a moment after they had trotted upward for a while, wheezing. Even the light armor of her mail-lined jerkin felt like iron bands around her chest for a moment. There was nothing on Arda that drained you like fighting. Not practice, not the hardest labor, nothing. After the clear madness was past you paid for what you’d done to yourself.

“You OK?” Ian asked in a throaty rasp, the sort of voice you got when you’d been screaming war cries for a while.

His had been: Maintain the Right!

“Sure,” she said, taking another deep breath. “Just reaction. I’ve got my friends with me, what more do I need?”