“So it seems. Get those demons up, gentlemen. Centurion! Can’t you move those men into the portal faster?”

“No, Lord.”

“Very well. Don’t slack off.” Shih-ka’i turned to watch Hsu Shen finish his last hundred yards.

Hsu Shen’s men ran lightly and well, in good order, as befit soldiers of Shinsan. They did not cast fearful glances over their shoulders. The only gear they had abandoned was that which their commander had told them to drop. They retained their shields and weapons. “Good men,” Shih-ka’i observed.

Meng Chiao responded, “This is the Seventeenth, Lord. This was Lord Wu’s legion.”

Shih-ka’i smiled within his mask. “I see.” The man spoke as if his remark explained everything there was to know about the legion.

Lord Wu, in his time, had been one of the great Tervola, but he had been one of those unfortunates seduced by recent politics. He had died mysteriously in Lioantung when that city had been the seat of Eastern Army.

A demon appeared. It howled grotesquely. It stood fourteen feet tall and had a half-dozen arms. It pranced around cursing the man who had summoned it. After receiving orders, it whirled, estimated the enemy force, changed shape.

Shih-ka’i watched it become a copper rhinoceros of epic proportions. It galloped toward the enemy. He loosed a sigh of disgust. “Someone isn’t taking this seriously.”

The shiny rhino trundled past Hsu Shen. It bellowed heartily and charged the nearest horsemen. It rumbled around in circles, flipping its nose horns this way and that. It overwhelmed opponents by virtue of sheer mass.

“A clown thing with a certain effectiveness,” Shih-ka’i admitted grudgingly. He did not feel a demon of that temper befit the dignity of a Tervola.

The demon shifted shape again, became octopod. It armed six tentacles with swords seized from its victims.

A dragon rider came out of the sun. It put a spear-bolt through the demon. The thing did not approve. It yelped like an injured puppy, faded away.

A dozen more Outside monsters joined the fray. They stopped the riders briefly. Hsu Shen and his men came puffing up the dune.

“Centurion, put these men through first. They’re exhausted.”

“Yes, Lord.”

Shih-ka’i examined the progress of the evacuation. It looked too slow. Too damned slow.

The riders pushed forward despite heavy casualties. They surrounded Shihka’i’s dune-walled position, then waited at a respectful distance. Lord Ssu-ma laughed. “You’ve got us now, don’t you? No chance for us to get away, eh? All you have to do is bring up the infantry and finish us, eh?” He directed his Tervola to concentrate on the nearest foot soldiers.

He stared at the stone thing. Was it stupid? If it kept on this way, its entire army would be destroyed before it broke out of the desert. Not many of the fallen remained in condition for reanimation.

That pleased Shih-ka’i.

Sure as he lived, he knew the master of the dead meant to march across the world. And once his armies broke out of the wasteland they would begin to swell. That explained why the thing was squandering manpower now. It anticipated no difficulty acquiring replacements.