The enemy infantry came on in such numbers that the demons, under constant attack from above, were swamped.

Shih-ka’i glanced back. The evacuation was going well. A man every ten seconds. Six a minute. Sixty every ten minutes. Three quarters of the force had gone. The others had formed round the portal. The maneuver was a tactical success already.

Give me a little luck, he thought. Let the portals remain useful a few minutes more. Let the stone thing persist in its profligate stupidity.

He did gloom about his minor exploratory thrust having become an embattled retreat which threatened to embroil the entire Eastern Army in an unexpected war. A big war. At a critical juncture in Shinsan’s history. He guessed there were fifty thousand enemy soldiers scattered around the desert. They seemed to have stopped coming from their place of hiding.

They did him a favor, did the foe’s infantry. They followed the example of the cavalry. They elected to surround him before making their attack. Shihka’i stepped into the portal just before their charge began. There was but one man behind him, his faithful Pan ku. They came over the dunes and found a whole lot of nothing. The Tervola had pulled their bolt hole in after them.

“What are they waiting for, Lord?” Tasi-feng asked. Four days had passed. The foe had not come west. Recon reports painted a portrait of confusion on a Brobdingnagian scale.

“I don’t know. Maybe we got our bluff in on them. Maybe they won’t come at all.”

“Do you think so, Lord?”

“Not really. But a daydream doesn’t hurt if you don’t put much faith in it. Anyway, let’s not be ungrateful for the gift of time.” Shih-ka’i had not expected to have time to move people into the mountains and get them dug in. He would not have given an opponent that edge.

He had gotten what he needed and more. The Seventeenth’s two field brigades were in place and waiting. Elements of the rest of Eastern Army were assembling at the fortress. If he were given another week, he thought, transfers would bring in enough people and thaumaturgic equipment to destroy thrice the number of zombies he had seen near the lonely mountain.

He had stripped his army of Tervola. The troops were coming overland under the command of their noncommissioned officers, with some units transferring in as opportunity arose. He was drawing Tervola and equipment from Northern Army, too, pushing his writ from Lord Kuo to its limit. He had ignored the predictable outrage of the Commander, Northern Army.

Northern Army was also on the march, but there was no way it could contribute troops here. Shih-ka’i had directed its three legions to assume a defensive posture along the west bank of the Tusghus, a broad river lying roughly midway between the Seventeenth’s old headquarters at Lioantung and the fortress on the edge of the desert.

The transfer streams were being pushed to their limits within Eastern Army’s territories. Too many miles lay between the fortress and even the closest of the legionary main forces.