Just for an instant he had forgotten that he battled the Dread Empire. There was no confusion on their side of the line. They would not lose sight of their mission. They would not panic. They were, as always, the best. He might end up taking but a single body into his own force, that of the last man guarding the last portal while the last corpse went through.

Ethrian reached into the Seventeenth’s fortress, trying to find dead men there. He sensed bodies, but none he could touch. He would have to put his own warriors inside first. The enemy were too much in control right now.

He was not disappointed. His strategy was working. The pass would be his. He laughed. Most of his soldiers had gone down at least once, but few had been badly mauled. They rose again and again.

His laughter rang across the night. Sahmanan heard it. She called back, her voice merry with imminent victory. The Tervola heard it as well. They responded defiantly. The Seventeenth’s battle drums roared.

The drums. Those infernal drums. He had heard his father tell of their endless, terrifying rumble, but never had he heard them before. Chills crept down his spine. Fear hit him. He began to doubt.

Those were the drums of the Dread Empire, drums of promise, drums which proclaimed, “We of the Seventeenth do not stand alone. We of the Seventeenth know no fear. A hundred legions will rally behind us. Come find your doom, enemy of the empire.”

Though his blood ran hot with the joy of victory, Ethrian could not help but hear the drums.

He was winning. The mountains would be his. He would travel on and meet Shinsan again, round the fortress beyond desolation’s edge….

There were other legions and other armies. A hundred legions might be an exaggeration, but, for certain, this victory would be a small one. A minor incident on the road. The great battles were yet to come.

He had heard his uncle Valther describe the battles in Escalon, when Mist and O Shing had taken war to that once mighty kingdom. Compared to those this was a skirmish. For battles of that epic stature he would need all the might of his stone godling, and more.

The moon was a sickle that night, and rose just an hour before dawn. Its wan silver light splashed the concluding movements of a battle determined and grim, clearly lost and won, yet still as vicious as when it had begun.

The Dread Empire did not yield. Not a step. Before the last of her defenders fell, Ethrian lost forever his twenty-thousandth man.

And yet he was joyful. He had seventy thousand left, and was knocking on the doors of lands where others could be conscripted into his cause.

The last few drums spoke their defiance. He thought to his dead battalions. The dead gave voice to a battle cry. “Deliverer!” they rasped. All together, like a hellish choir. “Deliverer!”