Oddly, there wasn't much sound as they came together, just a sort of dull thud. The manticore, for all its armor and weight, was driven back. It was hard to tell how hurt it was, though.

The riders wheeled away as the greffyns came leaping across, and the next two rows of horsemen gathered speed.

However Fend controlled them, it was clear that he couldn't make them any smarter or he would have had the catlike beasts avoid the charge and try to flank. They didn't, though, but met the charge head to head, leaping over the downed manticore.

Two of them were actually lifted into the air by the lancers, but the third got through, bowling over one of the horses and ripping into it with its beak and claws. Those riders wheeled away, too, but the beast abandoned its first kill and took down another horse.

The manticore wasn't moving. Two of the four greffyns looked like they were dying, and a third was wounded.

Something was missing.

"Sceat," Aspar said. "Where are the utins?"

But even as he asked it, he saw them swarming out of the river, coming at the cavalry column from the sides.

Utins, unlike greffyns, were pretty smart.

Cursing, Aspar picked the nearest and started shooting at it. His first arrow skipped off. The second stuck but didn't look like it went in deep.

The column already was coming apart as the riders turned their horses to meet the fast-running utins. Aspar watched as the one he was firing at leaped nimbly over the lance aimed at it, danced down it, and struck off the head of the rider with its claws. Aspar sent another arrow at it as it came back to ground and disemboweled another rider's horse.

"Holy saints," he heard Emfrith gasp.

Now the second manticore was starting across the bridge. The archers were pouring arrows onto it because the remaining greffyn and the utins were too mixed up with the horsemen to target well.

With a shout, Emfrith began trotting his horse forward, his men behind him.

The archers shifted their fire again as several of the utins began running toward the bluff. Aspar picked the one coming his way and began letting fly.

His first shot hit it in the eye. It spun and staggered but roared and began speeding toward them again. He saw one of Leshya's white-fletched shafts appear in its thigh. Aspar put another arrow on the string, inhaled, and let it snap. It glanced off the thick scales of its skull.

Then it was up to the pikemen. It grabbed one of the pole arms below the head and flipped itself up and over the first rank, but one of the men in the second rank managed to set his spear, and the monster's weight drove the point into its belly, showering gore all around. Screaming, it grasped at the shaft.

It was five kingsyards from Aspar. He took careful aim and shot it in the other eye, and this time the arrow went all the way to the back of the skull. Its mouth froze open, and it stopped struggling. The pikemen rolled it back down the bluff.

Another one was coming, but fifteen arrows met it. Most either missed or skipped off, but one that found it struck it through the eye.

The archers were beginning to remember his advice concerning the creatures' weak spots.

A glance showed him that the other wing of archers wasn't doing so well. An utin had gotten through the line, and most of the men were in flight.

Things were coming back together on the field below.

Sir Evan and the other nine in his first charge had kept their cohesion and, as he watched, put their lances to the greffyn. Most of the rest had dismounted and were taking on the utins with sword and shield, encircling them with superior numbers. One was already down, being hacked by eight heavily armored men.

Emfrith's group was slowing its charge because the second manticore had stopped advancing and stood just out of catapult range.

In moments, the two remaining utins tore away from their tormentors and ran back across the bridge.

"I don't believe it," Aspar said.

It looked like Sir Evan had lost around fifteen horsemen and probably about that many archers. A few more probably would die of contact with the greffyns. But of his monsters, their enemy had lost all but two utins and a manticore. Suddenly, beating them didn't seem that much trouble at all.

They seemed to know it, too. The wagons were turning.

Sir Evan was forming his men back up, and Emfrith was galloping back up the hill.

"Well," he said as he drew up, "maybe not such a bad idea, after all."

"Maybe not," Aspar agreed. "I never would have believed it, but maybe not."

"We'll dog them for a while, find a good place to attack them, and-"

"Sceat," Aspar said. "I think Sir Evan has other ideas."

Emfrith turned just as the Celly Guest horsemen-what remained of them-went thundering over the bridge, along with about twenty of Emfrith's men. The manticore wasn't there anymore but had moved back up the hill.

"Get back here," Emfrith howled. No one looked back. They probably couldn't even hear him.

The men and Sefry across the river had turned but didn't seem to be readying a countercharge. He couldn't make out their faces from that far away, but something seemed odd about them.

"I don't like this," Leshya said.

Aspar just shook his head, trying to figure it out.

And then, as if struck by a thousand invisible arrows, Sir Evan and all the men with him, along with their horses, fell and did not move again.

Far across the river, Aspar saw something glinting in the back of one of the wagons.

"Turn around!" Leshya screamed. "Close your eyes!"

Aspar felt his own eyes starting to warm and followed her advice. After an instant, so did everyone else.

"What is it?"

"Basil-nix," she said. "If you meet its gaze, you die. I think it's too far away right now, but…"

"Get them out of here, Emfrith," Aspar growled. "Get what's left of your men out of here."

"I don't understand," the young man wailed. He sounded as if he'd just been wakened from a deep sleep.

"Sound retreat," Aspar told the man with the horn.

"Sir-"

Aspar took Emfrith's shoulder.

"He'll move up now. We can't fight with our backs turned. We didn't know about this."

"Raiht," the boy said, his face wet with tears. "Sound the retreat."

A black shadow passed over them, and another, and there was a sound of many wings.

STEPHEN PAUSED, trembling, staring at his feet, staring at a thousand pairs of feet in shoes, buskins, boots, bare, missing toes, huge, tiny.

It was like what the Vhelny had done to him, except the other memories weren't his.

But that distinction wouldn't matter for long. He closed his eyes and stepped, feeling as he did a myriad of other steps, a thousand different swayings of his body.

His stomach couldn't take that, and he doubled over, vomiting, observing with an odd detachment that in that act he somehow felt more solid, more himself.

But he wasn't. That was the greatest lie in the world, the most fundamental illusion. That thing called Stephen was a culling, a mere snip of what really existed. The rest of him was trying to get back in.

Would that end it? Would he be complete if he gave up the fantasy that this tiny Stephen thing was real?

Maybe.

No.

The voice barged through the rest, pushed them back to whispers. It was gentle, strong, confident, and Stephen felt some of the strength from the first fane come back to him.

No, the voice repeated. That is death. The voices you hear, the visions you experience-those are the dead, those who let go of themselves, who allowed the river to take what was in them. You are stronger because you still have a self. Do you understand? You are still tied together. You are real, Stephen Darige. It's totality that is the illusion. Only the finite can be real.