‘When the Barghast fight clear-we charge, do you understand? Arrows and then sabres-into the tip of the wedge. We tumble them, we slow them, we bind them-if with our own dead horses and our own dying bodies, we bind them!’

She could see a third of a wing of horse-archers pulling clear to the east-they were responding to the threat, but they might not be ready in time.

Damn these barbarians!

Inthalas, third daughter of the Sceptre, rose on her stirrups, gaze fixed on the writhing ranks of the legion. My children, your mother will not be returning home. Never again to see your faces. Never-

A sudden impact sent the horses staggering. The ground erupted-and she saw figures wheeling through the air, flung to one side as the storm struck the flank of the hills to the west, struck and tumbled over those hills, swallowing them whole. Inthalas, struggling to stay on her mount, stared in horror as a seething crest of enormous boulders and jagged rocks lifted over the nearest ridge-

Something huge and solid loomed within the nearest cloud-towering to fill half the sky. And its base was carving a bow-wave before it, as if tearing up the earth itself. The avalanche poured over the crest and down the slope of the basin in a roaring wave.

An entire wing of horse-archers was simply engulfed beneath the onslaught, and then the first of the broken boulders-many bigger than a trader’s wagon-crashed into the milling mass of Barghast and Akryn. As the rocks rolled and bounced through the press, pieces of crushed, smeared bodies spun into the air.

At that moment the lightning struck. Lashing, actinic blades ripping out from the dark, heaving cloud, cutting blackened paths through Sagant’s lancers and the clumps of reeling foot-soldiers. The air was filled with burning fragments-bodies lit like torches-men, women, horses-lightning danced from iron to iron in a crazed, terrifying web of charred destruction. Flesh burst in explosions of boiling fluid. Hair ignited like rushes-

Someone was shrieking in her ear. Inthalas turned, and then gestured-they had to get away. Away from the storm, away from the slaughter-they had to-

Deafening white light. Agony, and then-

As if a god’s sword had slashed across the hills on the other side of the valley, not a single ridge remained. Something vast and inexorable had pushed those summits down into the valley, burying the Snakehunter camp in a mass of deadly rubble. Here and there, Tool could see, remnants were visible among the shattered boulders-torn sections of canvas and hide, snarled shreds of clothing, guy-rope fetishes and feather-bundles, splintered shafts of ridge-poles-and there had been mangled flesh once, too, although now only bleached bones remained, broken, crushed, jutting-yet worse, to Tool’s mind, was the black hair, torn loose from flaps of scalp by the beaks of crows, and now wind-blown over the entire slope before them.

Riggis had shouldered aside a speechless Bakal and now glared down into that nightmarish scene. After a moment he shook his huge frame and spat. ‘This is our enemy, Warleader? Bah! An earthquake! Shall we war against the rocks and soil, then? Stab the hills? Bleed the rivers? You have led us to this? Hoping for what? That we beg you to take us away from an angry earth?’ He drew his tulwar. ‘Enough wasting our time. Face me, Onos T’oolan-I challenge your right to lead the White Face Barghast!’

Tool sighed. ‘Use your eyes, Riggis. What shifting of the earth leaves no cracks? Pushes to one side hilltops without touching their roots? Drives three-possibly more-furrows across the plain, each one converging on this valley, each one striking for the heart of the Snakehunter camp?’ He pointed to the north channel of the valley. ‘What earthquake cuts down fleeing Barghast in the hundreds? See them, Riggis-that road of bones?’

‘Akryn raiders, taking advantage of the broken state of the survivors. Answer my challenge, coward!’

Tool studied the enormous warrior. Not yet thirty, his belt crowded with trophies. He turned to the others and raised his voice, ‘Do any of you challenge Riggis and his desire to be Warleader of the White Face Barghast?’

‘He is not yet Warleader,’ growled Bakal.

Tool nodded. ‘And should I kill Riggis here, now, will you draw your weapon and voice your challenge to me, Bakal?’ He scanned the others. ‘How many of you will seek the same? Shall we stand here over the broken graveyard of the Snakehunter clan and spill yet more Barghast blood? Is this how you will honour your fallen White Faces?’

‘They will not follow you,’ Riggis said, his eyes bright. ‘Unless you answer my challenge.’

‘Ah, and so, if I do answer you, Riggis, they will then follow me?’

The Senan warrior’s laugh was derisive. ‘I am not yet ready to speak for them-’

‘You just did.’

‘Spar no more with empty words, Onos Toolan.’ He widened his stance and readied his heavy-bladed weapon, teeth gleaming amidst his braided beard.

‘Were you Warleader, Riggis,’ Tool said, still standing relaxed, hands at his sides, ‘would you slay your best warriors simply to prove your right to rule?’

‘Any who dared oppose me, yes!’

‘Then, you would command out of a lust for power, not out of a duty to your people.’

‘My finest warriors,’ Riggis replied, ‘would find no cause to challenge me in the first place.’

‘They would, as soon as they decided to disagree with you, Riggis. And this would haunt you, in the back of your mind. With every decision you made, you would find yourself weighing the risks, and before long you would gather to yourself an entourage of cohorts-the ones whose loyalty you have purchased with favours-and you would sit like a spider in the centre of your web, starting at every tremble of the silk. How well can you trust your friends, knowing how you yourself bought them? How soon before you find yourself swaying to every gust of desire among your people? Suddenly, that power you so hungered for proves to be a prison. You seek to please everyone and so please no one. You search the eyes of those closest to you, wondering if you can trust them, wondering if their smiles are but lying masks, wondering what they say behind your back-’

‘Enough!’ Riggis roared, and then charged.

The flint sword appeared as if conjured in Tool’s hands. It seemed to flicker.

Riggis staggered to one side, down on to one knee. His broken tulwar thumped to the ground four paces away, the warrior’s hand still wrapped tight about the grip. He blinked down at his own chest, as if looking for something, and blood ran from the stump of his wrist-ran, but the flow was ebbing. With his remaining hand he reached up to touch an elongated slit in his boiled-leather hauberk, from which the faint glisten of blood slowly welled. A slit directly above his heart.

He looked up at Tool, perplexed, and then sat back.

A moment later, Riggis fell on to his side, and no further movement came from him.

Tool faced Bakal. ‘Do you seek to be Warleader, Bakal? If so, you can have it. I yield command of the White Face Barghast. To you’-he turned to the others-‘to any of you. I will be the coward you want me to be. For what now comes, someone else shall be responsible-not me, not any more. In my last words as Warleader, I say this: gather the White Face Barghast, gather all the clans, and march to the Lether Empire. Seek sanctuary. A deadly enemy has returned to these plains, an ancient enemy. You are in a war you cannot win. Leave this land and save your people. Or remain, and the White Faces shall all die.’ He ran the tip of his sword through a tuft of grass, and then slung it back into the sheath beneath his left arm. ‘A worthy warrior lies dead. The Senan has suffered a loss this day. The fault is mine. Now, Bakal, you and the others can squabble over the prize, and those who fall shall not have me to blame.’