General Aras walked the circuit of the walls with a cluster of aides and couriers, greeting the sentries in a low voice, halting every now and then to look out at the flickering constellations burning below. This he did every morning, and every morn­ing the same view met his eyes.

The defenders of Ormann Dyke must have experienced something like this, back in the old days. The knowledge that there was nothing more to do than to wait for the enemy to move. The nerve-taut tension of that wait. The Himerian general, whoever he was, knew how to bide his time.

Finally the sun reared its head up over the white-frozen Thurians, and a blaze of red-yellow light swept down the flanks of Candorwir in the western arm of the valley. It lit up the blank, pocked cliff face that was the Eyrie, travelled along the length of the curtain wall and kindled the stone of the redoubt, the sharp angles of the fortifications thrown into perfect, vivid relief, and finally it halted at the foot of the donjon walls, leaving that fortress in shadow. Only the tall head of the Spike was lofty enough to catch the sun as it streamed over the white peaks behind it. In the donjon itself Aras heard the iron triangles of the watch clanging, sum­moning the night watch to breakfast, and sending the day watch out to their posts. Another day had begun at Gaderion.

Aras turned away. His own breakfast would be waiting for him in the donjon. Salt pork and army bread and perhaps an apple, washed down with small beer - the same meal his men ate. Corfe had taught him that, long ago. He might eat it off a silver plate, but that was the only indulgence Gaderion's commanding officer would allow himself.

The last of the wains go south this morning, do they not?' he asked.

His quartermaster, Rusilan of Gebrar, nodded. Those are the last. When they have gone, it will be nothing but the gar­rison left, and several thousand fewer mouths to feed, though it's hard on the family men.'

'It'll be easier on their minds to know their wives and children are safe in the south, once the real fighting starts,' Aras retorted.

The real fighting,' another of the group mused, a square-faced man who wore an old Fimbrian tunic under his half-armour. 'We've lost over a thousand men in the last fortnight, and are now penned in here like an old boar in the brush, awaiting the spears of the hunters. Real fighting.'

'A cornered boar is a dangerous thing, Colonel Sarius. Let him move within range of our guns and he will find that out.'

'Of course, sir. I only wonder why he hesitates. Intelligence suggests that the Finnmarkans and Tarberans are all up now. He has his entire army arrayed and ready, and has had them so for at least four days. His supply lines must be a quarter­master's nightmare.'

"They're convoying thousands of tons of rations across the Sea of Tor in fishing boats,' Rusilan said. 'At Fonterios they have constructed a fair-sized port to accommodate them all now that the ice is almost gone. They can afford to wait for the summer if they choose; the Himerians can call on the tribute of a dozen different countries.'

The retort of an artillery piece silenced Rusilan, and the group of officers went stock-still. High up on the side of the Spike, the smoke of the gun was hanging heavy as wool in the air, and before it had drifted a yard from the muzzle of the culverin that had belched it, the alarm triangles were ringing.

Aras and his part}' ran along the curtain wall to the donjon proper, against a tide of soldiers coming the other way. When they had passed through the small postern that linked the wall with the eastern fortifications they climbed up to the catwalks there and peered out of an embrasure whilst all around them the gun crews were swarming about their weapons.

'Our adversary is on the move, it seems,' Colonel Sarius, the keen-eyed Fimbrian, remarked. 'I see infantry formations, but nothing else as yet'

'What strength?' Aras asked him.

'Hard to gauge; there are still hordes of them forming up in front of their camps. Two or three grand tercios at the least. A mile of frontage - but that's only the front ranks. I do believe it's a general assault.' The Fimbrian's hard eyes sparkled as though some great treat were in store for him.

'Horse teams coming up from the rear - yes, he's bringing forward his guns. That's what it is. He's decided to begin siting his batteries. And in broad daylight! What can he be thinking?'

'Ensign Duwar,' Aras barked. 'Run up to the signallers. Have them hoist "General Engagement, Fire at Will".'

'Aye, sir!' The young officer took off at a sprint for the signal station on top of the Spike.

'Gentlemen,' Aras said to the more senior officers remain­ing, 'to your posts. You all know what to do. Rusilan and Sarius, remain with me. We shall repair to the upper battle­ments, I think, and get ourselves a better view. It's apt to grow somewhat busy down here once the action starts.'

There was a strange gaiety in the air, Aras realised. Even the common soldiers of the gun crews were grinning and chatter­ing as they loaded their pieces, and their officers seemed afire with anticipation. For days, weeks even, they had been harr­ied and beaten back by the enemy until they had no option but to retreat behind the stout walls of Gaderion. Now that those walls were about to be assaulted, they knew they would be able to wreak a bloody revenge.

On the topmost battlement of the donjon, with the blank stone of the Spike's towering menace at their back, Aras and his remaining colleagues halted, breathless from having run up several flights of stairs. They could see the entire valley spread out below them, the sharp-angled shape of the redoubt, the snaking curtain wall, the sun glinting on the iron barrels of the Eyrie's guns as they were run out of the rock of the very mountain opposite. And all along that intricate and formidable series of defences, thousands of men dressed in Torunnan sable were labouring in the casemates or loading their arquebuses or running here and there in long lines bearing powder and shot and wads for the batteries. 'Here they come,' Sarius said dryly.

'I wish I had your eyes, Colonel,' Aras told him. 'What are they?'

'Rabble from Almark. He won't waste good troops in the first wave. He's got to know we have that entire valley ranged. 'Look at their dressing! They've never so much as smelled a drill square, this lot'

A mile and a half away Aras could now see that the crowd of men which darkened the face of the land was moving in a broad line. Behind that line there came another, this one more ordered. And behind that, the beetling mass of scores of horse teams hauling guns and limbers and caissons.

The first wave came on very swiftly, keeping no formation beyond that of a broad, ragged line. They were clad in Almarkan blue, some carrying pikes and swords, others jogging along with arquebuses resting on their shoulders. On the valley floor before them, a scattered line of thin saplings had been planted years before with a half-furlong between each tree. This marked the extreme range of the Torunnan guns. Aras held his breath as the host approached them. His men had been trained to hold their fire until the enemy was well beyond the line of trees.

All along the walls of Gaderion's fortresses the crowded activity gave way to an intent stillness. The smell of slow-match drifted about the valley. 'The perfume of war', old soldiers called it.

A puff of smoke from one of the redoubt casemates, follow­ed a second later by the dull boom of the explosion. Right in the middle of the enemy formation a narrow geyser of earth went up, flinging aside the ragged remains of men, tearing a momentary hole in the carpet of tiny figures.

A second later every gun in the entire valley opened up. The air shook, and Aras felt the massive stone of the battlements trembling under the soles of his boots. The noise of that opening salvo was experienced by the entire body rather than just heard by the ears. Waves of hot air and smoke came billowing up from the embrasures like a wind passing the gates of hell.