‘My brother and I’ll keep an eye on him,’ Beltira promised.

‘What else were the two of them talking about?’ I asked Pol.

‘Their instructions, for the most part,’ she replied. ‘Evidently the Ashabine Oracles gave Torak far more in the way of details than the Mrin Codex gives us. He knows that Eldrig’s bringing the legions, for example, and he knows that there’s not a great deal he can do about it. He also knows that the EVENT’s going to take place in three days. He’s known about that for a long time now. He doesn’t really want to meet Brand. Apparently there’s some bad news for him in the Oracles. When he came across the land-bridge and gathered up the western Angaraks, there was no way we could have matched his numbers, but his campaigns in Drasnia and Algaria and his trek across Ulgoland have cost him at least half his army. I guess Zedar went out and counted noses. If the legions get here in time, the numbers are going to be fairly even. At that point, Torak won’t have any choice but to accept Brand’s challenge.’

‘Well, now,’ I said, ‘isn’t that interesting?’

‘Don’t start gloating, father. Torak’s ordered Zedar to throw everything they’ve got at Vo Mimbre here. If they can take the city, the advantage swings back his way, and he’ll be able to ignore Brand’s challenge. Once we go past that third day, we go into an entirely different EVENT. Torak knows what it is, but we don’t. He seemed a bit smug about it, though.’

‘That suggests that he’ll win if this goes into the fourth day,’ Belkira said.

‘And the corollary to that is that we’ll win if the EVENT takes place on the third day,’ Beltira added. He frowned. ‘Did they talk at all about trying to delay the war-boats on their way upriver, Pol?’

‘Zedar suggested it,’ she replied, ‘but Torak said no. He’s not going to split his forces. He wants Vo Mimbre, and that’s going to take every man he’s got. How long is it until morning?’

‘Three or four hours,’ I told her.

‘I’ll have time for a bath, then. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll go see to that.’

The night seemed to drag on forever. I wound up prowling the top of the walls and staring out into the darkness. The stars overhead were very bright, but there was no moon. Poets rhapsodize about starlight, but you really can’t see very much by it.

Then, after what seemed an eternity, a faint stain of light touched the eastern horizon. It grew and gradually began to wash out the stars with its steely luminescence. At first, all I could see on the plain before the walls of Vo Mimbre were dark masses. Far out on the rim of Kal Torak’s army, twinkling watch-fires glowed like fireflies. Torak’s generals had just come through Ulgoland, and the cat-eyed Ulgos made them nervous.

I joined Mandor and Wildantor on the wall above the massive main gate, and we waited.

‘It looks like we’ll have good weather,’ Wildantor observed in that quiet voice men use when it’s very early in the day.

‘If it doth not rain,’ Mandor added. I don’t think he was trying to be funny, but his remark set Wildantor to laughing.

The dawn light grew gradually stronger, and details began to emerge. The siege-engines Pol had mentioned looked very much like large, spindly black insects with slender limbs; long, arched-back necks; and small, bucket-shaped heads. They encircled the city about a hundred and fifty paces out from the walls, and the dark bulky forms of the Thulls who manned them swarmed around them like clusters of fleas.

Wildantor chuckled.

‘Something funny?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t think the Thulls are going to laugh very much,’ he replied. ‘They’ve set up their siege-engines within bow-shot of the walls. Thulls seem to have trouble learning from experience, don’t they? When we were coming down the valley, we were picking them off at half-again that range. Give the word, Belgarath, and I’ll have my archers educate them some more.’

I considered it. ‘Let’s hold off on that,’ I decided. ‘When they start shooting rocks at us, their assault troops are likely to start massing up behind the engines. That’s going to impede escape-routes for the Thulls manning the engines and create a great deal of confusion.’

The sky gradually began to take on some color. It was blue off to the east above the mountains of Ulgoland now.

‘Why do they wait?’ Mandor asked.

‘Time’s a part of the EVENT, my friend,’ I explained. ‘Torak’s waiting for a specific moment to begin. The first rock he throws at us starts the battle, and if he’s off by so much as a second, he’ll lose.’

‘Methinks he will lose anyway,’ Mandor said.

‘We can hope, I guess.’

Then, just as the upper rim of the sun rose above the mountains of Holy Ulgo, a deep-toned horn sounded from the black iron pavilion that headquartered Kal Torak of Mallorea, the siege-engines all lashed forward like striking snakes, and a veritable cloud of large rocks arched upward to crash against the golden walls of Vo Mimbre.

The battle had begun.

There was a lot of confusion, of course - people shouting and cursing and running for cover. A fair number of the rocks those engines were hurling at us did fall inside the city, but that was only incidental, and probably the result of poor aiming. Torak wasn’t trying to kill people with his engines; he was trying to batter down the walls. After the first few volleys, his engineers adjusted their aim, and the whole business settled down to the clash and rattle of large rocks striking the outer walls of the city. It was noisy, but it didn’t really accomplish much. The walls held.

As I’d anticipated, masses of assault troops began to move battering-rams, assault towers and scaling-ladders up into position just behind the siege-engines in preparation for an attack on the walls. It was about mid-morning, after four hours or so of steady pounding, when I turned to Wildantor. ‘I think this might be a good time for you to give our Thullish friends out there some idea of the range of your longbows,’ I suggested.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

The fact that the Asturian archers were shooting from the top of a very high wall added more distance to the range of their bows, and the effect of their arrows devastated the Thulls manning the siege-engines. The bombardment stopped immediately. The air between the engines and the walls had been littered with rocks coming our way all morning. Now it was filled with a glowing arch of slender arrows all going the other way. The survivors of those engine crews turned and fled back into the very teeth of the assault forces massed behind them with the arrows relentlessly following them. Kal Torak’s army flinched in on itself and pulled back about a quarter of a mile. The insect-like siege-engines stood silent and unmoving with windrows of dead Thulls heaped around them.

‘What thinkest thou will be their next move, Ancient One?’ Mandor asked me.

‘They’re going to have to retrieve those engines,’ I speculated. ‘They’re not going to be able to tear down these walls with their bare hands.’

‘My very thought,’ he agreed. Then he raised that horn he always carried at his side and blew a strident note on it.

The main gate crashed open and a couple thousand armored Mimbrate knights mounted on huge horses charged out.

‘What are you doing?’ I almost screamed at him.

‘The Angaraks have withdrawn in fearful confusion, Holy One,’ he explained in an infuriatingly reasonable tone of voice. ‘Their engines stand unmanned and unguarded. I find those engines irritating. ’Twere best, methinks, to seize this opportunity to destroy them.’

I couldn’t fault his reasoning, but I wished that he’d told me about his plan before he’d opened those gates. I was getting older, and my veins weren’t as good as they used to be.

The Mimbrate knights were armed with battle-axes, and they swept out of that gate like two great scythes, one cutting to the left and one to the right. They didn’t exactly reduce the Angarak siege-engines to kindling wood, but they came close, then they circled back, pounded, cheering, along the foot of the walls, re-entered the city, and slammed the gates behind them.

‘Nice job, Mandor,’ Wildantor complimented his friend.

Mandor smiled with becoming modesty.

Kal Torak, however, probably wasn’t smiling. His iron pavilion was at least a mile out on the plain, but the sound of his raging came to us quite clearly.

‘What’ll he do now?’ Wildantor asked me.

‘Something foolish, most likely,’ I replied. ‘Kal Torak doesn’t think very clearly when he’s angry.’

With the loss of his siege-engines, Torak’s chances of broaching the walls of Vo Mimbre were reduced to almost zero. He really didn’t have any choice but to try a frontal assault on the main gates at that point. The battering-rams crept forward, and the tall, swaying assault towers came lumbering toward us. Hordes of Murgos, Nadraks, and Malloreans ran at the walls carrying scaling-ladders. The Asturian archers picked them off in droves as they rushed forward, and when they got closer, Mimbrates joined in with their shorter-limbed bows. When the Angaraks reached the walls, we dropped boulders on them and poured boiling pitch on their heads. Fire arrows into the pitch added confusion and smoke.