It took them just over an hour to reach the low hills that ringed the plain within which the Shadowarmy was camped, and as they crossed the last couple of miles the army stopped making noise and marched in perfect silence. Disorganised they might be compared to most regular human armies, but they knew how to approach an enemy without alerting them to their presence.

     A wyvern rider flew overhead at one point, silhouetted against the stars. It gave a cry of alarm at the sight of them and turned to flee, but Fangrap raised a hand and casually spoke a word. The wyvern and its rider exploded into a gory shower of blood, scales and bone. They saw two more wyvern riders as they climbed the hills and Fangrap dealt with them the same way, not wanting the enemy to have any warning of their approach. They descended into the shallow valley beyond and climbed a smaller hill just behind that, where they finally found themselves overlooking the Wilton Bowl; an area of lowland that had some of the most fertile soil in the whole country.

     A couple of miles away were more low hills, on the other side of which lay Tatria itself, its location given away by dozens of plumes of smoke. They were lit up red by the fires beneath and merged to form a huge angry orange cloud that seemed to symbolise all the evils that had afflicted the ravaged countryside.

     Directly below them they saw the enemy encampment itself, walled and fortified with stout treetrunks sunk to a third of their lengths into the dark, peaty soil. It was huge, virtually a city in itself, with thousands of grimy grey tents arranged in a haphazard pattern across the muddy, churned up soil, and Drake’s mind spun with disbelief that they’d been able to build it so quickly. Of course, the zombies, he realised suddenly. They had a vast army of mindless, obedient, undead slaves, and it must have been they who’d done all the work.

     Beside the encampment lay the wreckage of two shayen birds of paradise, destroyed by fire and scattered over a wide area by the Shadowsoldiers in their eager search for souvenirs. On the other side of the encampment were five demidrakes, tethered to the stumps of hundred year old oak trees, their huge heads nodding sleepily on the end of their long, serpentine necks. Huge though the flying reptiles were, though, they were dwarfed by the creature that squatted next to them. The animated corpse of a true dragon whose flesh had rotted completely away in places to expose the bleached white bones beneath and which had to keep batting its leathery undead wings to drive away the carrion crows that flocked around it.

     “Zombie dragon!” said Fletcher fearfully. “That’s going to cause a few problems.”

     “Seems pretty quiet down there,” said Drake. “Must be a lull in the fighting. Wonder how things are in the city.”

     “What are we going to do?” asked Fletcher. “Just charge down there and hope for the best?”

     “Let’s wait and see,” replied the young priest. “Fangrap’s in charge, let’s see what he’s got in mind.”

     Fangrap was talking to the other priests of Skorvos, who listened avidly to his words before going off to pass on the orders to their congregations. “Keep yer heads down!” Shragnaz hissed to them as he passed. “Fangrap’s gonna stir ‘em up a bit. Then we charge. Get ready.”

     “Stir them up how?” asked Drake, but the sholog was gone to repeat the instructions to the company of buglins beyond. Murmurs of excitement and anticipation rippled among the ranks of humanoids as their Commanders spread them out into a long, thin line just below the crest of the hill, the shologs and humans making sure that the smaller humanoids were in front of them. Partly so they could shoot arrows over their heads but mainly so that the smaller humanoids could act as a suicide squad of shock troops for their larger comrades following on behind. It seemed to be the fate of all the smaller races of humanoids to act as sword and arrow fodder for the larger humanoids, and the really surprising thing was that they didn’t seem to mind. They knew that they could accomplish much more allied to shologs, hobgoblins and evil humans than they could on their own, and they counted a high fatality rate a small price to pay for this. Besides, if their numbers weren’t kept down in this fashion, the small, fast breeding creatures would overrun the world in just a few generations.

     Then a hush fell over the humanoid army as Fangrap stepped forward to the top of the hill to look down at the Shadowarmy encampment. The red sun was hidden behind the pall of smoke hanging over Tatria, but the night was still bright, being lit by the largest moon in its third quarter. There were also two comets in the sky, their tails spreading across half the sky like the tails of huge, albino peacocks, and shooting stars were streaking across the southern sky, some moving slowly and persisting for several seconds. One particularly large fireball disappeared behind a low hill, which was silhouetted a moment later by a flash of light, followed a few minutes later by a low rumble of thunder.

     Although such large meteorite impacts were not uncommon on Tharia, it may have been this that diverted attention away from the hill on which Fangrap was standing. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t seen by the Shadowsoldiers, even though he would have been easily visible if any of them had happened to look his way and Drake felt disgust and disappointment in the Shadow leadership. They were overconfident, he thought. So far as they knew, all their enemies were confined in the city by the attacking forces, and they felt that the wyvern riders were enough on their own to keep watch. Whatever brilliant new leadership was in charge of the Shadowarmies as a whole, there was no evidence of it at the moment in the army that had invaded Ilandia.

     The priest looked down on the encampment for a long time, a sneer on his hard, cruelly handsome face. He stroked one side of his perfectly groomed moustache, then the other. Then he raised his hands. A gust of wind lifted his robes, and the moonlight gleamed on the chain mail armour beneath.

     He began to speak, and the instant the first words left his lips Drake felt a cold, heavy weight settling on his heart, the pureness of his soul cringing from the immense and oppressive stench of evil that suddenly filled the air. He began to mutter a fearful prayer to Samnos but stopped himself after a moment’s thought. He couldn’t take the risk that Fangrap might be put off his spellcasting. This was one occasion when the forces of evil had to be left alone to accomplish their designs, even assisted if possible, and Drake could somehow sense that such was the difficulty and complexity of the spell the huge priest was currently attempting that the slightest interference by the power of goodness might cause it to fail.

     Fangrap’s words drifted down from the top of the hill, each one clearly audible in the still silence of the night. “Seismagrap tectos Ala Muell. Shattaros hrift cthonia ghop...” It went on and on for minute after minute and Drake sensed the gradual buildup of tremendous forces all around them, growing steadily stronger as the chant approached its terrible climax. One word in particular froze the marrow in his bones, and sent his hand flying to the Griffin symbol hanging from a chain around his neck, to grip it with painful tightness. A word he recognised from his acolyte days and his tutelage in the Fortress Monestary of Helberon. Ala Muell, one of the most powerful of Skorvos’s servitor demons. Ala Muell, the Bringer of Destruction.

     Then Fangrap stopped speaking. Nothing happened at first, but the sense of immense pent up power remained and the faint sounds of merrymaking coming from the encampment faltered and then stopped as the enemy finally began to suspect that everything was not as it should be. Great flocks of birds that had been sleeping in the trees took to the air, circling around in confusion, and the demidrakes began howling and screeching in alarm, pulling at their tethers in sudden fear. From all around came the sound of wild animals giving alarm calls and running as fast as they could, and even the few remaining trees began shaking and rustling their leaves even though there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze.

     Then it began. Drake and Fletcher, standing on the other side of the hill, didn’t see it, but they felt it as the ground began to shake under their feet. “Earthquake!” gasped the young priest in horror, aghast at the sheer power being wielded in the name of evil. How could any goodness possibly survive in the world when the forces of evil were so powerful? How could anyone possibly stand against the terrible power of Fangrap? But then he remembered. Resalintas had stood against him. Not only that but he had fought him to a standstill, and his heart swelled with adoration and admiration for his old mentor.

     The main force of the earthquake, when it came, shook the entire hillside, and the two humans were almost knocked off their feet. They could only imagine what it was like at the epicentre, presumably directly beneath the enemy encampment. There was a distant dull roaring and the terrible grinding of rocks, accompanied by the screams and terrified bleatings of the Shadowsoldiers, and the priests of Skorvos lifted up their heads and howled their praise and devotion to their God, the monstrous deity who was powering the destruction. Their congregations added their own voices to the tumult and Drake had to put his hands over his ears and squeeze his eyes shut, fearing that the power and the strength of the evil being manifested here would crush him like a beetle under a soldier's boot. The hillside twenty feet to his right split open with a deafening crack, and billowing clouds of dirty yellow, sulphurous smoke gusted out of the gaping fissure, bringing joyous tears to the eyes of the buglins as they picked themselves up from where they’d been knocked flying like childrens dolls.

     Drake forced himself to open his eyes and saw an entire fifty foot section of hillside sliding down towards a company of goblins, the subsoil turned to liquid by the vibrations. The two humans urged them on as the goblins scrambled to safety, forgetting for a moment how cruel and evil the little monsters were. The ground jumped and shuddered beneath their feet like a bucking horse, opening more fissures and overturning fully grown trees, and Drake wondered fearfully whether Fangrap had overestimated the power of his spell. Stir them up! he thought. By the Gods!

     Then the earthquake gradually died away, although an awful, dull rumbling continued to come from somewhere deep underground. Eventually the noises subsided to the point where terrified crying and sobbing could be heard coming from what was left of the enemy camp, and the army of Skorvos picked itself up and got back into position, eagerly awaiting the order to attack.

     Fangrap, who’d somehow managed to remain standing securely at the top of the hill, looked down at the devastation below and smiled with satisfaction. He drew his black sword and held it up over his head where it was caught by a stray shaft of blood red light as the red sun finally began to break through the clouds. Then he shouted the order at the top of his thundering voice. “Let there be war!”

     There was a deafening war cry which must have been clearly audible even in the city of Tatria, and the army of Skorvos stormed over the top of the ridge and into the hollow beyond, screaming the name of their monstrous God as they went. Drake and Fletcher were completely caught up in the intensity of the occasion, charging in heart pounding battle lust along with the shologs and buglins and goblins all around them, and in the days and weeks that followed the young priest lost many nights sleep wondering whose name he’d been shouting as he charged down the steep hillside towards the enemy. Samnos, or Skorvos?

     His first glimpse of what the earthquake had done to the enemy encampment shocked him so deeply that it almost jolted him out of his battle frenzy. The outer palisade had been largely destroyed, the cross planking that held the individual treetrunks together having been snapped like matchsticks. Inside, everything had been demolished. The wooden command buildings had fallen in vast piles of wreckage from which the bruised and bleeding Shadowcommanders were still painfully trying to crawl, and most of the tents had collapsed, some of them half fallen into fissures that had opened up in the ground under them.

     Fires were beginning to break out where broken lamps had splashed burning oil amongst the flammable canvas, and some of the Shadowsoldiers were trying to put them out while others ran about like headless chickens, not knowing where they were going or what they were doing. It looked as though nearly a quarter of the camp's population had already been rendered battle ineffective, either dead or injured, and most of the rest were too shocked and bewildered for any coherent activity. Stirred up good and proper, thought Drake in satisfaction as he drew his shortsword ready to enter the slaughter.

     When the Shadowsoldiers suddenly became aware of the army sweeping down on them, it was as though the entire camp was hit by a high voltage electric shock. They stood and stared in horrified disbelief as a horde of screaming humanoids rushed towards them, and then they started digging desperately amongst all the wreckage for their weapons. Thousands simply fled, their terror so great that the Shadowlord’s power over them was broken, but the rest could only moan in despair as the power of the Bone Prince compelled them to struggle out of the ruined camp into the level plain beyond and prepare to meet their attackers as best they could.

     When the army of Skorvos hit the shocked and half stunned Shadowsoldiers and the battle began, Drake was surprised to see the cthillians already there, laying into them with devastating mind blasts so that humans and shologs fell, twitching and spasming, for no apparent reason. They were much too sedate and dignified to charge along with the rest of the army, and Drake presumed that they had crept invisibly down the hillside some time before and then levitated a few feet above the ground to avoid the fury of the earthquake.

     Drake had no time to pay them any attention, though, as the Shadowsoldiers, who still outnumbered them enormously, were shocked out of their dazed lethargy and fought back with all their skill and training. Fortunately, the demidrakes had torn themselves free and flown off, terrified so much by the earthquake that they’d managed to momentarily throw off the Shadowlord’s control, and the zombie dragon had been reduced to a tangled mess of leather and bones by a huge fissure that had opened directly below it, swallowing its entire rear end up to the shoulders before closing again, crushing it like a vice. It still batted its tattered wings furiously and lunged out at anything that came too close, but it was held securely in place and Drake put it gratefully out of his mind.

     He heard a clap of thunder and looked around to see a dozen shologs killed by a lightning spell cast by a Shadowwizard standing on the walkway of one of the miraculously undamaged sections of the camp’s outer palisade wall. He held a frightful looking staff in one hand, and as the horrified priest watched helplessly he pointed it at one of Fangrap’s human companies, killing half a dozen of them with another blast before taking out an entire platoon of buglins. Hundreds of Shadowsoldiers were forming ranks and files around him, and Drake knew that their element of surprise would only be good for another two or three minutes before things began to go against them. Better do as much as we can while we can then, he thought grimly, wading back into the battle.

     He killed one Shadowsoldier after another, moving with deadly, mechanical efficiency, his sword harvesting them like a farmer gathering corn. The enemy’s white bone armour and skull helmets made them easy to see in the moonlight, whereas the army of Skorvos was uniformed mainly in dark clothes and so blended easily into the night, their positions given away only by their gory, bloodsoaked swords as they reflected the light of the red sun. The Skorvosians, who'd suddenly become murderously organised and efficient now that the fighting had started, were skilfully trying to keep the Shadowsoldiers disorganised and off balance, separating them into small groups and applying constant, merciless pressure as they’d been trained to do. The worshippers of the God of Conquest were among the most highly motivated fighters in the world, learning sophisticated battle tactics quickly and eagerly. For them, battle was the highest form of worship, and the Beltharans had learned to fear them, to treat them with the greatest caution and respect. Now the Shadowsoldiers were learning the same lesson. Painfully.

     If the Skorvosians had been outnumbered by only two to one, or even three to one, the outcome would never have been in doubt. There were so many Shadowsoldiers, however, that it was impossible to stop large groups from reorganising themselves, and platoons and companies collecting around charismatic commanders until several small armies of several thousand had formed around the ruins of the encampment. Also, the forty thousand Shadowsoldiers who'd been out of the camp, laying siege to the city, were returning as they realised their camp was under attack, and even though they were tired from battle there were so many of them that the Skorvosians suddenly found themselves on the defensive. The various groups of Shadowsoldiers had neither the time nor the opportunity to communicate with each other, though, so that, while each individual Shadowsquad was well formed and organised, they were fighting completely independently, with no co-operation between them.

      The Skorvosians were a single military unit, however, under the leadership of Fangrap, whom even Drake had to admit was one of the most brilliant commanders he’d ever met. He shouted orders which were carried above the noise of the battle by the power of Skorvos to his individual commanders, and the Skorvosians concentrated all their strength on the largest of the Shadowarmies, surrounding them and leaving the other Shadowsoldiers to surround them in turn.

     The battle now consisted of eight thousand Shadowsoldiers in the centre, surrounded by eighteen thousand Skorvosians who were in turn surrounded by thirty thousand more Shadowsoldiers. Another thirty thousand or so Shadowsoldiers were left milling uncertainly around the outside, unable to squeeze their way in between their colleagues to get to the fighting. The vast hordes of zombies, who might have crushed the Skorvosians if they'd been brought into the battle, were left surrounding the city as their controllers, who'd been chosen for total obedience and an almost total lack of dangerous initiative, waited for orders that never came.

     Drake took a moment in the middle of the fighting to admire the huge priest’s strategy. They were surrounded, it was true, but the enemy was divided between those inside and outside the Skorvosians’ ring of steel and there was only room for about half the enemy to fight at any one time, whereas every Skorvosian faced a Shadowsoldier. The enemy’s overwhelming numerical advantage had been effectively neutralised and, in the absence of their Generals, who had already been targeted by the cthillians, their basically chaotic nature was becoming evident as their middle ranking commanders bickered over how the battle should be led, causing ever greater confusion in their ranks. There were five Shadowwizards and five priests, if Drake counted himself among their number, so the non mundanes were evenly matched, leaving the common soldiers to decide the matter by conventional means.

     Except, where was the red hooded wizard that Drake remembered causing such terrible destruction and loss of life during the siege of Fort Battleaxe? Had he been killed by one of the wizards defending Tatria, or was he simply away from the camp for some reason, spying on the city perhaps? And where were all the ghosts, spectres, wights and other spiritual undead that had accompanied the Shadowarmy?

     He put these distracting thoughts out of his head to focus on the two huge shologs facing him. His sword was turned aside time and time again by their white painted bone armour, but finally he was able to find an opening and spilled their steaming entrails onto the trampled, muddy ground. Another pair of shologs moved in straight away to take their place, but he still had a couple of seconds to glance around at the larger scene and he saw to his horror that he’d seriously underestimated the Shadowcommanders’ tactical cunning, and that Fangrap had as well.