Resalintas and the tactician sat in silence as everyone else filed slowly out of the room, some of them muttering to themselves and shaking their heads. "Sometimes, I have, ah, great sympathy for the nationalists," said Hurgis. "He's the idiot who said the Shads would never dare attack us again."

"The High Prefect is a fool," agreed the old priest. "Nevertheless, we have to obey him."

"You don't have to," pointed out the tactician. "You're a priest of Samnos. You're only loyalty is, ah, to Samnos Himself."

"That is true," agreed Resalintas, "but the men have sworn an oath of loyalty to the Emperor, and therefore to his viceroy. I cannot order them to disobey him."

"So what are you going to do?"

"We still have a few days before the enemy gets here. We have that long to persuade him to change his mind."

"That won't be easy, he's a stubborn man."

"So am I." The old priest decided to change the subject. "What about young Drake? Has there been any news of him yet?"

"I'm afraid not," replied the tactician. "His carpet must have, ah, crashed on its way here. He may still be alive, if he managed to make a soft landing in friendly territory. He could turn up at any minute."

Resalintas nodded, but knew they couldn't count on it. If he'd come down in enemy territory, he was finished. "Damnation!" he swore. "We need every priest we can get our hands on! We can't afford to lose even a youngster like him!"

"You like him, don't you?" said Hurgis. "I've, ah, seen the way you look at him when you think no-one's looking."

"He performs his duties adequately," replied the old priest "He shows great promise. It would be a tragedy if he were to die before that potential could be realised." He stood up to leave the room and the tactician followed.

"What's the situation in Bula Pass?" asked Resalintas as they walked.

"The only news we have is, ah, several days old," replied Hurgis, "since all messages now have to be carried by flier. The last we heard, Fort Dirk is again under siege and a battle is being waged further up the pass between, ah, five Beltharan divisions and nearly a hundred thousand Shads. It seems likely that the Sceptre will soon be used again."

"That'll be two of its three charges used," said the old priest, now looking older than ever, "and only one charge remaining. The bulk of the Shadowarmy, over half a million of them, is hanging back in the Shadow, waiting for all three of its charges to be used, whereupon they will sweep down on us and wash away our defences like sandcastles. That's the real reason they're attacking Fort Dirk. They're not seriously trying to take it yet, they just want to use up the Sceptre's charges." He suddenly realised he'd been walking with a slight stoop and angrily drew himself back up to his full height.

"I hear they've, ah, brought in conscription in Belthar," said the tactician thoughtfully. "They must finally be, ah, waking up to what's happening out here."

"Conscripts!" snorted Resalintas in contempt. "It takes five years to teach a man even the most basic swordfighting techniques. You send common farmers and peasants against Shadowsoldiers and all you're doing is swelling the ranks of their zombie legions."

"But it means that the high command is finally beginning to, ah, take this war seriously," said the tactician eagerly. "That's got to be good news."

Resalintas grunted noncommittally.

They reached the exit from the ministry building and walked out into the street towards their makeshift quarters a few blocks away. Ahead of them, floating gracefully above the city's skyline, they could see a Bird of Paradise; one of the magnificent and beautiful flying warships made by the Lourellian shae folk in the shape of the birds that inhabited their jungle homes far to the south. It was one of four such ships loaned to Ilandia to support the four divisions of the Army of Life currently stationed there.

"Is there, ah, really a chance they might pull out?" asked Hurgis.

"Yes," replied Resalintas. "A very real possibility if the fell men put any more pressure on them. I suspect we are the only people in the world who realise that this is a global problem, that we are doomed if we all think only of our own homelands."

"The shae folk and those flying ships figured strongly in my, ah, calculations of how long this city can last," muttered the tactician, his brow furrowed with worry. "If they pull out, I'll have to, ah, revise that estimate downwards by, ah, by quite a considerable degree. Why are the gl-hugs doing it? Don't they realise that their fate will be the same as everyone else's if the Shads are victorious?"

"They realise it, but they don't care," replied the old priest. "They see this mortal life as merely a brief prelude to an eternal and glorious afterlife in the service of their spider queen, Atlacha. Even those who are helping us are only doing so for Her greater glory."

"Those who said they'd be helping us," corrected the tactician. "There's still been no sign that they're actually, ah, doing anything, except for that one possible sighting in Elderglade, and I still don't believe it was a party of fell men they saw. It was simply, ah, too dark to be sure. I'm sure that if Striker and his men had challenged them they'd have found that they were, ah, just a free tribe of shologs."

"Going eastwards?" asked Resalintas. "No, I think they were fell men, and I think that if Striker had interfered with them, none of them would have survived to bring back that report."

"Well then, all I can say is, if the situation is this bad with their help, what in the name of Hell would it be like without them?"

The old priest had no answer to that, and so they simply walked in silence, watching the shae folk in their colourful blue and yellow uniforms scurrying about on the deck of the Bird of Paradise until the huge bulk of Tatria Cathedral hid it from view. There, they exchanged farewells and parted, the tactician continuing down the street towards the bridge across the river, on his way to the barracks and the city's defence headquarters, while the old priest entered the cathedral where he'd taken lodgings for the duration of his stay in this city.

Resalintas didn't go to his room straight away, though. He felt badly in need of a few hours of prayer and meditation to get his thoughts and plans in order. Instead of turning left into the corridor just inside the main entrance that led to the living quarters and training areas, therefore, he went straight ahead, past the altars of the most popular Gods and through the large double doors into the Great Dome.

The Dome was circular, exactly ninety feet across, and consisted of a circular wall on top of which was a stained glass dome depicting priests and other heroes from ages past performing various acts of heroism, all held together by a spindly wooden framework that seemed much too fragile to support the weight. The yellow sun shone brilliantly through it, casting golden images onto the circular wall and its plaster bas-reliefs of more priests and heroes, and onto the mostly empty floor, most of which was decorated with tiled mosaic images of the Gods Samnos and Conwar, the two Gods who were the temple's main patrons.

Resalintas marched across the room, his footsteps on the tiled floor sounding like gunshots above the whispered prayers of frightened citizens packing the pews and the faint noises of the city that managed to filter in. He walked on a clear path that ran between the images of Samnos and Conwar, since it would have been an act of shocking disrespect to set foot on the Gods Themselves. The supplicants already at the altars, soldiers of the Tatria garrison praying for courage and strength in the battles to come, stood and made way for him in a gesture of respect.

He stopped when he came to the altars themselves; a raised dais thirty feet across on which stood two massive stone statues representing the two Gods, eternal allies in the war against evil. Samnos, on the right, was represented by a huge griffin reared up on its hind legs. Wings outstretched, forelegs clawing at the air with six inch talons and its beak opened wide as it screeched a challenge to all the forces of evil infesting the world. Next to it, Conwar, previously one of the angels of Samnos and only recently promoted to the status of true God, was represented by a huge lion in a similar pose. Both statues wore bronze crowns on their heads, and in front of them were the two altars on which worshippers and supplicants had placed various small offerings, mainly small denomination coins which the priests used to fund the upkeep of the temple.

Resalintas took off his helmet, which he placed on the dais, drew his sword and dropped to one knee in front of the statue of Samnos; his head bowed and his hands resting on the hilt of his sword that he stood point downwards on the floor in front of him. He stayed that way for over an hour, letting the presence of his God soothe his troubled mind and renew the strength and determination he'd lost at Fort Battleaxe.

He would have stayed there for several hours longer, after which he would have gone to the temple's practice floor for some grueling and invigorating weapons training, but it was not to be as he heard nervous footsteps and looked around to see a white robed acolyte approaching. Delias Ardentinal. His current personal acolyte and Robert Drake's successor. He had been one of the lucky ones to be teleported out of Fort Battleaxe by the wizards in the last hours before its fall, and the guilt and shame of having been chosen to survive when so many others had died had hit him hard. Now, though, he was trembling with excitement as he stopped before the old priest and saluted, waiting with forced patience to be given permission to speak.

"What is it?" asked Resalintas as he stood, wondering what piece of news could be so important as to break the boy out of his survivor's guilt. Was it some new piece of terrible bad news or, he dared to hope, some unexpected and greatly needed piece of good news?

"Sir, I beg leave to deliver a report just received from Ameran, east of the Shadow, delivered by racing griffin."

He was itching to continue but Resalintas let him stand for a few moments to teach him self control. He was only just in control himself, however. It's good news! Thank the Gods! Good news! How we need it!

"Continue," he said at last, and the words exploded out of the acolyte. "Sir, a priest of Samnos named Mordicus has appeared out of nowhere in the Fu Nangian province of Ameran and is helping them fight the Shadowarmies, and Sir, he has the Sword of Retribution!"

"The Sword of Retribution!" breathed the old priest in surprise, striving to retain his composure in front of a subordinate. "So he did sense the activation of the Sceptre! Either that or our messengers got through to him down in the Underworld."

He sheathed his sword, put his helmet back on and swept out of the temple on his way back to the ministry buildings, leaving Delius hurrying to keep up with him.