It took three days to prepare for the Summoning. Three days during which the twenty six priests ate nothing but a few slices of bread, bathed three times a day in holy water and spent every waking moment chanting words of praise and devotion to Samnos. At the end of the period of preparation they were all feeling weak and shaky, hardly able to stand without wobbling on their feet.

     At the same time, though, they were filled with such a feeling of glory and holiness that it was a wonder it didn’t shine out through every pore of their bodies. Physically they were as weak as babies, but mentally they felt that they only had to lift their hands and all the evil in the world would be swept away. It was a state of mind that the priests called Rapture, and it was an extremely dangerous state of mind to be in. A priest in a state of Rapture could believe himself capable of anything and had to be watched at all times to make sure he didn’t go off and do something stupid, like single handedly assault a column of trolls.

     The ceremony had to take place out in the open, so the priests, their attendants and acolytes and a few interested officers gathered in the middle of the valley, in the shadow of the towering peaks that rose all around them. A few onlookers were permitted, so long as they didn’t interfere, so Field Marshal Haines followed Resalintas onto the flat area of ground that the acolytes had spent the night preparing.

     “What exactly is going to happen?” he asked, staring around curiously.

     Resalintas was feeling curiously light headed due to his three days of fasting, and his steel grey eyes fixed in his superior officer with an intensity that had Haines shuffling nervously on his feet. “If Samnos answers our summons, He will send one of His Shield Bearers to our aid. One of the most blessed of all beings in creation. He spends most of his time in the presence of Samnos Himself and is granted the honour of serving His needs in the next life. When Samnos goes into battle, the Shield Bearer goes with Him, carrying His sword and shield, but he is also a mighty warrior in his own right and a fearsome opponent, the word of whose coming is enough to strike terror into even the most powerful of evil creatures.”

     Haines stared at the old priest in astonishment, amazed at the state of exultation he was in. What kind of state will he go into if Samnos doesn’t answer the summons? he wondered, a little anxiously. “This Shield Bearer, he was originally the soul of a living worshipper of Samnos?" he asked.

     "Uncounted hundreds of thousands of years ago," agreed Resalintas. "It takes a long time to rise to such power and eminence."

     "I thought it was impossible for the souls of those who've moved on to return to the mortal planes.”

     “It is usually impossible, this is one of the exceptions. Even so, though, it is only possible for his bare spirit to come through. Once here, he has to construct a material body for himself, and to do that he has to draw upon the love and devotion of Samnos’s worshippers. That is why you see me now in this condition. We have spent the past three days saturating ourselves with as much adoration and devotion as possible, so that the Shield Bearer will have plenty to draw upon when he needs it.”

     “I see,” said the Field Marshal. “What will it look like, do you think?”

     “We will know when, if, he arrives,” replied the old priest. “I think we are ready to begin now. Please wait outside the circle until we are finished.”

     Haines nodded, and watched in fascination as the priests moved into position.

     Haines had expected the ceremony to be long and complicated, with lots of chanting and praising and so on, but priests of Samnos like to keep things simple whenever possible and so, while the twenty five other priests formed a circle around the prepared area, Resalintas took a few steps forward and dropped down onto one knee.

     “Mighty Lord Samnos,” he began, his head bowed and his hands resting on the hilt of his sword. “Our need is great. The forces of evil are gathered against us in countless multitudes. Give us the help we need to punish the sinners and send them to Thy righteous judgement. Send one of Thy Shield Bearers to our aid, in fulfillment of the promise Thou didst make to Pronias the First, may his name live on in glory for ever. Come to our aid, I, Thy humble servant, beg of Thee.”

     Is that it? wondered Haines in disappointment as the old priest stepped back into the circle made by the others. He might have been asking his neighbour to borrow a cup of sugar! It was apparently enough, though, as a moment later he became aware of a gradual change in the atmosphere around him, a feeling similar to the approach of a thunderstorm. It was the feeling of gathering power, he realised. The sense that something magnificent and terrible was approaching.

     The priests felt it even more strongly than he did, and began chanting verses from the Samnia, the holy book of the priesthood of Samnos. Haines listened carefully, and was able to pick out a few words and phrases.

     “The armies of dark Prince Hadum were scattered and lost, driven before the might of..."

     "...and the lamentations of her lost children..."

     "...the Lord Samnos did say unto him, and pious Prince Denell pledged his..."

     "...if ever the forces of darkness should gather again. That is my most solemn vow, and...”

     The feeling of gathering power grew even stronger, though, and one by one the priests fell silent, waiting humbly and patiently for the approaching entity to reveal itself.

     It’s here! Haines suddenly found himself thinking, and realised that he was absolutely certain of it. Whatever it was that the priests had summoned from the next world was now present, in the very midst of them. The priests raised their arms, and despite the dignity and calm reserve they were trying their very best to maintain, Haines was aware of the thrilling excitement felt by every one of them. To see the normally stern, grim faced priests brought to this state of rapturous exultation gave him a very strange feeling of guilt, as if he were seeing something he shouldn’t. Peeping into a girl’s changing room, say, or spying on one of his men as he was making love to his wife. It made him feel a little ashamed of himself for being there, and he thought about slipping away before someone noticed him and raised a cry. And yet, the priests hadn’t raised any objection to his and the others watching. They had no secrets. They were completely open about everything they did, which was one of the reasons why the armies of the world trusted them so completely.

     The priests now poured forth all the love and adoration they’d stored up inside themselves, and the Field Marshal imagined that he could almost see it as it streamed out of their staring eyes and gaping mouths, flowing into the centre of the circle where it was greedily sucked up by the entity that now squatted there. It was invisible at first, being little more than a powerful spirit sent into the mortal world by the power of a God, but gradually, little by little, it began to come into sight.

     At first it was little more than a shimmering in the air, but then the Field Marshal had a brief glimpse of blazing eyes and powerful, coiled tentacles, making him recoil in terror. Surely that couldn't be what the priests were expecting! Had something gone terribly wrong? The awful apparition, the brief glimpse of the body the spirit had worn in life, vanished before he could be sure he’d really seen it, though, to be replaced by the form the Shield Bearer had chosen for this particular manifestation.

     He didn’t know where he’d gotten the idea that the entity was squatting, but as it came into view he saw that he’d been right. It had chosen the form of a human man, appropriately enough, and was dressed identically to the priests around it, with a shortsword hanging from its belt and a broadsword strapped across its back. Chainmail covered its arms and legs, and on its head it wore a spiked steel helmet sporting the golden griffin badge of the priesthood of Samnos. At first it was squatting down on its hands and toes, but as it became fully solid it rose slowly to its feet and picked up a shield which also carried the emblem of the golden griffin.

     It was about the size of a normal man at first, but as it stood it began to grow. Seven feet tall, eight, ten, fifteen... Some of the priests cried out in pain as the Shield Bearer drew from them the power it needed to complete its material form, and one of them collapsed in a heap, his helmet rolling noisily away across the stony ground. Haines had seen enough corpses in his military career to know that the man was dead.

     The giant soldier continued to grow, and several spectators gasped in amazement as it reached twenty feet, thirty, forty. Finally, towering fifty feet above the tiny priests gathered around it, it stopped growing and came to life, gazing around at the valley, the mountains and the spectators. It then looked down and fixed its gaze on Resalintas, the most senior of the priests who’d summoned it.

     It wasn’t smiling.

     The priests were dwarfed by the colossal being that towered over them, but for some reason Haines could almost imagine that Resalintas had shrunk, that his apparently diminutive stature was caused by an actual decrease in his size and wasn’t just an illusion caused by his proximity to the giant soldier. He also seemed to be stooping a little and to have a slight tremble in his limbs, but he was too far away to be certain. He remembered what the old priest had said about the ceremony causing drastic ageing among its participants, but he dismissed the idea out of hand. It was simply impossible to think of Resalintas as being anything other than at the prime of his fighting life.

     Finally the colossus spoke, and its voice echoed like thunder around the valley, bringing small avalanches of stones and gravel raining down the mountainslopes. “WHAT IS THE TASK FOR WHICH THOU HAST SUMMONED ME?” it demanded, giving the definite impression that it was put out by the summons, that it had been interrupted in the middle of something far more important.

     Resalintas met its gaze steadily, however, his iron hard will unaffected by whatever the ceremony had done to his body. The stance of his body told the Field Marshall that the old priest believed himself to be the equal of the Shield Bearer. We both serve Samnos, his eyes seemed to say as he looked up at the giant towering over him. We are both worshippers of the God of Righteous Warfare and all such are equals irrespective of their age, size or power. Haines nodded to himself. He remembered Resalintas telling him so once, long ago. The military ranks they carried were necessary only to allow them to integrate into a hierarchical military structure.

     Resalintas glared back up at it as though it were any other of the priests gathered around him, therefore, and addressed it as an equal, one man to another. “Your task is to guard this valley, and destroy any evil creature that tries to pass through.”

     The Shield Bearer nodded and turned to obey the command, its every footstep making the ground shake as though a minor earthquake were taking place.

     The valley was already free of evil beings, though, they all having fled during the third and last usage of the Sceptre of Samnos, so after a quick look around to make sure of the fact the Shield Bearer came to a halt and stood still like a statue, its shortsword (a ten foot long ‘short’ sword) held in one hand, ready to be used the moment any evil being showed itself. The circle of priests then broke up, each one staggering wearily to their tents except two who picked up their fallen comrade and bore him away with stately dignity.

     Resalintas made his way to where Haines was waiting, still half stunned by the ceremony he’d witnessed, and as the old priest got closer Haines was horrified to see that his earlier observation had been correct. The ceremony had taken a terrible toll of him. Resalintas looked at least twenty years older than he’d been just a few minutes earlier and was now a genuinely old man. He was shorter by a good six inches, his back now having a noticeable hump, and his uniform hung on him like a tent, no longer filled out by hard, bulging muscles. His face hung in folds of loose skin, blemished by warts and outbreaks of tiny scarlet blood vessels, and as he walked the Field Marshal noticed that he was favouring his right leg, as if he had a trace of arthritis in the other.

     It was like a scene from a nightmare, the unimaginable turned into fact, but as he opened his mouth to say something the old priest looked at him, and the look in those steel grey eyes hit him like the blow of a giant’s fist. The tremendous faith and willpower behind those eyes was undiminished. His glance was still enough to turn a lesser man’s knees to water, and the look he was giving him now said, plain as words, that he’d better not make any comment on his physical condition. I am still a priest of Samnos, that look said, and the body of a priest is the least important part of him. Haines nodded, indicating his understanding without acknowledging that the unspoken conversation had taken place at all.

     “Will he be able to stop the Shadowarmies all by himself?” he asked therefore, indicating the titanic Shield Bearer.

     “No,” replied the old priest in a hoarse, raspy voice. “As a spiritual denizen of the afterlife it is all but immortal and indestructible, but to exist here it has to wear a physical body and that body is vulnerable to attack. When the body is destroyed, it will have no choice but to return from whence it came. It will certainly delay them, though. Give us a little more time.”

     Haines scowled unhappily. “That seems to be all we can ever do, just slow them down. Even the Sceptre of Samnos could do nothing more than that.”

     Resalintas nodded, and seemed about to say something in reply, but he paused with an uncomfortable expression on his face. He felt around in his mouth with his tongue, and after a moment spat two teeth out into his hand. He stared at them strangely for a moment before casually dropping them to the ground.

     Haines looked away in embarrassment, at a loss for anything to say, even though he knew that silence was probably worse than the crudest, most unkind thing he could possibly have thought of, and it was left to Resalintas to fill the silence.

     “I will be accepting promotion to General,” he said, unbuckling his belt of throwing knives and handing it over. “I think it’s obvious that my fighting days are over.”

     Haines accepted the belt gravely. He’d known priests of Samnos long enough to understand the tremendous significance of the act. “Didn’t you have a sword as well?” he asked, and immediately cursed himself for his thoughtless stupidity. His sword had been the Sword of Retribution, and it had left him the moment he’d ceased to be able to wield it. Even at that moment, some other priest somewhere in the world was receiving the surprise of his life as the Sword appeared before him.

     The old priest handed over his other weapons as well until he retained only an eight inch stabbing knife with a powerful magical charge, the only weapon his enfeebled body was still capable of wielding with any kind of effectiveness. Even now, though, Haines wouldn’t have wanted to have to fight him and doubted that there were many men in the world capable of facing him man to man.

     “I hereby promote you to General,” said the Field Marshal. “Effective immediately.”

     Resalintas nodded his acceptance. It was only a formality, of course. Priests of Samnos could be any rank they wanted to be, fitting themselves into the military hierarchy wherever they thought they could do the most good, subject only to the condition that actively fighting priests could rise no higher than Captain. Now that Resalintas was no longer capable of actively fighting, he was free to rise to the rank he was certain to have attained had he not been a priest. It was a sign of the Emperor’s good sense that he allowed this in his armies. He knew that those countries whose Commanders in Chief didn’t allow it were usually overwhelmed by the forces of evil in very short order.

     “Come on,” said Haines, gathering the old priest’s weapons up in his arms. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

     Resalintas nodded again, and the two men made their way back towards the tent city.