that some of them temporarily forgot their own defensive
tasks and thus were wounded or killed.
The inhabitants of the hematite were better equipped for
night fighting than any of the warmlanders save the few bats.
The previously unrelenting aerial assault of the Plated Folk
was shattered. Fragmented insect bodies began to fall from
the sky. The only reaction this grisly rain produced among the
warmlanders beneath it was morbid laughter.
By morning the destruction was nearly complete. What
remained of the Plated Folk aerial strength had retreated far
up the Pass.
A general council was held atop the wall. For the first time
in days the warmlanders were filled with optimism. Even the
suspicious Clothahump was forced to admit that the tide of
battle seemed to have turned.
"Could we not use these newfound friends as did the
Plated Folk?" one of the officers suggested. "Could we not
employ them to drop our own troops to the rear of the enemy
forces?"
"Why stop there?" wondered one of the exhilarated bird
officers, a much-decorated hawk in light armor and violet and
red kilt. "Why not drop them in Cugluch itself? That would
panic them!"
"No," said Aveticus carefully. "Our people are not pre-
pared for such an adventure, and despite their size I do not
think our owlish allies have the ability to carry more than a
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single rider, even assuming they would consent to such a
proposition, which I do not think they would.
"But I do not think they would object to duplicating the
actions of the Plated Folk fliers in assailing opposing ground
forces. As our own can now do."
So the orders went out from the staff to their own fliers and
thence to those from Ironcloud. It was agreed. Wearing dark
goggles to shield their sensitive eyes from the sun, the owls
and lemurs led the rejuvenated warmlander arboreals in dive
after dive upon the massed, confused ranks of the Plated Folk
army. The result was utter disorientation among the insect
soldiers. But they still refused to collapse, though the losses
they suffered were beginning to affect even so immense an
army.
And when victory seemed all but won it was lost in a
single heartrending and completely unexpected noise. A sound
shocking and new to the warmlanders, who had never heard
anything quite like it before. It was equally shocking but not
new to Flor and Jon-Tom. Though not personally exposed to
it, they recognized quickly enough the devastating thunder of
dynamite.
As the dust began to settle among cries of pain and fear,
there came a second, deeper, more ominous rumble as the
entire left side of the Jo-Troom wall collapsed in a heap of
shattered masonry and stone. It brought the great wooden
gates down with it, supporting timbers splintering like fire-
crackers as they crashed to the ground.
"Diversion," muttered Flor. "The aerial attack, the para-
chutists, the beetles... all a diversion. Bastardos; I should
have remembered my military history classes."
Jon-Tom moved shakily to the edge of the wall. If they'd
been on the other side of the Gate they'd all be dead or
maimed now.
Small white shapes were beginning to emerge from the
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ground in front of the ruined wall. Waving picks and short
swords they cut at the legs of startled warmlander soldiers.
Like the inhabitants of Ironcloud they too wore dark goggles
to protect them from the sunlight.
"Termites," Jon-Tom murmured aloud, "and other insect
burrowers. But where did they get the explosives?"
"Little need to think on that, boy," Clothahump said sadly.
"More of Eejakrat's work. What did you call the packaged
thunder?"
"Explosives. Probably dynamite."
"Or even gelignite," added Flor with suppressed anger.
"That was an intense explosion."
Sensing victory, the Plated Folk ignored the depradations of
the swooping arboreals overhead and swarmed forward. Nor
could the hectic casting of spears and nets by the Weavers
hold them back. Not with the wall, the fabled ancient bottle-
neck, tumbled to the earth like so many child's blocks.
It must have taken an immense quantity of explosives to
undermine that massive wall. It was possible, Jon-Tom mused,
that the Plated burrowers had begun excavating their tunnel
weeks before the battle began.
Without the wall to hinder them they charged onward. By
sheer force of numbers they pushed back those who had
desperately rushed to defend the ruined barrier. Then they
were across, fighting on the other side of the Jo-Troom Gate
for the first time in recorded memory. Warmlander blood
stained its own land.
Jon-Tom turned helplessly to Clothahump. The Plated Folk
soldiers were ignoring the remaining section of wall and the
few arrows and spears that fell from its crest. The wizard
stood quietly, his gaze focused on the far end of the Pass and
not on the catastrophe below.
"Can't you do something," Jon-Tom pleaded with him.
"Bring fire and destruction down on them! Bring..."
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Clothahump did not seem to be listening. He was looking
without eyes. "I almost have it," he whispered to no one in
particular. "Almost can..." He broke off, turned to stare at
Ion-Tom.
"Do you think conjuring up lightning and floods and fire is
merely a matter of snapping one's fingers, boy? Haven't you
learned anything about magic since you've been here?" He
turned his attention away again.
"Can almost... yes," he said excitedly, "I can. I believe I
can see it now!" The enthusiasm faded. "No, I was wrong.
Too well screened by distortion spells. Eejakrat leaves noth-
ing to chance. Nothing."
Jon-Tom turned away from the entranced wizard, swung
his duar around in front of him. His fingers played furiously
on the strings. But he could not think of a single appropriate
song to sing. His favorites were songs of love, of creativity
and relationships. He knew a few marches, and though he
sang with ample fervor nothing materialized to slow the
Plated Folk advance.
Then Mudge, sweaty and his fur streaked with dried blood,
was shaking him and pointing westward. "Wot the bloody
'ell is that?" The otter was staring across the widening field
of battle.
"It sounds like..." said Caz confusedly. "I don't know. A
rusty door hinge, perhaps. Or high voices. Many high voices."
Then they could make out the source of the peculiar noise.
It was singing. Undisciplined, but strong, and it rose from a
motley horde of marchers nearing the foothills. They were
armed with pitchforks and makeshift spears, with scythes and
knives tied to broom handles, with woodcutters' tools and
sharpened iron posts.
They flowed like a brown-gray wave over the milling
combatants, and wherever their numbers appeared the Plated
Folk were overwhelmed.
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"Mice!" said Mudge, aghast. "Rats an' shrews in there,
too. I don't believe it. They're not fighters. Wot be they doin'
'ere?"
"Fighting," said Jon-Tom with satisfaction, "and damn
well, too, from the look of it."
The rodent mob attacked with a ferocity that more than
compensated for their lack of training. The flow of clicking,
gleaming death from the Pass was blunted, then stopped. The
rodents fought with astonishing bravery, throwing themselves
onto larger opponents while others cut at warriors' knees and
ankles.
Sometimes three and four of the small wamilanders would
bring down a powerful insect by weight alone. Their make-
shift weapons broke and snapped. They resorted to rocks and
bare paws, whatever they could scavenge that would kill.
For a few moments the remnants of the warmlander forces
were as stunned by the unexpected assault as the Plated Polk.
They stared dumbfounded as the much maligned, oft-abused
rodents threw themselves into the fray. Then they resumed
fighting themselves, alongside heroic allies once held in
servitude and contempt.
Now if the wamilanders prevailed there would be perma-
nent changes in the social structure of Polastrindu and other
communities, Jon-Tom knew. At least one good thing would
come of this war.
He thought they were finished with surprises. But while he
selected targets below for the spears he was handed, yet
another one appeared.
In the midst of the battle a gout of flame brightened the
winter morning. There was another. It was almost asif... yes!
A familiar iridescent bulk loomed large above the combat-
ants, incinerating Plated Folk by the squadron.
"I'll be damned!" he muttered. "It's Falameezar!"
"But I thought he was through with us," said Caz,
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"You know this dragon?" Bribbens tended to a wounded
leg and eyed the distant fight with amazement. It was the first
time Jon-Tom had seen the frog's demeanor change.
"We sure as hell do!" Jon-Tom told him joyfully. "Don't
you see, Caz, it all adds up."
"Pardon my ignorance, friend Jon-Tom, but the only
mathematics I've mastered involves dice and cards."
"This army of the downtrodden, of the lowest mass of
workers. Who do you think organized them, persuaded them
to fight? Someone had to raise a cry among them, someone
had to convince them to fight for their rights as well as for
their land. And who would be more willing to do so, to
assume the mantle of leadership, than our innocent Marxist
Falameezar!"
"This is absurd." Bribbens could still not quite believe it.
"Dragons do not fight with people. They are solitary, antiso-
cial creatures who..."
"Not this one," Jon-Tom informed him assuredly. "If
anything, he's too social. But I'm not going to argue his
philosophies now."
Indeed, as the gleaming black and purple shape trudged
nearer they could hear the great dragon voice bellowing
encouragingly above the noise of battle.
"Onward downtrodden masses! Workers arise! Down with
the invading imperialist warmongers!"
Yes, that was Falameezar and none other. The dragon was
in his sociological element. In between thundering favorite
Marxist homilies he would incinerate a dozen terrified insect
warriors or squash a couple beneath massive clawed feet.
Around him swirled a bedraggled mob of tiny furry support-
ers like an armada of fighter craft protecting a dreadnought.
The legions of Plated Folk seemed endless. But now that
the surprise engendered by the destruction of the wall had
passed, their offensive began to falter. The arrival of what
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amounted to a second warmlander army, as ferocious if not as
well trained as the original, started to turn the tide.
Meanwhile the Weavers and fliers from h-oncloud contin-
ued to cause havoc among the packed ranks of warriors trying
to squeeze through the section of ruined wall to reach the
open plain where their numbers could be a factor. The
diminutive lemur bowmen fired and fired until their drawstring
fingers were bloody.
When the fall came it was not in a great surge of panic. A
steady withering of purpose and determination ate through
the ranks of the Plated Folk. In clusters, and individually, they
lost their will to fight on. A vast sigh of discouragement
rippled through the whole exhausted army.
Sensing it, the warmlanders redoubled then- efforts. Still
fighting, but with intensity seeping away from them, the
Plated Folk were gradually pressed back. The plain was
cleared, and then the destroyed section of wall. The battle
moved once again back into the confines of the Pass. Insect
officers raged and threatened, but they could do nothing to
stop the steady slow leak of desire that bled their soldiers'
will to fight.
Jon-Tom had stopped throwing spears. His arm throbbed
with the efforts of the past several days. The conflict had
retreated steadily up the Pass, and the Plated combatants were
out of range now. He was cheering tiredly when a han6
clamped on his arm so forcefully that he winced. He lookeo
around. It was Clothahump. The wizard's grip was anything
"By the periodic table, I can see it now!"
"See what?"
"The deadmind." Clothahump's tone held a peculiar mix-
ture of confusion and excitement. "The deadmind. It is not in
a body."
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"You mean the brain itself s been extracted?" The image
was gruesome.
"No. It is scattered about, in several containers of differing
shape."
Jon-Tom's mind shunted aside the instinctive vision and
produced only a blank from the wizard's description. Flor
listened intently.
"It talks to Eejakrat," Clothahump continued, "his voice far
away, distant, "in words I can't understand."
"Several containers.. .the mind is several minds?" Jon-
Tom struggled to make sense of a seeming impossibility.
"No, no. It is one mind that has been split into many
parts."
"What does it look like? You said containers. Can you be
more specific?" Flor asked him.
"Not really. The containers are mostly rectangular, but not
all. One inscribes words on a scroll, symbols and magic
terms I do not recognize." He winced with the strain of
focusing senses his companions did not possess.
"There are symbols over all the containers as well, though
they mostly differ from those appearing on the scroll. The
mind also makes a strange no
ise, like talking that is not. I can
read some of the symbols... it is strangely inscribed. It
changes as I look at it." He stopped.
Jon-Tom urged him on. "What is it? What's happening?"
Clothahump's face was filled with pain. Sweat poured
down his face into his shell. Jon-Tom didn't know that a turtle
could sweat. Everything indicated that the wizard was expending
a massive effort not only to continue to see but to understand.
"Eejakrat... Eejakrat sees the failure of the attack." He
swayed, and Jon-Tom and Flor had to support him or he
would have fallen. "He works a last magic, a final conjura-
tion. He has... has delved deep within the deadmind for its
most powerful manifestation. It has given him the formula he
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ds. Now he is giving orders to his assistants. They are
ringing materials from the store of sorceral supplies. Skrritch
watches, she will kill him if he fails. Eejakrat promises her
the battle will be won. The materials... I recognize some.
No, many. But I do not understand the formula given, the
purpose. The purpose is to... to..." He turned a frightened
face upward. Jon-Tom shivered. He'd never before seen the
wizard frightened. Not when confronted by the Massawrafh,
not when crossing Helldrink.
But he was more than frightened now. He was terrified.
"Must stop it!" he mumbled. "Got to stop him from
completing the formula. Even Eejakrat does not understand
what he does. But he... I see it clearly... he is desperate.
He will try anything. I do not think... do not think he can
control..."
"What's the formula?" Flor pressed him.
"Complex ... can't understand..."
"Well then, the symbols you read on the deadmind
I containers."
"Can read them now, yes... but can't understand..."
"Try. Repeat them, anyway."
Clothahump went silent, and for a moment the two humans
I were afraid he wouldn't speak again. But Jon-Tom finally
managed to shake him into coherence.
"Symbols... symbols say, 'Property.' "
"That's all?" Flor said puzzledly. "Just 'property'?"
"No... there is more. Property... property restricted ac-
cess. U.S. Army Intelligence."
Flor looked over at Jon-Tom. "That explains everything;
the parachutes, the tactics, the formula for the explosives to
undermine the wall, maybe the technique for doing it as well.
Los insectos have gotten hold of a military computer."