There would be nothing subtle in this battle. No deft brilliance displayed by tactical geniuses. The Letherii waited with their backs to the steep hills. The Tiste Edur and their allies would have to come to them. Such were the simple mechanics, seemingly incumbent, and inevitable.
But sorcery spoke with a different voice.
The spiralling pillars of dust towered into the sky, each one keening, the wind shrieking so loud that Edur and Letherii alike began to cower.
The Letherii white fire surged upward, forming its own standing wall of bridled mayhem.
Trull was finding it difficult to breathe. He saw a hapless raven that had made the mistake of flying over the killing field tumble and flutter to the ground, the first casualty of the day. It seemed a pathetic harbinger to his mind. Rather a thousand. Ten thousand ravens, caterwauling through the sky.
The pillars leaned, staggered, lurched forward.
And began toppling.
A rush of wind from behind battered Trull and his fellow warriors, blessedly rich and humid, in the wake of the advancing columns of dust. Faint shouts on all sides, as weapons were readied.
The spiralling pillars were a long time in coming down.
Shadow wraiths were suddenly flowing across the ground, a dark, low flood. Udinaas could feel their terror, and the dread compulsion that drove them forward. Fodder . It was too early to launch an attack. They would be beneath the clash of sorcery.
As the columns toppled, the wave of Letherii fire rose to meet them.
Feather Witch hissed. ‘The Empty Hold. The purest sorcery of the Letherii. Errant, I can feel it from here!’
‘Not enough,’ Udinaas muttered.
Positioned with the King’s Battalion, Preda Unnutal Hebaz saw the day’s light fade as the shadows of the falling pillars swept over the soldiers. She saw her men and women screaming, but could not hear them, as the roar of the dust thundered ever closer.
The Letherii ritual was suddenly released, the spitting, hissing fire sweeping over the heads of the cowering ranks, the tumbling froth surging upwards to meet the descending pillars.
Rapid concussions, shaking the earth beneath them, tearing fissures up the hillsides, and from Brans Keep a dull groaning. Unnutal spun round even as she was pushed to the ground. She saw, impossibly, the lake beside the keep lift in a mass of muddy water and foam. Saw, as the front wall of the keep bowed inward, pulling away from the flanking towers, dust shooting outward like geysers, and vanishing back into a billowing cloud.
Then the east tower swayed, enough to pitch from the edge the mangonel atop it, taking most of the crew with it. And the mage, Jirrid Attaract. All, plunging earthward.
The west tower leaned back. Its enormous foundation stones pushed outward, and suddenly it vanished into a cloud of its own rubble. The mage Nasson Methuda disappeared with it.
Twisting, Unnutal glared skyward.
To see the white fire shattering, dispersing. To see the pillars plunge through, sweeping the Letherii sorcery aside.
One struck the centre of the Merchants’ Battalion, the dark dust billowing out to the sides and rolling up against the hill.
For a moment, she could see nothing, then the pillar began to reform. Yet not as it had been. Now it was not dust that began spiralling upward, but living soldiers.
Whose flesh blackened like rot even as she watched.
They were screaming as they were lifted skyward, screaming as their flesh peeled away. Screaming-
The shadow above Unnutal Hebaz deepened. She looked up.
And closed her eyes.
Whirling in a frenzy, a huge fragment of Letherii sorcery slanted off the side of a collapsing pillar, plunged down and tore a bloody swath through the core of the Merude warriors a thousand paces to Trull’s left.
The warriors died where they stood, in red mist.
The white fire, now stained pink, rolled through the press towards the K’risnan on that side. The young sorceror raised his hands at the last moment, then the magic devoured him.
When it dwindled, wavered, then vanished, the K’risnan was gone, as were those Edur who had been standing too close. The ground was blackened and split.
On the other side of the killing field, columns were rising once more filled with spinning bodies. Higher, the mass of writhing flesh dimming into a muddy hue, then giving way to white bone and polished iron. The pillars rose still higher, devouring more and more soldiers, entire companies torn from the entrenchments and dragged into the twisting maw.
Ahlrada Ahn reached out and pulled Trull close. ‘He must stop this!’
Trull pulled savagely away, shaking his head. ‘This is not Rhulad! This is the Warlock King!’ Hannan Mosag, do you now vie for insanity’s throne ?