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Lord Wu, in his time, had been one of the great Tervola, but he had been one
of those unfortunates seduced by recent politics. He had died mysteriously in
Lioantung when that city had been the seat of Eastern Army.
A demon appeared. It howled grotesquely. It stood fourteen feet tall and had
a half-dozen arms. It pranced around cursing the man who had summoned it.
After receiving orders, it whirled, estimated the enemy force, changed shape.
Shih-ka i watched it become a copper rhinoceros of epic proportions. It
galloped toward the enemy. He loosed a sigh of disgust. Someone isn t taking
this seriously.
The shiny rhino trundled past Hsu Shen. It bellowed heartily and charged the
nearest horsemen. It rumbled around in circles, flipping its nose horns this
way and that. It overwhelmed opponents by virtue of sheer mass.
A clown thing with a certain effectiveness, Shih-ka i admitted grudgingly.
He did not feel a demon of that temper befit the dignity of a Tervola.
The demon shifted shape again, became octopod. It armed six tentacles with
swords seized from its victims.
A dragon rider came out of the sun. It put a spear-bolt through the demon.
The thing did not approve. It yelped like an injured puppy, faded away.
A dozen more Outside monsters joined the fray. They stopped the riders
briefly. Hsu Shen and his men came puffing up the dune.
Centurion, put these men through first. They re exhausted.
Yes, Lord.
Shih-ka i examined the progress of the evacuation. It looked too slow. Too
damned slow.
The riders pushed forward despite heavy casualties. They surrounded
Shih-ka i s dune-walled position, then waited at a respectful distance. Lord
Ssu-ma laughed. You ve got us now, don t you? No chance for us to get away,
eh? All you have to do is bring up the infantry and finish us, eh? He
directed his Tervola to concentrate on the nearest foot soldiers.
He stared at the stone thing. Was it stupid? If it kept on this way, its
entire army would be destroyed before it broke out of the desert. Not many of
the fallen remained in condition for reanimation.
That pleased Shih-ka i.
Sure as he lived, he knew the master of the dead meant to march across the
world. And once his armies broke out of the wasteland they would begin to
swell. That explained why the thing was squandering manpower now. It
anticipated no difficulty acquiring replacements.
The enemy infantry came on in such numbers that the demons, under constant
attack from above, were swamped.
Shih-ka i glanced back. The evacuation was going well. A man every ten
seconds. Six a minute. Sixty every ten minutes. Three quarters of the force
had gone. The others had formed round the portal. The maneuver was a tactical
success already.
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Give me a little luck, he thought. Let the portals remain useful a few
minutes more. Let the stone thing persist in its profligate stupidity.
He did gloom about his minor exploratory thrust having become an embattled
retreat which threatened to embroil the entire Eastern Army in an unexpected
war. A big war. At a critical juncture in Shinsan s history. He guessed there
were fifty thousand enemy soldiers scattered around the desert. They seemed to
have stopped coming from their place of hiding.
They did him a favor, did the foe s infantry. They followed the example of
the cavalry. They elected to surround him before making their attack.
Shih-ka i stepped into the portal just before their charge began. There was
but one man behind him, his faithful Pan ku. They came over the dunes and
found a whole lot of nothing. The Tervola had pulled their bolt hole in after
them.
What are they waiting for, Lord? Tasi-feng asked. Four days had passed. The
foe had not come west. Recon reports painted a portrait of confusion on a
Brobdingnagian scale.
I don t know. Maybe we got our bluff in on them. Maybe they won t come at
all.
Do you think so, Lord?
Not really. But a daydream doesn t hurt if you don t put much faith in it.
Anyway, let s not be ungrateful for the gift of time. Shih-ka i had not
expected to have time to move people into the mountains and get them dug in.
He would not have given an opponent that edge.
He had gotten what he needed and more. The Seventeenth s two field brigades
were in place and waiting. Elements of the rest of Eastern Army were
assembling at the fortress. If he were given another week, he thought,
transfers would bring in enough people and thaumaturgic equipment to destroy
thrice the number of zombies he had seen near the lonely mountain.
He had stripped his army of Tervola. The troops were coming overland under
the command of their noncommissioned officers, with some units transferring in
as opportunity arose. He was drawing Tervola and equipment from Northern Army,
too, pushing his writ from Lord Kuo to its limit. He had ignored the
predictable outrage of the Commander, Northern Army.
Northern Army was also on the march, but there was no way it could contribute
troops here. Shih-ka i had directed its three legions to assume a defensive
posture along the west bank of the Tusghus, a broad river lying roughly midway
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