There was a ramshackle new construction perched on its roof like a greenhouse; from this flags were flying which no-one could identify, though Fulthor and the dwarf argued desultorily over their provenance. And down at its ancient front door, his big-knuckled hands clasped like a bunch of dice, stood the solitary principal of that lost maritime demesne, genius of a doomed fleet, St Elmo Buffin.

Elmo Buffin, that sad travesty, with his limbs like peeled sticks! He was seven feet tall and a yellow cloak was draped eccentrically about his bony shoulders. Plate armour of a dull-green colour encased him, sprouting all manner of blunt horns and spurs, little nubs and bosses which seemed chitinous and organic. It pulsed and shivered in its colour, for it had come to him from his father, a Reborn Man of the defunct House of medina-Clane, one of the first to be resurrected by Tomb the Dwarf and now dead. What his mother – a dour Northwoman and fishwife of Iron Chine, whose first husband had died in the War of the Two Queens – had bequeathed him is hard to say. Neither strain had bred true, for between Afternoon and Evening there is a great genetic as well as temporal gulf. Epilepsy racked him twice a week. His eyes were yellow and queer in that slack clownish face which seemed too large for his thin limbs. His brain heaved like the sea; across it visions came and went like the painted sails of his own fleet. Of years he had twenty-six; but his insanity made of that forty or fifty. Since the death of his father (himself an eccentric but principled man, who had consented to the miscegenation in order to cement the two halves of his bi-racial community) the whole weight of the Chine had rested on his shoulders.

How many of the villagers actually believed in his invisible enemy, or his experimental fleet? It seems immaterial. Those who died at sea knew the truth, as do we. Those that did not were nonetheless inspired by him. And if it did not thrive, well then the village survived. Buffin's success was as a symbol – queasy but enduring – which enabled past and present to collaborate. (His failure lay in underestimation; in being, if you like, not quite mad enough: but that was not to become clear until later, and who anyway could have been quite so mad as to imagine the actual state of affairs?) Now he stood in the doorway of the ancient ball, with its dreadful disregard for the passage of time and its rooftop contraptions worn with the air of a rakish hat, watching from the corner of his eye Fulthor's party as it approached. He was dwarfed by the dark columns. He could not keep still. He rubbed his hands to warm them in the cold air. He leant unconcernedly on the doorpost. Then he must look at his feet to admire his boots. Then, muttering to himself, jerk upright and practise a handshake with some imaginary visitor.

“'News from the City!”'they heard him murmur. 'Shall I say that? No. I must not appear so anxious. Shall I then enquire (thus, with a politic solicitude), “Your journey, it was comfortable?” Manifestly though, it was not -He snapped his fingers impatiently.

'Oh, what shall I say!'

Suddenly he dodged back among the columns and was lost to view. (Though it had no basis, Hornwrack retained for some time an impression of him huddled up there somewhere in the gloom the way a child might huddle breathless and white-faced behind the great half-opened doors of some echoing abandoned palace into which it has wandered; that palace being the world.)

After a moment he called querulously, 'Hello?'

No-one answered. Except for Fay Glass they had all got down from their horses and were staring astonished into the massive fluted shadows. Out popped his head like a crumpled leather bag on a stick, and he tapped the side of it mournfully. 'We're all mad here,'he sighed, as if the village, the boatyards and the ancient stones were all in some way contained within it: which, Hornwrack supposed, in a way they were. Now he recovered himself, smiling ironically; came forward and clasped Fulthor's hands. 'The briefest of aberrations,'he apologized (at this the mad woman pursed her lips enviously, and sniffed); 'Please forgive me:'and never referred to it again. 'Viriconium has sent observers then, at last!'

Under this misapprehension he led them up a monstrous flight of stairs. They could not correct it because he would not let them speak. He had, he explained, given up hope of ever getting help from the capital. He did not blame the High City for this. Messengers had been sent every six months to Duirinish, which was the regional centre, but patently the messages had not been sent on. This was understandable. In Duirinish they seined to believe that he was quarrelling with some other coastal village. This had not been at all uncommon in the years immediately following the War. What could he do but maintain a philosophical attitude?

Up the vast stairs they went behind him, listening to his monologue float down. His laughter was strained. 'Still, now you have come -His rooms were full of bald light, strange navigational instruments, clutter. In one room the charts had peeled from the wall and lay all along its foot in odd folds. He took them to a thing like a conservatory built right out on to the roof.

'From here I can see twenty miles out to sea.'He smiled proudly, a little pathetically. 'I expect you have more profound instruments in the South.'There was a great maze of tubing made of brass into which he invited them tO look. They bent one by one to the eyepiece. When it was Hornwrack's turn to look, all he saw was a sad reticulated greyness, and, suspended indistinctly against it in the distance, something like a chrysalis or cocoon, spinning and writhing at the end of a thread. 'Success is slow to come with this particular instrument.'Hornwrack shook his head; but Cellur seemed to be fascinated. As they moved from exhibit to exhibit like reluctant tourists in some artist's studio, Buffin sat on a stool with his limbs tense. He was like an exhibit himself in the direct odd light filtering through the whitish panes, legs wound tensely round one another, his face like an apologetic bag. 'It is not an ordinary telescope.'Out to sea. nothing moved.

… The rooms were draughty and seemed deserted. When he ordered refreshments they were brought by an old woman but he served them himself. 'Would you like some of this dried herring?'Money and men were his most urgent requirements, he said (there was besides a shortage of timber). The fleet was fitted but under-crewed. 'Pardon?'He showed them charts; designs; plans for a strategy they could not comprehend. On these maps an unconventional symbol depicted 'mist'. The island continent of Fenlen was not marked. Hornwrack looked for it but he could not find it.

'The war,'Alstath Fulthor managed to say. 'What is its exact nature?'

Buffin looked surprised.

'Why, it is precisely as you have seen. That is the extent of it.'

He thought for a long time. Then he said that his ships went out well-armed. They were captained by crafty men. At sea they encountered first rough water and adverse currents: then a mist. In the mist was some enemy no-one had ever seen. 'A madness comes over them, and they throw themselves into the water.'Those that did not drown were destroyed by fire; by unimaginable weapons. Some returned. A strange smell clung to their vessels; and they spoke of sounds so appalling as to be beyond description (though they were not loud).

Fulthor began to show signs of impatience. This sort of conjecture was not to his taste. He looked sideways at Hornwrack, who shrugged. Cellur the birdmaker, however, had been listening to every word. 'Have you ever been attacked on land?'he asked.

'For ten years now,'Buffin said absently, 'we have fought a war we cannot see. Since the death of my father something has been out there.'

Fulthor stirred, drew in his breath. 'I can make nothing of this,'he said brusquely to Cellur. 'We cannot concern ourselves with this.'