'Cromis, there's something wrong with your vulture.'

The bird was strutting to and fro on the roof of the caravan, where it had perched during the night. It extended its neck as if to vomit, beat its great iridium wings together, and squawked insanely. It made short, hopping sallies into the air. Suddenly, it shrieked:

'Go atonce! Goatonce! Go at once!'

It aunched itself off the roof and fastened its talons on Cromis'arm. It bobbed its head, peered into his face.

'tegeus-Cromis, you should leave here at once and go to -'

But Cromis hardly heard. He was watching Canna Moidart's captains as they swarmed down the face of the northern ridge and into the valley – their standards raised high, thirty thousand Northmen at their backs, and the geteit chemosit coming on in dark waves before them.

Time bucked and whipped like a broken hawser in Cromis'head, and for a moment he existed at two separate and distinct points along its curve -In a dark glade by a stinking pool, he fought a great black shadow some seven or eight feet high. Its limbs were thick and heavy, its head a blunted ovoid, featureless but for three glowing points set in an isosceles triangle. Its movements were powerful and controlled. It hissed as it wielded its enormous energy-blade, and left strange, shapeless imprints in the mud beneath it. There was an alien coldness about it; a calm, calculated intelligence -Simultaneously, in the irrefutable present of the Great

Brown Waste, he observed with unemotional preciseness the terrible skirmish-line that advanced into the valley ahead of the Moidart's horde. Each of its units was a great black shadow seven or eight feet high, weilding an immense energy-blade. Their movements were alien and silky and controlled, and their unpleasant triplex eyes glittered yellowly from blunt, ovoid heads -'Beware the geteit ehemosit!'cried the vulture on his arm.

Sick and shaking, he explored an understanding that had been open to him since his fight in the Metal Salt Marsh.

'I should have listened,'he said. 'We have no chance,'he whispered.

'We have more than poor Waterbeck, perhaps,'murmured Birkin Grif. He put a hand on Cromis'shoulder. 'If we live, we will go to Lendalfoot and see the metal bird's owner. They are golems, automatic men, some filthy thing she has dug up from a dead city. He may know -'

'Nothing like this has been seen in the world for a thousand years,'said Tomb the dwarf. 'Where did she find them?'

Unconcerned by such questions, Canna Moidart's black mechanical butchers moved implacably toward the first engagement in the War of the Two Queens: a war that was later to be seen as the mere opening battle of a wholly different – and greatly more tragic – conflict.

Their impact on Waterbeck's army was brutal. Already disorganised and disconcerted by the airboat raid, scattered, separated from their commanding officers, the Viriconese milled about their ruined encampment in a desperate and feeble attempt to form some sort of defensive position.

Faced by a human antagonist, they might have held their shaky line. Certainly, there burned in all of them a hatred of the Northman which might in other circumstances have overcome their tactical weakrmess and stiffened their resistance. But the chemosit slaughtered their self-possession.

They sobbed and died. They were hastily-conscripted, half-trained. Powered blades cut their swords like cheese. Their armour failed to armour them. They discovered that they did not belong there.

In the moment of first contact, a fine red mist sprayed up from the battleline, and the dying inhaled the substance of the dead while the living fought on in the fog, wondering why they had left their shops and their farms. Many of them simply died of shock and revulsion as the blood arced and spurted to impossible heights from the severed arteries of their fellows, and the air was filled with the stink of burst innards.

When the Moidart's regular troops joined the battle, they found little but confusion to check them. They howled with laughter and rattled their swords against their shields. They flanked Waterbeck's depleted force, split it into small, useless detachments, overan his pavilion, and tore him to pieces. They ringed the Viriconese and hammered them steadily against the grim anvil of the still-advancing chemosit. But there was resistance -In the dead airboat park, someone managed to depress the

barrel of the energy-cannon enough to fire it horizontally. For some seconds, its meteoric bolts – almost invisible in the daylight – hissed and spurted into the unbroken rank of the mechanical men. For a moment, it looked like discomfiting them; several burned like torches and then exploded, destroying others: but a small squad detached themselves from the main body, and, their power-blades chopping in unison, reached the gun with ease. It sputtered and went out, like a candle in the rain, and the gunners with it -And, from a vantage-point on the roof of Tomb's caravan,

Lord tegeus-Cromis of Viriconium, who imagined himself a better poet than swordsman, chose his moment. 'They make their own underbelly soft. Their only strength lies in the chemosit.'His head was full of death. The metal bird was on his arm. 'To the south there, they are completely open.'He turned to Birkin Grif. 'We could kill a lot of them if your men were willing.'

Grif unsheathed his sword and smiled. He jumped to the ground. He mounted his roan mare (in the grey light, her caparisons shone bravely) and faced his ugly, dishonest crew. 'We will all die,'he told them. He bared his teeth at them and they grinned back like old foxes. 'Well?'

They stropped their evil knives against their leather leggings. 'What are we waiting for?'asked one of them.

'You bloody fools!'yelled Grif, and roared with laughter. 'Nobody asked you to do this!'

They shouted and catcalled. They leapt into their saddles and slapped their knees in enjoyment of the joke. They were a gangrel, misfit lot.

Cromis nodded. He did not want to speak, but, 'Thank you,'he said to them. His voice was lost in the clangour of Water-beck's defeat.

'I am already halfway there,'chuckled Tomb the dwarf. He adjusted some of his levers. He swung his axe a couple of times, just to be sure.

Theomeris Glyn sniffed. 'An old man,'he said, 'deserves better. Why are we wasting time?'He looked a fool, and entirely vulnerable in his battered old helmet. He should have been in bed.

'Let's go then,'said Cromis. He leapt down from the roof. He mounted up, the iridium vulture flapping above him. He drew the nameless sword. And with no battle cries at all, forty smugglers, three Methven and a giant dwarf hurled them-selves into a lost fight. What else could they have done?

The dead and the half-dead lay in mounds, inextricably mixed. The ancient, unforgiving dust of the Great Brown Waste, recalling the crimes of the Departed Cultures, sucked greedily at these charnel heaps, and turned into mud. Some five thousand of Waterbeck's original force were still on their feet, concentrated in three or four groups, the largest of which had made its stand out of the bloody morass, on a long, low knoll at the centre of the valley.

The momentum of the charge carried Cromis twenty yards into the press without the need to strike a blow: Northmen fell to the hooves and shoulders of his horse and were trampled. He shouted obscenities at them, and made for the knoll, the smugglers a flying wedge behind him. A pikeman tore a long strip of flesh from the neck of his mount; Cromis hung out of the saddle and swung for the carotid artery; blade bit, and splashed with the piker's gore the horse reared and screamed in triumph. Cromis hung on and cut about him, laughing. The stink of horse-sweat and leather and blood was as sharp as a knife.