The stairs were rising up the wall now. Another long line of warriors had moved up into position near the lip of the ditch. The Khad's own troops.

The Mongs had thrown another attack in on the left as a further diversion. These were also the Khad's men. Farther back, on the green slope, the second line of reserves moved into position.

It was still in essence a frontal attack, and brutal. The high cliffs guarding the moat at either end served as a funnel to divert the Mongs against the ramparts where the Sea Caths were strongest. No real flank attack could be mounted, and as the Mongs pressed forward, urged by the pressure of their own troops behind them, they began to converge and the separate companies to lose identity.

The ditch was now filled with thousands of screaming, working, fighting, blood-crazed Mongs. The sound was one long anguished scream of battle. Men died beneath the arrows and were stepped on and trodden into soft earth. Some who were merely wounded were trampled to death.

The Sea Caths, all this while, had been quietly warping their tall clumsy ships in toward the sea wall which held back the ocean. Blade had wondered about those tall ships, more like towers on a raft than ships, and now he saw their use. The sides of the towers fell away and revealed long slender poles with cup-shaped devices at the top end. Blade could see this because Rahstum had now given the order for his own men to fall back, and Blade rode back up the slope as the Khad's troops poured into the ditch and toward the completed stairs up the wall.

Blade, from this new vantage, saw a crew winching back one of the slender poles. It bent like a resilient whip and something was loaded into the cup. It glittered in the sun and even at that distance Blade recognized it. Jade. Not cannon balls, but jade just the same.

He saw a Cath officer pull a rope trigger. He could imagine the nasty spanggg as the slender catapult whipped up and over, though he could not hear it over the battle. A huge shard of jade, flattish and sharp edged, soared high over the city and came down in the ditch. Nearly a vertical fall, a mortar effect. The jade missile smashed twenty men to pulp. There was no way to miss the target in that fighting, dinning mass.

Rahstum was riding furiously up and down, extricating his men from the ditch so that Khad's men could rush in. He turned and rode toward Blade as another shard of jade smashed down and squashed the attackers like bugs. The Caths were warping more of the tower ships in. Blade counted a dozen of them.

Rahstum, after sending his officers scurrying to reform and rearm his men, joined Blade. Together they watched the carnage grow as more and more of the ships began to hurl the deadly chunks of jade over the city.

Rahstum tugged at his beard in puzzlement. "Are they wizards, then? Every one finds its mark. I would expect a miss now and then."

Blade did not try to explain. The Sea Caths had tested and fired and planted sighting stakes, all against this emergency. Those tall catapults were perfectly adjusted for range.

"Anyway," Rahstum said with a grin, "those are the Khad's men. Not mine."

He turned to shout at a lieutenant. "Form up again, Lusta. They will be in the moat in a few minutes."

It was true. The Mongs in the ditch had completed a series of shallow steps up the wall. They bounded up and over into the moat, waving their swords and bows and screaming defiance at the Caths on the rampart beyond the moat. A wave of horsemen went charging down the ditch and put their ponies at the stairs. The shaggy little beasts plunged up, as agile as mountain goats.

Now came another wave of foot, carrying ladders. The rank and file of the Mongs thought it was almost over. Soon they would be in the town and cutting throats and raping to their hearts' content.

The actual rampart of the city offered no serious obstacle. It was barely ten feet high, of earth and stone and braced by timbers. A broad way ran atop it, where the crossbows were still at work. The wall was thronged with Caths who screamed insults and every type of obscenity meant to lure the Mongs into the moat.

Blade tapped Rahstum's arm. "Soon now. If they mean to flood it at all."

He glanced up the hill behind him. The Khad had left his throne and ventured down the slope a few feet, staring and shielding his eye with both hands. He also was thinking that victory was within his grasp. Nothing could stand against the Mongs in hand-to-hand combat.

The Sea Caths waited, cunningly, until the dry moat was a raging mass of attackers from sea gate to sea gate. Some ladders were already up and being thrown back. Great cauldrons of boiling oil were tipped on the Mongs as they swarmed up, uttering blood-curdling yells, swords in hand and knives in teeth.

Slowly, paying a terrible price, the Mongs began to gain a foothold on the wall. A line of Mong archers came into the ditch, at a proper distance from the wall, and poured in a murderous covering fire. More and more of the ladders went up and stayed. There was hand-to-hand fighting on the wall now, and the archers began to kill Mongs as well as Caths. Rahstum could have sent an order to the archers, but he did not. The arrow fire ceased, after minutes, when some sublieutenant gave the order.

A slow, growing, rushing thunder sound began to fill the air. Rahstum pointed. The Caths had opened the sea gates.

From both ends the sea rushed into the moat, foaming and churning, a roaring green monster flecked with muddy white, a manmade tidal wave that was twenty feet high and scoured everything before it. It overflowed the moat and spilled into the ditch below like an avalanche. There it turned muddy and churned in frenetic whirlpools and killed everything in its path.

Blade thought it unlikely that any of the Mongs could swim.

There was a tremendous clashing hiss as the two streams of water met. Horses and men were tossed high in the air, to be immediately sucked down and under. The Caths, screaming in triumph, and having finished off the Mongs on the rampart, began running up and down and making pincushions out of the few that could keep their heads above water.

Blade looked back at the Khad again. The Scourge of the Universe was beating his breast.

Rahstum nodded at Blade. "Now, man! Your wagons. We will see how well your plan works."