Flane fought until the breath whistled in his throat, until his arms were scarred with wounds, and ran red blood. Someone yanked on him, pulled him from the press, and he stood sobbing for air as Aevlyn dabbed a dry cloth at his cuts. When she offered him white wine in a copper flagon, he drank deep; with the back of his hand he dried his mouth and grinned at her. "It will be night presently," she whispered. "Then the men will have a rest." "So soon?" questioned Flane blankly, looking at the sun. "You fought for hours there," Aevlyn smiled, kneeling to ease a dying man's pains. "Some grumbled that you sought all the glory for yourself." Flane chuckled, looking out at the tribes that hemmed them in, building camps and fires, and erecting _kaatra_-hide tents. He whispered savagely, "Glory enough for all at this fight." He shook his head, and his green eyes narrowed. "There are many of them," he said slowly. "Too many." He lifted the violet-gun and carried it to a jagged edge of rock; rested it in a crotch of stone, leaning cheek against the wooden stock. He smiled mirthlessly to himself, thinking: I will reduce some of that number, now. His finger pressed the button of the gun and a lavender flame swept from the muzzle toward the assembled horde. Bolt after bolt he fired, carefully, until the ullulating wail of the stricken Darksiders reverberated from the cliffs. The violet-gun clicked and made odd sounds. * * * * * Flane stared at it, wondering. The thought that it might need fuel to work never occurred to him. He looked on the gun as supernatural, and anything as mundane as ammunition for it was as foreign to his mind as the stars. There might be one more blast left, he reasoned, and gave it to Aevlyn. It was dark now, and the three moons of Klarn swam slowly into the sky. Red fires dotted the stone plateau before the mesa, where Darksiders squatted or sat, eating. On the mesa, men hastily bolted food and ran back to the entrance, drying their weapons. There was no concerted night attack; there was worse, for soon the arrows began to arch among them. Biting into leg and arm and chest, at random, the steel-tipped shafts scattered the men, which sword and axe could not do. Soon they were all huddled behind the uplifting rocks at the mesa-edge, where the shafts could not follow. A surprise attack caught a faceful of defending blades, and broke away, as a wave from the seawall. Dawn found the men of Moornal bloody and weary, but the hot sunlight drove new strength into hack-weary arms and they met each new attack with cries of scorn and defiance. Flane was everywhere: standing for long hours in the pass, his sword singing; encouraging his men by the magical slaughter of his blade, slapping them on backs, encouraging, cajoling, commanding....