The Nemedians fought as gallantly as their traditions of high courage demanded. But they could not break the iron wedge, and from the wooded knolls on either hand arrows raked their close-packed ranks mercilessly. Their own bowmen were useless, their pikemen unable to climb the heights and come to grips with the Bossonians. Slowly, stubbornly, sullenly, the grim knights fell back, counting their empty saddles. Above them the Gundermen made no outcry of triumph. They closed their ranks, locking up the gaps made by the fallen. Sweat ran into their eyes from under their steel caps. They gripped their spears and waited, their fierce hearts swelling with pride that a king should fight on foot with them. Behind them the Aquilonian knights had not moved. They sat their steeds, grimly immobile. A knight spurred a sweating horse up the hill called the King's Altar, and glared at Xaltotun with bitter eyes. 'Amalric bids me say that it is time to use your magic, wizard,' he said. 'We are dying like flies down there in the valley. We cannot break their ranks.' Xaltotun seemed to expand, to grow tall and awesome and terrible. 'Return to Amalric,' he said. 'Tell him to re-form his ranks for a charge, but to await my signal. Before that signal is given he will see a sight that he will remember until he lies dying!' The knight saluted as if compelled against his will, and thundered down the hill at breakneck pace. Xaltotun stood beside the dark altar-stone and stared across the valley, at the dead and wounded men on the terraces, at the grim, blood-stained band at the head of the slopes, at the dusty, steel-clad ranks reforming in the vale below. He glanced up at the sky, and he glanced down at the slim white figure on the dark stone. And lifting a dagger inlaid with archaic hieroglyphs, he intoned an immemorial invocation: 'Set, god of darkness, scaly lord of the shadows, by the blood of a virgin and the sevenfold symbol I call to your sons below the black earth! Children of the deeps, below the red earth, under the black earth, awaken and shake your awful manes! Let the hills rock and the stones topple upon my enemies! Let the sky grow dark above them, the earth unstable beneath their feet! Let a wind from the deep black earth curl up beneath their feet, and blacken and shrivel them----' He halted short, dagger lifted. In the tense silence the roar of the hosts rose beneath him, borne on the wind. On the other side of the altar stood a man in a black hooded robe, whose coif shadowed pale delicate features and dark eyes calm and meditative. 'Dog of Asura!' whispered Xaltotun, his voice was like the hiss of an angered serpent. 'Are you mad, that you seek your doom? Ho, Baal! Chiron!' 'Call again, dog of Acheron!' said the other, and laughed. 'Summon them loudly. They will not hear, unless your shouts reverberate in hell.'