"No, brother in hatred, your fight is not yet." Morgan rejoined the battle, the ring of men standing braced in blaster harness fifty yards away, ripping down with interweaving ion-pencils the great forms leaping inward. Man and girl held hands and watched. To the left trouble came to a nearby island. Stompers converged from all sides, abandoning the other attacks, impossibly many. They overran the defenders, attacking not them but the powercaster behind them, and piled up until the Corbin's blue-violet glare was hidden. A great blossoming of flame tore the pile of stompers apart, but the Corbin was dark. "They blew out the power banks," Pia said. "They've never known to do that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges." It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in total volume. Then it was their own turn. Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave of stinking heat rolled over them. All around, survivors struggled to their feet, using flame pistols to head-shoot wounded stompers, digging out and connecting emergency pack charges to their blasters. They were pitifully few and their new, dark island was thirty feet across. The moor seemed dark with only the red of flame pistols and the violet flickering of power pack blasters. It seemed to heave randomly like a sluggish sea with the seen struggles of dying stompers and the felt struggles of lesser human bodies. Thinned now, stompers attacked singly or in small groups. Blasters flickered and ripped and went darkly silent as power packs discharged. The red of short-range flame pistols replaced them. But across the fault scarp ridge the tumult swelled to new heights and Corbin after Corbin there flamed out of existence in a bloom of rose-purple against the skyline. In a lull Bidgrass shouted to Morgan, "That's costing them more than they have to give, over there. Listen. Can you hear it?" "Yes, Father in Hatred," Morgan said. "They will break soon." "Yes, when Arscoate lays the fire mist. They will come through here. I have one charge left." "I have two, Father in Hatred. Change packs with me." Cole found his voice and his senses once more. "I must find a weapon! Grandfather, give me your flame pistol!" "Soon, lad. Soon now. Let the power take you," the old man soothed.