So on the fourteenth day of March, of a bright frosty morn, he with his main army marched up Breakingdale and over the Stile, by that same road that Lord Juss fared by and Lord Brandoch Daha, that summer’s day when they went to take counsel in Krothering before the Impland expedition. So came the Witches down to the watersmeet and turned aside to Many Bushes. There they found not Zigg nor his lady wife nor any of his folk, but found the house desolate. So they robbed and burned and went their way. And a famous castle of Juss’s they sacked and burned in the confines of Kelialand, and another on Switchwater Way, and a summer palace of Spitfire’s on a little hill above Rammerick Mere. In such wise they marched victoriously down Switchwater Way, and there was none to dispute their progress but all fled at the approach of that great army and hid themselves in the secret places of the mountains, avoiding death and fate. When he was come through the straits of Gashterndale up on to Krothering Side, Corinius let pitch his camp under Erngate End, at the foot of the scree-strewn slopes that rise steeply to the high western face of the mountain, where the lean embattled crags far aloft stand like a wall against high heaven. Corinius came to Lord Gro and said to him, “To thee will I entrust mine embassage to this Mevrian. Thou shalt go with a flag of truce to gain thee entry to the castle; or if they will not admit thee, then bid her parley with thee without the wall. Then shalt thou use what fantastic courtier’s jargon nature and thine invention shall lightliest counsel thee, and say, ‘Corinius, by the grace of the great King and the might of his own hand king of Demonland, sitteth as thou well mayst see in power invincible before this castle. But he willed me let thee know that he is not come for to make war against ladies and damosels, and be thou of this sure, that neither to thee nor to none of thy fortress he will nought say nor hurt. Only this honour he proffereth thee, to wed thee in sweet marriage and make thee his queen in Demonland.’ Whereto if she say yea, well and good, and we will go up peaceably into Krothering and possess it and the woman. But if she deny me this, then shalt thou say unto her right fiercely that I will set on against the castle like a lion, and neither rest nor give over until I have beaten it all to a ruin about her ears and slain the folk with the edge of the sword. And that which she refuseth me to have in peaceful love and kindness I will have of my own violent deed, that she and her stiff-necked Demons may know that I am their king, and master of all that is theirs, and their own bodies but chattels to serve my pleasure.”