'Aye, sir.'

'Go on, then.'

She hurried off.

Well, damn me. The lass buys a worthless piece of stone from a Gral swindler and suddenly she's invisible. Raw but pure talent, right in her bones, and she doesn't even know it.

Hidden beneath fronds and brush, Picker and her squad had a clear view of the Pannion legions, the front lines reaching the base of the treeless ramp that led to the entrenchments. Grey sorcery spun a wall of tangled webbing before the chanting Beklites. The Seerdomin commanders were wreathed in the magic, advancing now on foot ahead of their companies, marching upslope with an air of inexorability.

On a bank high above the Pannions, Quick Ben looked down, exposed and alone. Or so Blend had told her — the trees on her left blocked the view.

Suicide. The wizard was good, she knew, but good only because he kept his head low and did whatever he did behind backs, in the shadows, unseen. He wasn't Tattersail, wasn't Hairlock or Calot. In all the years she had known him, she had not once seen him openly unveil a warren and let loose. Not only wasn't it his style, it also wasn't, she suspected, within his capacity.

You unsheathed the wrong weapon for this fight, High Fist.

Sudden motion in the midst of the first Pannion square. Screams. Picker's eyes widened. Demons had appeared. Not one, but six — no, seven. Eight. Huge, towering, bestial, tearing through the massed ranks of soldiery. Blood sprayed. Limbs flew.

The Seerdomin mages wheeled.

'Damn,' Blend whispered at her side. 'They've swallowed it.'

Picker snapped a glare at the woman. 'What are you talking about?'

'They're illusions, Lieutenant. Can't you tell?'

No.

'It's all that uncertainty — they don't know what they're facing. Quick Ben's playing on their fears.'

'Blend! Wait! How in Hood's name can you tell?'

'Not sure, but I can.'

The Seerdomin unleashed waves of grey sorcery that broke up over the legion, sent snaking roots down towards the eight demons.

'That will have to knock them out,' Blend said. 'If Quick Ben ignored the attack, the Pannions will get suspicious — let's see how — oh!'

The magic darted like plummeting nests of adders, enwreathed the roaring demons. Their death-throes were frenzied, lashing, killing and maiming yet more soldiers on all sides. But die they did, one by one.

The first legion's formation was a shambles, torn bodies lying everywhere. Its onward climb had been shattered, and the reassertion of order was going to take a while.

'Amazing what happens when you believe.' Blend said after a time.

Picker shook her head. 'If wizards can do that, why don't we have illusionists in every damned squad?'

'It only works, Lieutenant, because of its rarity. Besides, it takes serious mastery to manage faking even a lone demon — how Quick Ben pulled off eight of 'em is-'

The Seerdomin mages counterattacked. A crackling, spinning wave rolled up the slope, chewing up the ground, exploding tree stumps.

'That's headed straight for him!' Blend hissed, one hand clutching Picker's shoulder, fingers digging in.

'Ow! Let go!'

A thunderous concussion shook the ground and air.

'Gods! He's been killed! Blasted! Annihilated — Beru fend us all!'

Picker stared at the wailing soldier at her side, then forced her eyes once more to the scene on the ramp.

Another Seerdomin wizard appeared from the legion's ranks, mounted on a huge dun charger. Sorcery danced over his armour, pale, dull, flickering on the double-bladed axe in his right hand.

'Oh,' Blend whispered. 'That's a sharp illusion.'

He rode to join one of his fellow mages.

Who turned.

The axe flew from the rider's hand, its wake sparkling with suspended ice. Changed shape, blackening, twisting, reaching out clawed, midnight limbs.

The victim screamed as the wraith struck him. Death-magic punched through the protective weave of chaotic sorcery like a spearpoint through chain armour, plunged into the man's chest.

The wraith reappeared even as the Seerdomin toppled — up through his helmed head in an explosion of iron, bone, blood and brains — clutching in its black, taloned hands the Seerdomin's soul — a thing that flared, radiating terror. The wraith, hunched over its prize, flew a zigzag path towards the forest. Vanished into the gloom.

The rider, after throwing the ghastly weapon, had driven his heels into his horse's flanks. The huge beast had veered, hooves pounding, to ride down a second Seerdomin in a flurry of stamping that, within moments, flung blood-soaked clumps of mud into the air.