Once more Karux stood in the dead twilight of his dreams, at the top of the blasphemous building of steps, staring up at the growing wound that was the curse. This place was beginning to feel more real than the day-time world which passed before him, from dawn to dusk, in a bright blur.

Somewhere in the distance, his apprentices chanting the names of the elements, calling them together to close the gaping wound in reality. Their schemas straining across the opening like the faintest of gossamer threads, disappearing in brief flashes of light as they snapped.

They were all doomed to fail. The portal had grown too big and too powerful. The n'kroi would soon either escape their prison or draw the whole world into the Void and his students' meager efforts would prove unable to even slow that from happening.

The gravity of the world shifted with the arrival of a familiar and comforting presence.

"A child's belief, that they can force the world to comply with their simple understanding of it, is a precious thing, is it not?"

Karux turned. The woman of light stood behind him. "Are you speaking of my students or of me?"

Her loving smile radiated with calm assurance. He nearly wept with longing. Karux wanted to throw his arms around that mask of light and somehow drag the person behind it to his side in the waking world. Right now she could be anywhere in the world. He knew she must be many miles from Nur.

"You know what you must do." She spoke softly, a reluctant reproof. "There is no other way to unite the spirits of the land and marshal them to eliminate this curse."

"Yes." A cold brush of fear shivered in his chest. "I just can't force myself to make that sacrifice."

The dark rim of her lashes caught sprays of light from her radiant eyes as she peered up into his. "We must all cease to be what we are in order to become what we may. This is the one lesson our creator has been trying to teach us."

Karux shuddered. "Perhaps, when the time comes, I'll find the courage."

"The change won't happen all at once." The woman of light assured him, taking his hand. Warmth and a barely tangible pressure pressed against his skin. "And you needn't go through it alone."

What? What was she saying? Was she offering to join with the elementals as well? As much as he wanted her with him, he didn't even dare to ask that. "I don't want you to have to sacrifice yourself as well."

She laughed. "I won't have to be changed."

A host of questions hammered at Karux. "Then perhaps you can claim the seat of power and join with the spirits of the land?"

The woman of light's smile broadened. "I cannot, any more than a child can give birth to their parent."

This didn't make sense to Karux. She had already assured him that she was an ordinary person like himself. "Are you...? Are you one of them after all?"

"No. I cannot join with them, because one has already joined with me. As an infant, I consumed one of the n'phesh."

A distant trumpet sounded and the dream vision began to fade.

"The enemy is upon you," a note of worry trembled in her voice. "You cannot stand against them, not even with all the spears in the world."

"What are you saying?"

"You must retreat."

"If we do not stand and fight, we might as well surrender."

"Come back home," her tone became plaintive. "Come back to me."

The sound of a trumpet awoke Karux. It wasn't the trumpet Garanth carried, but its insistent note still carried the urgency of approaching danger. Karux rose from his bed, threw on a cloak and grabbed his walking staff. He left the house, which had once imprisoned him and his students, and hurried down the hill to the main crossroads where the arcanths and tacarchs were assembling.

Macander searched the surrounding faces, then hurried toward him.

Karux interrupted before he could speak. "What's happening?"

"A tireav has been spotted approaching from the west."

"In this weather?"

"Yes. It appears to be quite large, though we don't have numbers yet."

"Who are they? Where are they from?"

"We don't know yet. We've sent outscouts. Garanth is establishing a defense of the western shore in the meantime."

"It won't work." The echoes of the woman of light's warning repeated in his head. "Especially with that hard freeze. They'll just march right over the river. This city has no fortifications."

"Then you best speak with Garanth. He's asked us to recall the reavers and have them form up in hands."

Karux glanced at the horn at Macander's side and suddenly wished he still had the horn he had given Garanth. "Someone's got to talk some sense into him." Karux hurried as best he could to the city's west side. The ice made the streets treacherous and his bad leg felt particularly stiff and useless in the cold.

He found a line of shield fighters arrayed across the western shore, several rows of spears standing behind. They had even brought out the maccunai who howled in response to distant snarls, leaping up and pulling on their ropes in eagerness. Garanth walked the line issuing last minute orders and words of encouragement.

"Garanth, you must pull back!" Karux shouted.

Garanth hurried over to him. "I can't. This is the only defensible position."

"You won't be able to hold. The woman of light warned me."

A strange expression flickered across Garanth's face. "How did you—have you—spoken with her?"

"Archon! Archon!" A lone man ran toward them across the frozen river. They waited from him to scramble up the shore onto the berm on which they stood.

"What is it?" Garanth asked. "Did you see the tireav? How many men do they have?"

The scout stopped and bent over, gasping. He nodded. When he had caught a few more breaths, he wheezed, "Hard to tell in the heavy snow. Hundreds. Certain more than Nur had."

Karux thumped his staff on the frozen ground. "We have to pull back."

Garanth slowly shook his head. "We can't."

"And that's not all," the scout said. "I heard the howl of drwg. I'm certain I saw the lumbering shapes of angorym behind their reavers. I fought in the north and I'm not likely to forget their look."

"From the west?" Garanth sounded stunned.

"We have to evacuate the city," Karux said.

"How? We'd never be able to gather up all the people."

Karux gestured for the horn hanging at Garanth's side. "Give me that."

Garanth handed it to Karux who slipped the strap over his shoulder. "Do you think you could slow them down?"

Garanth shrugged. "If they've got drwg, I'm not sure how. We can only try."

"Don't make your stand here." Karux looking around at the city crowded up against the edges of the river. "Block the streets and use the buildings as your wall. Fall back to the north gate as you go."

"I'll need all the spears you can send me."

Karux nodded and held up the horn. "Re-position your men and tell them to ignore this for the next few minutes."

"Right."

Karux hurried back to the market square. "It's a large force," he told the arcanths. "It includes angorym and drwg."

"That's not good," Labrose said. Macander rubbed his face and scowled.

"Labrose, Z'taes, gather your men. We're going to evacuate the city and take them to Har-Tor."

"The whole city?"

"We can't leave them here. They'll be slaughtered."

"What about our men?"

"Mac," Karux turned to Macander. "I want you, Anankaes, Tekmos and the northern arcanths to take your men and join Garanth. You're going to be trying to hold back the enemy, especially the drwg, while the citizens escape. This is going to be hard street-to-street fighting. You're going to need multiple lines of defense to keep from getting broken up and surrounded."

Macander nodded. "How are you going to get the people out?"

Karux held up his horn. "Tell your men to ignore this for a bit."

He waited a moment as the tacarchs relayed their orders, then drew a deep breath. Three blasts of the horn slapped the sides of the nearest houses and caromed from wall to wall down the street. Though the citizens of Nur had no idea what that signal meant, still the horn's strangely insistent call compelled their attention. Karux blew three more times and felt the power of the horn himself. He paused just long enough for the urgency to sink into the hearers, then sounded the horn again. Curious men, women and children, many of whom had hidden from the start of the occupation, began to appear. They approached the marketplace almost against their will, overwhelmed by curiosity and the horn's insistence. A lot more had remained than Karux had first thought.

"Z'taes," Karux said. "Explain to them what's happening. Tell them to bring only warm clothes and what food they can easily carry. Oh, and find me a runner." Karux waved him and Labrose off and waited for the runner to appear.

The number of townspeople milling about the square grew. They didn't seem to understand that they couldn't just go back and hide from the approaching army. After several moments, Karux heard hurried footsteps pounding toward him over the rising arguments. The runner was a tall and skinny young man . Karux clapped a hand on his shoulder. "We're evacuating the people of Nur. I want you to go to Kerwyn's Hill and the group we left in Korion-Tamia and have them send their reavers south to help escort these people."

The runner nodded and took off.

Karux looked back over the square as chaos ensued. He prayed they had enough time.

<====|==|====>

Garanth stood at the intersection of five streets. All were narrow winding cobblestone lanes lined by two and three story half-timber structures. Anankaes had positioned his men on the right along the edge where the city met the hill to the north. Tekmos had positioned his men at the next two intersections on the left hoping to use the streets to funnel the enemy into narrow channels. Garanth's own men were straight ahead, though he had positioned some of the lighter spears on the rooftops. Daikon Knuckles had found several large pots of keleos oil in a warehouse and suggested using fire to deter the attackers. Garanth would have preferred to not burn thetown down. But he doubted that, after today, much of it would remain either way.

Furniture lay strewn along the streets where the panicked inhabitants had been forced to drop them. They had insisted on bringing all their belongings. The reavers had threatened beatings to make them abandon their things. Crates and barrels from the warehouses had been piled on the debris in the hopes that such make-shift barriers at the streets entrances might to slow the attackers. Garanth had no idea how effective the obstructions might be, but he thought it would make good firewood in any case.

The reavers were quiet for once as they waited, weapons in hand, staring down the narrow lanes, ears straining for the first sound of the enemy's approach. Only an occasional nervous cough rose above the faint whisper of wind between empty houses.

Perhaps they had miscalculated, Garanth wondered. What if the enemy were attacking from a different direction or a different target entirely? A faint howl echoed between the buildings to the west. Reavers exchanged grim looks at the rapid approach of claws clattering on stone.

A shadow fell across the intersection at the end of the street. A drwg pounced into the space between two buildings and paused to look around and sniff the air. It sensed Garanth's men crouched nearby, clutching their spears with sweaty hands, and launched itself over a broken divan perched across a tangle of splintered lumber. The black-furred canine monster landed with one dinner-plate-sized paw on an upturned barrel. The barrel twisted and it fell with a yelp. The men laughed and threw spears. The spears bounced harmlessly off the sides of buildings and clattered on cobbles for the drwg had already sprung up and disemboweled a reaver standing less than ten feet away from Garanth.

Men on either side lunged forward and impaled the beast. It died snarling, snapping thick wooden shafts in its jaws. Behind the barricades, more drwg bounded down nearby streets, their snarls approaching the nearest intersections from multiple directions.

Strange human warriors, with dull eyes and hollow faces, followed the drwg. They were dressed in rags and wielded sticks as clubs and a scattered collection of farm tools as weapons. Spears rained down, slaughtering the men as they methodically climbed the barricade, seemingly indifferent to their deaths. Very few made it past the barricades to die in the crossfire of the intersections. Then wading through the resulting thicket of spears and corpses,  the angorym, each one nearly wide enough to block the street alone, came along behind. As they neared the barricade, Garanth called up to Knuckles and the men on the roof. "Now!"

On each side of the street, men tipped clay jars over. Keleos oil sprayed out over the angorym and flooded the street. One angoran slipped and fell on it's back. It's mates paused to laugh at it. A single torch fluttered down from the rooftop and lit the street up with a whoof. Flames engulfed them and raced up the buildings' oil-soaked sides.

"Get down here!" Garanth shouted. The angorym screeched in pain. In all the fights he'd had with them, he'd never heard one scream from pain. Rage, yes. Frustration, yes. Pain, no. Angorym loved to experience other's pain. Garanth had wondered if the reason might be that they felt no pain of their own. It was gratifying, and a little frightening, to find that they could.

More drwg leaped over barricades into nearby streets. Garanth's men held them at spear point while more enemy reavers and angorym approached.

"Fall back! Fall back!" Garanth called. "To me!"

The men retreated down narrow streets where defenders waited behind piles of debris. As Garanth's men passed by, the reavers pushed the rubble together and crouched behind the new barricades, spears ready  for the next wave.

The enemy approached more cautiously, but they were so strong that Garanth's forces could barely slow them. Already he'd been forced to pull his men back from the river completely. How could there be angorym and drwg in the west? Why were men fighting for them instead of feeding them?

Garanth glanced up and down the street where other arcanths waited after having pulled their men back to secure the adjacent intersections. The snarls of drwg and angry bellowing of angorym grew closer. He had no more time to prepare for the next assault. Garanth cast a last wondering glance eastward. He didn't know how much time he could give Karux to evacuate the city, but he was certain it wouldn't be enough.