And he saw other flames-the flames of burning cities and villages, their streets littered with the bodies of those who had once lived in those blazing homes. He saw the bodies of women, mothers, cut down as they fled with children in their arms. He saw the children they'd tried to save. He saw laughing warriors tossing screaming children into the flames. He saw blood soaked altars, surrounded by the butchered bodies of sacrificial victims while still more victims were dragged, fighting frantically, to their fates. And he saw . . . creatures he had no names for-creatures out of the darkest depths of nightmare-killing and maiming, devouring. He saw them being directed, controlled, in their slaughter.

And he saw the men-and women-who stood against the tide of butchery and darkness. He watched them, recognized the iron determination and raw courage which kept them on their feet, facing that avalanche of horror when simple sanity must have cried out for them to flee for their lives. Some of them seemed wrapped in glittering coronas of blue light, like some sort of lightning. Others were simply men and women, with no light, no special aura. Only men and women who could not let the darkness triumph unopposed. Who had to face it.

And who died fighting it.

He saw it all, and only much later did he realize that what seemed to have taken hours at the time could not have lasted more than a very few minutes.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The images disappeared, and he found himself staring into Wencit of R #363;m's wildfire eyes.

"That's my war, Gunnery Sergeant Houghton," the wizard said very, very softly. "And it's the war my friend is riding straight into all by himself."

II

"I'm thinking as how something new's after being added to the pot," Bahzell Bahnakson said to his horse.