The last time Siren had come out to Ond Burgisnor, five summers prior, it had been in shame and supplication. An opportunistic strike by Archon Mattric, whom the Sirennicans called “the Long Suffered,” found its fledgling sister city in her softest flesh. It was a call for taxes--all seven years’ worth. A direct challenge to Sirennican sovereignty. An appetizer for war. Awash with troublesome tribes and Galite invaders--and in the wake of the old Burgisfel matriarch Podrun’s death--Siren was not in a position to refuse.

But neither was she in a position to accede. Construction of the Green Gate had only recently finished, and military necessity had left the city’s finances shallow. The young archon had nevertheless managed to squeeze out just under half the sum from her reluctant clans, and personally delivered it.

Under the circumstances, she hadn’t had a lot of hard words for Mattric of the Felkta--only the softest assurances. She’d been afraid, of course, of Burgisnor’s enduring might. Standing in the shadows of its great walls would do that-.

Now its shadow was on its other side. The citadel city rose in the hazy distance like a pale, youthful butte, with harder edges than the mountains of its northern horizon. While silently admitting that the white morning light rather suited the domineering walls, Siren still hated to see them--not as a symbol of Burgisnoriac might, but as obstacles. Big obstacles.

The base of the wall was set with enormous, raw stones, carried down from the gray northern mountains by ancient Noriacs, and mortared together around their nascent, southern bastion by the stonemages of old. These wide, time-smoothed faces rose sixty feet from the ground, and were built perhaps eighty feet deep. Rising from this base, as if crowning a mountain, the upper wall consisted of another eighty feet of uniformly cut limestone bricks, quarried somewhere across the Sea of Gales. It was built by slaves and clever craftsmen. It was no less daunting than its enchanted foundation.

As they rose in the distance, slowly dominating the landscape, the Sirennican troops stirred. Some had never seen the city before: Keldu and Kesum natives, and eastern tribespeople. Others hadn’t seen them in a decade or more, and while some boasted of plans to scale or undermine them, the general opinion seemed to be that they were larger than anyone remembered.

Sure enough, and Siren knew: if it came to a good old-fashioned beleaguering, then the war was certainly lost. It would take more than bravado to topple the Walls of Burgisnor--more than what Siren’s army was prepared to deliver. No, they needed a quick, decisive victory: in a preliminary bout, if possible; on the battlefield, if necessary.

It was with a conflicted relief, then, that she spied a Burgisnoriac vanguard shuffling about the base of the high Gates of Terodor--and a force in march coming in behind them. Eventually they crawled out to the front of it, and bloomed into three formations, forming a meager, protective meniscus around the chasmic gap in the wall.

“Condur, Deltric, Vallan,” she called into the wind. They all nudged up into the space behind her, ahead of the body of soldiers adjusting the set of their equipment before the march, and sharing nervous laughter. “Get ready to move the divisions. Vallan: east, to the Burgisfel gates. Keep them locked up tight. Deltric: western flank, butting up against the Ovburgis, the Pale Forest. Be ready for chariots on the wings--both of you. We once relied on the drivers of the Bartuls and Bartodors, but today we’re fighting them. And you know how agile they are in the hills--move cautiously.”

“Hills mean little before the mountain soldiers of Burgisfel, my lady,” Vallan flippantly assured her. “We will ever be your most stalwart shield.”

Then I’m really fucked, she considered quite soberly.

“Then I’m really fucked,” she said. “Condur: see to the Hollow Guards. They’re the only soldiers in my army who accept superior battle tactics, and you’re the only general who can give them.” Deltric rolled his buggish eyes, sourly frowning, while Vallan offered the mute apology which he probably would have preferred to receive. “Take the flattest parts of the center--and be quick about it.”

She turned to face them, shared a curt nod with each

“I take it you’ll be wanting this, my lady,” Condur muttered, gravely presenting the long shaft and shimmering tooth of Bleeding Leaf.

“Don’t act so stuffy,” Siren berated. “This might be the best day of your life.” His half-faced grin flickered.

Then Vallan returned, similarly carrying a white-stained wicker shield. “That you should not come to harm, my lady, take my shield. I hope it will…at least suffice.”

“Thank you Vallan. Thank you Condur.” She took them without any further ceremony. Then Deltric, surprising all three of them, also returned. He had something in his hands, but he kept it wrapped up in his fist, holding it before him like some noxious article more than a blessing. He poked along the ground uncomfortably, looking more like a hen in his modestly crested helmet.

Siren, despite her suspicion, held a hand out to receive the gift. He dropped it in her palm--a surprisingly heavy burden.

“Oh,” she started, and as she gingerly stretched the golden article between delicate, two-fingered grips, a net of threadlike chains unfurled.

“Today,” Deltric declared, “you will be archon of all the Southern Noriacs. Let this symbol be a reminder of your service.” Then those three councilors, those eternal sources of Siren’s hardship and pain, surrounded her, conspiring to clasp the golden emblem about her upper shield arm--just below the chain of her Sirennican office.

“I--” She wanted to thank them--sincerely she did. But something inside her wouldn’t allow them the satisfaction. She turned her gaze to the soldiers--the common folk--with their mundane interests, and their cynical prerogatives. They were much easier to feel nothing about.

“I’ve still got a few fights before all that,” she muttered. “Well…just one, ideally. If Mattric still has a shred of honor left.”

“I wouldn’t hold out hope,” Condur shrugged.

“Then we’ll do it the hard way,” Vallan breezily suggested.

“Pah,” cocked Deltric, “if I had that city, I’d shut the damn gates and wait out anything. The absolute idiocy--”

“It’s called honor, Deltric,” Condur muttered. “Something like bravery--if you’ve ever heard of that.”

“Honor, eh? My yellowing foot, you blustering fool. Why do you think our ancestors built the big, damn things, anyway, if not to be used?”

“Why is this craven man in charge of one of my divisions?” Condur growled back, threateningly close to anger. “He is no Noriac--”

“That’s enough, you two,” Siren declared. “Besides, Deltric is right. They should have stayed in the walls--it would have guaranteed their victory. Luckily, they haven’t. That’s about the only stroke of good fortune we can hope for. On that note, make sure the men are serious.”

“Don’t look like they want a fight?” Vallan teased.

“Worse,” she grunted, “like they don’t think they’ll have to. I doubt if our impious cousins will let us take the day without a little bit of trickery.” It was a rule, in Noriac warfare, that a champions’ bout served as surrogate for battle--a rule which was traditionally broken.

Condur gave a curt, obedient bow. “Well, we all have preparations to attend,” he muttered, then marched purposefully back to the emergent armies--at whom he almost immediately started shouting unintelligible threats.

It would be a long morning. More than two miles of open field still divided the Sirennicans from their quarry. And marching toward a fight was always the slowest marching of all.

No more than a hundred Sirennicans tramped down the gently winding, gently falling road to Burgisnor. Behind them, the distant roar of the three divisions working into their respective marches dissolved indistinctly into the high breeze. Harvests all accounted for, the country fields were a graveyard of desiccating straw, mounded at the edges with threshed chaff. The sunbaked smell of it died in the cool air, and inspired an embarrassing bout of hay fever in the entourage.

Vallan, pressing his own nose into submission, begrudged: “And here I thought I missed the endless farms, the sights and smells of city living.” Come the melting snows of winter, the straw would molder pungently. Then spring, when hot piles of manure would be scattered everywhere. In her exile, Siren hadn’t missed it for a single day.

“The tribesmen say that farming makes people weak,” said one of Vallan’s older squires. Nobody else gave a damn what the tribespeople thought.

Vallan, however, dutifully bothered to correct him: “If that was true, then they wouldn’t have been subjugated by us.”

The gangly, young clansmen frowned, and thoughtfulness burned away to indignation. “Well, they certainly look tougher,” he snapped, giving Vallan a suggestive appraisal.

“Look at the way he talks to his patriarch,” Siren chided, though she cast a cruel grin at Vallan. “Big words like that--is this a fighting man?” The disbelief was painted on--the lad’s face grew consequently colorful. She met his eyes for a long moment. He did not respond.

Speaks back to Vallan--Siren liked that--and not to me. She liked that even more.

Vallan’s easy laugh cut a comfortable juxtaposition across the tense silence. “This is Tundur, my lady--my nephew.”

She knew that name…Ragan’s son. Ragan, for whom she’d always had a soft spot. A predilection which obviously irritated his younger brother. A predilection which was not much assuaged by Ragan’s early marriage to Potur of Clan Feltros (who, further complicating matters, stayed behind in Burgisnor with her “loyalist” clan). And then Galites, and their missiles, and now Vallan was patriarch--and the soft spot (Siren had long thought) was gone.

Yet here was the boy. Somewhere in the contours of his face hid the shadow of his father.

He’s still a boy…but not so much of one, anymore. Where do the years go, Ragan?

Vallan grabbed the young man by his shoulder. “He’s grown three inches over the summer,” (he was still a finger or two shorter than Siren) “and his coordination has matured well beyond his years. He doesn’t share my urbane sensibilities,” he muttered, “but he’s also free of my…urbane vices.” He snickered at himself. “He’s every bit the equal to my late brother, and I regard him as such.”

In fact, he probably thought he had to put up with this uppity youngster’s outbursts. Suspicions surrounding the close deaths of Ragan and their grandmother Pondur had never quite died off. Vallan’s refusal to marry, and continued spoiling of his brother’s heir, might have been lifelines to the unlikely clan head.

(Siren wondered, consequently, what she’d do if young Tundur decided to avenge his father’s dubious demise. It filled her with an unwelcome relief.)

Alas, though perhaps it was just an effect of Vallan’s saccharine disposition, there was the color of earnest affection in his voice. Vallan and Ragan had never gotten along--they simply couldn’t see eye to eye. But that didn’t mean Vallan couldn’t miss his older brother. Every other Sirennican did.

“Ragan was worth a hundred on the battlefield,” a nearby voice interjected, “he never failed to shake the lines of his enemies. He was even deadlier in single combat.” It was a hard voice to listen to, grated at the ears. The unmistakable rasp of Gorbar of the Shovarim.

“Not deadlier than you, Gorbar,” Vallan sneered. “Your capacity for murder is the only thing propping Clan Shovarim up, at this point.”

Siren felt conflicted. On the one hand, Vallan was absolutely correct. Gorbar’s father, Gorbannu, Patriarch of the Shovarim, only managed to avoid her heartiest disfavor on account of his complete lack of importance. Nobody benefitted from his successes, nor suffered from his failures. His daughter, on the other hand, had fought in a dozen duels, and never lost. She had suffered nearly critical injuries--not least the spearhead which had destroyed her throat--and consequently bore a host of scars. For the smooth-skinned Vallan, of all people, to insult her…

But Gorbar merely shrugged. Placated, perhaps, by the comparison to his late brother--of whose memory Siren was quickly tiring. It was taking her out of the fight, and at an inopportune time.

Before them, the advancing Burgisnoriac delegation spread along an opposing hillside.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Well, here we are,” shouted Siren, and without waiting for a response, she advanced, alone. As she came down into the mounded flats between them, a solitary figure emerged from the line, and descended partly down her own slope.

Siren squinted, noticing the glimmer of a golden chain on the figure’s shield arm, but she couldn’t recognize the Burgisnoriac woman. She was young, certainly--no older than Siren.

“What’s happened to Mattric? I didn’t expect him to come out, mind you…but I didn’t expect to see his chains on some…girl.”

“We had an election,” shouted the opposing archon. “That’s how Noriacs do it,”

“And they chose…you?” Siren still couldn’t place her. She wore the dark, ruddy wires of her hair tied back into a fountainous protrusion behind the crown of her skull. Her belt plate was laid in with a lot of silver script (Siren had never really gotten the hang of reading the really artsy stuff), which authentically reflected the white, eastern sun. Her mean frown tended toward impetuousness, and her cheeks were a drunk red. “Aren’t you a little young?”

“Perhaps I am only archon for a day,” she answered. “For this day. The people of Burgisnor have sent me to destroy you. Who knows what tomorrow will hold?”

Fucking Noriacs. “I’ve got some idea,” Siren offered. “Who are you?”

The young woman grunted disgustedly. “You have no manners.”

“Don’t be coy--you know who I am. Now out with it--or would you rather I slew you nameless?”

“I am Ocpotur of Clan Feltros,” she answered, gritting her teeth, “and I won’t be fighting you. If I fight, it will be against a true Noriac. Not you, black-skin. Elf-child.”

“You know who I am,” Siren seethed. “You know who I fucking am! I am Siren of Burgis, the daughter of the Dread Goddess. I am the champion of all people in Her Shadow. I am the favorite of your protector, of your Mother, and I’ll slay you whether you accept it or not! I’ll shove my hand down your throat and force you to say my name, you common bitch!”

Ocpotur did not flinch, did not betray herself. Instead, a second champion advanced toward Siren.

He stopped when he reached the daily archon. “You are Siren of Burgis,” he said, his voice as deep as the Silver Sea. “I am Bortrun, and I will be the one who deals with you.”

He offered no demonym. And he looked like a ringer--two Sirens would fit into his heaving frame. Upon closer inspection, it seemed his collar was not leather, but stone, and it covered his shoulders in stiff, pointed pauldrons. Besides that, he wore only a loincloth.

“Where did they dig up this golem?” Siren muttered to herself, and was surprised to hear laughter in response. Vallan trudged up next to her.

“It seems my nephew, Tundur, wants to take a stab at you,” he yelled up, “Ocpotur of the Feltros. If it’s Noriac blood you want, then surely you wouldn’t object to a duel with your own cousin?” He sneered. “Did Auntie Potur ever tell you about her husband?”

“She’s told me plenty,” the archon snapped back, “about his craven brother.”

“Then you won’t be surprised,” Vallan muttered loudly, “when I don’t rise to your insults.” He nodded at his nephew, who had come up swiftly behind them. And the rest of the Sirennicans were moving into the flat. Their opponents followed.

“Any more hard words against me?” Vallan further probed. “I can assure you I’m not concerned about my reputation. My nephew and my archon, on the other hand, already like me less than you do.”

“Too cowardly to even talk about fighting?” Ocpotur snorted. “I thought the Burgisfel were a proud clan.”

“We are proud!” proclaimed the clan’s young scion, Tundur, with a voice that creaked with his fading boyhood, and the same impudence with which he’d earlier addressed his uncle. “Proudly loyal to the fiercest deity of all.” He shook his head with the kind of disdain only accessible to hubristic elders and haughty children. “I’ll talk with you, twice-false archon. I’ll talk until your blasphemous gams fall off your skull; or, we can do this the way which befits us better.”

A period of stunned silence gave way to Siren’s nostalgia. “Oh,” she managed, “Ragan…” She felt, briefly, like she should cry--but she couldn’t hang on to the sentiment.

“Isn’t he splendid?” Vallan whispered, aggressively pinching his mustache. She watched the muscles of his jaw shift, clenching--she could almost hear it. She shivered back into composure.

“Sure,” she admitted coldly. “But he must fucking hate you.”

“Yes!” Vallan hissed contentedly. “My brother’s own soul.”

“Is it true that you’re the son of Ragan?” Ocpotur started again. “You speak like a girl. Drop your belt, then, ‘Tundur,’ and prove what you say.”

Tundur snorted, firing back immediately: “Why should I drop my belt? I will drop yours, Ocpotur, and I will pull my proof from your guts. And then I will show you, with your writhing innards, that I am Ragan’s son, and will bear his legacy accordingly.”

“Kid’s got a mouth on him,” Siren marveled. “Who taught him to talk like that?”

“Not me,” Vallan said, though he hardly needed to.

“You, my lady,” Gorbar unpleasantly interjected. “Nobody else talks like that anymore.”

“Certainly not since they cut your throat out,” Siren replied. Gorbar once again shrugged.

“Quiet ladies,” Vallan cooed. “The dance begins.”

Indeed, the participants were sidling, describing a careful oval in the dry earth as they looked the other over. Each carried only an ax, and held their shield-hand open--fingers prying air as if to fill the absence of a yard-long wicker plank. Tundur’s weapon looked particularly fine, for an axe. The handle was all black, shaped like an asp, its fanged maw opening on the narrow wedge of shining bronze. Ocpotur, on the other hand, fought with iron--Siren hoped it was the brittle kind.

They kept up their side-stepping, and their distance. Neither making more than a tentative half-step in the other’s direction. Clashing metal and grunts, and alternating cheering, erupted further down the line. Siren didn’t dare look away.

The fighters glared furiously, heads nodding back and forth, as if they could taste the air with their eyes. They rolled hands around the grips of their axes. Eventually, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Tundur struck first.

It was a broad feint, deep enough to make the other archon inch back. The youngster recovered himself trimly. He kept up the motions, pushing her always, if minutely, back. He never pressed his advantages.

“He’s awfully shrewd,” Siren observed, “for such a big talker.”

“Some of us,” Vallan reminded her, “haven’t had our lives guaranteed by ancient deities, my lady.”

Thank her branches for that. She happily sneered, belatedly realizing how much better she felt now that the action had begun.

“I love a battle,” she breathed. “Glory in arms reach, and death just behind you…”

Gorbar cackled. Vallan impatiently hushed them.

The ground quivered as the central division advanced to a halt some hundred yards behind the lines of champions. The Burgisnoriacs emerged from the low, opposite ridge, popping up like curious ground squirrels above their champions’ proud heads. And even if they had been squirrels, Siren might have been disturbed by the number.

She chanced a quick look back. The familiar, bleached white ornaments of the Hollow Guards stood along their own hillside. A lone chariot approached before them, cautiously navigating the shallow hillside.

“What the hell is this, Condur?” Siren spat, from the side of her mouth, as he drove nearer. She nodded up at the long line of Burgisnoriacs. “Bring in the other divisions!”

Condur examined the troop-toothed ridgeline with a solemn frown, then shook his head. “Deltric’s already wrapped up with a mob of chariots. Vallan’s troops, whom he saw fit to leave with Isotor, might be heading our way--but they’re moving like babies through snow banks.”

“You’d agree that I won’t have many chances for glory?” Vallan defended himself. “I’d hardly want to leave someone too capable in charge.”

“Ugh, Vallan--why are you even here?” Siren moaned. “It’s not like you’re going to fight--”

An ugly groan interrupted her. All heads snapped in the direction of the main event. Ocpotur was stumbling back, her free hand curled up against her breast, her axe pressed out in hopeless defense. Tundur pressed. But he was either too late, or a decade too early. Ocpotur snapped back to a crouch, and jammed her axe nose-first into her opponent. He caught the flat top of it smack in his face, reeled, shivered, and bonelessly collapsed into a heap.

Siren almost reached out. Almost called his name: Ragan. Luckily, for concerned parties both dead and living, she didn’t. She merely watched him fall, with the impetuous, critical sneer she’d meant for Vallan.

Blood bathed Ocpotur’s ax. A suspicious quantity, Siren thought--until she saw an equally suspicious mound formed out of the ax’s eye. A spike, she realized. A fresh spike…

“That’s decent arsory,” Siren muttered, sure her eyes had grown wide with a near terror.

“She’s not the only one with talents.”

And as Vallan cooly smiled, the heaped adolescent rapidly re-erected himself, propping up on wide, bowed legs. One of Tundur’s hands hung paralytically at his side, the other reached tenderly toward his face. When he observed what his hand had found, he let out a terrible shriek.

His balls really haven’t dropped, Siren considered. If she said it out loud, nobody realized it. The shriek did not recede, or left a ringing in the ears so potent that Siren didn’t have a chance to ask just what the hell this was before it was all over.

Ocpotur was taken apparently more aghast by what she saw in young Tundur’s face. But the back of him was disturbing enough: his muscles flexed against his skin, which looked about ready to split. His stance was animalistic, but far from beastly. It was an undignified sight, but oddly familiar.

As he rushed across to his stunned opponent (she looked as if she’d been gripped by an evil sul) something in the motion hinted to Siren. An elf, she realized. He looks like an elf. A monstrously large elf, and therefore much more frightening, but just as swift and sure.

Tundur cleaved Ocpotur’s head off with a single swing. It was not a clean slice, but sufficiently vicious. The last drops of her living blood splashed into the hot dirt, and her body fell into the freshly stinking mud. Then the crazed lad turned to face Siren.

She could sympathize with her late rival’s faltering. Tundur’s face was still quite smashed, a brutal divot in the side of his nose caked and oozing blood. His nose shot off plainly to the less afflicted hemisphere, like a leaning sunflower with an ugly shadow. His left eye, tethered to its socket like a hanging lamp, still twitched around, stretching for observations.

Nothing about this zombie betrayed any intelligence, craft or cunning, but he remained undoubtedly cognizant of his circumstance. Again, Siren was reminded of her childhood wardens: the half-animal, half-spiritual denizens of the Forest.

He charged Siren, who--unlike the fated Archon of Burgisnor--reacted quickly. She raised her whitened shield before her, pressed Bleeding Leaf against her side. She dropped and pivoted behind the small cover of her shield, wound up like an asp. But before she had a chance to strike, a hand pulled at her collar, up and back. Vallan, in what appeared an uncharacteristically chivalrous compulsion, swung himself into her stead. Tundur was near. Vallan stretched his shield hand forward, crossing over his body--an ineffectual defense.

But then…he’s unarmed, Siren noticed, with enough time to blink. And his left hand was still moving, still pushing forward--toward the grotesque wound in Tundur’s face. With a delicate flourish of his flexing elbow, and a grin steeped in self-satisfaction, he flicked his long, middle finger out, and caught his nephew’s dangling eye with the flat of its nail.

The eye shivered, then recoiled. Siren nearly lost her breakfast. With an audible pop, it reset itself into the socket. Tundur seized, and once more fell like a ragdoll to the ground. The champion lines were silent.

“What the hell was that?” Siren hissed. But Vallan was busy tending to the boy’s wounds. He worked quite like a shepherd: without grace or gentleness. He pulled the nose into place, then pressed at the expanded bits of skull around the affected cheek. Holding his head thus, while thumbing loose flesh back into its red crevice, he muttered affectionately--a bit hysterically, occasionally cackling until his hands shook out of place.

“Vallan…” He did not turn, but started up, winding his arms as he staggered backwards. The rest of the champions crowd watched with a growing horror, muttering disconsolately, as Tundur rose from death a second time.

The wound on his face had surely healed, though still caked in blood. His eyes were vacant, but more tired than mindless. He looked around, weakly scanning the horrified onlookers, until he came to the fallen corpse of Ocpotur of the Feltros. With a shrugging tilt, he nodded, stumbled only a few steps toward Vallan before collapsing. His uncle rushed to catch him.

“Well,” he announced, looking around proudly, “I’d say that just about does it, eh?” If he had not been cradling the victor, Siren would have laid into him. Instead, he was met with silence all around.

He looked confoundedly at his archon. She was balling her fists furiously, a meant threat.

“He’s got a fury,” Vallan replied, defensively. Then, after a realization, assuringly added: “There’s no evil about it. It’s perfectly normal.”

“I haven’t seen one since I was just a girl,” Gorbar croaked.

“Yeah,” Vallan sneered, “and back then, you could’ve told us about it.”

Gorbar shrugged.

“Ragan wasn’t…” Siren stammered.

“Didn’t have a fury?” Vallan guessed. “Who knows? He never got pushed in a fight.” He winked at her, then shouted:

“Proud clansmen of Burgisnor! I’ll admit it’s a bit ridiculous, your archon dying against a beardless boy.” Some of those proud clansmen hissed insidious slights from the distance. “Then again, it was a bit ridiculous for your false archon to deny a fair fight with your true archon.” The disconsolation intensified.

Gorbar raised up her shield, and smashed it with the flat of her ax. Her voice was a high and nigh intelligible whine, patterned with a grating, ebbing force which shivered the eardrums. “You all lost your honor?” she screeched. “I’ll bloody you then, prideful bastards. I’ll bloody however more--” her voice faltered into a heaving gasp. She gritted her teeth, nearly spitting out the gravel of her final words: “See that you’ve lost.” More shouts, but none came forward to challenge her. In the silence, horns from the skirmishing flanks raked the atmosphere. Siren, oddly reconstituted by that unpleasant outburst, put a hand on Gorbar’s shoulder, blessedly stopping her.

“See who the Dread Goddess favors,” she added. A rather bashful muttering erupted, punctuated by a few loud voices enjoining the crowd from further insult--from further struggle.

“She wasn’t our archon!” someone gruffly called, from down the line--to an unfortunately popular affirmative chorus.

“Just a bitch with a golden bracelet!”

Siren snorted hot fury. “Fucking Nor--”

But all noise died in a moment, killed by a tremendous rap. It cracked through the air like a divine whip, and hung like distant thunder. It shook the earth like a landslide--not just a few nearby squires lost their footing. The two other bouts which had tenuously begun suddenly stopped. All heads turned to the surviving archon, but only saw that Siren was as flummoxed as them (if not more steady on her feet).

So they all watched, only poorly comprehending, as Bortrun the Placeless raised his heavy foot and stomped. Again.