Chapter 6

Sam figured that if he did anything to the assembled demons, it had to be big. He was afraid that anything relatively small would just aggravate them and make them fight even harder. He asked Agar, "Is there anything that the demons are really afraid of. What could we do to cause real panic in their ranks?"

"I don't really know for sure, but I have heard that they are afraid of cold. If there were some way to make a cold blast hit them, it would really shake them up. I have no magic for controlling the weather, so I can't help you there."

"Maybe Teekay can bring in some ice or snow from the north pole and drop it on the demons. Would that accomplish anything?"

"I don't know how much good it would do, but it would be fun to watch it happen. Let's ask him what he can do along that line."

A moment later, Teekay walked in from the adjoining room where he had been reading. "You wanted to see me, Wizard Agar?"

Sam said, "Actually, I was the one who wanted to ask a question. You know what ice and snow are, don't you?" Teekay nodded that he did, so Sam asked, "Can you haul some in for the fight, tomorrow. I mean a really big quantity. My idea is to bring it in and drop it on top of the demons, but I don't want to do so unless there is a hell of a lot of it."

"The quantity I could move in is something I would have to experiment with. I could move more if I could treat it as a single unit, such as one big snow ball. I wouldn't have to compact it, I would just have to pick it up, carry it, and drop it as one thing. Would that do what you want?"

"It sure would, if it would make a big enough pile when it got here. Any idea how much you could move?"

"Let me think a minute, please... Would a cubic mile be enough? I'm pretty sure I could bring in that much, but it would take about an hour to get it here from the north pole."

Sam was stunned, then he began to laugh. "A cubic mile is almost 150 billion cubic feet. I don't think that we need that much! Just for rough calculation purposes, assume that there are 40,000 demons, and each one takes up 10 square feet of ground, that comes to 400,000 square feet. If we buried them them in 10 feet of snow, that comes to 4 million cubic feet. It sounds to me like you could bring in that much without too much trouble. Is that right?"

"Oh, sure, that would be easy. When and where do you want it?"

"It sounds to me like we might win this war tonight if we are lucky. Suppose you bring in that much snow and dump it on the demon camp. Could you do that and then smooth it out to a depth of about 10 feet?"

"OK, what time do you want it?"

"Let's go for 2:00 AM. It's almost 9:00 PM now, is that enough lead time?"

"Yes it is. Wizard Agar, if you will provide me with a thermal shield so that I don't burn up getting there and back and don't freeze while I'm at the north pole, I could leave now. That way, I could be back in plenty of time."

Agar mumbled a few words and said, "OK, Teekay, you are covered. That shield will last at least 24 hours. You can be on your way."

Teekay said goodbye and headed for the roof to take off for the north pole. He promised to dump the snow at 2:00 AM.

"By the gods, Sam, I haven't had this much fun in over 700 years. I can't imagine how I got so lucky as to find you. I'm going to be sorry when I have to send you back."

"Thanks, Agar, I am having a ball. I'll hate to go back when the time comes. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. We haven't won, yet. Also, we haven't considered how we're going to keep the Emperor of Usra from just gathering up another army and coming back. Will we have to chase him down and knock him off his throne? If so, how do we do that?"

"Oh, there's no question that you have raised valid questions, Sam, but let's savor the victory we have gained for now. I'd rather wait until tomorrow to worry about any more fighting."

"OK, Agar, you have a deal. Now, please warn the princess that we will need her presence tonight, and the same for Herc. In fact, let's go to the CP now, so we'll be in position when the snow falls. Please tell Princess Olena and Herc that we will be by with the flying carpet to pick them up in about an hour. That should give them time to get ready."

An hour later, they had picked up Olena and Herc and landed at the CP. Everybody went to the east side of the tower to look at the enemy camp. The various campfires gave the scene the atmosphere of an idyllic summer camp with thousands of vacationers about to retire for the night. Occasionally, a campfire would be obscured, probably as a demon walked beside it, giving the impression of a twinkling star. Overall, one couldn't ask for a more peaceful looking scene.

They watched for a while, then went back inside to sit on the very comfortable chairs and sofas and converse until time for Teekay to arrive with the snow. Agar conjured up some very fine quality tea and cookies for refreshments while they waited. A very pleasant time was had by all, but the evening began to drag as they got closer to the big event. At last, it was time.

They went back to the balcony and watched as a huge blackness hovered over the camp. Suddenly, there was a blast of cold wind as Teekay let the snow fall onto the camp. Some force they couldn't see smoothed out the tremendous bank of snow until it covered the whole camp. A great shout of fear was heard just before it was snuffed out by the snow.

The whole thing was so inexorable that it was anticlimactic. It was the action of the proverbial Juggernaut—inevitable and unstoppable. The whole camp was simply snuffed out by the snow! Everybody watched, fascinated, but the scene was entirely different in Hell!

Hell was more chaotic than usual. The demons were running around and shouting at each other things like, "I never signed up for this shit!" and "I never want to see that place, again!" The only demons left in Alieria were those so overcome with fear that they had frozen in place. But that was OK, they'd be back in Hell as soon as they thawed out.

The Devil could not contain himself! He had to have a scapegoat, and the scapegoat was General Mortrin. He was strung up by ropes tied to his thumbs and his balls, the Devil had him hanging over the main entrance to Hell as a sign to evil doers who screwed up of what kind of treatment they could expect. The Devil had made some subtle changes in his vocal chords so that he would always be able to scream, and he was always screaming.

This took hours of subjective time for the beings in Hell, but the Devil was able to cover all this and return to Alieria with no perceptible time lapse there. The Devil called a meeting of his lieutenants and screamed invective at them for a while, until, finally, even He ran out of steam. Once He had calmed down, He demanded that they come up with a scheme to recover the initiative.

A lot of stupid ideas were offered which earned the source a searing glance, and a searing glance from the Devil is no trivial matter. The winning suggestion, which earned the source a pat on the back which nearly killed him from the force of the blow, was for the Devil to recruit another batch of demons from the far reaches of Hell where they hadn't gotten the sorry word, yet. This the Devil did, along with melting all the snow and ice at the north and south poles. This did cause some inconvenience for the humans who lived near the coast, but the Devil did not concern himself with trivial matters like that.

The residents of Alieria did notice a shift in the climate when the ice melted, but they were far enough from the coast that they were protected from the rise in the level of the oceans. Sam suspected what had happened and dispatched TP1 to the poles to check it out; his report did nothing to improve Sam's day.

The new contingent of demons were moved into Alieria in position before Alier's walls. There were only 15,000 this time, all that the Devil could con into joining in the war. This 15,000 was still a hell of a force to lay siege to one city, so Sam and his troops still had their work cut out for them.

Sam waited until the whole of the force of demons looked to be in place but not ready to attack before he opened his own attack. It was noon and the demons were settling down for lunch when a rain of boulders was sent at them by Teekay. As soon as he had dropped his first load of missiles, Teekay was moving up another batch of stones. Meanwhile, the firebrands had blasted the stones into fragments and the illusionists had multiplied the visual effect of the bombardment.

The stones were sent to different places in the camp, kind of an equal opportunity maimer, to spread the fear and panic as much as possible. The attack lasted for over 30 minutes and only stopped when they had started to run low on missiles. Teekay had supplied all of the stones used in the attack, so the trebuchet and onager crews had run to the walls with the rest of the citizenry to watch the fun. Every bang of a new load of missiles was greeted with a loud cheer from the city walls, which did nothing to soothe the Devil's emotions.

The Devil's henchmen had tried to halt the bombardment by destroying the missiles with fire blasts, but all they accomplished was to create the rock shards at a higher altitude than Sam had called for. This increased the radius of a particular blast, raising the potential of finding more victims, but it cut the density of the shrapnel, lowering the number of victims per square yard. The result was a wash, and the Devil ordered them to cease and desist their operations.