'They're moving,' said Flangers.

The twelve air-floaters wheeled in perfect formation. The sun flashed off the mirror, the beam lighting up a strip of ground some twenty spans long.

The beam crept across the battlefield, to play on a group of lyrinx attacking a line of soldiers. Irisis focussed on the scene with a spyglass. The lyrinx threw up their arms, trying to shield themselves from the boiling glare, then broke and ran, staggering from side to side. One bold soldier attacked from behind, felling his quarry with a sword thrust between the back plates, but the others escaped.

The beam stepped to another group of lyrinx, who broke like the first. As it tracked across the ground, the mud began to steam gently. The next detachment, some fifty lyrinx, resisted longer than the others, but within a minute they too had fled.

'With a lens, anyone can focus the sun's rays so as to set paper or cloth alight,' said Irisis, 'though I don't think that's their aim here.'

'The beam isn't tightly focussed,' said Flydd, putting down his spyglass, 'but it's enough to dazzle and confuse. And blind too, should you look directly at it.'

The general had a calculating look in his eye. 'Shall I order the counterattack, surr?'

'Wait,' said Flydd. 'If the mirror tears in the wind, or the lyrinx make a determined attack on it, we'll be more exposed than we are now.'

The enemy now attacked desperately, but the beam stopped each onslaught. Within an hour the lyrinx began to fall back en masse, whereupon the beam moved towards the ranks of enemy surrounding the walled perimeter of Snizort.

Suddenly half a dozen lyrinx took to the air, well apart, rising into the path of the air-floaters. This'll be interesting,' said Tham. "They'll never move the mirror quickly enough.'