The stomper song changed suddenly. It became a mournful lament, a dying into grieving subsonics. Cole knew that note. He had heard it from the stompers in the stone-floored pen when the butchers were hacking off their heads. He knew that Grandfather Stomper was dead forever, after seven hundred years of war.
Flyers crossed above, blasters were still at work across the ridge, but the war was ended. The power, whatever that sense of exalted unreality might be, left Cole; and he felt naked and ridiculous and wondered what he was doing there. Then he saw the girl bending above Garth Bidgrass and regained control of himself.
The strong old man was smiling wearily.
"We've won the war, lad," he said. "The next task is yours."
"I'll help you," Cole said.
"You'll lead. Oh, I'll live, but not for long. Centuries ago, lad, there was a prophecy, and until tonight people like myself and Arscoate thought it was only poetry, however literally Morgan and the other ex-wilds took it."
"What was it?"
"It foretells that on the night Grandfather Stomper shall die the new Grandfather Man will come naked out of the forest with his beautiful wife and armed with a thigh bone, and that he will lead us in the even greater task of reclamation that comes after. Your ritual title of address is 'Father in Love,' lad, and I'm just a broken old man now. Take up the burden."
Cole's throat swelled, choking speech for a moment.
"I can start," he said.