them with a mere seventeen thousand men.

All in all, the Invaders were getting nowhere, but they seemed
determined to keep on plugging.

The news only filtered slowly into the areas which were situated well
away from the front. A thousand miles to the west of Chief Samas'
barony, the Invaders began cutting deeply into Xedii territory, but they
were nowhere near the capital, so no one was really worried.

Anketam worked hard at keeping the barony going during the absence of
The Chief. Instead of _cataca_, he and Jacovik planted food crops,
doing on a larger scale just what they had always done in the selected
sections around the villages. They had always grown their own food, and
now they were doing it on a grand scale.

No news came from off-planet, except for unreliable rumors. What the
rest of the galaxy was doing about the war on Xedii, no one knew.

Young Basom proved to be a reasonably competent supervisor. He was
nowhere near as good as Anketam or Jacovik, but there were worse supers
in the barony.

Anketam found that the biggest worry was not in the handling of the
farmers, but in obtaining manufactured goods. The staff physician
complained to Kevenoe that drugs were getting scarce. Shoes and clothing
were almost impossible to obtain. Rumor had it that arms and ammunition
were running short in the Xedii armies. For two centuries, Xedii had
depended on other planets to provide manufactured goods for her, and now
those supplies were cut off, except for a miserably slow trickle that
came in via the daring space officers who managed to evade the orbital
forts that the Invaders had set up around the planet.

Even so, Anketam's faith in the power of Xedii remained constant. The
invading armies were still being held off from Chromdin, weren't they?
The capital would not fall, of that he was sure.

What Anketam did not and could not know was the fact that the Invaders
were growing tired of pussy-footing around. Instead of fighting Xedii on
Xedii's terms, the Invaders decided to fight it on their own.

Everyone on Chief Samas' barony and the others around it expected
trouble to come from the north, from the Frozen Country, if and when it
came. They didn't look to the west, where the real trouble was brewing.

Anketam was shocked when he heard the news that the Invaders had reached
Tana L'At, having cut down through the center of the continent, dividing
the inhabited part of Xedii into two almost equal parts.