A Victory for Kregen (27 page)

Scouts and skirmishers moved forward in clouds to deny the enemy clear observation. The churgurs waited just inboard of the archers. It was a simple arrangement to all seeming, and not a particularly military layout, either. I knew a fair old number of princes and generals who would blanch at the mere sight of the formations we adopted.

Our total aerial force went whirling off to put into effect the final dazzlement. Even the lumbering old weyver went, with a rascally gang of cutthroats concealed behind her low bulwarks and a dozen varters ready to spew out chunks of Ovalia’s fine street paving.

“You’ll never dupe all that cramph Hangrol’s aerial forces, Dray!” Turko rested his massive shield on his saddle. “By Morro the Muscle! We’ll have the hornets around our ears—”

“Difficult to say.” I spoke seriously, for this was a tactical and psychological problem. “If our fellows can draw off a goodly part, our archers can deal with the rest.”

“I just wish Seg was here,” said Turko, and gentled his zorca between his knees.

By Zair! And didn’t I! And Inch, too, and all the others!

We watched the lads of the Tenth Kerchuri running back down the dry, ancient riverbed scattering their caltrops. If you question — if you condemn — the use of youngsters here, I sympathize. But they were born on Kregen, Vallians, and they burned to do what they could. The chevaux de frise were unloaded from the krahnik carts and carried forward ready to be run out where needed. I lifted in the stirrups to survey the scene. There was no fleet voller for me now to oversee the dispositions. Our men melted into the shadows of the bushes, and were still. A lazy breeze tufted the leaves, which was most useful and was taken by many men as a sign of the direct assistance we had from Opaz and Vox.

Into that ravine trotted Jiktar Travok Ramplon’s regiment. The zorcas looked marvelous. The men had smartened themselves and their mounts up for the occasion, and wore their brightest uniforms. Red and gold glittered in the light. They rode forward and they suddenly seemed, despite their trim appearance and martial order, very small and lonely and isolated trotting up that dusty defile.

They trotted on and the hooves of the zorcas glittered through the dust, the spiral horns jutted proudly, the tails switched impatiently. Each trooper held his bow in his left hand, straight down his left leg, and his right hand gripped the nocked arrow. Jogging along in the trot, guiding their mounts with knees and body movement and voice, the swods of the zorca bows rode forward.

At the far end of the defile appeared the scouts from Hangrol’s forces. Overhead a bunch of mirvols flew up ready to swoop down. I held my breath. You can see the tricky situation. Too soon and Hangrol would never follow. Too late, and that fine zorca regiment would be a mangled ruin.

With faithful Fango between his knees, confident, exalted, Jiktar Ramplon judged it to a nicety.

His men loosed at the mirvols. The flying animals swerved away, preferring to leave to the advance guard of land cavalry the sweeping away of this troublesome zorca unit. Remember, Ramplon had been baiting these adversaries for the past days. They had blood in their eye. The leading units of enemy zorcas simply let rip a yell of rage and anger and charged like leems. Jiktar Ramplon gave his orders, his trumpeter blew, the regiment pivoted and pulled back, building up their speed into a fine, free gallop.

Around that kink in the defile Ramplon sent on his regiment, for he had chosen to ride last, for which I marked him. He had the Twenty-seventh Regiment of zorca archers. They raced around that bend, and the following cavalry roared around after them. Dust smoked into the air. When the pursuing cavalry were out of sight of their following main body, our archers let fly. Ramplon’s men hauled up, skidding, turned, and those bows came up and showered shafts into the abruptly huddled, terror-stricken mass.

Shot to pieces, the enemy zorcas tried to flee back, and ran full tilt into a wall of steel that closed as though on a hinge across the defile. The Tenth Kerchuri received the fleeing cavalry as though they received a charge. Perhaps half a dozen zorcamen survived to scramble around the edges and run for it

— and each one of that half-dozen was brought down by a marksman.

The noise was such, I hoped, as to convince Hangrol that his advance cavalry had successfully chased off the annoying hornets who had been stinging him so unmercifully. The first elements of his main body came into sight, and I judged that Hangrol did think so. Apart from those early mirvols, there was no sign of his aerial support.

I looked back to where the 2ESW and the EYJ lay waiting in the runnels in the ground. All our men waited in concealment. Hangrol’s forces advanced, led by more cavalry, with bunches of irregulars following, and backed by regiments of the iron legions of Hamal. I counted quickly. Ten regiments...

They were the hard nut we had to crack. Like the other troops in Hangrol’s force, the Hamalese swods were mounted up; they would dismount to go into action.

The moment approached and nothing was going to stop it now.

The Jiktars of the Archers awaited the signal. The churgurs gathered themselves. The kreutzin strained to get in among those brilliant adversaries. Close they came, nearer and nearer, riding with all the aplomb and confidence of men sure of themselves.

Any minute now...

Deb-Lu-Quienyin appeared at my side.

He was standing and leaning back, with his left hand pressed flat against thin air, as though he supported himself against an invisible wall. His clothes were filthy, torn, and tattered, and his turban was hanging over an ear. His face worked with passion and near despair, and he glared upon me with frightful meaning.

I bent from Shadow’s back to peer more closely.

With an effort, Quienyin motioned.

Not understanding what he wanted, and aware that Turko was taking no notice whatsoever, I for a moment thought I was hallucinating and imagining I saw the Wizard of Loh. Hangrol’s army marched on and the distance lessened. The giving of the signal could not be long delayed. I looked back at Quienyin, and he was still there, an apparition bold in the light of the suns.

He lifted his right hand with a gesture of weariness. The short sword in his fist was broken in half.

He dropped the sword. The moment it left his hand it vanished.

He pointed. He pointed with his right forefinger. He pointed at his eyes. I leaned from the zorca, staring.

I stared into the eyes of the Wizard of Loh...

I was looking into a stone-walled chamber pierced by tall windows through which the suns light streamed in emerald and ruby. Silda Segutorio, half-naked, blood staining her shoulder, was staggering up distraught and trying to wield a blood-crusted rapier. Crumpled in a corner lay the body of a man in clothes splashed with blood. I stared. I felt the sickness rising. The man’s fist rested on a sword, flat on the straw-covered stone.

My vision swung to the doorway. Men crowded in, fierce, bright, savage men, exulting. They were clansmen. Their weapons flickered in the brilliant light. They kicked aside the dreadful evidences of their handiwork. They trod contemptuously over the shattered corpses of men wearing the red-and-yellow uniforms of the Emperor’s Sword Watch. Clansmen, savage, horrific, far more lethal than any barbarian, they jostled in to be the first to slay the Wizard and Silda and the man who lay crumpled in the corner.

I knew that man. His fist made a sudden spasmodic attempt to seize the sword, and fell away, limp. I knew the sword.

That was a great Krozair longsword.

That man was my son Drak.

Turko said, “Almost time, Dray! Another hundred paces or so, and then...”

He spoke, Turko the Shield, and I could not see him. I could hear the susurration of the breeze, hear the ominous drumroll of that advancing army; I could feel Shadow between my knees and the warmth of the suns, but I glared with awful fury into a stone chamber where some of the most ferocious warriors of all Kregen stalked down with bloodied weapons upon the helpless form of my son.

The vision’s view shifted again and I saw Silda drawing herself up. Her blood-spattered body glowed through her ripped russet leathers. The rapier trembled in her fist. But she staggered up, her face pallid and distraught, her eyes fierce, her brows downbent, and I knew she would hurl herself forward. Seg’s daughter would fling herself to destruction to protect my son!

The feral, bearded mouths of the clansmen opened and I knew they roared their appreciation of the gallantry of it, shouted compliments of the High Jikai; yet I could hear nothing of them, only the onward tramp of an enemy army dinning in my ears.

How could I give the signal to loose when I could not see Hangrol’s forces? How could I assist Drak and Silda when I was miles and miles away from them?

In my nostrils blew the sweet-scented breeze of Kregen. I could not smell the dust in that stone chamber or the raw stink of spilled blood. Among the refuse of swords scattered from the shattered Sword Watch lay a drexer, one of those swords we in Valka had designed and forged to make a superior weapon. It stirred.

The sword moved of itself.

Jerkily, it lifted into the air and the hilt dropped down and the blood-smeared point snouted up.

I knew. This, I had witnessed before. Gladiomancy! Swordomancy! Deb-Lu-Quienyin was exercising his powers, putting forth his kharrna, and manipulating that sword through the force of his mind. The sword trembled.

So, at once, near-instinctively, I understood what the Wizard of Loh required of me.

The clansmen hauled up. Soundless, that ghastly scene. The clanners stared at the sword floating unsupported in midair. But they did not run away. They were Clansmen of the Great Plains of Segesthes.

They had little truck with sorcerers. One leaped. He was a Zorcander, one of the chiefs, and his broadsword struck like a sliver of silver fire.

“Dray! What—? What ails you?”

The drexer parried the first flashing blows.

“Nothing, Turko.” Still keeping my gaze fastened on the eyes of Quienyin and through them that scene within the stone chamber, I dismounted from Shadow. I gripped the saddle. “My eyes — tell me when Hangrol’s advance reaches the second down-drooping missal tree.”

“Hai!” Turko started to yell, prepared to rouse our men to my aid.

“Shastum! Silence! Listen, Turko. You must be my eyes. Keep talking, tell me what goes forward, but speak quietly. Let no one know. You understand?”

“I understand. And the cramphs have reached the first missal.”

“Then it will not be long delayed.”

The drexer was beaten aside and the Zorcander, with a soundless yell of triumph, burst past. A discarded rapier lifted and struck and drove deeply into his side. He staggered back, and between the fingers of his left hand the bright blood seeped.

The rapier hovered in the air. And then — and then it was as though I gripped the hilt of that rapier in my fist. I could feel it, silver-wound and ridged, hard in my fingers. And I knew I gripped Shadow’s saddle!

The rapier twitched up, and my body and arm did what bodies and arms with rapiers attached are accustomed to do on Kregen. The Zorcander fell, and the next clansman, leaping, silently roaring, fell also. But a rapier is no weapon with which to go up against Clansmen of Segesthes, by the Black Chunkrah, no!

Quienyin, through his kharrna, controlled the weapons. His strength had been taxed to the utmost. His skill would not avail him in swordplay against these supreme warriors. So he stretched out the powers of his mind and brought me in to wield the weapons through him. Uncanny, weird, spirit-shaking — but the only chance left in all the cruel and exotic world of Kregen for Silda and Drak.

The Wizard had to channel my skill at swordplay through his control. The rapier was a flashing blur of bloodied silver, and the broadswords beat and slashed. They had to knock that slender sliver of steel away before they could pass, and when they thrust they pierced thin air. But they drove on and I felt the shifting, sliding movement of my feet on the straw-covered stone, and yet I knew I stood braced on the ground beside my zorca and gripping onto his saddle.

The smashing power of the clansmen’s blows forced me back, and the rapier slicing and thrusting unsupported in the air drew back. Had I been there in the flesh, I would have been sore wounded by now. Back and back, until I stood a few paces only before Drak and Silda. A single comprehensive glance showed me Drak sprawled unconscious and Silda crouched over him with her rapier half-lifted.

She panted and her eyes were wide and wild. She would spring up at the last and fight until the end over the body of Drak.

The chamber spun about me as Quienyin turned once more to face the clansmen, for I realized I saw through his eyes. Stubbornly I tried to move back. I let go of Shadow’s saddle and the dizziness caught me and I staggered. I felt Turko’s Khamorro arm wrap about me and support me. But as I released my grip on the saddle so the rapier fell soundlessly on the stone.

This lack of communication baffling us infuriated me. It was like shouting into fog and receiving nothing in return. But Deb-Lu-Quienyin had been with me through the Moder where in that subterranean hellhole he had seen me battling with a longsword. The Wizard understood instantly. The Krozair brand under Drak’s limp fingers twitched. It shivered. It lifted. It seemed to me I reached out with both fists and took the hilt into my grasp, and I turned in Turko’s arm and so once again gripped onto Shadow’s saddle.

This time I gripped with both hands.

“They have reached the second missal, Dray.”

“Then — loose! And Opaz have us in his keeping.”

The noise of the battle I could hear; the sounds of the combat within the stone chamber remained cut off.

In two places at once, I fought.

The battle I could hear and smell but not see roared on as our archers and slingers loosed and the Tenth stepped into view to block the ravine and entice Hangrol on. The combat I could see but not hear or taste flowered in the stone chamber as the clansmen smashed on to strike down the Krozair blade and have done. The battle was of vital importance to the welfare of the country. The combat was of excruciating agony for me, for through wizardly powers I sought to save the life of Drak.