Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (48 page)

Mhoram spun and leaped lightly onto Drinny’s back. The Ranyhyn whinnied; peals of pride and defiance resounded through the hall. As the huge gates opened outward on the courtyard, Mhoram sent Drinny forward at a canter.

The Warward started into motion behind him, and at its head High Lord Mhoram rode out to war.

In a moment, he flashed through the gates, across the courtyard between steep banks of sand and earth, into the straight tunnel under the tower. Drinny stretched jubilantly under him, exalted by health and running and the scent of battle. As Mhoram passed through the splintered remains of the outer gates, he had already begun to outdistance the Warward.

Beyond the gates, he wheeled Drinny once, gave himself an instant in which to look back up at the lofty Keep. He saw no warriors in the tower, but he sensed them bristling behind the fortifications and windows. The bluff stone of the tower, with Revelstone rising behind it like the prow of a great ship, answered his gaze in granite permanence as if it were a prophecy by the old Giants—a cryptic perception that victory and defeat were human terms which had no meaning in the language of mountains.

Then the riders came cantering through the throat of the tower, and Mhoram turned to look at the enemy. For the first time, he saw
samadhi
’s army from ground level. It stood blackly in the bleak winterscape around him like a garrote into which he had prematurely thrust his neck. Briefly he remembered other battles—Kiril Threndor, Doom’s Retreat, Doriendor Corishev—as if they had been child’s play, mere shadows cast by the struggle he now faced. But he pushed them out of his mind, bent his attention toward the movements in the foothills below him.

As the sentry had said, Revelstone’s attackers were pelting furiously back toward their encampment. It was only a few hundred yards distant, and Mhoram could see clearly why
samadhi
’s forces had been recalled. The Giant-Raver was under assault by a tight wedge of ten or fifteen score Waynhim.

Satansfist himself was not their target, though he fought against them personally with feral blasts of green. The Waynhim struck against the undefended rear of the encampment in order to destroy its food supplies. They had already incinerated great long troughs of the carrion and gore on which Lord Foul’s creatures fed; and while they warded off the scourge of Satansfist’s Stone as best they could, they assailed other stores, flash-fired huge aggregations of hacked dead flesh into cinders.

Even if they had faced the Raver alone, they would have had no chance to survive. With his Giantish strength and his fragment of the Illearth Stone—with the support of the Staff of Law—he could have beaten back ten or fifteen thousand Waynhim. And he had an army to help him. Hundreds of ur-viles were nearly within striking distance; thousands of other creatures converged toward the fighting from all directions. The Waynhim had scant moments of life left.

Yet they fought on, resisted
samadhi
’s emerald ill with surprising success. Like the ur-viles, they were Demondim-spawn, masters of a dark and potent lore which no Lord had ever touched. And they had not wasted the seven and forty years since they had gone into hiding. They had prepared themselves to resist Despite. Yelping rare words of power, gesturing urgently, they shrugged off the Raver’s blasts, and continued to destroy every trough and accumulation of food they could reach.

All this High Lord Mhoram took in almost instantly. The raw wind hurt his face, made his eyes burn, but he thrust his vision through the blur to see. And he saw that, because of the Waynhim, he and the Warward had not yet been noticed by Satansfist’s army.

“Warmark,” he snapped, “we must aid the Waynhim! Give the commands.”

Rapidly Quaan barked his instructions to the mounted warriors and the Hafts of the four unmounted Eoward as they came through the tunnel. At once, a hundred riders positioned themselves on either side of the High Lord. The remaining two hundred fell into ranks behind him. Without breaking stride, the unmounted warriors began to run.

Mhoram touched Drinny and started at a slow gallop straight down through the foothills toward the Raver.

Some distant parts of the encampment saw the riders before they had covered a third of the distance. Hoarse cries of warning sprang up on all sides; ur-viles, Cavewights, Stone-made creatures which had not already been ordered to the Giant-Raver’s aid, swept like a ragged tide at the Warward. But the confusion around the Waynhim prevented Satansfist’s immediate forces from hearing the alarm. The Raver did not turn his head. Revelstone’s counterattack was nearly upon him before he saw his danger.

In the last distance, Warmark Quaan shouted an order, and the riders broke into full gallop. Mhoram had time for one final look at his situation. The forces around
samadhi
were still locked in their concentration on the Waynhim. The Raver’s reinforcements were long moments away. If Quaan’s warriors could hit hard enough, break through toward the Waynhim fast enough, the unmounted Eoward might be able to protect their rear long enough for them to strike once at the Raver and withdraw.

That way, some of the warriors might survive to return to the Keep.

Mhoram sent Drinny forward at a pace which put him among the first riders crashing into Satansfist’s unready hordes.

They impacted with a shock that shook the High Lord in his seat. Horses plunged, hacked with their hooves. Swords were brandished like metal lightning. Shrieks of surprised pain and rage shivered the air as disorganized ranks of creatures went down under the assault. Heaving their mounts forward, the warriors cut their way in toward the Raver.

But thousands of creatures milled between them and Satansfist. Though the hordes were in confusion, the sheer weight of their numbers slowed the Warward’s charge.

Seeing this, Quaan gave new orders. On his command, the warriors flanking Mhoram turned outward on either side, cleared a space between them for the riders behind the High Lord. These Eoman sprinted forward. When they reached Mhoram, he called up the power of his staff. Blue fire raged ahead of him like the point of a lance, piercing the wall of enemies as he led the second rush of riders deeper into the turmoil of the Raver’s army.

For a moment, he thought they might succeed. The warriors with him hacked their way swiftly through the enemy. And ahead of them, Satansfist turned from the Waynhim to meet this new threat. The Raver howled orders to organize his army, turned his forces against the Warward, surged a few furious strides in that direction. Mhoram saw the distance shorten. He wielded his Lords-fire fiercely, striving to reach his foe before the impossible numbers of the enemy broke his momentum.

But then the riders plowed into an obstacle. A band of Cavewights had had time to obey the Raver’s commands; they had lined themselves across the path of the Warward, linked their strong earth-delvers’ arms, braced themselves. When the riders plunged forward, they crashed into the creatures.

The strength of the Cavewights was so great that their line held. Horses were thrown down. Riders tumbled to the ground, both before and beyond the wall. The charge of the Warward was turned against itself as the horses which followed stumbled and trampled among the leaders.

Only Mhoram was not unhorsed. At the last instant, Drinny gathered himself, leaped; he hurdled the line easily, kicking at the heads of the Cavewights as he passed.

With the riders who had been thrown beyond the wall, Mhoram found himself faced by a massing wedge of ur-viles.

The Cavewights cut him off from the Warward. And the falling of the horses gave
samadhi
’s creatures a chance to strike back. Before Quaan could organize any kind of assault on the Cavewights, his warriors were fighting for their lives where they stood.

Wheeling Drinny, Mhoram saw that he would get no help from the riders. But if he went back to them, fought the wall himself, the ur-viles would have time to complete their wedge; they would have the riders at their mercy.

At once, he sent the warriors with him to attack the Cavewights. Then he flung himself like a bolt of Lords-fire at the ur-viles.

He was only one man against several hundred of the black, roynish creatures. But he had unlocked the secret of High Lord Kevin’s Lore; he had learned the link between power and passion; he was mightier than he had ever been before. Using all the force his staff could bear, he shattered the formation like a battering ram, broke and scattered ur-viles like rubble. With Drinny pounding, kicking, slashing under him, he held his staff in both hands, whirled it about him, sent vivid blasts blaring like the blue fury of the cloud-damned heavens, shouting in a rapture of rage like an earthquake. And the ur-viles staggered as if the sky had fallen on them, collapsed as if the ground had bucked under their feet. He fired his way through them like a titan, and did not stop until he had reached the bottom of a low hollow in the hills.

There he spun, and discovered that he had completely lost the Warward. The riders had been thrown back; in the face of insuperable odds, Quaan had probably taken them to join the unmounted warriors so that they could combine their strength in an effort to save the High Lord.

On the opposite rim of the hollow, Satansfist stood glaring down at Mhoram. He held his Stone cocked to strike, and the mad lust of the Raver was in his Giantish face. But he turned away without attacking, disappeared beyond the rim as if he had decided that the Waynhim were a more serious threat than High Lord Mhoram.

“Satansfist!” Mhoram yelled. “
Samadhi
Sheol! Return and fight me! Are you craven, that you dare not risk a challenge?”

As he shouted, he hit Drinny with his heels, launched the Ranyhyn in pursuit of Satansfist. But in the instant that his attention was turned upward, the surviving ur-viles rallied. Instead of retreating to form a wedge, they flung themselves at him. He could not swing his staff; ravenous black hands clutched at him, clawed his arms, caught hold of his robe.

Drinny fought back, but he succeeded only in pulling himself out from under the High Lord. Mhoram lost his seat and went down under a pile of rabid black bodies.

Blood-red Demondim blades flared at him. But before any of the eldritch knives could bite his flesh, he mustered an eruption of force which blasted the ur-viles away. Instantly he was on his feet again, wielding his staff, crushing every creature that came near him—searching fervidly for his mount.

The Ranyhyn was already gone, driven out of the hollow.

Suddenly Mhoram was alone. The last ur-viles fled, leaving him with the dead and dying. In their place came a fatal silence that chilled his blood. Either the fighting had ended, or the livid wind carried all sounds away; he could hear nothing but the low cruel voice of Lord Foul’s winter, and his own hoarse respiration.

The abrupt absence of clamor and turmoil kept him still also. He wanted to shout for Quaan but could not raise his voice through the horror in his throat—wanted to whistle for Drinny, but could not bring himself to break the awful quietude. He was too astonished with dread.

The next instant, he realized that the Raver had trapped him. He sprang into a run, moving away from the Warward, toward the Waynhim, hoping that this choice would take the trap by surprise.

It was too complete to be surprised. Before he had gone a dozen yards, creatures burst into view around the entire rim of the hollow. Hundreds of them let him see them; they stood leering down at him, pawing the ground hungrily, slavering at the anticipated taste of his blood and bones. The wind bore their throaty lust down to him as if they gave tongue to the animating spirit of the winter.

He was alone against them.

He retreated to the center of the hollow, hunted swiftly around the rim for some gap or weakness in the surrounding horde. He found none. And though he sent his perceptions ranging as far as he could through the air, he discovered no sign of the Warward; if the warriors were still alive, still fighting, they were blocked from his senses by the solid force of the trap.

As he grasped the utterness of his plight, he turned inward, retreated into himself as if he were fleeing. There he looked the end of all his hopes and all his Landservice in the face, and found that its scarred, terrible visage no longer appalled him. He was a fighter, a man born to fight for the Land. As long as something for which he could fight remained, he was impervious to terror. And something did remain; while he lived, at least one flame of love for the Land still burned. He could fight for that.

His crooked lips stretched into an extreme and perilous grin; hot, serene triumph shone in his eyes. “Come, then!” he shouted. “If your master is too much a coward to risk himself against me, then come for me yourselves! I do not wish to harm you, but if you dare me, I will give you death!”

Something in his voice halted them momentarily. They hesitated, moiling uneasily. But almost at once the grip of their malice locked like jaws. At the harsh shout of a command, they started down toward him from all sides like an avalanche.

He did not wait for them. He swung in the direction Satansfist had taken, intending to pursue the Raver as far as his strength would carry him. But some instinct or intuition tugged him at the last instant, deflected him to one side. He turned and met that part of the avalanche head-on.

Now the only thing which limited his might was his staff itself. That wood had been shaped by people who had not understood Kevin’s Lore; it was not formed to bear the force he now sent blazing through it. But he had no margin for caution. He made the staff surpass itself, sent it bucking and crackling with power to rage against his assailants. His flame grew incandescent, furnace-hot; in brilliance and coruscation it sliced through his foes like a scythe of sun-fire.

In moments, their sheer numbers filled all his horizons, blocked everything but their dark assault out of his awareness. He saw nothing else, felt nothing but huge waves of misshapen fiends that sought to deluge him, knew nothing but their ravening lust for blood and his blue, fiery passion. Though they threw themselves at him in scores and hundreds, he met them, cut them down, blasted them back. Wading through their corpses as if they were the very sea of death, he fought them with fury in his veins, indomitability in his bones, extravagant triumph in his eyes.