“I will speak to Balif,” Amero said. “Stay here, Hekani, and keep watch for the raiders.”
He started toward the Silvanesti position, feet crunching in the loose gravel. He heard someone behind him. It was Lyopi. She’d already told him in a tone that brooked no discussion that she would not leave his side this day.
He smiled and took her hand. “Let us greet the elf lord.”
The lightness of Balif’s arms and armor surprised the Arkuden. He’d assumed a noble Silvanesti would fight encased in costly bronze, but all Balif wore was a modest breastplate, helmet, sword, and shield. After greeting him, Amero commented on the elf lord’s light armor.
Balif explained mildly that he’d been on a hunting expedition and hadn’t come prepared for war. He looked past Amero to Lyopi.
“The females of your settlement fight, too? Are most human females warlike?”
“No more nor less than men,” Lyopi replied sharply. “Courage is not determined by sex.”
He bowed his head. “As one who has fought and pursued Karada for twenty years, I know the truth of that.”
The first roll of thunder broke over the valley. It was far away and only barely made itself heard over the intervening mountains, but it was an unsettling portent of things to come.
Balif eyed the darkening sky with a frown as he drew on a pair of leather gauntlets. “I dislike fighting in the rain,” he said. “My lord Silvanos used to bring priests with him when he traveled to insure fine weather by their art. I wouldn’t mind having one or two with us now.”
“Like Vedvedsica?” said Amero.
Recognition flickered across Balif’s face. “You know him, do you?”
“Only by his deeds. My sister met him once.”
“A talented fellow, but unreliable. He no longer serves my house.”
“What became of him?” Lyopi asked.
Balif feigned indifference, but strong emotions plainly lurked behind this façade. “He overreached himself and so was dismissed.”
In view of his past services, Vedvedsica’s life had been spared, but he had been banished from Silvanos’s realm. Where he lived now, Balif knew not.
Shading his pale eyes, the elf lord changed the subject. “This open ground will suit Karada and the raiders. Not good for us on foot, though. We won’t have much shelter from attacking horsemen.”
The rumble of massed hoofbeats announced the approach of Karada’s band. The nomads emerged from camp in a column divided in three forces, each roughly two hundred strong.
Karada rode to the crest of the knoll where her brother, Lyopi, and Balif stood. When she stopped, the horsemen behind her halted. The middle section swung right and filled in the gap between Karada and the Silvanesti. The third rode out to their left, aligning itself beside the villagers. Bahco and two lieutenants rode out from the left wing to join Karada, as did Pakito and two riders from the right. Everyone dismounted, and greetings were exchanged.
“Bad weather for battle,” Balif remarked dryly.
“Bad for the enemy as well,” Karada replied, looking toward Zannian’s camp.
They all turned to follow her gaze. The pulsing wind scoured away the usual spires of smoke from campfires, leaving the western half of the valley looking barren. Sunlight, visible only intermittently through the thick clouds, flashed over the panoramic view. By the river, the raiders’ camp appeared deserted.
“Have they fled?” Bahco wondered.
Amero did not think so. “Their campfires burned until dawn. I could see them from the wall.”
“They’re there,” said Karada. “If I judge this Zannian right, he won’t run away. The ogres will be here, too. Of that I’m sure.”
She went to the forward edge of the knoll and looked over the ground between there and the low hills shielding the river. Except for a few odd boulders buried in the soil, and a tree or two, the land was level and without cover.
“Amero, your people and the elves will go there,” she said, pointing to the west baffle of Yala-tene. “Hold the ground between the village and the lake.”
“Just hold?” asked Balif.
“Yes. Between my band and the raiders, there will be nearly a thousand riders in the valley. Your fighters on foot number less than a hundred. You could get trampled by either side.”
“Good point,” Balif said, just as Lyopi muttered indignantly, “No one’s going to trample us!”
The elf lord added, “What if the ogres array against us? What then?”
“They won’t,” Karada said. “Chief Ungrah wants my head. He’ll come after me.”
“We’ll hold our place unless chance beckons us to go elsewhere,” said Balif.
“Don’t get adventurous on me, elf! The last thing I need in the midst of a melee is to have to break off and ride to your rescue!”
“I hardly expect you to rescue —” Balif began, but Amero signed for him not to argue, and Balif understood. It was her brother, fighting with the elves, whom Karada would feel compelled to rescue.
“Now,” Karada said, “I expect Zannian and his ogre friends to come for me as hard and fast as they can. I’ll make myself plain and invite them. In fact, I’ll give way to them, draw them in. Once they’re fully engaged, I want the wings to close in on their sides and rear.
No one is to escape.” To illustrate her meaning, she drew a simple plan in the dirt. Pakito and Bahco avowed their understanding.
More thunder rolled across the valley, chased by heavy gusts of wind. Whitecaps danced on the Lake of the Falls. Balif returned to his soldiers and marched them where Karada had decreed.
“Good luck,” Amero said, clapping his sister firmly on the shoulder. A smile teased the comers of her mouth, then she gruffly sent her brother on his way.
With the villagers in the lead, Balif and Amero’s groups descended the knoll and passed under the walls of Yala-tene. The plain was littered with the burned and broken remains of previous attacks – weapons, travois, dead horses. Fallen raiders were always cleared from the field by night, so no human corpses haunted their march. At one point Amero happened to look up and see the village wall, lined with his people. Some waved, but all were silent.
The west baffle was little more than a mound of rubble. Ogres had torn it apart, using slabs of rock and loose stones to make a crude ramp leading up to the main wall. Hekani pointed out the soot marks on the wall where he’d used fire to repel Ungrah-de. They also saw the bodies of four ogres, killed earlier, which still lay in the shadow of the town wall.
Amero arranged his people in a double line from the ruined baffle out toward the lake. Balif deployed his trained soldiers in a single, widely spaced line. The elves knelt on one knee, spears out. Balif stood behind them with the elf entrusted to carry the standard.
They waited.
Karada’s force spread out across the top of the knoll, and she took her place at the center of the front line. Horses pranced and pawed, sensing the nervous excitement of their riders. Overhead, the unsettled air added its own fuel to the tension. Birds roosting on the cliffs abandoned their nests in the swirling wind. Flocks of sweeps and starlings filled the sky, their dark bodies swooping and circling several times before being carried off on the wind.
It seemed a bad omen to Beramun, and she said as much to Karada.
“We make our own fates,” the nomad chief said. “No one else.”
“Do the Great Spirits mean nothing to you?”
“I have no time for them now.” Her gruff voice took on a more caring tone. “Be careful, girl.”
Beramun vowed she would. Her shoulder still twinged, but at least the pain was in her left shoulder and not her right, where she wielded her spear.
As part of Karada’s plan, a line of riders filed out on each side of her position, making it appear from a distance as though the whole nomad band was on the hill. On the reverse slope, Bahco and Pakito kept the bulk of their warriors secreted out of sight.
With the thick clouds churning i
t was hard to read the time of day, but it wasn’t long after Karada had deployed her various troops that the first stirrings on the riverbank could be seen. A deep drum sounded a steady, repeated note. Wind stole the sound and played it falsely off the rocky crags lining the valley. The drumming seemed to come from the east, then the south. Scouts sent in those directions reported no enemy in sight.
By the lake, Amero and his people tried to see what was happening. Even the disciplined elves were curious, a few daring Balif’s displeasure by breaking formation and standing erect and straining to see. A single word from him recalled them to their places.
From the village wall, people began shouting and waving. They had a longer view than anyone on the ground and could see what was coming.
The drumbeat grew louder. Something was moving on the riverbank. Swinging into view above the sandy hills came a great ogre, half again as tall as any man, festooned from head to waist in leather armor studded with chunks of stone the size of a human man’s fist. Skulls of past victims dangled from his chest, and a giant single-bladed axe rested on his shoulder.
“Ungrah-de,” said Amero under his breath. Merely speaking the name made him sweat. All of the villagers fighting with him closed in until their shoulders nearly touched. They’d fought the ogres for days from the wall, but it was quite another thing to face such monsters toe to toe on open ground.
More fanged faces appeared, striding along behind their leader. To warn Karada, villagers on the wall chanted, “Ogres! Ogres!”
They came forth in a broad spearhead formation, with Ungrah-de at the front. They crossed the old road from Yala-tene to the river, making straight for the open ground north of the village. When the trailing ogres on the right end of the line spotted Balif and Amero by the lake, they ignored them and kept going.
“Karada was right,” Lyopi said. “The ogres are going after her.”
All twenty-four ogres were in sight when the first raiders appeared. A tight square of riders, no more than fifty men in all, climbed the riverbank and rode forward slowly, filling the space behind the ogre spearhead.
“Is that all of them?” Hekani wondered.
“Maybe the rest ran away?” Lyopi offered.
Signals from the lakeshore caught Amero’s eye. Balif’s standard bearer was waving the white doeskin banner back and forth. Amero hurried down the hill to see what had alarmed the elves.
It was a column of raiders, several hundred strong, following the shoreline, coming right at Balif’s position. Amero hailed the Silvanesti.
“Zannian isn’t doing what Karada wants,” Balif said dryly.
“We can’t hold off so many! Should we retreat into Yala-tene?”
Balif examined the land, the sky, and the slow-moving column of raiders. “Not yet,” he said. “I don’t think they realize we’re waiting here. Send some of your people up the ramp. Let them be noisy, make sure they’re seen. I’ll hide my soldiers in the hollow behind the ramp. Join me there, and we’ll see if they pass us by.”
“We can attack them from behind if they ride past!”
“Exactly.”
Amero sent a dozen villagers scrambling up the broken-down baffle, yelling and clattering their weapons. The rest of his people and the Silvanesti quietly slipped out of sight behind the mound of rubble. They waited there anxiously until it became clear the raiders were turning east well short of the village.
“Good,” said Balif. “Zannian will think your people were foragers or scouts. I wonder what Karada will do when she sees the raiders are not following her plan.”
Amero sat down on the heap of stones and watched the end of the raider column disappear north of the village.
“She’ll do what she does best,” he said. “Fight.”
*
Daylight saw the raider band diminished further, despite Ungrah’s threats and Zannian’s exhortations. When they mustered around their captains, only two hundred forty-four men were present. Hoten reported the rest had deserted, including all the men without horses.
Zannian was livid. “Wretched cowards! After the battle I’ll hang every one of them from the walls of Arku-peli!”
Hoten clenched his heavy jaw. “There’s more, Zan. The slaves have escaped, too. All that’s left are those we captured in this valley. I don’t know why they stayed.”
“They think they’ll be free soon,” Zannian muttered. “Summon Ungrah-de.”
The ogre chief was fully decked out for battle, which on this special day included drenching himself with a foul-smelling oil the ogres called kunj. The acrid oil was supposed to weaken the enemy with its terrible odor while strengthening the ogre who wore it. Fighting the famous Karada demanded all the warrior rituals the ogres possessed.
Upwind from Ungrah, Hoten still had to hold his nose. Grim-faced, Zannian ignored the stench.
“I have a task for you,” he said.
“You do not give a great chief tasks,” Ungrah replied.
“Call it a favor then – a favor I’m doing for you.”
The ogre’s yellowed eyes narrowed. “What favor?”
“There are a score or so captives in our camp. Win or lose, they’re yours. Our other slaves ran off in the night, but those from Arku-peli stayed behind, thinking they’ll be free soon. I want them to know staying behind was a mistake.”
Ungrah looked over Zannian’s head at the depleted ranks of the raiders. “Many humans ran during the night. Why did you not?”
“Because I am Zannian!” He shook with fury. “Because I will conquer or die!”
Ungrah nodded his heavy head. “You have the proper spirit. Like Harak-ta.” Ta was an ogre epithet meaning “small.” He added, “Where is that one, since I speak his name?”
“Dead,” Hoten said. “Taken when the nomads first struck us.”
Zannian snorted. “Deserted, more like. Smooth-talking snake.”
Hoten asked the ogre chief his plan for the coming battle.
“I will kill as many of the enemy as possible, starting with Karada. That is my plan,” Ungrah said, then left to organize his warriors.
“Let the monsters do as they will,” Zannian said, seating the skull-mask on his head. “As for us, Hoten, I want you to take fifty men and follow Ungrah-de. If he breaks through, ride hard and exploit any openings you find. The rest of the band will follow me. I’ll show Karada how the Raiders of Almurk fight!”
With this ringing pronouncement, Zannian swung onto his gray horse. Hoten’s hand on his animal’s reins caused him to look down. The old man looked as though he wanted to say something but didn’t. Finally he bowed stiffly to his chief and watched as Zannian cantered away to the head of the column.
Not long after, under writhing clouds and punctuated by the sound of ogre drums, the raiders rode to their final battle. Hoten led just forty-five men. He sent the other five – all older men he knew well and trusted – on a special task of his own creation. If they succeeded, he would face his death with a calmer spirit.
*
The drumming ceased.
Ungrah-de stood at the head of his warriors, wind rattling the bones decorating his chest. His patchy gray hair, coarse and long, streamed out behind his massive head like a personal standard. He raised his terrible stone axe – still chipped from the blow he’d given the walls of Yala-tene – and bellowed. Like an answer from on high, a bolt of lightning flashed overhead, and the ogre’s cry merged into a ferocious clap of thunder.
The rearmost ogres began running. When they drew abreast of their comrades, these also started moving, and so on, until the line of running creatures reached Ungrah himself. The ogre chief, axe held high, hurled himself forward. Twenty-four ogres came storming up the knoll at Karada’s waiting line of horsemen.
Behind the nomad leader, Beramun swallowed hard. “Karada?” she said unsteadily.
“Wait.”
A white shaft of lightning struck the mountains north of the valley. The ground beneath their horses shook, and fat drops of
chilly rain hit Beramun. The sky was full of black, billowing clouds.
Karada held her sword up. Every eye was on her.
“Now,” she said quietly.
The horsemen stirred into motion. They didn’t pitch headlong down the hill but moved at a steady trot. Inexperienced in mass maneuvers, Beramun found herself dropping back through the ranks as more skillful riders pushed by. She tried to keep Karada in sight, but it was difficult.
She heard no command, but at the same moment all the horses broke into a canter. The ranks were close-packed, and she had no room to lower the long spear she carried against her shoulder.
Rain thickened, pelting the soil and purging the air of dust. Lightning flashed again, and Beramun saw with terrifying clarity the heads of the ogres looming above the mounted nomads.
The canter became a full gallop. The ogres were less than forty paces away, running hard toward the hurtling mass of riders. It seemed impossible they could stand against the nomads, powerful as they were.
Rain fell in a torrent, and Beramun was blinded when it struck her eyes. She heard loud grunts and groans, and the screams of horses. Flinging water from her eyes, she saw the front rank of riders slam into the ogres. Succeeding waves of nomads piled up against those halted ahead of them. She hauled back on her reins, trying to turn her mount, but it was too late. Her horse collided with the animal ahead of her. The shock of impact almost unseated her.
Karada rode straight at the biggest, ugliest ogre on the field, assuming he was their leader. He in turn ran right at her, confirming her belief. Coming closer, she recognized Ungrah-de from their brief encounter the day before. He held his huge axe in a two-handed grip over his left shoulder. She shifted her horse a little to the right. As they came together, the terrible stone blade crashed against her shield. It was an oblique blow, and though her arm stung from its force, the weapon slid harmlessly down her shield.
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