by Jack Lovejoy
There was still no sign of habitation, although more and more frequently they came upon strange animal tracks. What made these tracks so mysterious was that they began and ended abruptly, as if some large powerful creature had appeared out of nowhere, run a short distance, and then disappeared again. There were whispers about dragons, although the footprints were clearly not reptilian.
The whispers among the lieutenants were now about finding some defensive position where they could make a last stand. They had been seen by the enemy; a dense column of regular troops—followed by a rabble of desert marauders and bandits—marched up the wooded slopes behind them, while the pincers closed upon them from north and south. Their only hope was to find some natural rampart where they could defend themselves until sunset, then slip away in the dark.
Even that desperate hope seemed to vanish, as they scrambled onto a broad flat-topped hill less than a square mile in area. There was little vegetation, and no cover at all. Nothing but rock and scrub and patches of barren soil. There were also more of the strange footprints that appeared suddenly and led nowhere. In the distance they could see what looked like a natural gateway, and began to run for it as hard as they could—until they saw it was no use. The arms of the pincers were closing in too fast. They would be cut off before they were halfway there, and they halted.
Then the pincer arms also halted, although no order seemed to have been given. Mass dissension now began to seethe all through the enemy ranks; those nearest the mountain gateway could be seen pointing at something while their captains and battle priests raged among them, trying futilely to drive them forward. The angry cracking of whips echoed through the mountains.
The fugitives, continuing to straggle forward out of mere inertia, looked about them in dismay. Then their acting captain also pointed to something, although not at whatever was now so intimidating their pursuers. South of the mountain gateway, a cascade of volcanic rock ascended like a giant’s stairway. Not the ideal spot for a last stand, but the best within reach.
Srana’s vision was the keenest of them all. Row upon row of white objects lined the rocky cascade, or sat atop posts, and she was the first to recognize these as skulls. Soon others around her also realized what they were, and pointed and hung back as superstitiously as the enemy pincers.
“Keep moving!” barked one lieutenant after the other, rallying them. “If you don’t like what’s in front of you, take a look at what’s coming up behind.”
The main column of the enemy, a thousand regular troops, had just climbed onto the broad flat-topped hill, and continued to march relentlessly forward, weapons at the ready. But not all the whipping and cursing and shouting of the captains and battle priests could yet drive the pincer arms a foot nearer the gateway, and the fugitives, their desperation overcoming their own fears, reached it first.
Then there was a moment of indecision. They had their defensive position for making a stand, but perhaps they should plunge straight through the gateway instead, hoping their superstitious enemies would be too irresolute to follow. All they could see through it was another broad flat-topped hill, some three times the extent of the one on which they now stood. Then the decision was made for them.
Once more it was Srana’s keen vision that first perceived the new danger, and her warning sent them all scrambling frantically for safety, up the volcanic blocks and ledges.
What exactly was approaching, she did not know; only that there were a lot of them, moving swiftly with long gliding leaps, and obviously hostile. Both the column of regular troops and the pincer arms—which had at last resumed closing—were still moving blindly forward. They seemed to outnumber the approaching forces a good four to one, although only the roughest estimate was as yet possible; for there were at least two or three riders mounted on each of the strange animals running and leaping unseen toward them. Nor did these riders seem very big.
“Shield wall!” cried the acting captain, as darts and missiles began to arc upward from below. “Take cover where you can!”
The wall of shields that went up like the shield of some great shelled animal might not have met Severakh’s exacting standards, but it succeeded in repelling the first barrage. There were no serious casualties—and no second barrage. For their pursuers suddenly became the pursued; their attackers the attacked. They looked down in wonder as those who had sought to overwhelm them were now in turn overwhelmed; a fate that would surely have befallen themselves as well, had they not taken refuge high up the cascade of rocks. The rows of skulls lining the mountain gateway were no idle warning.
Through the gateway, like a living avalanche, ran and leapt and sailed a weird cavalry of dwarfish warriors, mounted in twos and threes upon huge two-legged animals that would run a short distance, leap into the air, spread flaps of skin along their sides, and glide incredible distances forward, a scant few feet above the ground. The wall of shields went down again, and the fugitives stared down in wonder at the most bizarre means of warfare they had ever witnessed.
Srana had decided to use concealment magic long enough to secrete her fragment of the Khavala where it could never be found. Even if she died here—like her grandfather she knew better than to let herself be captured alive by the Evil One—at least his power would not be augmented. But she now recognized magic of other kinds.
Surely the weird two-legged animals possessed at least rudimentary powers of levitation, to prolong glides only a few feet off the ground such incredible distances. The battle empathy of the dwarfish warriors who rode them also seemed magical.
The true odds against the newcomers turned out to be about five to one; but in any actual combat these odds were proportionately reversed. Wherever there was weakness or confusion, wherever a flank was exposed or a line extended too far, an avalanche of the weird animals would drop out of the air as if drawn magnetically to the spot; hundreds of the dwarfish warriors would pour from their backs, swarm over every exposed enemy, then as quickly remount and bound out of range of any counterattack. No orders were given; none were needed.
Wielding broad-bladed curved swords as tall as themselves, each little warrior seemed to know empathetically what he was supposed to do, and what each of his comrades was doing or expected of him at any given moment.
Their larger and more powerful foes were unable to either advance or retreat, wherever they rallied as a disciplined mass, they found that it was only those who had not rallied that were attacked. They formed a solid phalanx, and were at once attacked from the rear; they formed a battle square, an impenetrable mass of spears, swords, and javelins pointed outward, and were attacked from the inside. As the absolute odds dropped toward equality, the relative odds swung heavier and heavier in favor of the dwarfish warriors. Eight, nine, ten of them at once would now swarm over every solitary foe. They wore peculiar cloaks over their armor, dramatically blended from pelts of many colors, which they twirled so deftly in the faces of any helpless wretch they attacked that he could only lunge blindly into whirlwinds of fur, before being swarmed over and cut to pieces.
Then began the rout. So long as they massed together, the regular troops could at least stave off the inevitable, although they were never able to fight back with effect. Their swarming attackers either were out of range of their darts and missiles, or deflected them with their broad-bladed curved swords with an astounding deftness. But the instant they bolted, every mrem for himself, every last one of them was lost. There was no quarter asked or given; no prisoners taken; not a single survivor.
Seated upon their strange mounts, twirling their blades as they glided through the air, just as they had twirled their fur cloaks in battle, the dwarfish little warriors lopped off head after head from behind. The pursuit was swift and inexorable.
The bandits had been the first to bolt, and hence the last to be overtaken, but none escaped.
Meanwhile Srana descended unseen down the rocky ledges to the battlefield
below. Nobody looked in her direction, neither friend nor foe; she could easily have used concealment magic at this moment to escape, perhaps to make her way eventually all the way to Ar. But that would have doomed her companions to certain death, and probably rendered the quest for the Khavala futile. For the mystic stone was of no use to anyone without magical powers, and there were no magicians among those now seeking it—except the Evil One himself, the greatest magician of them all.
The mass levies he had recently dispatched to Namakhazar could only mean that he had somehow discovered that others now sought the Khavala. Merely destroying it to keep it out of his hands would no longer be enough. At least, not enough to save the great city of Ar from destruction.
As she started across the mountain gateway she noticed three troops of mrem, dressed humbly and trotting in martial step, approaching from the same direction as had the dwarfish warriors. But these mrem were not at all dwarfish; if anything, they were exceptionally tall. So humble and obedient were they, however, that a single warrior was enough to keep them in drill-field order.
Srana wondered who they could be, but did not lose her concentration. Nobody looked in her direction. She had picked out the leader of the dwarfish host by his overbearing demeanor and the jeweled coronet on his brow. He stood waiting the arrival of the three troops of exceptionally tall mrem, while the pair of riders who had shared his mount with him throughout the battle now joined in the pursuit. He never saw Srana approach.
“Bravely done, my lord,” she whispered. “But how long could even so valiant a people as yours withstand the Eastern Lords, once the mrem have been overrun?”
Startled, he turned around—but in the wrong direction.
There was nobody near him.
“You have defeated odds of five to one,” she continued, from the direction he was not looking. “How would your warriors fare against a hundred to one, a thousand, against all the hordes of the steppes and deserts?”
Again he turned in the wrong direction. “Parvatta? Is it you who counsels me, goddess?” he whispered with superstitious awe. “I know what you tell me is true, but your own High Priestess opposes me. You know that the Yozgat have dwelt in isolation from other peoples for many centuries. You also know that our sacred traditions are inflexible, that from birth until death they rule every moment of our lives, that to deviate from them is to perish. For only through adhering to these sacred traditions have we prevailed over peoples larger than ourselves. Any deviation could provoke our very Mamlocks to revolt.”
“But dare you remain aloof, when all the world is in turmoil? Would you be allowed to, even if you so desired? Would the enemies who surround you stand against the Eastern Lords to defend you, or join them in your destruction? I see that you know the answer.”
He groaned. “I have known it since the first reports of the invasion, goddess. That is why we were so well prepared this morning. I knew an attack must come eventually, and kept the bambarongs saddled night and day. Making an example of their first attack may discourage a second.”
“For how long? Your warriors are now returning, and troops of mrem approach from inside your own land, so we have only minutes. Listen carefully.”
There was no possibility of such a people allying themselves with the Evil One, or with anybody who might encroach upon their fierce independence, perhaps with anybody at all. But Srana related why she was here, who was after her, and even an intimation about the quest for the Khavala. She desperately needed allies, or at least a refuge until she knew whether Branwe and his companions had succeeded or failed.
“Though your people and mine can never be true friends, my lord,” she concluded, relenting her concealment magic, “we have common enemies. Should they prevail, neither of us will survive.”
This time he turned in the right direction, but was again startled. “Parvatta, it is you,” he muttered with awe. But at last he realized that it was only a she-mrem standing before him, although a she-mrem so beautiful compared to the squat tufty ugliness of his own people that she indeed seemed truly a goddess. “Say not another word,” he cautioned her. “My warriors are already demanding the pelts of your companions as trophies of honor, which is their sacred right. If I fail, my own pelt will be among them.”
But he did not fail. His name was Changavar, Prince Warrior of the Yozgat, an authority that was neither hereditary nor elective—at least, not formally so—but earned both in council and in war. Another sacred tradition was that the decisions of a Prince Warrior were infallible during a battle; they could be questioned only in council afterwards.
There were fierce looks, and some demonstrative pointing toward the fugitives, who had again raised their shield wall on the rocky ledges above, but no open mutiny. Perhaps it was the number of trophies already claimed, perhaps Changavar’s sword prowess, but he succeeded in preserving the lives of the fugitives—at least, for now.
Getting them to descend from the ledges and surrender their arms needed still rarer diplomacy, and this time it was Srana who was the diplomat.
The Yozgat warriors were hardly more than waist-high to their Mamlock bondmrem, who also turned out to be significantly more numerous. Yet so humbled and browbeaten were they that they servilely performed all the menial tasks in the land, freeing their overlords to perfect the very martial skills which domineered them in the first place. At any other time the swagger and arrogance with which the fierce little warriors bullied their towering menials might have seemed comic. But as the Mamlocks abjectly set to work, flaying the “trophies of honor” from the corpses of the enemy, scattered by the thousand across the broad flat-topped hill, the fugitives, at last coaxed down from the ledges by Srana, looked tempted to scramble back up again out of sheer horror. Not one of them but half expected to lose his own pelt.
It was the superstitious awe for Srana’s beauty, which they saw reflected on the ugly, tufty faces of the Yozgat that at last reassured them. Also, they no longer had anything to lose. For even the boldest among them now realized that they could not prevail against such doughty warriors; neither could they escape them. Their strange mounts could easily overtake them up the very ledges of the mountainside. They naturally felt uncomfortable at the way certain Yozgat openly appraised the quality of their fur, but so far at least they were not molested.
In fact, most of the Yozgat were now too busy pressing claims for battle trophies to bother about them. Swaggering on their short little legs, cursing, posturing arrogantly, kicking laggard or clumsy Mamlocks, they settled conflicting claims by what looked like a martial dance, but was really a means of sortition. There were no open squabbles, although there were sometimes seven or eight claimants for the same pelt because of the swarming-attack method of the Yozgat. Stolidly the Mamlocks continued their grim work.
They would remain behind to cremate the flayed corpses, add more warning skulls to the mountain gateway, and lug the trophies back to the communal barracks, with only a single mounted warrior left to supervise them. The fugitives were meanwhile formed into ranks and marched away. Srana alone was honored with a mount, seated behind Changavar himself at the head of his weird cavalry.
No Yozgat had been killed in the battle, few even seriously wounded. Twirling their swords and fur cloaks as they rode, they chanted a resounding victory song, which the running, leaping, and gliding of their bambarongs caused to quaver eerily across the broadening mountain valley.
Since every glide covered a hundred yards and more, Srana was able to answer most of Changavar’s questions which was why, she suspected, he had seated her alone behind him. She appreciated more fully now just how dangerous was his break with tradition. He in turn appreciated more fully the dangers besetting his people. Run, leap, glide; a few terse words of conversation; then run and leap again. The glides became progressively longer and longer, as the land sloped downward and the valley continued to broaden.
Miles and miles of order
ly farms, paddocks, and orchards centered upon two clusters of barracks—each a veritable city—which in turn centered upon a sprawling stone edifice, the Temple of Parvatta. There was no ornament. The architecture was perfectly functional. It was a military encampment, a society of little soldiers and big orderlies, with the latter forbidden weapons upon pain of death.
As she approached the Temple of Parvatta, Srana’s keen ears perceived, mingling with the quavering victory song of the warriors, a paean of welcome by female voices. Over a hundred dwarfish, tufty little she-mrem in green robes formed a chorus upon the temple stairs. Leading them was the oldest and tuftiest of all, the High Priestess of Parvatta.
The plaza before the temple looked more suitable for martial drills and parades than religious worship. It was now thronged with thousands of Yozgat mrem, and kits. There were murmurs of astonishment as Srana dismounted; many glanced toward the inner temple, where stood the eidolon of Parvatta. Then her danger sense warned her of hostility, and she glanced toward the High Priestess.
Never before had she seen such malice concentrated in mrem eyes. Khal himself could scarcely have fixed more vindictive hatred upon her. She also sensed other concentrations, as if this ugly, tufty old priestess did more than direct the singing of the chorus behind her, as if she were already tapping their mind power: using it as a force, a probe, a weapon.
There was a shimmering clarity in the mountain air; the morning sky was blue and cloudless. Srana did not yet know if she had any friends here, but she clearly saw her enemy.
The Judgment of Parvatta
MOST OF the news these days was bad, and Nizzam had learned his lesson about delivering it in person. Let the messengers themselves bear the consequences. The legate of the Eastern Lords, after being closeted for hours with Khal, had at last emerged content that the siege of Ar would end victoriously, that soon the entire realm of the mrem would lay open to plunder and enslavement. But Khal himself was not content, and Nizzam had also learned to read his moods with the acuteness of a survivor.
