by Джеффри Лорд
Blade dashed forward. A single leap carried him up onto the stolof's back beside the enemy warrior, and a single slash from his sword took off the man's head. The spouting corpse toppled off the stolof in one direction, and Blade sprang down in another. Before the warrior he'd saved even had a chance to thank him, a sudden surge forward by the enemy drove them apart. Blade found himself surrounded by stolofs who were jammed too close together to fire their ribbons. A moment later they came to a stop, too crowded together to even move.
Blade ducked in and out between the thick green and golden legs as if he was running through a forest. At unexpected moments he popped out from under the stolofs, sword in one hand and spear in the other. In those moments warriors of Trawn died screaming or choking in their own blood. Blade must have killed eight or ten without taking a single scratch. Then stolof-whistles blew and the creatures began moving backward. Blade ducked under a last one, stabbed it in the belly, ran across in front of another one to thrust his spear into its eyes, then broke out into the open.
As he did a fresh wave of Draad's warriors came in, more spearmen and some of the archers as well. The archers dropped into cover behind the dead stolofs that now littered the ground and began picking off any enemy they could hit without risk of hitting a friend. The spearmen pushed forward, stabbing wounded or stunned stolofs and dying or crippled enemy warriors as they came to them. Blade stepped back through the advancing line, and for the first time in quite a while got a clear view of the battle.
The main formation of Desgo's army was still intact and unmoving, unable to see or perhaps understand what was happening to the stolofs' attack. What was happening to that attack was quite simply a massacre. Two-thirds of the warriors and stolofs were already dead or dying. The rest were too paralyzed by fear or surprise or sleeping water to make any effort to flee or defend themselves. It was only a matter of time before they also died.
It was also only a matter of time before Lord Desgo and his commanders recovered from the shock of seeing their stolofs and several thousand of their best warriors massacred before their eyes. That was why speed was so vital for Blade's tactics. He had to deliver his second and finishing stroke to Desgo's army before the enemy recovered enough to realize what was about to happen to them.
Blade turned and sprinted back toward the rear, angling toward the left of his own army. King Embor could and would do all that was necessary to push the main battle. It was time for him and Neena to lead their own attack.
Blade slowed down as he approached the mass of civilians. He didn't want to be seen running by people who might not clearly understand why he was doing so. That was the way panics and routs got started and victorious armies could disintegrate in the moment of victory.
Blade trotted through the civilians, ignoring the cheers and the hands reaching out to touch him, and reached the meytans. Neena was already in the saddle. He swung himself up onto the back of his meytan and thrust his feet firmly into the stirrups.
Lord Desgo felt sweat trickling under his helmet. The sun had just cleared the treetops to the east and was only beginning to thin out the mist over the battlefield. Desgo's sweat was the cold sweat of a man who has just seen his army's main striking force destroyed in ten minutes. Desgo found it hard to keep his hands from shaking as he held the reins of his meytan or his voice from shaking as he gave his orders.
It was hard to see exactly what Draad's army was doing, what with the mist and the slaughter of the stolofs that was still going on. It looked as if they were extending their line, perhaps trying to push their flanks out beyond his. That made no sense to Desgo. They couldn't get anything out of that maneuver, not without twice as many men as they had. Still, flank attacks were sometimes possible. It would be well to extend his own line to match Draad's, even though it would make the line thinner than he liked. Yet that was certainly the least dangerous course of action. There was nothing Draad could do to break through his line that wouldn't give him plenty of warning.
The uproar to Blade's right faded as the last of the stolofs died and the last of the enemy warriors either died or fled back to their own lines. Barely a hundred of them made it.
Desgo's first attack had been not only defeated but destroyed. Half the danger to Draad had died with the stolofs. Perhaps the sensible thing to do now was to disengage, hoping that Desgo would take his army back through the Pass of Kitos, its tail between its legs. Further fighting could turn Trawn's defeat into a rout. It would also involve gambling Draad's whole army. That meant eight thousand warriors plus all the civilians who'd done their work so well today but who would certainly be doomed if the battle turned violently and suddenly against Draad.
No, the battle would go on. He would gamble. Trawn's army might not march away if he left it alone. Desgo had much more to avenge now than simply an arrow in his behind, and all his men doubtless had comrades to avenge. The enemy might stay, and then there would be many thousands of dead in Draad's villages and camps. In the end there would be another battle, perhaps under less favorable circumstances.
Even if Trawn's army went away now, it might return soon. Trawn's warriors had suffered, but they had not been beaten and smashed and driven. They had not taken a defeat that would keep them on the other side of the Mountains of Hoga for two generations. Blade wanted to pound them that badly. He sensed that every man in the army around him wanted the same thing. There were too many years of blood and hatred meeting on this field in this battle to let him call the battle off now.
Blade rose in his stirrups and signaled to the trumpeters. The two thousand warriors lined up in columns on each side of him saw the signal and a ripple of tension went up and down both columns. Then the trumpeters sounded, and the attack rolled forward. Beside Blade rode Neena, and around the two of them ten more warriors on captured meytans.
Those meytans were one more of Blade's tricks. They were slow to breed, slow to mature, hard to keep alive, and therefore rare and expensive. There were less than a thousand of them in all of Trawn, and most of those were used for ceremonial purposes rather than trained for war. Desgo must have put in a great deal of time and effort to get the forty or so he'd brought on this campaign with him.
So Trawn had no cavalry and no tradition of fighting on horseback. That should mean they also had no tradition of fighting against men on horseback. In theory, they should be completely unable to defend themselves against any sort of cavalry charge.
So completely, that a charge with only a dozen meytans could crack their line? That was a good question. It was also one that would be answered in about two more minutes.
The attacking columns started their advance at a walk. The leaders of the columns pushed through the civilians. They broke into a trot and pushed through the front line, a thin screen of warriors concealing the civilians. As they reached the open, the leaders sounded their war cries and broke into a dead run.
At the same moment Blade and his little band of cavalry dug in their spurs. The warriors who'd been running in front of the meytans dashed to either side. Straight in front of him Blade saw the enemy's line. He dug his spurs in still deeper and the meytan surged forward, its six legs rapidly working up to a pounding gallop.
Blade's mouth was dry with tension. It would not take long to reach the enemy line. It would take long enough for Trawn's archers to slaughter him and Neena and the men riding with them if they stood their ground and took careful aim.
The seconds went by, with war cries and the thunder of hooves deafening in Blade's cars. He bent low against the meytan's neck, at any moment expecting to hear the whistle of arrows and feel the red-hot stab of them in his flesh.
Then suddenly the line of warriors facing him shivered, writhed, and began to disintegrate. Blade sat up in his saddle with a roar of triumph and drew his sword as his meytan thundered down at the space where the enemy line had been.
He'd been right. Against even the smallest cavalry charge Trawn's warriors could think of nothing but fleeing. Fif
ty yards of Trawn's line was gone as completely as if Blade had dropped a salvo of shells on it. Some of the warriors ran to either side, joining their comrades. Others were not worrying about comrades, battle, honor, or anything else. They were running like rabbits, hurling down weapons as they ran, heading west toward the Pass of Kitos. Blade gave another triumphant roar as he saw that, and heard his cry echoed by Neena.
Then the two columns of running warriors smashed into the shaken men on either side of the gap torn by the cavalry. Suddenly those men found themselves holding down flanks that hadn't existed ten seconds before, holding them against a swarm of enemy warriors who screamed and shrieked, swinging axes and thrusting with spears like madmen.
The extreme right flank of Desgo's army was completely cut off by Blade's attack. The warriors there stood their ground for as much as a minute, until they realized their situation. Then they crumbled away, half of them fleeing without striking a blow, nearly all of them heading west out of the battle. The warriors of Draad saw their enemies in flight and turned to join their comrades on the right.
There stood most of Desgo's army, and for the moment it was stronger and not as badly shaken. Some men had fled, others had died surrounded by overwhelming numbers, but many had struggled back to join their comrades. Slowly Desgo's battle line folded back on itself, and the thin flank facing Blade's men grew into a thick mass of warriors fighting for their lives.
This was something Blade had hoped he wouldn't see. But he'd made plans to meet it and now he put them into action. More trumpets, and the rest of Draad's warriors swarmed forward, leaping up from behind the dead stolofs where they'd been taking cover. The archers came on firing as they ran, sending a deadly close-range fire into Trawn's ranks. The other warriors came on, brandishing swords and iron-tipped spears they'd snatched up from the dead on the ground. All of them stormed forward with yells and screams like a host of fiends bursting out of the earth. They crashed into the rest of Trawn's battle line with the impact of five thousand running men who will not be stopped by anything except death. With that impact they broke their enemy.
Blade saw it as he rode up and down on the left flank of the battle. He and the cavalry were not trying to ride into the fighting. He hadn't been able to teach anyone except Neena how to fight from the back of a meytan. The rest of the cavalrymen had already dismounted, their job as a battering ram done, and joined the fighting on foot.
Neena shouted first as she saw Trawn's army starting to crumble, and Blade echoed her. Then Neena gave a shout of a very different sort, and Blade spun around in the saddle to see Lord Desgo charging down on them. There was foam on the lips of his meytan, and Blade wasn't quite sure that there wasn't foam on Lord Desgo's own lips.
Lord Desgo saw his defeated and crumbling army, the head of his meytan, the mountains on one side and the forests on the other. He saw all of them through a red haze of fury. He saw only one thing in all the world clearly, and that was Prince Blade. The gods had sent him and Trawn defeat. This he knew. But surely in his last moments they would not also deny him vengeance against Blade and Neena?
He drew his sword, threw back his head, and let a terrible scream tear up from deep inside him. There was rage and hatred and fear and despair in that scream, a knowledge of his own death, and the desperate hope that he would be able to take the man who had destroyed him down into death along with him.
Neena's meytan bolted at Lord Desgo's scream. It angled sharply away to the right, toward the enemy's flank. Blade swore as he realized the runaway animal was going to take Neena right down behind Trawn's battle line. The archers would have an easy target, and even the spearmen would be-
Neena stood up in her stirrups. With the skill of a circus rider she swung from the stirrups up into the saddle, balancing there with inhuman ease and grace. Then she leaped high, tumbling head over heels, soaring toward the enemy line, soaring over it. She twisted in midair to avoid the jutting spears, then landed in an open space only a few feet from Draad's line. Before a single warrior of Trawn could lift a finger against her, she plunged into the safety of Draad's ranks. They folded themselves around their princess, and she vanished from Blade's sight.
A moment later he had problems of his own. Blade and Lord Desgo had both been staring at Neena's fantastic leap so hard that they completely forgot about each other. Their meytans nearly crashed head-on into each other. They pulled them aside with feet to spare and charged past each other.
As he pulled his meytan around, Blade saw Lord Desgo doing the same. For a moment he wondered what to do next. He had no weapon with enough reach to match Lord Desgo's two-handed sword. But he had a captured Trawn short sword, he knew how to throw it, and Lord Desgo wore no armor. Blade drew the sword and hefted it by the tip as he and Lord Desgo charged past each other again. Then they were coming back around, into a third charge, with Desgo heading straight toward the Mountains of Hoga. Blade's arm whipped up and out, and the short sword sank into Desgo's belly just below his rib cage.
He screamed, as much in surprise as in pain, and reeled in his saddle. Then he toppled to one side, sliding toward the ground. He did not fall all the way. One foot caught in a stirrup. As the panic-stricken meytan galloped away, Lord Desgo went with it, dragged along the ground and bounced into the air by every rough spot he went over. His face was already a pulped, bloody mask as Blade lost sight of him.
Lord Desgo's eyes must have closed for good long before his army finally broke and ran from the field. The gods had not spared him much, but they did spare him that.
The army of Draad never did find out what its opponents' trumpets sounded like in defeat. All of Trawn's trumpeters were either dead or too busy running for their lives to have any breath to spare for their music.
Chapter 28
It was the evening of the day of the battle. Blade, King Embor, Neena, and the High Kaireen were sitting in a dark and drafty but not far from the battlefield. A small fire burned in the center of the floor, producing nearly as much smoke as light.
It produced enough light to show an enormous emerald flashing on Neena's left hand. Her betrothal ring was finished at last, delivered by messenger only an hour after the battle.
The same firelight showed the ruby ring once more on Blade's hand. He was not as delighted as Neena, but it was certainly a load off his mind. His time in this dimension must be drawing toward a close. When he was snatched back to Home Dimension, he wanted to be wearing that ring. It was the first object ever to pass with him into Dimension X, and that made it too important to leave with anyone, for any reason.
King Embor was talking.
«-not as happy as I might be. We have the bodies of ten thousand of Trawn's warriors, with all their weapons and gear. We have the camp, with everything and everyone in it. We have slain most of Trawn's trained stolofs, and also Lord Desgo himself. Yet is this enough? Half of the enemy's warriors have escaped us.»
Neena shook her head. «They have escaped us here, on the battlefield, today. That does not mean they will find a safe way home. The Pass of Kitos is held against them, and the mountain people will also do their part. I doubt if more than half the survivors will get through the pass. Half of those will die in the forests, of hunger and thirst, snakes and falls, drowning and the arrows of the mountain people who will still be following them. Those who return to Trawn will be starved, sick, and wearing nothing but their breech clouts, if that much. I think we have taught Draad a lesson that they will not forget in our time or in our children's, at least.»
The High Kaireen nodded. «I agree with the princess. Also, we have another weapon against them, one my people have discovered while searching the camp.» He held out a thick wad of parchment scrolls tied up with deerskin thongs.
«Lord Desgo apparently had hopes of making himself a ruler of Draad after he smashed our camp. Then he would use our wealth to win friends among the nobles of Trawn, and in the end lead them against Furzun and sit upon the throne of Trawn himself.»
&nb
sp; «I'm not surprised,» said Blade. «His ambitions stuck out all over him.»
«He certainly was ambitious,» said the High Kaireen. His smile broadened. «He also was not very wise. He wrote many letters to those he hoped would some day be his firm allies, and received many replies. Here they are.» He dropped the scrolls on the floor.
«I too would say that he was not wise,» said Embor. «But what does this mean for us?»
Blade grinned. «It means a great deal. Have you thought what may happen in Trawn if we get these letters into King Furzun's hands?»
Neena gave a whoop of delight. «He will be too busy tracking down all of Desgo's friends and taking off their heads to think about anything else. There will be complete chaos in Trawn for at least a year, and much bitterness after that.»
«Assuming that one of those nobles doesn't decide to try getting the king first,» added Blade. «Then there will be civil war in Trawn, and chaos for ten years instead of one.»
King Embor nodded. «All this is very good, but how are we to get the letters into Furzun's hands?»
«I think we should-«began the High Kaireen, but Neena held up a hand to stop him.
«If you two wish to sit up all night planning how to confound Trawn even further, well and good. Blade and I will not be needed. I think we can leave, can we not, father?»
Embor sighed and smiled wearily. «You can, daughter. But first I have something for your husband.» He reached into a bag beside him and drew out a small sack of fine white deerskin with a copper and gold fastening. He handed it to Blade.
«Open it, my son»
