by Dragon Lance
“We’re not cowards, Zan,” said a weary captain. “Six hundred nomads and the villagers! The odds are too great against us.”
“And when were they not? When we began our ride, the whole world was against us! How has anything changed?”
“But Karada —”
He laughed. “Are you scared of a scarred old woman? I’m not! She bleeds and dies like anyone. Ungrah has sworn to take her head home to his mountain lair. Anyone here want to wager against the ogre chief?”
No one spoke. Zannian laughed again.
“What did you think your lives would be like?” he went on, walking round the fire. When he found a raider nodding with drink or sleep, he kicked the man awake. “Did you think you would grow old riding the plains, fighting and taking the land’s bounty in your hands? Idiots! Any of us, any day, could stop a lucky spear thrust. So what if we die tomorrow? What does it matter, so long as you’ve lived as a true warrior?”
The chief dragged a burning limb out of the fire and held it up. “Better to see death coming than let it sneak up on you,” he declared.
Their leader’s words began to sink in. The raiders lost their slouch and regained some of their confidence.
Hoten asked quietly, “Have you any regrets about the way things have gone, Zan?”
Zannian’s wild grin fled. He tossed the flaming brand back on the fire. “Only one – the black-haired girl. I would’ve liked to have had her, at least a while.” He shrugged broadly, then said, with another grin, “Will you let the ogres outshine us? Listen to them rant and roar! Can’t the Raiders of Almurk do better than that?”
Two of the captains stood, a little unsteady from minor wounds and raw brew. Arms linked around each other’s shoulders, they began to sing. Their voices were ragged as they wove their way through “The Endless
Plain,” but Zannian circled around the fire and joined them. One by one, raiders still sober enough stood and joined in. In the rest of the camp, sleeping men awoke to the sound and crawled out of their bedrolls to lend their voices. Soon all the remaining raiders were bellowing out the old song – all but one.
Hoten had no voice left. He stared into the fire and nourished his nerve with dreams of his own death. It could not come too soon.
*
From the walls of Yala-tene, restless Amero heard loud singing rising from the raiders’ camp. It drowned out the inhuman rumble of the ogres and echoed weirdly off the cliffs behind the village.
Alone on a hillock outside her camp, Karada heard it too. She’d gone out alone to prepare herself for battle. Stripped to the skin, she washed in cold spring water. While her hair was still damp, she applied spirit marks to her face, stomach, thighs, and feet. Without realizing it, she hummed along with the song the raiders were singing. The strangeness of it struck her as she finished applying the last of the marks to her feet. “The Endless Plain” was a song her mother, Kinar, used to sing to her children to cheer them on their wanderings. Strange she should hear it now, after so long.
Her damp skin dimpled with gooseflesh. Donning her buckskins, Karada sat down to await the rising sun.
Chapter 12
Beramun woke slowly. The small tent, normally stifling in the summer, was pleasantly cool. She turned her head and saw the top flap waving in a stiff breeze. Clouds were rushing past in the patch of sky she could see.
She got up, disentangling herself from Mara. The girl had crept in silently late last night, lain down beside Beramun, and gone to sleep. She remained huddled against Beramun’s back all night and did not wake even when Beramun pushed her aside.
Her left shoulder twinged when she stood, and Beramun drew in breath sharply at the sudden discomfort. She must have strained her muscles during the hard ride here, or perhaps she’d slept awkwardly on her arm. She’d hardly been able to move at all, so close to her had Mara slept. With a glare at Mara, Beramun worked her arm in slow circles and walked outside.
The whole camp was stirring. Dawn was breaking, and the nomads were on their feet, grooming horses and gathering their weapons.
As she looked around for Karada, Beramun noticed the nomads weren’t preparing their bows and arrows as they usually did. A chilly, damp gust of wind swirled past her, and she realized why. A storm was coming. Rain made bowstaves soft, strings stretch, and warped arrows, rendering the weapons useless. Karada’s band would have to fight the old way, with spear and sword.
A stronger gust of wind rattled tents and snuffed cooking fires. The peaks south of the waterfall were partially obscured by low, white clouds. In their wake came heavier plumes of gray, gravid with rain. The cold wind made Beramun’s aching shoulder throb. She made a disgusted face. The old folks always complained of pains when the weather changed.
North of the nomads’ camp, the Silvanesti had finished their preparations for battle. Armed and ready, they stood in a neat line behind their lord. The elves had made a banner from a scrap of white doeskin. Tacked to the skin was the starburst crest from Balif’s helmet. Though fighting under Karada’s command, they would go into battle under the standard of their sovereign, Silvanos, Speaker of the Stars.
Beramun saw the elves arrayed and was struck by their calm manner. Behind her the nomads fairly boiled with activity, and she was sure the raider camp was in a similar state. These elves were curious folk.
Pakito’s voice sounded, booming orders. Where the amiable giant was, Karada was sure to be near, so Beramun headed in that direction.
Amero arrived with a small group of villagers to fight beside his sister. Though he looked bone-weary, he walked confidently at the head of his little troop. With him were Lyopi, Hekani, and forty-eight villagers still willing and able to lend their lives to the final battle. They were raggedly dressed and armed with a motley collection of weapons, but one glance at their determined faces told the nomads the villagers were not to be discounted.
Amero led them to the high ground west of Karada’s camp, a stony knoll formed by years of rain washing gravel down the valley. Once the villagers were in place, the Silvanesti marched out, taking up a position on the north side of the same hill. The two groups looked at each other across open ground, awkward and curious at the same time. Still, it was comforting to have the ordered ranks of Silvanesti standing with and not against them.
“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 it 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.”
