He went back to the center and told Thaniel to halt, facing the enemy. After several minutes of deliberate study of the dark line opposite, he spoke to Thaniel again and he and the horse turned slowly and went back through the lines to his position just to Donnick's rear.
Across the way, atop the rise, the immense lasher commander appeared to take no notice of Aram’s actions as he continued to make adjustments to his lines of grim, gray troops. Sitting astride Thaniel in back of his own lines, Aram watched with some puzzlement as the enemy's configuration began to take shape.
There was a triple line of gray men all across the enemy's front, with another group of the lean, oddly colorless men, very likely archers, gathered behind the middle and evidently preparing to come through and expend their weapons in the direction of the foe. But it was the placement of the lashers that gave Aram pause. There were something above three thousand of the huge beasts, and all of them were deployed to his right, on the enemy's left. Other than a dozen or so scattered along the right wing of the opposing army as battalion commanders, they were all placed as if they were expected to advance and fight solely against Aram's right.
As time passed and it became clear that the lasher component of the opposing army was indeed fully deployed there, with no signal that they would move left, Aram and Thaniel began to ease that way as well, where they would no doubt be needed. Edwar and Lamont, then, would face only the lesser breed of foes, and though they were many, Edwar had ample reserves that he could inject into the line where needed. Also, the wolves were there and Durlrang and Leorg could be trusted to come to the aid of the men of the east.
The morning lengthened. The enemy commander continued to task himself with the disposition of his soldiers.
Then, finally, he appeared satisfied and went back through his lines. The enemy was apparently ready but strangely, made no move to advance. The sun climbed higher, soaring toward midday in a sky free of clouds except for a line of high, jumbled masses that began piling up on a line over to the northwest.
Silence reigned.
But for the nervous shuffling among the ranks of the men watching the larger army across the way, and the sighing of an intermittent breeze coming down out of the northwest, the world was still.
Thaniel made an odd sound, low in his throat, almost a growl. The big horse was as uneasy as Aram with the disposition of the enemy lines but was also impatient for action. Up and down the allied lines, men fidgeted and cursed. Aram glanced once more into the high, rough ground to the east of the road and satisfied himself yet again of the improbability of the enemy gaining any advantage upon him there. Then he turned and looked westward at the rocky ridge. The wolves were there, he knew, Durlrang, Leorg, and the wolves from the valley to the east. Shingka was absent, suckling her young, having just given birth. Aram had the unsettling feeling that he would miss her fierce presence in the coming hours.
Padrik's larger band was also there, but like Durlrang, Leorg, and the others, they were hidden. Aram could see no sign of any wolf among the rocky heights of the ridge. He nodded to himself, pleased. Knowing Durlrang and Leorg, there would be a nasty surprise in store for any of Manon's troops that attempted mischief to the west.
The sun continued to climb. Still Manon's army stood still, massed in a long dark line atop the grassy rise. Aram found the enemy's inactivity puzzling. Did the lasher commander expect Aram's army to advance? If so, that enormous beast was in for a disappointment. Aram had no intention of surrendering his defensive advantage. Uneasy, however, about the adverse effect that the ominous silence and the sight of the darkly sinister line opposite might have upon his men; Aram decided to break the stillness.
Though he had moved to the right so that Thaniel stood squarely behind the point where Duridia and the men of Derosa came together, Aram now cantered the great horse to the left and found Edwar about two hundred yards away.
“Sound the hold,” he said in a loud clear voice, and then spun back to the right in order to give Donnick and Boman the same instruction.
Moments later, trumpets sounded along the lines of Edwar's men, followed almost on the instant by more trumpets over to the right, sending the clarion call into the silence of the late morning. The sound broke the unsettling stillness and, Aram hoped, also helped disrupt the spell cast by the sight of the fearsome, unmoving line of enemy troops gathered upon the opposite slope.
After the bugle calls died away across the prairie and echoed their last among the hills, the enormous lasher commander came out in front of his troops once more and walked slowly back and forth along the lines, staring across at Aram and his men. After making several of these forays back and forth, he turned his attention to his lines and adjusted them further, especially on his right, where he pushed the lines westward until it appeared that they would overlap the lines of Lamont by a good distance, extending at least a hundred yards beyond the rocky ridge that defined Aram's left. Then the huge commander barked at the lashers that were bunched behind his own left and spread them out a bit as well, although they did not move to his right, but instead remained fully deployed behind his left wing.
Then the monstrous lasher turned and stood still, gazing across at Aram's lines. He seemed to look squarely at Aram for a while, and then turned his attention to his right, toward the men of Lamont, and studied them and the ground between them and his own troops for some time.
He means to try to flank me there, Aram thought, he's got troops enough. But if that were true, why did he keep his lashers, many of whom were obviously harbigurs, on his left? The opposing commander's behavior puzzled Aram, but also worried him. It was clear that the lasher had a plan, and was studying the best way to implement it. Although Aram had studied this ground well and had made his men familiar with it also, he began to be acutely aware of his lack of experience in deploying large forces. In the back of his mind, a small voice also continued to fret over the greenness of his men.
But maybe, after all, that was the enemy commander's plan, to exploit the nervous sensibilities of inexperienced troops. As untested as was Aram in the business of warfare when practiced on a scale such as this, he nonetheless understood that bluff and anxiety were also tools of battle, and the commander opposite undoubtedly was a journeyman in the employment of both.
Then, abruptly, the lasher turned and went back through his lines.
An instant later, a horn sounded.
Instantly, a large dark cloud of arrows rose up and began tracing a terrible arc across the intervening space toward Aram's troops.
“Sound cover!” He yelled, and he reached back for the sword. Some of the men responded to the call by moving a step backward or forward to spread the line as they’d been taught but most simply crouched down where they were. Shields went up all along the line. Silently, furiously, Aram cursed himself for a fool. He'd been caught by surprise. Instead of moving his archers forward the lasher had ordered them to launch their missiles from where they stood.
Standing high in the stirrups as the arrows crossed the top of the arc and began to descend toward his lines, Aram desperately washed the blade in sunlight, gathering what power he could in the moment that remained. Just before the arrows fell upon his men, he swung it in a broad arc from right to left. Fire sizzled out and destroyed many of the terrible missiles, but the unearthly blast was spent quickly and only a portion were deflected or reduced to dust. Up and down the lines, but especially to the left among Lamont, men screamed in pain as the deadly darts found a mark here and there.
Aram kept the sword aloft, renewing its fire in case of another volley.
“Sound hold,” he yelled again, but even as the words came out, a few men broke and ran for the rear. Most had been injured in some way, though several had not.
Thaniel immediately moved to intercept the fleeing men. Aram stopped him.
“Stay, Thaniel; there are only a few. We're needed here. Move along the line.”
Hoping that the men would see the fire sizzli
ng and erupting from the end of the blade and take strength from its power, he went back and forth along the whole middle of the line. Its song arose, resounding through the clear air. Hopefully, having just been blooded by the enemy, the men would nonetheless take solace in the fact that there was strange power on their side of the field.
“Hold, men, hold,” he exhorted as Thaniel pounded to the left and then galloped back to the right behind them.
Another horn sounded from across the way.
“Move to the center, Thaniel.” Aram ordered, and he held the sword high, bathing it in sunlight as he prepared for another volley of deadly missiles. The sword was humming madly and glowing like a blade of fire, as if Aram held a shining sliver of the fiery orb of the sun itself in his gauntlet. Fewer of the enemy's arrows would make it through this time.
But no arrows came.
Instead, the grim gray army began to move, advancing down the slope toward the stream. Behind, as the last of the front ranks spilled over the rise, the archers appeared to have abandoned their bows for pikes, and now formed a kind of reserve grouped mostly behind the enemy's right, facing Edwar. Aram, aware that the sword's sound had reached unbearable proportions for the men nearest him, knew that he must release its captive energy. For a moment, he thought about lowering the blade and aiming its fire at the advancing enemy, but was afraid that at that distance some of the erratic, lightning-like fire might go astray and inadvertently harm some of his own troops. Instead, reluctantly, he swept it across the sky in a mighty arc, unleashing its captive fire in a fearsome display and then sheathed it.
The enemy soldiers made no sound, nor were there any growls or shouted commands from their lasher overlords. The lean hunched forms of the gray men with their pikes held at the vertical tramped down through the high grass in a long dark mass, like the advance of a cloud shadow. Their boots made a kind of muffled rumble that grew as they advanced over the moist earth of the plains, spongy with the lush new growth of spring and the recent rain.
Just as the front ranks reached the bottom of the sloping ground where the prairie leveled out along the banks of the brook, about fifty yards from the edge of the water, the enemy horn sounded.
The grim gray host came to a halt.
Once more, silence fell over the prairie. And yet again, the lasher commander came out in front and studied his foe, but this time, he showed little interest in Lamont, gazing longer to his left, toward Duridia.
Up and down Aram's lines, after the enemy had once again halted his advance, men began removing their dead and wounded comrades toward the rear. Aram decided to take advantage of the lull.
He rode over to Edwar first. “Advance to the bank of the stream, Captain.”
Then he spun and went back to the middle to speak with Findaen and Donnick and then further on to Boman, giving each of them the same instruction. Orders were shouted, passed from commander to commander. Haltingly, the men obeyed, moving to the edge of the level ground where it broke over toward the reeds and sand that verged the rippling water. Because of the meandering nature of the stream, the line had bulges in it here and there.
Aram and Thaniel made another pass behind the men.
“Dress the line!” He shouted. “Form up to receive the enemy!”
The bellowed commands echoed away toward the farthest ends of the lines. Slowly, the line straightened out and took on once again the look of order and solidity. Undoubtedly fearful of the nature of the next hour's work, and distressed by the death and injury that had already occurred in their ranks, the men nonetheless held their place. It appeared as if, as Thaniel had declared, that they might indeed stand and fight. Here and there, in fact, fists were raised and shook in the direction of the enemy by men who had just seen friends fall under the hail of arrows. Good, thought Aram. He knew from experience that anger and fury were as much aid in a fight as the keenly sharpened edge of a blade. There were men all along his lines now that wanted revenge.
The enemy army held itself in place as well. For the moment, the advance was halted.
Standing a few yards in front of his silent troops, the lasher commander turned and gazed toward the east, at the stone bridge that arched over the stream. Watching him, Aram suddenly realized that the lasher's actions were very likely meaningless as far as any tactical intent was concerned. More than anything else, the huge commander was trying to sow the seeds of uncertainty in the mind of his foe.
Understanding crystallized in Aram's mind.
He's playing with us.
The beast was easily the biggest lasher Aram had ever seen. There was a large sword slung over one shoulder, but that weapon was for the moment ignored. The lasher held only a multi-thronged whip in his clawed right hand. It was a wicked-looking thing, with metal spikes attached near the end of each throng.
After staring at the bridge for a while, the lasher again turned to the front and let his gaze rove slowly up and down the lines of his enemy. Believing now that the monster's actions were meant more than anything to inspire fear and uncertainty, Aram had a sudden and powerful urge to go out and engage him in combat and attempt to kill him between the lines.
He resisted the urge.
Doing so, even if he were successful, wouldn't in and of itself decide the outcome of the struggle to come, and might defeat every purpose he had in bringing his men onto a field of battle. Joktan was right, he couldn't win the war alone, and it was time for every willing free man to join in the fight.
The lasher rounded on his heel and went back through his lines. Aram reached up and put his hand on the hilt of the sword. Because part of the opposing army was still deployed on the higher ground behind the level prairie verging the stream, Aram could clearly see them all. He peered forward, watching for the telltale signs of arrows being nocked and bows being bent back in preparation for release, but the archers continued to act as a reserve, holding their pikes at the vertical behind the enemy ranks to Aram's left.
The horn sounded.
And the army across the way split in two.
Aram watched in confusion as a gap appeared in the dark ranks beyond the stream. Shuffling forward, but at an angle, the entire right wing of the enemy army separated itself from the portion on its left that was backed up by the contingent of lashers.
For a long moment, Aram thought that the enemy commander was stretching his ranks of gray men to further envelope Edwar and Lamont on the left and that he would then bring the lashers massed in the rear into the gap at the enemy center. He does mean to flank me, he thought. But then, when the gap in the enemy line had reached a distance of twenty yards or so, the horn sounded again and the gray men on Aram's left turned and faced forward once more. Again there was the sound of the horn and the tramping gray host came to a halt.
The entire mass of the enemy was now on level ground, thirty-five or forty yards away. Once they’d halted and the echoes of the horn died away, there was again no sound other than the light breeze, stiffening a bit now as the piled masses of clouds to the northwest mounded up even higher and began to move down across the plains. The day was too bright to allow for the sight of any distant flashes of lightning but muted thunder rolled toward the two armies across a vast expanse of grassland, as if bringing them the sounds of a battle that had already begun and was being fought on another field far away.
The lasher commander made no attempt to fill the gap in the center of his lines, now fully twenty yards wide. The detachment of lashers, including the few hundred harbigurs, whose location was indicated by the enormous broad blades of their halberds, remained stolidly behind the lines to the right, on the enemy's left. Aram noticed, however, that the harbigurs were positioned nearer the center than the rest of the contingent of beasts.
The eerie silence lengthened out while the enemy stood immobile. They were close enough now that Aram could see the thin, twisted features of the gray men and the dark slits of their eyes peering out around the nose-guards of their leather helmets. If there was a re
cognizably human expression on any one of those dull, colorless faces, Aram could not make it out.
The sun was now almost straight overhead. Into the midday stillness, thunder inserted its distant muted rumble.
“Sound hold,” Aram shouted, and trumpets echoed away down the long lines of men.
As the sound of the trumpets died away, the enemy horn blared again.
The dark lines began to advance, and this time they had the look of purpose.
Still puzzling over the gap the enemy commander had created in the center of his line, Aram spoke to Thaniel and they began to ease toward the right. If the lashers meant to fight there, then that was where he and the horse would be needed. Everywhere along the front, the enemy was coming on, solid and unwavering, with hard determination. The muffled drumming of enemy boots seemed to mesh with the resonance of the far-off thunder.
The enemy reached the edge of the stream and began to spill down over the bank and tramp across the sand toward the winding band of shallow water.
Aram glanced to his left to see how Lamont was behaving in the face of the foe, now about to make contact.
What he beheld made his heart jump in his chest.
Instinctively responding to the angled movement of the enemy to their front, the lines of Lamont had shuffled left, bunching up against the stream that ran near the rocky ridge. The reserves in the rear had then responded to the leftward movement of their fellows and had also repositioned themselves to the west. They had not moved far, but it was far enough that a gap had appeared in the center of Aram's lines where Lamont had lost contact with Derosa. And since the enemy continued a slight but oblique movement to the west as they advanced, the soldiers of Lamont instinctively mirrored that movement.
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 14
