The gap in Aram's center was growing larger by the minute. Alarmed at the dissolution of his front, he looked around and found Boman, a few paces away to his right.
“Prepare to meet the enemy!” He shouted and then he looked down at Thaniel's head.
“To the left, Thaniel, quickly – we have to bring Lamont's right flank back into contact with Donnick.”
The horse obeyed with a mighty lunge and began to rapidly close the distance to the disastrous event occurring at the center of Aram's army. As Thaniel thundered toward the widening gap, an odd sound abruptly filled the midday air, as of thousands of feet pounding along the ground. The sound came from beyond his lines, from across the stream in the direction of the enemy. He looked to his right, toward the advancing host.
The lashers had abandoned their position behind the enemy's left.
Led by the harbigurs, they had swung around and were spilling through the gap, charging for the undefended opening in Aram's lines. Aram looked ahead, searching for Edwar, but Edwar was too far away, having moved to the left with his men and was even now engrossed in dealing with the broad mass of gray soldiers that was closing on his front.
There was no time. The lashers were across the stream, and through the water; their leading elements just steps away from the bank on the near side. If they succeeded in piercing Aram's army, there would be no hope; the monsters would roll up his lines in both directions or worse swing around and attack the allies from the rear. And now Aram saw the enemy commander's plan clearly. When the lashers were through the gap and running amok behind Aram's lines, he would close the gap in his own lines and then he would have Aram and his men caught in a vise.
Aram drew the sword. “Through that gap, Thaniel. Straight into them!”
As the great horse swung around and drove for the opening through which dozens of lashers were even now surging, the harsh reverberations of battle exploded to Aram's left. Lamont had made contact. He should be back there, watching the course of things, watching for where his aid and instruction was needed most but instead, in a matter of moments, Aram had gone from being the commander of an army of men to a desperate lone warrior, trying to prevent the utter defeat and destruction of that same army.
He twirled the sword in the air as Thaniel closed the distance. At the end as the horse crashed into the leading elements, Aram leaned to the side and directed a bolt of fire into the charging mass of beasts. Several went down, howling in pain. But there were others, many others, and they seemed to have expected the action that Aram and Thaniel had just taken.
Just behind the leading ranks of lashers, there was a large group of harbigurs. As the lashers near the bank went down in a sheet of flame, the harbigurs moved aside, as if to allow the horse to pass. As they did so, they dropped their large blades and swung with their might at Thaniel's armored lower legs, some of them shoving the broad blades of sharpened metal into the horse's path even as they twisted away.
Thaniel went down.
16.
Edwar felt a chill settle deep in his bones as he watched the strangely quiet, unmoving host atop the grassy knoll opposite his lines. It was the first time that he and his countrymen had ever looked into the faces of those that meant to do them harm – that meant to inflict death. Marching and drilling on the peaceful fields of Lamont, and practicing swordplay and pike-work on straw-filled dummies had done little to prepare them for this. The vicious intent emanating from the dark, silent, sinister lines beyond the stream was almost palpable.
Then the enemy’s arrows ascended into the morning.
“Take cover, men!” He shouted – even as the same call came from Lord Aram – and the trumpets sounded. Squatting among his men, he held his shield above him and tried to make himself as small as possible. There came a sharp sizzling sound from his right and the flash of light brighter than the sun. He peered out from under the lip of his shield.
Lord Aram's sword was spewing fire into the heavens.
And it destroyed many arrows.
But the strange lord's even stranger magic didn't get them all.
There were sickening thuds that sounded all around as the deadly missiles drove themselves into the soft earth while too many found things perhaps a bit less yielding but more susceptible to injury. Screams of pain arose from left and right as men felt the terrible piercing of steel in flesh. A few made odd, soft grunting sounds and then went silent as they tumbled from their place in line.
Many of the injured immediately made for the rear. A few others went with them – those who could not withstand fear such as that which reared up like a shadow from the deep places of earth, making its dark and terrible self known in the broad light of day and seeming to cast a pall over the sun.
But from other men there came a different response.
When the hail of arrows ceased and soldiers stood to find that some of their friends and companions had suffered grievous harm – and more than a few lay dead or dying – there was an eruption of fury. One soldier, turning from trying to help a friend that was now beyond all aid stood and drew his sword and yelled at the source of his companion's death across the prairie.
“Come on, you bastards, come and fight!” The soldier looked around; his eyes bright and hard, and found Edwar. “What are we standing here for, Captain? – let's go and see if they have a taste for steel.”
Edwar strode over and placed a hand on the man's shoulder, shaking his head firmly. “They'll come soon enough, and then we'll make them pay. Hold for now, Blennem, hold for now.” He raised his voice to the others around him, on many of whose faces he saw traces of the same fury that had taken Blennem. “Hold. They'll come, and then we'll avenge our own.”
Edwar was surprised at the reaction of his troops, but on closer inspection of his own feelings, found that the fear from just moments earlier had been displaced by a hot desire to do harm to those that had killed and injured his companions.
Turning and looking toward the rear, he found his surgeons approaching. “Get the wounded out of here,” he ordered, uttering in the throes of his hard anger that which he knew to be a completely unnecessary command.
There was another long pause in the action while the enemy army maneuvered and thunder rumbled far away beneath the thickly piled storm clouds away to the northwest. Those too injured to remain at the front were moved to the surgeons' wagons in the rear, although many that should have gone refused to leave.
“They killed Gadwar, Captain,” one young soldier protested, shaking the hands of the surgeon loose even as blood traced a dark path down the seam of his breastplate where it was attached to his leather jerkin underneath his arm, “and I'm not leaving without avenging him.”
Edwar frowned at the growing stain. “Can you continue?”
The young man's face was hard and his eyes dark with anger as he lifted his pike. “A scratch, sir, nothing more. I’m not leaving the line.”
Edwar nodded and waved the surgeon away and moved his attention back to the mass of dark soldiers across the way.
The enemy began to move again, but after reaching the level ground just beyond the stream, they once again halted and stood motionless. The gigantic beastly commander made another long, purposeful study of his enemies' lines, moving his gaze from Edwar to Findaen and finally on to Boman. Then the great lasher went back through his own lines once more.
After that there was more maneuvering and Edwar made ready to prepare his men for another onslaught of arrows. But the second volley never came. Instead, when the horn sounded again, the enemy split his forces. Edwar stared in puzzlement at this bizarre and unexpected tactic, but after a moment thought that he understood the enemy's reasoning. The lasher commander undoubtedly knew that the army that faced him was composed of more than one people because of the difference in uniforms. Leaving his left wing in place, he shuffled his right wing even further to the right, as if he intended to attack the separate entities in the opposing army individually, or – and this worried E
dwar – maybe he intended to envelope the Lamontans in a flanking attack, sweeping around and up and over the rocky ridge to Edwar's left.
Instinctively, Edwar moved to the left along his lines. Not noticing that his men were also moving leftward in response to the enemy's movement, he glanced nervously at the rocky ridge on the extreme left of his lines. There were wolves up there, he knew; Aram had informed him so, but would they be enough to prevent a full-on flanking maneuver?
He found himself questioning his disposition of commanders. Earlier, assuming that the worst of the fighting would occur at or near the center of the field, he’d positioned his most competent captains, Kaspar, Mornay, and Fordwar in his own center, placing Muray on the right, next to the Derosans. On his left, he’d put Scullar, whom Edwar held to be a bit less capable than the others. Behind his lines, in reserve, but somewhat left of his center and therefore closer to Scullar’s regiment, he placed Neilay.
Now, with the enemy appearing to exhibit a desire to encompass his left, Edwar began to fear that he’d placed his most vulnerable components at the exact spot where things might get hottest. Consequently, his worry pulled him to the left.
Then came another blaring of the horn and the dark line across the way drew to a halt.
There was another pause in the action. As he stared across and pondered his enemy's next move, Edwar failed to notice that his lines had gotten bunched, even jumbled, and that Scullar’s front had thickened to four ranks in places. Nor did he look over toward the center of the field. Had he done so, he would have seen that his right flank had lost all contact with Donnick's left. His attention was focused entirely and uneasily upon the enemy.
When the alien horn sounded once more moments later, the enemy troops abandoned their sharp movement to the left, lowered their pikes and though there was still an obliquely leftward slant to their assault, came purposefully at Edwar and the men of Lamont.
“Here they come, boys!” He yelled. “Lower pikes! Spikes – make ready!”
Only about every third man had possession of one of those strange, short-handled spears. Edwar, at first sight, had been more than a little skeptical about the value of the weapon. But on demonstration, as he watched it thud into the earth with great force several yards away, he'd seen its possibilities immediately. While requiring very little skill on behalf of its employer, the weapon could inflict severe damage on anything in its path.
When the front ranks of the approaching dark-gray line had splashed through the shallow water and reached the sand below the bank, he yelled, “Spikes!”
Flashes of steel issued forth into the air, looped in short, deadly arcs, and made contact with the gray host.
And then the enemy was not so silent.
Hoarse grunts and piercing screams erupted from alien throats as the heavy spikes wrought damage and even death. Blood, not gray or green or some other color that would match the aspect of those from whom it was spilled, but red and bright, erupted from hideous wounds and darkened the sand and the clear waters of the stream. Many went down, some clutching at their wounds, screaming in agony. A few clutched at nothing and made no sound at all as they fell, never to rise again.
But the rest of that grim gray line came on and it was wide and deep and bristling with sharpened steel.
They were close enough now that the men of Lamont could see the lean visages of their enemy and the eyes in those gray expressionless faces that peered around the nose guards of leather helmets were cold, black slits of malevolent intent.
“Pikes at the ready!” Yelled Edwar.
Thunder rumbled far away while the earth near at hand seemed to tremble beneath the weight of the approaching host.
The grey mass surged across the sand on the near side of the rippling brook and reached the bank, pikes at the ready to rend human flesh.
The enemy crashed into his lines.
Edwar was not prepared for the eruption of raw sound that accompanied contact with the enemy. Men yelled instinctively while leaning with their might, trying to force the business end of their pikes into the enemy in front of them. They yelled in fury when the enemy steel bit into them, and screamed in agony when the weapons of the enemy found something vital. The hideous volume of noise increased as the opposing lines strained and pushed against one another like the sinuous bodies of two great beasts.
In places, the gray men gained the top of the bank and threatened to break through. Edwar snatched away elements of Neilay’s troops and sprinted left and then right as needed in order to direct reserves into every breach. But the men of Lamont, their fear displaced by a sudden raging hunger to inflict damage upon those that were attempting to do the same to them, had their way as well. Here and there, as the furious mayhem expanded, the line of the enemy would yield a bit and Edwar would rush to those places of opportunity in order to yell encouragement or even to lift a fallen pike and aid his men in pushing back the enemy. The noise increased to the point where the human ear could no longer process it and seemed to fade into the background.
On the left, the gray men that had threatened to overlap his lines now moved back behind their companions to lend weight to the ongoing attack. Maybe it was because the enemy was forced to attack up the short bank of the stream but Edwar's men, by and large, held their own, even pushed the enemy back into the stream bed here and there.
The weight of the reserve force of the enemy began to make itself felt, however, and though enemy dead littered the grassy banks and the sand of the stream edge, the men of Lamont were taking casualties, too.
And then the disparity in numbers began to make itself felt; the straining masses of gray men gradually reached the top of the bank all along the line and were fighting on the level. Slowly, but inevitably, the men of Lamont were pushed back. The main thrust of the enemy reserve had been affected near the center of Edwar's lines. Over the course of the next half-hour, as pressure built there, the Lamontan line began to develop a concave aspect. Even as Edwar directed his remaining reserves into the center of this curve, there was a real danger that his line would break at that point and then all would be lost. If that happened, his men would be attacked from the flanks and the rear and no army of veterans – let alone green troops – could withstand such pressure.
Edwar, sweating and stumbling, rushed here and there, exhorting the men to hold, grabbing up a fallen pike or abandoned sword and thrusting it at any enemy that threatened to break through his front.
Time seemed to falter and then stop completely.
The world and everything in it was reduced to howls of fury and screams of pain.
Then abruptly, another sound entered the bedlam of the fray. This noise did not rise above the general clamor of the battle but rather made itself known at the lower end of the spectrum of sound. In the midst of the struggle, wielding his sword or an abandoned pike as the situation required, Edwar heard this ominous rumor and it chilled his spirit.
What strange devilry had been set loose upon them now?
But then the enemy in the center of the bulge began to give way. And fresh screams arose, not in the vicinity of Edwar's men, but from the enemy's rear.
He understood and hope surged.
The wolves had entered the battle.
Apparently convinced that the danger of envelopment had passed, the wolf chieftain, Durlrang had brought his four-footed troops down off the rocky ridge and sent them into the tumult. Vicious teeth slashed at the enemy's heels, tearing through lean gray leg muscle and ripping out the throats of any that fell. On the western side of the field, Manon's soldiers abruptly found themselves trapped between two determined foes.
Slowly, the concave formation of Edwar's troops corrected itself, and became once again a solid line of straining men. Then they were at the banks of the stream and still the enemy gave way. The snarling, ripping attack of the wolves held a peculiarly horrible aspect, but to Edwar it was as welcome a sound as he had ever heard.
The gray men in the reserve were evide
ntly resisting this new assault. Testament to this fact arose from the yelps of pain that clearly came from furred throats. Nonetheless, they continued to give way. Some of Edwar's troops descended the banks of the stream and were fighting among the shallow currents of the now dirty red-brown water of the stream. In some places, the lines of the enemy grew so thin that Lamontans and wolves actually made contact and fought together.
And then the enemy attack faltered all along the line. Singly and in clumps, the gray men began giving way.
They did not run, but despite the threats and blows delivered by their commanders, began a slow, deliberate retreat across the stream and toward the higher ground beyond, fighting as they went. Eventually, however, due to the continued viciousness of the wolves' assault and the unrelenting pressure from Lamont, the retreat became a ragged affair.
Finding himself in the water of the stream, Edwar became abruptly aware that there was a furious melee occurring to his right. An enormous mass of lashers had pushed into the center between him and Derosa and some of the men of his right wing – Muray’s men – were now caught in a swirling maelstrom of death and confusion. If he advanced further, the army would come apart. He looked around for a trumpeter. Failing that, he began to yell with his might.
“Hold! Re-form! Reform the line at the top of the bank!”
Gradually, the command began to make its way along the line, but some men were so full of the fury of battle that they ignored it and kept stabbing at their retreating enemies. The wolves, being immune from the command of any man but Aram, continued to tear through and among the retreating gray host. Climbing the bank, Edwar stumbled upon a trumpeter who had slung his instrument over his shoulder in favor of making use of his sword. Edwar grabbed him by the arm.
“Sound the re-form!”
As the clarion call of the man's trumpet resounded above the din, other trumpets took up the refrain and the men of Lamont began to break off and return to the level ground above the bank. The lush springtime grass was red and slick and the bodies of free men and gray men lay intermingled everywhere. It was then that Edwar discovered the gap between his lines and those of Derosa. It was several yards wide now, and filled with grunting, howling lashers. But they weren't attempting to break through.
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 15
