They were intent upon something or someone at the center of their struggling mass, where from two distinct and widely separated places bright white fire sizzled and flashed. Edwar could not see what it was that the lashers had cornered in the small deadly space at the middle of their assault, but he instinctively knew that it had to be Lord Aram.
Shouting and cursing, little by little he managed to move his troops to the right and close with the men of Derosa who under Donnick's calm direction were attempting to drive into the growling mass, heading for a point between the flashes of white fire.
Muray had already discerned the nature of that which occurred at the center and had led his rightmost battalions down off the bank and into the melee. Edwar could make out the form of his right-wing commander slashing and pivoting among the blood-red waters, but communication was for the moment impossible.
“Turn right, men! Turn to the right!” Edwar yelled again and again at his troops on the right flank in an attempt to get them to pivot toward the roiling vortex of enemy flesh. “There's your new enemy!'
Leaving his left wing stretched toward the rocky rise, Edwar moved every available and willing man to his right and sent them toward Muray, into the fray surrounding Lord Aram.
17.
Donnick had watched the peculiar machinations of the enemy force and its commander with a knowing eye. Though he had been in battle but once before, at Stell, he understood almost immediately what the enormous lasher hoped to accomplish.
Only a few of the men with him had been engaged in that earlier conflict, but their presence helped to calm those around them. Nonetheless, Donnick felt that he ought to do something to defray any adverse psychological effect that the enemy commander's behavior might engender among his soldiers.
“Easy, boys,” he repeated in loud, clear, but unexcited tones as he moved back and forth behind his lines. “It's all a show. He must not have much confidence in his troops or their steel. They'll come sooner or later and then we'll prove his doubts justified.”
Just then, from the left and rear, Lord Aram shouted, “Sound the hold!”
Donnick was at that moment passing the trumpeter, a man of Lamont named Conry that had been loaned to Derosa by Edwar. He said calmly, “Sound the hold.”
A few moments later, Lord Aram came pounding up behind him on Thaniel. “How are the men, General?”
Momentarily surprised that his prince had chosen this particular instant to use the title for the first time, Donnick looked up and met Aram's eyes. They were bright and hard with fierce anticipation. The tall lord was dressed in his magnificent black armor and horned helmet trimmed with gold. Behind him, young Hilgarn, mounted on Balten, breathed hard from the exertion of trying to stay in the saddle and keeping Lord Aram's standard stiffly aloft while charging back and forth across the valley.
Donnick had walked the earth for nearly sixty years and he had never been the kind of man that was given to overt displays of emotion. But now, looking up at the man, more than twenty years his junior, who had just given him a battlefield promotion, above whose head the red and gold standard of ancient kings fluttered in the breeze that had arisen in the last few minutes, he found that he had to swallow before returning an answer.
“The men are fine, my lord; they'll hold.”
Lord Aram nodded, satisfied, and then moved away to the east, toward Duridia.
After the prince left, Donnick looked his lines over once more and then moved through them to the front where he could see the enemy more clearly. Just as he reached the front rank, a horn sounded across the way and arrows rose up in a dark cloud.
“Sound cover!” He shouted and then dropped and raised his shield above his head. From behind him he heard the sizzling fire from Lord Aram's sword erupt and crackle through the air overhead. Because of the proximity of the prince and his strange weapon, few arrows fell among Donnick's men, but even those few did damage.
After the onslaught ended, Donnick stood. “Remove the wounded!”
He looked back to the front as the enemy horn sounded again. The enemy advanced to the edge of the stream and then once more came to a full halt. Again the huge lasher commander came out front and made a show of inspecting the ranks of his enemy. When he disappeared back through his lines and the horn sounded once more, the opposing lines split.
Donnick stared in confusion as a gap appeared in the ranks of the enemy. Though his own command was small, it was now unopposed on its left wing. He looked back to find his son, waiting with the mounted archers. There might come an opportunity here, he thought, but before he could gain Wamlak's attention, the alien horn sounded again and the enemy came directly at them.
It was then that Donnick saw the gap that had opened up between him and Lamont. With the enemy closing on his right front, he had little time. Still, he looked eastward to find Lord Aram and show him the danger that had appeared in the allied center, but the prince and his great horse were already charging toward that very spot. Donnick rejoined his men.
“Here they come – ready the spikes!”
But Donnick and his men were denied any opportunity to close with the enemy. When Lord Aram and Thaniel crashed down over the bank and into the mass of lashers that had suddenly appeared in the gap, all of the enemy troops to Donnick's front abruptly turned their attention and their steel toward that spot.
Donnick grasped the essence of the situation immediately.
Indicating the growing clot of roiling enemies surrounding Lord Aram – who could no longer be seen – he yelled at his troops, “Spikes! There – loose spikes! Now – ready pikes – now forward!”
18.
Boman watched the actions of the great horned beast as he stalked back and forth in front of his lines, studying the Duridians and Derosans in turn, and came to the conclusion that it was all for show, intended to arouse fear in the hearts of his foes. And of course, it was effective. The governor felt tense apprehension rising within him, and he glanced around to see the effect of the terrifyingly huge enemy commander's behavior upon his troops.
And there was an effect. Wide eyes stared out of each helmet at the display going on across the stream. Every man here had agreed to come to this distant place and risk life and limb in a cause greater than himself. They had fully anticipated being placed in harm’s way. But now, face-to-face with those that meant to inflict that harm, fear arose and coupled itself onto the gigantic lasher's actions.
The enemy general was an enormous beast, a frightening enough thing in itself, but combined with the truth that this great monster was also the commander of the grim gray line across the way added a layer of dread onto his performance. Boman's men were already skittish, standing in line, gazing at the enormity of the host arrayed against them and now the enemy commander's grimly intentional behavior turned that skittishness into a fear which threatened to become terror.
He looked to his right at young Jef, the chief trumpeter.
“Sound the hold,” he said, and at the same instant heard Aram call out the same order from his position over to Boman's left, near the center of the field.
The sound of trumpets pierced the morning air. As the sound echoed away to nothing among the hills, Boman walked to his right, toward the road a few hundred yards distant.
“Hold, men, hold,” he exhorted in a clear, deliberately calm voice, repeating his words as he paced eastward. “We know why we're here, don't we? Keep the spikes at the ready and your bows and pikes at hand. When they tire of playing and come, we'll show them of what stuff the men of Duridia are made. Stand firm, boys, hold the line.”
The governor was especially worried by the mass of horned monsters that apparently formed the reserve behind the dark lines of the enemy that faced his side of the field. Looking left, he could see that, as yet, none of those great beasts were lined up to assault Lamont. It appeared that his men, therefore, would bear the brunt of the coming assault.
He pivoted to his left to try and find Lord Aram but when
he did he discovered that the prince had evidently seen the same thing, and had come to the same conclusion. Aram had turned away from Lamont's side of the field and was moving toward Boman's position.
Just then, the enemy commander moved back through his lines and a moment later a horn sounded. A dark mass of arrows arose and traced a deadly arc through the sky.
“Take cover!” Lord Aram shouted.
All along the line, men knelt and made themselves small while holding their shields aloft. There was a sizzling sound of fire and a blindingly bright flash as Lord Aram employed his magical sword. While some missiles managed to pass through that strange fire and did damage here and there, most fell as nothing more than black dust among the men of Duridia.
Boman stood and looked along his lines. Several men writhed in pain, holding various parts of their anatomy while they moaned or cursed. He turned to the reserves.
“Wounded to the rear – hurry, now.”
He became aware of a strange sound that grew stronger and higher in pitch until it seemed that it would rend the very fabric of the atmosphere. Wincing against the sudden distress inside his ears, he looked over to his left from whence the sound originated. Lord Aram was holding his shining sword aloft. Bathed in the clear light of the sun, it flashed and sizzled, sending blasts of fire into the sky.
“Look, boys, look! See what power is on our side.”
Men turned, holding their ears against the piercing keening, and gazed in awe at the tall lord on horseback. Fear of the enemy and apprehension of the coming conflict paled somewhat in that moment, as men gazed open-mouthed upon Lord Aram’s sword and its fearsome display of unearthly power.
Boman looked back to the front just as another horn sounded.
“Cover!” He yelled, but after a moment it became clear that more arrows were not forthcoming. Instead, the lines of the enemy began to advance down the slope toward the stream. Except for the occasional growled commands of their lasher overlords, they came silently. Only the muffled thumping of booted feet emanated from that grim host. From far across the plains to the northwest, beneath a line of mounded storm clouds, there came the rumbling sound of distant thunder.
Gaining the level, the enemy halted at another blast from the horn, and once again the lasher general came out and initiated a repeat of his earlier behavior.
Lord Aram, having sheathed his sword, came over near Boman.
“Advance to the bank of the stream and form lines of battle, Governor.”
Boman turned and looked at his nearest commander, his uncle Semper. “Sound the advance,” he said.
Semper looked at Jef and repeated the command. Jef's trumpet rang out, echoed by others up and down the lines. And the lines moved. Tamping down their fear in the face of the enemy, the sons of Duridia obeyed.
As the men neared the short steep bank, Boman called out, “Hold! Lines of battle!”
The command rippled down the long line toward the hills beyond the road. Dutifully the men straightened their lines, drawing deep breaths and looking right and left at their closest companions, swallowing and nodding grimly as their eyes met.
Another horn sounded. Strangely, in response to this sound, the lines of gray men and lashers to Boman's front did nothing, but he could see and hear plenty of movement over on the enemy's right. After a time, the horn sounded again and the distant movement stopped.
“Sound hold!” Lord Aram commanded and Boman nodded to Jef. Thunder, still far off but nearer now, added a deep base note to the ringing sound of the trumpet.
Beyond the stream, the enemy horn blared.
And now the enemy advanced.
Watching them come, Boman knew that this time they meant business.
He looked around at the men nearest him. How, he wondered, would the boys from the farms that were scattered across the southern plains of their far-away home do here, in this distant place, in the face of this alien foe? He was about to discover the answer, for the enemy showed no sign of further delay. They reached the far bank, spilled down into the stream bed and came on, their pikes held low and at the ready, and their leaden eyes were fixed on the lines of Duridians.
Boman deliberately stiffened his back and drew in a deep breath.
“Steady now, boys.”
As the gray men in the lead ranks reached the brook and began splashing through the shallow, rippling current, the lashers in the rear suddenly bolted to Boman's left, streaming away from his front and toward Derosa and Lamont beyond. A moment later, Lord Aram's great horse, Thaniel, pounded up.
“Prepare to meet the enemy, Governor!” Lord Aram yelled and then the horse lunged away, following the tangent of the lashers.
Good enough, thought Boman, seeing only gray men to his front, my lads can handle this lot.
“Ready spikes!” He yelled, and the command echoed down the line.
The gray men were through the water and scrunching across the sand on the near side of the meandering stream.
“Now!”
The grim, dark host gave vent to screams of pain and yells of anger as the stubby weapons found their marks among them.
“Crossbows!” Boman yelled the command, and a moment later followed it with another. “Release!”
More gray men fell, and more howled in misery.
“Pikes to the fore,” the governor shouted above the rising din, “here they come!”
Charging hard up the bank, the gray men plowed into the line of Duridians. The stolid men of the southern plains yelled with their might and thrust pikes to the fore. As weapons pierced armor and flesh and some broke with the strain, men on both sides fell and gaps appeared among the lines of friend and foe alike. In places, the lines collided to the extent that pikes became useless. Swords came out and the deadly business became personal; savage hand-to-hand fighting ensued at various points along the line. In those spots where the battle had devolved into sword work, the two sides rapidly became jumbled and mixed together.
Boman had arranged his captains and their men thus: Ragen was on the left, touching Derosa, then Todden, Semper, Jefna in the center with Pajek on the right flanked by the cavalry on the road. Jozef and his men were in reserve.
Now, with battle enjoined and gaining in ferocity, and with enemy soldiers mixed among his lines, Boman tried to send elements of his reserves into the gaps. But there were no real gaps, instead the lines had become so convoluted that hand-to-hand combat was the order all along the line. He found it necessary to instruct Jozef to simply stretch out his men, form a thin line and advance to the front, in order to buttress the troops everywhere.
The fighting grew more savage.
Then, just as two bright flashing columns of light, like white fire, erupted to the left, at the center of the field, another horn sounded on the other side of the stream. Abruptly, the gray men along his front disengaged, broke away, and retreated. But as soon as they got clear of the Duridians and back across the water of the brook, they turned as one and moved westward toward where a terrific commotion had erupted at the heart of the battle. Some of the Duridians gave chase, tumbling down off the bank.
“Sound hold!” Boman yelled at Jef, then, a moment later, “Dress the line!”
As his men re-formed and the few remaining clots of reserves came up to remove the wounded, the governor tried to make sense of conditions on the battlefield. One thing stood out – though it had lasted but a brief though savage few minutes, his men had fought well their first time.
But where had his enemy gone? Except for dead and dying gray men, the stream bed was empty of foes. Those of the enemy that he could see were hurrying away to his left, moving with solid purpose toward the center.
19.
As Thaniel crashed to the sand of the stream bed, Aram fell forward, somersaulting from the horse's back and into the water of the stream. Instinctively holding the sword out from his own body and away from Thaniel's tumbling bulk, he rolled and came onto his hands and knees. His helmet was gone though he stil
l wore the hood.
The enemy was upon him immediately.
Pain exploded inside his skull as the end of a lasher's pike grazed along the side of his head. Sharp steel poked furiously at his black armor, finding the gaps and in places piercing the golden armor beneath as the monstrous beasts attacked with concentrated wrath.
Swinging the sword in a wide arc, he came to his feet, twisting in a desperate circle as he tried to keep his foes at bay and find Thaniel.
Determined steel came at him from all sides. He grasped the sword with both his gauntleted hands and swung with his might. With the sun now almost directly overhead, the sword weighed less than nothing. He felt little but saw the enemy fall as the blade cut through weapons and bodies like a heated knife sliding through butter. Some way off to either side, there were bright lightning flashes of white fire as the guardians came to his aid.
For some unknown reason, they were fighting at a distance from him, allowing a gap between him and them; consequently lashers seemed to come at him from all sides. Did they intend to protect Thaniel as well, or even the whole front of the army? If so, good, he thought – it would mean that those powerful creatures were fighting as a component of the allied cause rather than just as guardians of the sword and the Call. Eventually, however, he noticed that where the white flashes indicated the location of the Guardians, the assault against him was thinner and more easily defended, though nonetheless ferocious.
They were guarding him, then.
Which meant that he needed to find Thaniel, and together with the horse try to retreat back inside the allied lines. But the lasher assault threatened to overwhelm him.
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 16
