He tried to clear a space, whirling and cutting and swinging the sword madly, while he looked around desperately for Thaniel.
As he slashed and pivoted he saw that to one side, in the shallow waters of the stream, there was a large group of lashers with their backs to him, stabbing and thrusting wildly at something large and black that whirled and reared, kicking and pounding.
Thaniel.
The great horse was surrounded but fighting like a titan.
Grimly, Aram fought his way toward him, clearing a path, but the enemies that encircled him gave no quarter. Whenever he tried to make progress toward the horse's position, those behind him delivered pain with every unguarded thrust into his own armored back.
“Hang on, Thaniel, I'm coming,” he yelled aloud.
“No, Lord Aram, I will come to you,” the horse replied.
But it soon became clear that neither could accomplish his declared intention. The lashers were too many. Though Aram heaped their bodies about him on all sides, they kept coming. Pain erupted from many parts of his body as those that escaped the passage of the sword found opportunity to attack as he pivoted away.
Thaniel abruptly appeared above him, rearing and slashing with his massive hooves. Aram, swinging the sword in a desperate arc, nearly made contact with the horse.
“Thaniel!” He screamed. “Move away – get clear if you can.”
“No – I won't abandon you.”
“Stay clear of the sword!” As he screamed these words of warning into Thaniel’s mind, Aram abruptly understood why the guardians had kept their distance from him even while they worked to diminish the numbers of the enemy that assaulted him.
The sword.
There was nothing upon the earth that could threaten them physically except for one thing – and it was the blade that Aram wielded. As understanding of this fact clarified in his brain, Aram deliberately tried to move the fight away from where the great horse kicked and plunged and wrought death.
“Get clear of this, Thaniel,” he ordered with his mind. The answer came back in the same way.
“I won't leave you.”
“Please, Thaniel.”
“No.”
The battle raged on.
Bleeding, wounded in many places, Aram grew weary.
Though the sword weighed nothing in his hand, nonetheless the effort of defending on all sides began to take its toll. And the apparently endless hordes of lashers began finding increasingly frequent opportunities to test his armor.
Thaniel seemed to be tiring as well. Once, when Aram again reached out to him with his thoughts, the horse returned no answer.
And still the lashers came at him.
20 .
From his position atop the bank of the stream, Donnick could see clearly how the enemy had succeeded in isolating Lord Aram. The ranks of gray men had by now retreated from before both Lamont and Duridia and were forming defensive lines that angled away to the left and right from the center. Into a gap between these lines, lashers poured in great numbers, swelling the savage crowd surrounding Aram and Thaniel.
Understanding came.
They meant to kill the Prince, whatever else occurred on this day. The commander of the enemy army evidently understood – or had been made to understand – something that had become clear to Donnick years ago – that this one man was more dangerous to the designs of the grim lord than a thousand armies of free men.
Fury flooded into Donnick's normally unflappable soul. Raising his sword, he looked right and left along his lines.
“Form up – now!” He shouted. “Ready pikes!”
Lowering his sword, he pointed straight at the mass of lashers surging around Aram and Thaniel in the shallow waters of the stream, and then, without waiting for his men, he leapt off the bank and down onto the sand as he gave the order.
“Forward!”
The Derosans crashed into the lashers from the rear and caught them by surprise, intent as the monsters were on overwhelming Aram and Thaniel. As pikes became imbedded in muscular thighs and legs or were wrenched away by those beasts that managed to turn and fight, the men of Wallensia employed their swords. Though out-matched in both strength and size, the Derosans enjoyed the advantage of better order. They took horrific casualties, but many lashers went down, too.
The field of struggle had become very compact due to the nature of the lashers' assault against Aram, so as men were slain or driven back, the Derosans were able to bring reserves to bear quickly and forcefully. Within a short time, they reached Thaniel and brought relief to the great horse. Blood flowed from every overlapping seam in Thaniel’s armor, from his head to his hooves. Donnick expected that the great horse would retreat from the field in order to nurse his many obvious wounds, but Thaniel, finding friendly troops fighting alongside him, immediately began to work his way, kicking, rearing, and plunging, toward Aram.
For a time, they made slow and steady – albeit bloody – progress through the rippling stream but then the Derosan advance ground to a halt as lashers on the outside edges of the deadly melee began to turn their attention away from the prize at the center and onto this new threat.
Donnick and his men fought fiercely and bravely and contested every foot of watery sand, but when faced with the full attention of a solid line of beasts, they began to suffer intolerable casualties and were driven back.
Over to Donnick’s right, there remained one small pocket of fierce Derosan resistance. Mallet, aided by Jonwood and two others, had pierced a massive beast with his pike and was attempting to push the monster backward into the mass of his fellows.
“Mallet!” Donnick yelled. “Fall back!”
“Lord Aram’s in there!” Mallet yelled back. “We have to get to him!”
“Our front line is collapsing – we must regroup,” Donnick insisted. “Then we’ll come at them again.”
Mallet shook his head, straining at the pike embedded in the monster to his front. “We can’t give up the ground!”
Donnick ducked his head just in time to avoid the heavy, whistling passage of a halberd. Looking over at Mallet, he tried one last thing. “You’ll get those other men killed.”
Jonwood, panting and grunting with every slashing attempt to keep enemies away from Mallet and his kill looked over with fury in his eyes. “We’re just fine!”
But Mallet seemed to come to his senses then.
Shoving his pike deep and then twisting it loose from his victim’s body as it crumpled, he began to retreat. “The captain’s right, Jon; we’ll regroup and come at them again.”
Thaniel would have none of it. Having been delivered from a struggle to save his own life, he was now intent only on rescuing Aram. Lunging away from the Derosan line, the great horse drove through the massed lashers like a behemoth, but the monsters closed upon him quickly. The horse soon became isolated and once again was the target of a concentrated attack. Aram was still several yards away, far enough that many lashers easily swarmed into the intervening gap and were able to continue their ceaseless assault upon Aram while once again attempting to end the life of the horse that had borne him here.
From his position just to Donnick’s rear, Wamlak had ordered his mounted archers into a line and was directing their fire over the heads of his father’s troops and into the mass of beasts surrounding Lord Aram in an attempt to aid the Derosan advance and keep their kinsfolk alive. When conditions deteriorated and the Derosans retreated, Thaniel became isolated. Wamlak looked to the right half of his line and pointed.
“Help Thaniel!” He commanded. “Be careful not to hit him – but pour them on as close to his position as possible. They’ll kill him if we don’t bring him relief!”
Surrounded by enemies, Aram was aware of none of these actions on the part of his friends. His own situation had grown increasingly desperate. Though the guardians had moved a bit closer and their efforts on his behalf meant that he was now attacked on just two opposing sides, the expenditure of energy and b
lood was taking its toll. Assaulted without respite, he grew terribly weary. And as his strength waned, and the deadly movement of the sword slowed, the monsters surrounding him found greater opportunity to do him harm.
Then abruptly, as he spun and slashed, he caught sight of Thaniel's large black form no more than a few long steps away. Having lost all sense of his position on the battlefield in relation to friendly lines, and feeling inevitable defeat begin to wash toward him like a flood, he saw Thaniel's proximity as a lifeline. Calling upon a reservoir of strength, he hurled himself toward the horse, and with mad, wild strokes cut down the monsters in between.
For a brief instant, Aram thought that if he could create a lull and mount up, he and Thaniel might lunge clear of the morass of enemies.
But then a pair of massive harbigurs swung their halberds in deadly unison. Thaniel went to his knees.
The great horse tried to rise, but the beasts saw their advantage in his stumble and pressed the assault. As he attempted to lunge to his feet, several of the monsters rushed him bodily and pushed him over onto his side in the stream. By now, the murky water around the thrashing horse had turned deeply red-brown with his blood and that of his enemies. On the far side of the great horse, beyond the reach of Aram's blade, lashers continued to thrust with their steel pikes and swing their huge halberds, and with every stroke it became apparent to Aram that they were driving Thaniel inexorably toward the dark shadow of death.
21.
When Muray happened to glance to the right just as the enemy closed on his front, he saw Lord Aram drive through the gap that had opened between his men and those of Derosa, and immediately cursed himself for a fool. For the moment however, cursing was all he could do about it, for at that instant the dark lines of the enemy crashed into his front.
Muray was not a behind-the-lines commander. Drawing his sword as the gray men closed upon his lines, he pushed into the front rank and began to lay about furiously with the steel, so much so that his own men were obliged to give him space. Perceptive man that he was, he knew instinctively that he was responsible for the gap in the army’s center that Lord Aram was now obliged to defend, and he was driven by that understanding to push the enemy back so that his error might be rectified.
Inspired by their commander’s brash behavior, Muray’s men, the right wing of Lamont’s forces, stormed forward into the gray ranks, many pushing down off the bank to confront the foe on the sand. Though elsewhere the grey lines spilled above and over the incline and assailed Edwar’s men on the open prairie itself, here on the right not one gained the top of the bank. Within the space of the first half-hour, Muray and his troops began to turn the left flank of the enemy’s line.
But just as the fierce Lamontan was considering an attempt to roll up the enemy’s line toward the west, he turned and caught sight of the maelstrom of fury and death surrounding Lord Aram. Understanding of the primary intent of the enemy pierced his brain.
“No – we’ll not allow that!” He growled through gritted teeth.
With the enemy in withdrawal to his front, Muray quickly lengthened the rearward ranks of his line toward Derosa, cursing and screaming at his troops to make haste- damn it!, and then he separated out the battalion that had fought nearest him, turning it to the east.
Blood dripped in profusion from the edges of his blade as he pointed toward the mass of monstrous beasts that surrounded Aram’s position. Panting in fury, and with the urgency of a subconsciously-known truth bursting from his innermost being, he yelled –
“Save the King! Forward – with me!” And he plunged into the roiling fight.
With their blood roused to fever pitch by their successes in the battle and by their commander’s valorous deeds and thrilling, unexpected words, the battalion went with him, rushing upon the unsuspecting lashers from behind.
Muray sawed at enormous thighs and slashed at clawed hands and feet in a desperate attempt to reach Aram. Instinctively, he veered away from something to his left – something bright, fearsome, and otherworldly that spewed white flame and wrought death among the ranks of the enemy.
But then a new wave of the villainous beasts, also circling out and away from the strange something, fell upon the Lamontans’ left rear.
Very quickly, Muray found himself fighting on two fronts. And just as quickly, his men began to fall back before the double-edged onslaught.
Just as he slashed to his left into the exposed legs of a lasher, another monster hove up suddenly on his right. The beast swung his huge flat-bladed weapon.
Muray felt pain explode in his right thigh as the blade bit deep and found bone.
Blood erupted, as if the pain had vomited it forth. Staggered, Muray twisted away, wrenching loose from the offending steel.
The lasher evidently thought that Muray would try to turn and run, for it grinned wickedly and casually raised the blade for a finishing stroke.
It mistook its enemy.
Terrible anger exploded through Muray even as he felt his life’s blood flooding away.
For he had caused this.
Lord Aram was at risk and perhaps the whole of the army as well, because of his foolishness and greenness in the face of the enemy, and now this unholy beast thought to add to that self-inflicted insult with mortal injury.
Hardened with anger, ignoring the searing pain, Muray lunged toward the great beast and thrust upward with his might, and felt the blade punch through tough, stringy sinew and find something more yielding beyond. The monster let out a roar of pain and hunched over, pinning Muray between its torso and its legs.
Muray twisted the blade over with all the remaining strength in both his arms and was rewarded with a further groan of agony from the beast.
But then it collapsed upon him and its massive weight crushed him downward into darkness. The noise of the battle receded until all was still as death.
22.
Yelling with rage, swinging the sword, Aram jumped across the horse's body and drove the lashers back. Then he straddled Thaniel's neck, cutting and slashing as they came at him from all sides. The Guardians had also repositioned themselves but still remained some distance away, apparently staying beyond the reach of Aram's sword, though with one Astra to either side the onslaught upon Aram and Thaniel was markedly reduced from those two directions. Thaniel kicked out in another attempt to rise, savagely and desperately, catching Aram on the ankle and nearly bringing him to his knees.
“Stay down, Thaniel!” Aram screamed. “Let me clear us a path out of here.”
But the horse had been terribly injured in the last few minutes. He was in great pain and continued to thrash. In the midst of the melee, Aram tried mind-speak. Frighteningly, he could find nothing in the horse's thoughts but pain and confusion.
And still the lashers came on in a furious assault, thrusting their pikes at Aram and downward at Thaniel's bleeding bulk, and swinging their mighty halberd's in vicious sweeping strokes. Steel clanged off Aram's arms and legs and back, resounding against bone and sinew and in places finding gaps in his black armor, piercing the golden armor beneath, and biting deep. His own blood ran in streams down his black armor and mixed with Thaniel's in the brook, which by now was little more than reddish mud.
Gradually, Aram became aware that the horse's struggling and thrashing were losing their vigor. Still finding nothing in the pain-wracked darkness of Thaniel's mind, he pleaded aloud. “Please, Thaniel – my friend – do not die!”
The day seemed to have grown dark. Still, Aram fought on against an encircling and unending tide of lashers. At least now they were concentrating their attack on him, believing perhaps that the horse was beyond the need for consideration. Despite the fact that the sun was still overhead and as a consequence the sword weighed almost nothing, Aram's arms ached, and the muscles of his legs quivered and burned from the terrible, unending strain. Increasingly, a distant, indistinct buzzing nagged at the depths of his skull.
But at last, the work of the Guardians s
eemed to be having an effect. Aram now faced opponents from two directions only, and then eventually from just one, but still they came on. Beneath him, Thaniel had ceased thrashing. Consumed by a desperate need to attend to his friend, Aram closed his mind to the weariness and the pain and fought on ferociously, swinging the sword in great arcs, dropping lashers in heaps. Slowly he realized that while their attack was not faltering, it was lessening, not so much for lack of enthusiasm but because the sheer heaps of mangled flesh that surrounded him impeded and in places prevented them.
The day grew darker yet and thunder rumbled, close and low, seeming to redound inside his pain-wracked skull. Lost in an agony of growing hurt and mounting exhaustion; desperate to end it so that he could see to Thaniel, Aram swung the sword blindly.
Then, suddenly, from somewhere beyond the hideous onslaught of attacking lashers, a great pain-filled roar resounded over the battlefield, rising to a shrieking howl of utter torment before falling away and ending. Instantly afterward, silence fell over the field and there came a lull. Straddling Thaniel's broad neck, Aram swung the sword in a desperate, encircling arc but made contact with nothing.
A hush spread across the blood-spoiled ground of the battlefield.
Then, a horn sounded.
And abruptly, the enemy broke off the attack and were moving away.
Aram watched them go with open-mouthed exhaustion and then looked down.
Thaniel's armor-clad body lay below him in the shallow waters of the blood-red brook.
The horse was still breathing, but each great shuddering gasp ejected even more blood from his great nostrils, and it was pinkish and flecked with foam.
“Thaniel! Speak to me!”
There was no answer.
He looked up, startled, as Durlrang appeared around the heap of mounded lasher bodies. The old wolf’s maw was dripping with lasher blood; in fact the whole of his head from his ears to his jowls was soaked with deep red-black gore. Despite his macabre appearance, and the seeming unsteadiness of the wolf’s legs, Aram could not immediately discern whether or not he had suffered serious injury.
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 17
