The Forests Of Gleor

Chapter 27

King Embor's warriors scoured the forests around the workshop for three days. By the end of the third day they knew that every one of the raiders was either dead or had fled beyond the Mountains of Hoga. The next move was up to Lord Desgo.

Blade realized that the timing of Trawn's invasion might depend on something as simple as the condition of Lord Desgo's wounded buttocks. Would he insist on waiting until he could again comfortably lead his warriors from the saddle of a meytan? Or would he be willing to be carried into battle, seated on cushions in a litter or perhaps even lying facedown? It was amusing to speculate on the question, and also quite pointless.

What was not pointless was to assemble all the warriors Draad could put into the field and train them, train them, train them! Blade started putting in eighteen-hour days again, putting the warriors through one maneuver after another. He was not worried about overtraining them. Lord Desgo would certainly strike long before a single warrior of Draad would have time to get impatient or bored with Blade's training. Desgo would also strike with at least a two-to-one superiority in numbers, and by no means all of his warriors would have two left feet. In an army of twenty thousand, drawn from a people who loved violence if not necessarily war, there would be a good many men who knew their business. Draad could only hope to survive if its warriors took every advantage and every bit of training they could get.

Day followed day. The sense that something was about to happen hung over Draad's army and its leaders like the mists on the Mountains of Hoga. For Blade one day began to blend into another in an endless, unvarying, and increasingly monotonous succession.

Still more days. Now the scouts of the mountain clans were moving out beyond the Mountains of Hoga, watching Lord Desgo's army. Some obeyed their orders and lived to bring or send back word of the enemy's strength and position. Others disobeyed, tried to launch attacks of their own, and did not come back.

It was just under a month after the raid when the scouts reported that Desgo's army was on the march. The first reports had it marching north. King Embor was all for moving Draad's assembled army in the same direction.

Blade had other ideas. «That is what Desgo will be expecting us to do. Therefore we should not do it.»

«What do you suggest, Blade?» said the king. His eyes were red, his hair grayer than when Blade had first met him, and his voice edged with both exhaustion and anger. «Is there anything else to do, that will not let Desgo come through the passes and burn and kill in Draad? I do not want to live to see that!»

«None of us do, father,» said Neena. «Think that, and let my husband speak.»

Blade continued. «What I suggest is that we march our army south, toward the Pass of Kitos. It is the largest of the mountain passes and the closest one to the emerald mines. Desgo can march his whole army through it quickly. Elsewhere he would have to use two or three passes, or else send his army through very slowly. Both would be dangerous, since we could attack him before he could reunite his army.»

Blade's finger stabbed at the deerskin map on the table in front of them. «Also, on our side of the Pass of Kitos is a stretch of open land nearly a day's march wide. There is plenty of room there for Desgo's army to maneuver and fight its battle as a single force. Anywhere else in Draad, he would risk fighting with his army split up and not knowing the land, against an enemy who knows the land very well. Desgo will see this open ground as the best place to fight his battle, and sooner or later he will come there. Why not by the most direct route?

«I agree,» said Neena, «Lord Desgo deserves fifty filthy names. But he is not a fool, and anyone who thinks otherwise certainly is!»

«Very well,» said the king. «We shall take the risks. Certainly it gives us a better hope of a victory that will give us many years of peace. But I shall pray to the gods with all my strength, Blade, that Lord Desgo is only as wise as you think he is, and no wiser!»

Lord Desgo's army marched north, with Draad's scouts watching it. Draad's army marched south, unwatched. At Blade's suggestion King Embor had all the passes patrolled so that a cockroach couldn't have gotten through, let alone an enemy scouting party. Those patrols added up to a good many warriors who would not be available for the battle in the south. Yet they would not be wasted, if they gave Draad the advantage of surprise.

Those weren't all the warriors Blade was planning to detach. When Lord Desgo's army was well through the Pass of Kitos-if it came that way-another force of warriors would slip into position on either side of the pass. They could strike at Desgo's rear, or ambush his army as it tried to retreat from Draad.

Eventually they reached the forests on the edge of the open land around the Pass of Kitos. The ambush party split off and marched up into the mountains on either side of the pass. The rest of Draad's warriors settled into concealed camps in the forest, with nothing left to do but wait.

They had to wait ten days. King Embor seemed to age a year during each of those days, gnawed by fear that he had doomed ten thousand of his people by following Blade's advice. Blade and Neena found it best to avoid him.

Then on the eleventh day the word came through-Lord Desgo's army had swung about, and was approaching the western end of the Pass of Kitos. On the thirteenth day it entered the pass. By evening on the fifteenth day it was camped on the open land to the east of the pass.

That was the evening when Blade and Neena climbed a tall tree on the edge of the forest and looked out upon their enemy. The campfires of Desgo's army made a long ragged crescent across three miles of land, a flickering orange crescent blurred by the rising mists of evening.

«They will be nearly three to one against what we will have on the field tomorrow,» said Neena. «I hope fighting in the open against such odds is not the kind of folly the gods hate, so that they will punish us for it.»

«It could be,» Blade admitted. «I would not be thinking of it under other conditions. But you know all that I have taught our warriors that they did not know before and which will be a surprise to Desgo. Our warriors are also strong and well-rested, while Desgo's men have marched fast and far on sore feet and growling stomachs. We will move faster than they can tomorrow. I think the gods will not call our battle a folly.»

«I hope not,» said Neena. Then she smiled. «Shall we go back down, or would you take me here, in the branches with the wind in our ears?»

«I think we will go back down,» said Blade with a chuckle. «I would not care to go down in the chronicles of Draad as the warrior who on the night before his greatest battle fell out of a tall tree while embracing his woman and smashed himself into small pieces on the ground!»

The next day, Blade fought his battle.

Lord Desgo formed his army in a wide shallow line a mile wide but only a few ranks deep. This formation had worked well enough in the past against opponents with no answer to the stolofs. It might not work so well now.

«Lord Desgo probably knows that as well as we do,» said Blade. «But he has not had time to train his men in any new tactics, so he will not try them. If he did, his army would fall into confusion and he would be even worse off. He will try what has worked in the past, and hope for the favor of the gods and enough skill and courage in his warriors.» He did not add that Draad would have to hope for exactly the same things in order to be sure of victory. Neena probably knew that just as well as he did.

It was a misty morning. Blade counted on that for some help. The mist was not thick enough to permit real surprises, but it would be useful for the first of his planned tricks.

The army of Draad marched out of the woods in the same wide thin line as the enemy. To stretch a mile, Draad's warriors had to be spread even thinner than Trawn's. Blade's first trick was intended to conceal that fact.

The warriors with regular weapons formed the first rank. Behind them moved a thin second line, all the stolof killers together. With each of them marched a helper-wife, concubine, trusted servant, sometimes a son or a-en a daughter. These helpers carried the extra sprayers. the heavy sacks of throwing pots, everything that would weigh down or slow down a stolof killer. When the time came for them to charge, the stolof killers would dash forward like black stalkers on their prey.

Behind the stolof killers came a whole mass of people. Every man for miles around who could put one foot in front of another was there, and a good many women and older children. There were gray-bearded grandfathers, youths just learning weapons, craftsmen of all kinds, workers from the emerald mines under their overseers, wives, midwives, and courtesans. There were nearly ten thousand, of them, outnumbering the actual warriors Blade and Embor had brought to the field.

Perhaps five hundred of these ten thousand could use some sort of a weapon with any skill Lord Desgo wouldn't know that. As Draad's army marched out of the morning mists toward him, it would look twice as strong as it really was. Desgo would lose any hope of overwhelming the enemy by sheer weight of numbers and become cautious. By the time Desgo discovered that he'd been tricked, it hopefully wouldn't matter. Blade intended for the nobleman to have too much else on his mind!

King Embor marched with the warriors of the front rank, Blade with the stolof killers, Neena among the civilians to the rear. Neena also kept an eye on the dozen captured meytans that were being led forward, carefully concealed among the civilians. They also had their place in Blade's plans.

The army of Draad marched forward. On the level ground, the warriors and stolof killers were able to keep an impressively precise formation. The Brigade of Guards on parade in London could hardly have done any better. Precision like that was something new, something unknown in Gleor-and facing anything unknown was likely to unsettle Desgo or his warriors or both.

Just over a mile ahead, the army of Trawn slowly appeared out of the mist, already drawn up in its battle formation. King Embor, Blade, and Neena shouted orders, and the army of Draad came to a stop, just outside bowshot from the enemy's line. Silence fell on the field, and nothing moved except for the gentle eddying of the mist as the morning breezes began to blow.

Lord Desgo sat on his meytan in the rear of his army's line and stared out at the enemy.

«More of them than I'd expected,» said one of the warriors of his household.

Desgo nodded. «We're not going to simply roll forward and stamp them into the ground.» He turned to a messenger. «Tell the Master of the Stolofs to bring his men and beasts forward, ready for a full attack.»

Another of Desgo's household frowned and spoke up boldly. «Sire, we have here most of the war-trained stolofs of Trawn. You say the enemy has a weapon to slay or cripple the stolofs. Yet-«

«You doubt my war wisdom?» said Desgo, his voice suddenly cool and his hand on the hilt of his dagger. The other man shook his head, although his expression didn't match the gesture at all.

«No, sire. I wonder, though, about running too great risks with the stolofs.»

«We will be running no risks,» snapped Desgo. «I saw Blade's weapon work against half a dozen stolofs. We shall not see it work so well against a thousand.»

«The stolofs are coming forward,» said King Embor, striding up to Blade. «That means an attack after their usual fashion.»

«Good,» said Blade. «Lord Desgo can go on doing things the usual way as long as he pleases-or as long as he can.»

King Embor nodded and strode away, back to his position in the front rank. He looked like a man whose nerves were being plucked at with red-hot pincers. Blade did not blame him. Once the battle was joined, the fate of Draad would probably be decided in less than an hour. That was why Blade had spent all those days training the warriors of Draad to move at top speed.

Hopefully they would be moving faster than Lord Desgo could think.

The stolof-whistles seemed to be blowing continuously in the enemy's lines now. They sounded like an immense cage of oversized and not very musical birds.

Blade looked up and down the line of stolof killers. Some of them had gone as pale as the brown-skinned warriors of Draad could go. Many were licking their lips or shuffling their sandaled feet. Blade did not blame them. For all the power of their new weapons, there was still some power in the ancient fear of the stolofs, the monsters that had given Trawn mastery of so many battlefields for so many generations.

With luck, that fear would die today, along with most of the stolofs.

In twos and threes and half dozens and dozens the stolofs crept out through Trawn's line into open view. Their numbers mounted up-two hundred, three hundred, five hundred, seven hundred. More of the stolof killers turned pale.

It looked as though Desgo was going to launch a simple attack, coming straight in and hoping to overpower by terror and sheer weight of numbers. Two or three warriors would be advancing with each stolof, and together they were supposed to break Draad's line apart. Then Desgo would launch the rest of his army on the broken formation, and that would be the battle.

Still the stolofs came out, until there must have been nearly a thousand of them. Blade neither turned pale nor shuffled his feet, but his mind was working furiously. This must be not only every stolof in Desgo's army, but damned near every war-trained stolof in Trawn! Destroying them all would make this a day Trawn would never forget, whatever else happened. Desgo was gambling his stolofs in pursuit of an easy victory; he might end up giving that easy victory to Draad.

But first Draad's stolof killers had to stand up to a thousand of the monsters, and beat them back or destroy them. That was not going to be easy. Blade found himself even more sympathetic toward those stolof killers who had by now turned the color of dirty bedsheets. So far none of them was looking over his shoulder, picking out a safe route to the rear. The courage of the warriors of Draad might falter, but Blade doubted if he would see it fail.

The stolof-whistles fell silent. There were odd flurries of movement as some of the warriors in the attack formation shifted position. Then those horribly unmusical trumpets of Trawn sounded.

Blade shouted so that everyone could hear him. «If that is how they play now, can you imagine how they'll sound after we've beaten them?» It was not a particularly good joke, but it cut like a sharp knife through the tension among the stolof killers. A roar of laughter went up and down the line, and only died when the enemy's trumpets sounded again, this time sounding the charge for both warriors and stolofs.

The enemy line moved slowly forward, the warriors matching their stride to the lumbering pace of the stolofs. Some tried to urge their stolofs to a faster pace; none succeeded.

Three hundred yards. Two hundred. A hundred and fifty. A hundred and twenty. Blade and King Embor kept their eyes fixed on the approaching enemy. When they reached one hundred yards-

They did. Trumpeters and drummers sent signals racing along Draad's battle line. Almost in a single motion, all the archers in the front racks nocked arrows, raised their bows, aimed, and shot. Two thousand arrows flashed toward the approaching line, whistling like a winter sleet storm. Then the whistling of the arrows gave way to screams and hisses as they struck home in men and stolofs.

The stolofs were nearly invulnerable to the arrows from Draad's bows. The warriors were another matter. They wore tough leather armor from throat to groin, but there were plenty of faces, arms and legs exposed to the storm of arrows. Plenty of those arrows found targets. Warriors of Trawn staggered about, waving bleeding arms, clapping hands to bloody thighs, screaming as they tried to pick arrows out of their eyes or faces. Not too many of them went down, but a good many of them lagged behind or blundered about wildly.

Then the second flight of arrows whistled down on the advancing line. The range was closer now, and more of the arrows struck vulnerable spots. Some of those that struck the leather armor struck hard enough to penetrate, not fatally but painfully. Blade heard many more screams, a great many curses, and angry hissing from the stolofs. Their armor was as tough as ever, but the sheer number of arrows coming at them was bound to produce a few lucky shots. Several stolofs were going down, arrows sprouting among their eyes. Many others seemed to be slowing down or moving uncertainly.

A thousand warriors of Trawn were now maimed or at least hurting. The archers of Draad nocked and drew for a third flight of arrows. Before the arrows came down, most of the warriors darted behind their stolofs, crouching low. Most of the arrows bounced harmlessly off the armor of the stolofs or the thick rounded helmets of the warriors. Few did any real harm that Blade could see.

That was perfectly all right with him. Hiding behind their stolofs, the warriors could not guide the creatures well. The stolofs were slow to obey or respond to anything or anyone they could not see in front of them. And the warriors could no longer stand between their stolofs and any attackers.

Blade looked along the line of stolof killers and raised his hands in a signal. A thousand fighting men scooped throwing pots out of bags with one hand and raised their sprayers with the other. There were still pale faces in the line, but the tension was gone. They had seen the charge of the stolofs already blunted by Blade's innovation of massed archery. Now they confidently expected to smash the charge entirely with the Prince's new sleeping water.

The fourth flight of arrows whistled across the narrowing gap between the two lines. A few of the braver warriors went down, those who hadn't ducked for cover behind the stolofs. A couple of dozen stolofs also went down. That was all-the vulnerable spots on a stolof were too small to make good targets even at close range. But every stolof that stumbled and sagged and dropped out of line made the line still more ragged. Instead of crashing into Draad's warriors as a solid, irresistible mass, Trawn's attack was coming forward as an increasingly ragged and disorderly mob, stolofs and warriors all mixed up together.

The archers pulled arrows for a fifth flight out of their quivers, but held their fire. Blade raised his hands still higher, until everyone in the line of stolof killers could see his signal. Then he flung his arms downward. Trumpets blared again, and the whole line surged forward.

They dashed up through the gaps between the archers and other warriors of the front ranks and out into the open. The warriors of Trawn reacted swiftly, springing out from behind their stolofs, swords and spears held ready for battle.

As the warriors of Trawn burst out of cover, every one of the running stolof killers bent forward at the waist without breaking stride. A few of them lost their balance and sprawled on the grass, scattering pots and sandals as they rolled over and over. A moment later the archers of Draad loosed their fifth flight of arrows, straight over the heads of their running comrades, straight into the faces of the warriors of Trawn. At close range the arrows stabbed through leather armor into hearts and lungs, stomachs and vital arteries. Hundreds of warriors went down as if someone had turned a death ray on them, and several dozen stolofs also folded up and slumped to the ground.

This had been the riskiest part of Blade's whole battle plan. If the archers had aimed only a little bit low, they could have wiped out hundreds of the stolof killers and very few of the enemy. Blade could see they had aimed well. The enemy's ranks were gaping, while only a few of the stolof killers and a score or so of the attendants running behind them were down. That was all Blade had time to see before the charge of the stolof killers struck the enemy's line.

Most of the stolofs' masters were either too badly wounded or too surprised to order their charges to launch ribbons. A good many ribbons went out, nonetheless, as the stolofs got it into their tiny brains that something ought to be done about all those men running toward them. Most of those ribbons struck; the stolofs were good shots to the end. The stolofs who had a victim on the end of their ribbons reared back as they'd been trained to do. The stolof killers who hadn't been caught threw their pots and opened up with their sprayers. Then the battle dissolved in a screaming, hissing, swirling chaos so complete that Blade himself couldn't keep track of anything going on more than six feet from him.

He saw a ribbon coming at him, darted aside, and saw the ribbon slap against the cheek of a girl loaded with a stolof killer's extra pots and sprayers. She screamed and went down, her bag bursting open and scattering pots across the grass. Some broke, some didn't. The stolof killer snatched up one of the unbroken pots and hurled it at the stolof. It struck the creature just as it reared, dragging the girl forward and making her scream again. Sleeping water poured down over the breathing holes, and the stolof seemed to freeze and stand still, reared back on its hind legs, forelegs in the air, mandibles clicking steadily. The stolof killer bent to slash the ribbon with his bone knife. As he did so, a warrior with a spear ran past him, straight at the stolof. The man drove his spear with all his strength into the vulnerable part of the stolof's belly. Then he sprang clear of the spray of foul-smelling yellow fluid, as the creature quivered all over and collapsed. An enemy warrior sprang up from behind the fallen creature, leaped up on top of it, and attacked the man from Draad, sword against spear.

Blade dashed forward. A single leap carried him up onto the stolof's back beside the enemy warrior, and a single slash from his sword took off the man's head. The spouting corpse toppled off the stolof in one direction, and Blade sprang down in another. Before the warrior he'd saved even had a chance to thank him, a sudden surge forward by the enemy drove them apart. Blade found himself surrounded by stolofs who were jammed too close together to fire their ribbons. A moment later they came to a stop, too crowded together to even move.

Blade ducked in and out between the thick green and golden legs as if he was running through a forest. At unexpected moments he popped out from under the stolofs, sword in one hand and spear in the other. In those moments warriors of Trawn died screaming or choking in their own blood. Blade must have killed eight or ten without taking a single scratch. Then stolof-whistles blew and the creatures began moving backward. Blade ducked under a last one, stabbed it in the belly, ran across in front of another one to thrust his spear into its eyes, then broke out into the open.

As he did a fresh wave of Draad's warriors came in, more spearmen and some of the archers as well. The archers dropped into cover behind the dead stolofs that now littered the ground and began picking off any enemy they could hit without risk of hitting a friend. The spearmen pushed forward, stabbing wounded or stunned stolofs and dying or crippled enemy warriors as they came to them. Blade stepped back through the advancing line, and for the first time in quite a while got a clear view of the battle.

The main formation of Desgo's army was still intact and unmoving, unable to see or perhaps understand what was happening to the stolofs' attack. What was happening to that attack was quite simply a massacre. Two-thirds of the warriors and stolofs were already dead or dying. The rest were too paralyzed by fear or surprise or sleeping water to make any effort to flee or defend themselves. It was only a matter of time before they also died.

It was also only a matter of time before Lord Desgo and his commanders recovered from the shock of seeing their stolofs and several thousand of their best warriors massacred before their eyes. That was why speed was so vital for Blade's tactics. He had to deliver his second and finishing stroke to Desgo's army before the enemy recovered enough to realize what was about to happen to them.

Blade turned and sprinted back toward the rear, angling toward the left of his own army. King Embor could and would do all that was necessary to push the main battle. It was time for him and Neena to lead their own attack.

Blade slowed down as he approached the mass of civilians. He didn't want to be seen running by people who might not clearly understand why he was doing so. That was the way panics and routs got started and victorious armies could disintegrate in the moment of victory.

Blade trotted through the civilians, ignoring the cheers and the hands reaching out to touch him, and reached the meytans. Neena was already in the saddle. He swung himself up onto the back of his meytan and thrust his feet firmly into the stirrups.

Lord Desgo felt sweat trickling under his helmet. The sun had just cleared the treetops to the east and was only beginning to thin out the mist over the battlefield. Desgo's sweat was the cold sweat of a man who has just seen his army's main striking force destroyed in ten minutes. Desgo found it hard to keep his hands from shaking as he held the reins of his meytan or his voice from shaking as he gave his orders.

It was hard to see exactly what Draad's army was doing, what with the mist and the slaughter of the stolofs that was still going on. It looked as if they were extending their line, perhaps trying to push their flanks out beyond his. That made no sense to Desgo. They couldn't get anything out of that maneuver, not without twice as many men as they had. Still, flank attacks were sometimes possible. It would be well to extend his own line to match Draad's, even though it would make the line thinner than he liked. Yet that was certainly the least dangerous course of action. There was nothing Draad could do to break through his line that wouldn't give him plenty of warning.

The uproar to Blade's right faded as the last of the stolofs died and the last of the enemy warriors either died or fled back to their own lines. Barely a hundred of them made it.

Desgo's first attack had been not only defeated but destroyed. Half the danger to Draad had died with the stolofs. Perhaps the sensible thing to do now was to disengage, hoping that Desgo would take his army back through the Pass of Kitos, its tail between its legs. Further fighting could turn Trawn's defeat into a rout. It would also involve gambling Draad's whole army. That meant eight thousand warriors plus all the civilians who'd done their work so well today but who would certainly be doomed if the battle turned violently and suddenly against Draad.

No, the battle would go on. He would gamble. Trawn's army might not march away if he left it alone. Desgo had much more to avenge now than simply an arrow in his behind, and all his men doubtless had comrades to avenge. The enemy might stay, and then there would be many thousands of dead in Draad's villages and camps. In the end there would be another battle, perhaps under less favorable circumstances.

Even if Trawn's army went away now, it might return soon. Trawn's warriors had suffered, but they had not been beaten and smashed and driven. They had not taken a defeat that would keep them on the other side of the Mountains of Hoga for two generations. Blade wanted to pound them that badly. He sensed that every man in the army around him wanted the same thing. There were too many years of blood and hatred meeting on this field in this battle to let him call the battle off now.

Blade rose in his stirrups and signaled to the trumpeters. The two thousand warriors lined up in columns on each side of him saw the signal and a ripple of tension went up and down both columns. Then the trumpeters sounded, and the attack rolled forward. Beside Blade rode Neena, and around the two of them ten more warriors on captured meytans.

Those meytans were one more of Blade's tricks. They were slow to breed, slow to mature, hard to keep alive, and therefore rare and expensive. There were less than a thousand of them in all of Trawn, and most of those were used for ceremonial purposes rather than trained for war. Desgo must have put in a great deal of time and effort to get the forty or so he'd brought on this campaign with him.

So Trawn had no cavalry and no tradition of fighting on horseback. That should mean they also had no tradition of fighting against men on horseback. In theory, they should be completely unable to defend themselves against any sort of cavalry charge.

So completely, that a charge with only a dozen meytans could crack their line? That was a good question. It was also one that would be answered in about two more minutes.

The attacking columns started their advance at a walk. The leaders of the columns pushed through the civilians. They broke into a trot and pushed through the front line, a thin screen of warriors concealing the civilians. As they reached the open, the leaders sounded their war cries and broke into a dead run.

At the same moment Blade and his little band of cavalry dug in their spurs. The warriors who'd been running in front of the meytans dashed to either side. Straight in front of him Blade saw the enemy's line. He dug his spurs in still deeper and the meytan surged forward, its six legs rapidly working up to a pounding gallop.

Blade's mouth was dry with tension. It would not take long to reach the enemy line. It would take long enough for Trawn's archers to slaughter him and Neena and the men riding with them if they stood their ground and took careful aim.

The seconds went by, with war cries and the thunder of hooves deafening in Blade's cars. He bent low against the meytan's neck, at any moment expecting to hear the whistle of arrows and feel the red-hot stab of them in his flesh.

Then suddenly the line of warriors facing him shivered, writhed, and began to disintegrate. Blade sat up in his saddle with a roar of triumph and drew his sword as his meytan thundered down at the space where the enemy line had been.

He'd been right. Against even the smallest cavalry charge Trawn's warriors could think of nothing but fleeing. Fifty yards of Trawn's line was gone as completely as if Blade had dropped a salvo of shells on it. Some of the warriors ran to either side, joining their comrades. Others were not worrying about comrades, battle, honor, or anything else. They were running like rabbits, hurling down weapons as they ran, heading west toward the Pass of Kitos. Blade gave another triumphant roar as he saw that, and heard his cry echoed by Neena.

Then the two columns of running warriors smashed into the shaken men on either side of the gap torn by the cavalry. Suddenly those men found themselves holding down flanks that hadn't existed ten seconds before, holding them against a swarm of enemy warriors who screamed and shrieked, swinging axes and thrusting with spears like madmen.

The extreme right flank of Desgo's army was completely cut off by Blade's attack. The warriors there stood their ground for as much as a minute, until they realized their situation. Then they crumbled away, half of them fleeing without striking a blow, nearly all of them heading west out of the battle. The warriors of Draad saw their enemies in flight and turned to join their comrades on the right.

There stood most of Desgo's army, and for the moment it was stronger and not as badly shaken. Some men had fled, others had died surrounded by overwhelming numbers, but many had struggled back to join their comrades. Slowly Desgo's battle line folded back on itself, and the thin flank facing Blade's men grew into a thick mass of warriors fighting for their lives.

This was something Blade had hoped he wouldn't see. But he'd made plans to meet it and now he put them into action. More trumpets, and the rest of Draad's warriors swarmed forward, leaping up from behind the dead stolofs where they'd been taking cover. The archers came on firing as they ran, sending a deadly close-range fire into Trawn's ranks. The other warriors came on, brandishing swords and iron-tipped spears they'd snatched up from the dead on the ground. All of them stormed forward with yells and screams like a host of fiends bursting out of the earth. They crashed into the rest of Trawn's battle line with the impact of five thousand running men who will not be stopped by anything except death. With that impact they broke their enemy.

Blade saw it as he rode up and down on the left flank of the battle. He and the cavalry were not trying to ride into the fighting. He hadn't been able to teach anyone except Neena how to fight from the back of a meytan. The rest of the cavalrymen had already dismounted, their job as a battering ram done, and joined the fighting on foot.

Neena shouted first as she saw Trawn's army starting to crumble, and Blade echoed her. Then Neena gave a shout of a very different sort, and Blade spun around in the saddle to see Lord Desgo charging down on them. There was foam on the lips of his meytan, and Blade wasn't quite sure that there wasn't foam on Lord Desgo's own lips.

Lord Desgo saw his defeated and crumbling army, the head of his meytan, the mountains on one side and the forests on the other. He saw all of them through a red haze of fury. He saw only one thing in all the world clearly, and that was Prince Blade. The gods had sent him and Trawn defeat. This he knew. But surely in his last moments they would not also deny him vengeance against Blade and Neena?

He drew his sword, threw back his head, and let a terrible scream tear up from deep inside him. There was rage and hatred and fear and despair in that scream, a knowledge of his own death, and the desperate hope that he would be able to take the man who had destroyed him down into death along with him.

Neena's meytan bolted at Lord Desgo's scream. It angled sharply away to the right, toward the enemy's flank. Blade swore as he realized the runaway animal was going to take Neena right down behind Trawn's battle line. The archers would have an easy target, and even the spearmen would be-

Neena stood up in her stirrups. With the skill of a circus rider she swung from the stirrups up into the saddle, balancing there with inhuman ease and grace. Then she leaped high, tumbling head over heels, soaring toward the enemy line, soaring over it. She twisted in midair to avoid the jutting spears, then landed in an open space only a few feet from Draad's line. Before a single warrior of Trawn could lift a finger against her, she plunged into the safety of Draad's ranks. They folded themselves around their princess, and she vanished from Blade's sight.

A moment later he had problems of his own. Blade and Lord Desgo had both been staring at Neena's fantastic leap so hard that they completely forgot about each other. Their meytans nearly crashed head-on into each other. They pulled them aside with feet to spare and charged past each other.

As he pulled his meytan around, Blade saw Lord Desgo doing the same. For a moment he wondered what to do next. He had no weapon with enough reach to match Lord Desgo's two-handed sword. But he had a captured Trawn short sword, he knew how to throw it, and Lord Desgo wore no armor. Blade drew the sword and hefted it by the tip as he and Lord Desgo charged past each other again. Then they were coming back around, into a third charge, with Desgo heading straight toward the Mountains of Hoga. Blade's arm whipped up and out, and the short sword sank into Desgo's belly just below his rib cage.

He screamed, as much in surprise as in pain, and reeled in his saddle. Then he toppled to one side, sliding toward the ground. He did not fall all the way. One foot caught in a stirrup. As the panic-stricken meytan galloped away, Lord Desgo went with it, dragged along the ground and bounced into the air by every rough spot he went over. His face was already a pulped, bloody mask as Blade lost sight of him.

Lord Desgo's eyes must have closed for good long before his army finally broke and ran from the field. The gods had not spared him much, but they did spare him that.

The army of Draad never did find out what its opponents' trumpets sounded like in defeat. All of Trawn's trumpeters were either dead or too busy running for their lives to have any breath to spare for their music.