Allies of Antares (25 page)

“We must harden the heart and make strong the sinews,” I said, quoting, to N. Strathyn Danmer, an old friend who, as a gerbil-faced two-armed Obdjang, was a cunning, resourceful and immensely devious army commander. He could handle the Djang forces here with as much ease as a drill Deldar flung an audo of swods about the parade ground. Also, he could sense the
point d’appui
and was wise in the way of reserves.

He said, sitting his zorca upright and alert: “You ride again with Djangs now, majister.”

I inclined my head. It was a rebuke I deserved. In a good cause there is no more ferocious or skilled fighter than a Djang, and they go through Katakis by the dozen. Perhaps my Clansmen — but no — idle thoughts...

Garnath’s schemes to chain up masses of levies to soak up the first waves of the attack having been rejected, our plans called for these crowds of spear and shield men to draw the Fish-heads into a counterattack that would strike into the confusion. Here the thomplods would have to earn their keep.

“I am going to have an impossible task to hold them back, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux!” said N. Strathyn Danmer. “Any plan that calls for Djangs to hang back is—”

“The emperor Nedfar commands, Nath, not I. But if we incline gently toward the sea, we will be in a better position.”

“Agreed. At least, that will keep them on the move and not sitting fretting.”

Danmer cracked out his orders to two of our messengers and they went off lickety-split. From our position on the extreme left of the line we could see the dun masses of the enemy moving forward, crowned with the sparkle of steel. Further along to our right stood the Vallians, with the few contingents from the Dawn Lands, and then the Hyrklese formed a connecting link with the mass of Hamalese who held the right center and flank. Positioned just to the rear of the levies and rising like haystacks over fields of stubble, the thomplods looked impressive and menacing to us. How they would appear to the Shanks remained to be seen.

The air having been cleared, the armies could get down to the main struggle.
[6]

Although this stretch of the coast in Chido’s Eurys bore the name of The Level Race, the battle came to be known by another name, which I will tell you anon. It is not my intention to give a full blow-by-blow account. Other currents were at work here to which this great and important battle formed a backdrop. A craggy and bloody backdrop, to be sure; but these currents of emotion flowing past in the foreground were in their own way no less violent.

Soon the Shanks advanced and the armies clashed and our levies duly ran away.

We could hear above the clangor that shrill and sickening hissing from the Fish-heads as they rushed wildly on. There were all manner of different species or kinds, animated armored figures with fish heads crowned with scales in brilliant colors and designs. As with the feathers of a Rapa, it was difficult to tell if the majority of the scales were natural or decoration.

Now it is quite impossible for a man sitting his saddle to see every part of what occurs on a battlefield and much of what follows was told me by eyewitnesses. The onrushing Shanks, victorious over our poor levies, should have run full tilt into the stink of the thomplods. Their cavalry should have panicked. At that moment, Tyfar with the mass of our vaward, would have nutcracker crunched them in both flanks. Then we Djangs would circle inwards, with the Hamalese right, and with the Vallians as the hinge, close in and destroy utterly...

Something will always go wrong, and you just hope it will not be a big or important thing.

The odd thing was, our plan, simple though it was, would have worked splendidly, for nothing attributable to us went wrong.

The Shanks tipped the balance in the center.

The smell of thomplods is not really detectable by humans; its effect is disastrous upon many animals. Now a fresh smell rose over the mingled odors of leather and sweat and fear and blood. A rich, full-bodied, kitchen kind of smell, a burning and roasting, a crisping sort of smell that brought the saliva to the mouth. Fires were visible through the ranks ahead.

A thomplod in the van which had been forging on like an animated battering ram, his archers loosing again and again and his twelve feet squashing Fish-heads with juicy crunches, stopped. His haystack hide appeared to bristle. He let rip a snorting shriek and backed off, started to turn around, stepping on our own kreutzin, for the light infantry did well with the thomplod protection duty they had been handed. He screamed again, turned around and barged straight back — berserk.

Between the two armies the ground crackled into life and flame. Spots of fire, racing from the Shanks toward us, spots of fire that ran on twinkling legs.

Someone yelled, so I was told: “The cruel bastards!”

The Fish-heads, these Leem-Lovers, had taken a great herd of vosks — those stupid, ungainly, rasher-providing animals — and smeared them with tar and combustibles and set them alight and launched them, squealing, at our thomplods.

Disgusting.

The vosks ran dementedly. Their hides crisped. The hair frizzled. The smell was like an army kitchen the day vosk rashers are on. The squeaks and squeals scratched irritatingly above the expected clangor of spear and shield, the scream of dying men.

The stink of burnt vosk outdid the stink of spilled blood.

By ones and twos, and then fives and sixes as the burning vosks reached them, the thomplods lumbered about and ran.

Our totrix cavalry instantly turned tail and fled.

Many of the regiments we had mounted on other kinds of saddle animals ran.

The zorcas remained unaffected — at least by the smell — and I own to a short but intensely painful moment of apprehension as the Djangs astride their joats from Djanduin held their mounts and reimposed control. The joats quieted. At this moment Tyfar led the vaward forward to what should have been a crunching charge and instead turned into a desperate, scrambling melee.

Lucky it was for Vallia and her allies that we had the benefit of Filbarrka’s lancers and archers, for these zorcamen pirouetted and lanced in, mace crunching from the rear ranks, and darted out. The sleeths most of the Shanks rode were no match for zorcas. Green ichor stank on the air, mingling with the raw smell of the red blood of Paz and the stench of the burning vosks.

Thomplods burst back through the lines, and those regiments who were too slow to open ranks and let the beasts through suffered the consequences of slack drill. Seg handled the Vallians magnificently. They opened out and the thomplods careered through and Seg’s archers shot the poor devils of vosks to a merciful end. Then the Vallians closed up, and set themselves, and advanced.

Kapt Danmer twisted his Obdjang moustache — the left one, for his right hand held a sword and he, like me, had but the pair of hands. “I cannot hold them any more, majister. We must charge.”

“By all means, Natch. And may Djan ride with you.”

So, the trumpets pealed and the Djangs let out their joats and those splendid riding animals, the best juts in Havilfar, roared out in a dark and glittering tide.

Perfectly confident that the left wing was now secure and the center about to be closed, I flung a harsh word of command at my squadron of 1ESW. “Hold! You follow me, not the Djangs.” And I swung Blastyoureyes and nudged him into his eight-legged flowing motion, heading to the right, heading to where our lines sagged and bulged and where the Leem-Lovers were about to break through in triumph.

For a considerable distance to our rear the sands were covered by fleeing men. Most were the unfortunate levies, but a few bodies held a loose cohesion that told they had once been regiments of fighting men, now huddling together for safety in adversity. We rode on, shouldering aside fugitives. By Krun! The more I looked the more it seemed the whole army was turning tail.

But Nedfar held the center and right. From the eminence crowned by its ruins he could see the course of the battle better than could I, and it was at this time that, observing his left and center were about to be secure, he flung in everything he had on his right. Also, it was at this time, in the small cleared space between Nedfar and the onrushing Shanks, that his massed archers wreaked such horrible confusion upon the enemy. And every Shank that fell was worth two of our men — except for some, of course...

The Hamalese regulars fought like demons. No doubt they smarted with the hurt to their professional pride their defeat at the Battle of Ruathytu caused them. And the paktuns fought as only hard men who fight for a living know how. By the time I reached the knoll and rode up to the ruins, Nedfar — impressive, pointing, dominating his surroundings — had the situation contained. It was not quite under control; but even as I reined in at his side and stared out and down onto the battlefield, my Djangs hit the flank of the forces attempting to halt the Vallians. In a very short time there were no Shanks in that portion of the field — no living Shanks.

“Dray!” said Nedfar. He looked exalted. “I see your people have done all and more than is required. It is all in the hands of us Hamalese now.”

“I have no doubts whatsoever.”

There were few men left in his retinue. The death toll among messengers and gallopers was high. My squadron of 1ESW waited quietly but inwardly fuming in the hollow behind the rise. As I said to Korero: “If the lads wanted a fight then bodyguarding an emperor in a battle like this is no place to find it.”

To which Korero, in his cutting way, had replied nothing.

Over to the right where Vad Garnath struggled to hold a line and prevent the Shanks from overlapping us and striking inwards at the rear of our center — which was exactly what the Djangs were now doing to the Shanks — the Hamalese had a grim conflict on their hands. As we stared a shout of joy broke from the group around Nedfar. Up from the rear, kicking sand, racing with their six-legged ungainly gait, came the totrix cavalry, rallied and raging to rejoin the fight.

Rees and Chido would be at the head of that headlong onward rally, furious they had been cut out of the battle and determined to show us all their true mettle. Nedfar gave fresh urgent orders and more of his aides galloped off. Now it did seem as though we people of Paz could successfully resist the Shanks. And, through it all, I was aware of the detachment, of the way in which I rode about so grandly directing operations and had not even drawn a sword from its scabbard. This was a far cry from the sweat and muck and blood of the heat of battle.

The passions that burned in the forefront of the battle backdrop, also, passed me by and left me with just the same manner of detachment. In the event, in the two events, I own I was glad I was passed by. In this wise...

“I shall ride to join Garnath’s wing,” I shouted at Nedfar, and in no time at all Blastyoureyes was carrying me thundering off to the right with my little group of 1ESW hard on my heels. We hit at the same time as the returning totrix cavalry, smashing into a screeching horde of Shanks who thought they had won. A single squadron, superb though they were, could make little difference and the bulk of the work was done by the totrix cavalry, with those elements who, having recoiled, reformed to press on again. The swarth cavalry lumbered up afterward at their slower gait and they tipped the scales. For a few moments we were in a real battle, with men yelling and animals rearing, with the lethal sweep of steel and the sudden spurt of blood. Then the Shanks were no longer facing us, and the totrixmen let out bright yells of triumph. I saw Rees. His golden lion face lowered down upon a pile of corpses, tumbled any old how in a welter of red and green.

I felt my heart kick. Chido...!

I cantered over, with the nik-vove avoiding the heaps of slain. Rees looked up. Still his face bore no readable expression.

“You are all right, Chuktar?” My voice was rough-edged.

“Perfectly, thank you.”

“You looked as though you have lost someone dear to you.”

I know I felt what I could not express, a great proud emperor sitting a magnificent charger among the slaughter, talking to Rees like a stranger. Chido, I wanted to scream out, Chido...

“Yes, majister, I have lost someone. Someone, I own, I now see to have been dear to me. But not, I fancy, in the way you may imagine.” He looked down and touched a headless corpse with his boot. The corpse rolled away, slithering.

There, a trident’s tines through both eyes and the third smashing the bridge of his nose, lay Vad Garnath.

Rees looked up. “This — person — was known to me.”

“Well, he is dead now. You can forget him.”

A trumpet pealed, high and carrying brilliant overtones, a series of notes piercing the sky. I looked away. I had work to do. I would see Rees and Chido in the Sacred Quarter.

I rode away. Only when I was returning to the headquarters was the realization borne in on me that I had spoken deucedly oddly to Rees. Any normal reaction would have been one of sorrow for a friend lost. Who would know, here, of the deadly enmity between Rees and Garnath? Well, that would be explained away, for emperors often do not operate under normal rules — and that is not always a good thing, either.

Figures fought beneath the old ruined temple on the rise.

Thinking that, I was glad Rees had not had to slay Garnath in the end, and that that evil man had met his death from a Shank trident — how appropriate! a worshipper of Lem the Silver Leem slaughtered by the Leem-Lovers! — I saw the scene ahead more clearly.

Nedfar fought for his life, surrounded by swordsmen.

I dug my heels into Blastyoureyes and sent him galloping madly ahead. We thundered up the rise, his eight legs pumping in wonderful unison, and I flung myself off, blade in hand, to roar into the fight. My lads followed and in only moments the swordsmen were dispatched. Nedfar held his arm from which the blood flowed. He, like Rees, looked down on a pile of corpses.

“Nedfar! You are unharmed?”

“Just a scratch, Dray. I’d have been dead — Spikatur, they are from Spikatur Hunting Sword.”

“So I see.”

“I’d have been killed for sure — but for him.”