Authors: Glen Cook
“The best,” she repeated. “And all four at full strength. He’s made a fool of me.”
Bragi wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t expected good news. But he had hoped O Shing would make a smaller showing. “He’s here himself?”
She nodded, pointed. “There. Behind the First. You can see the tower. He wants to watch our destruction from a high place.”
Ragnarson turned. “Colonel Phiambolos, relay the word to Altenkirk.” The engineer departed for Seidentop, “Varthlokkur? You’ve seen enough?”
The wizard nodded. “We’ll begin. But I doubt we’ll do any good.” He departed. “Colonel Kiriakos?”
The Colonel clicked his heels and half bowed. “Gods be with you, sir.” He left to assume command of the castle and sugarloaf. “Turran?”
The man shrugged. “You’ve done all you could. It’s up to the Fates.”
“Your Majesty, everything’s ready.” She nodded coolly, regally. There was the slightest strain between them because, after her journey from Vorgreberg, he had spent the night in battle preparations. “Now we wait.” He glanced at O Shing’s tower, willing it to begin.
Though he concealed it, he didn’t think he had a chance. Not against four legions, nearly twenty-five thousand easterners. With so many O Shing might not commit his auxiliaries...
But he did. At some unseen signal Sir Andvbur threw his full weight against the mercenary regiments, all his people fighting afoot.
“That man,” said Turran, “needs hanging. He learns too fast.”
The mercenaries, though better fighters, were hard-pressed till Phiambolos’s engines found the range.
After an hour, Ragnarson asked Turran, “What’s he doing? It’s obvious that he can’t break through.”
“Maybe trying to weaken them for the legions. Or draw them out of line.”
Ragnarson glanced toward the mountains. The dark cloud from Maisak was fading. “They’ll let us have the sun in our eyes.” He had hoped they would overlook that.
Mist interjected, “He’s buying time to ready a sorcery.”
And Turran, “There goes a wagonload of the Thing’s poison.” In time Visigodred had admitted that the foul stench from the sorcerers’ enclave was caused by their distillation of a drink to be served weary troops on the fighting line. There was little if any magic involved, but the liquor would combine the encouraging effects of alcohol with a drug that staved off exhaustion. Little sorceries like that, Ragnarson thought, might be more important than the ground-shakers.
“Marshal,” said the Queen, “you have smoke across the marsh.”
Bragi turned. It was Haaken’s signal. He allowed himself a small grin. “Good. Runner.” A man presented himself. “Tell Sir Farace to cross the pontoon.”
A key adjunct to his plans, hastily developed during the night, after the enemy’s dispositions had become clear, was developing perfectly. Blackfang and Kildragon had laid a trap. The Captal had been lured in.
“The witchery begins,” said Mist. Arm spear-straight, she indicated a mote of pinkish light at the foot of O Shing’s tower. “The Gosik of Aubochonagain.” Aweand horror filled her voice. “In the flesh. The man’s mad! There’s no way to control it...”
“Kimberlin’s breaking off,” said Turran.
Ragnarson had noticed. “This’s the critical point,” he said, looking down at the still untested Alteans. “Will they hold when they realize what’s happening?”
“Back!” Mist snapped. “I need room!” The pink became scarlet flame; from it rose dense red smoke. In moments, within the smoke, an immense horned head with Stygian eyes formed. This thing was no moonscraping monster such as had loomed over the Kapenrungs, but Bragi guessed it would stand a hundred yards tall. It seemed to grow from the earth itself.
Mist stood with arms outstretched and head thrown back, screaming in a tongue so liquid that Ragnarson wasn’t sure she was using words. A strong chill wind began to blow, whipping her hair and garments.
He checked his tame sorcerers.
As the Gosik took on awesome solidity, the twelve hurled their counter-weapons. Bolts of lightning. Spears of light. Balls of fire in weird and changing colors. Stenches that enveloped the tower. A misty thing the size of several elephants that coalesced between the armies and trailed bloody slaughter through immobile legions before attaching its hundred tentacles and dozen beaked mouths to one of the Gosik’s legs...
Mist brought her hands together sharply. Down the canyon, echoing from wall to wall, ran a deafening, endless peal of thunder. Over the Gosik a diadem of lights appeared, sparks in rainbowed rings racing angrily. The diadem began to fall.
Ragnarson wasn’t sure, but from its enclosing circle, it seemed, a nebulous face as ugly as the Gosik’s glared down, swelled till all the interior was a gap through which a hungry mouth prepared to feed.
A touch of shadow crossed the parapet. A few hundred feet up, a lonely eagle patrolled, above Mist’s unnatural wind, apparently unconcerned with the human follies below. For an instant Bragi envied the bird its freedom and unconcern. Then...
He released a small, sharp gasp. For an instant the eagle flickered and was an eagle no longer. It became a man and winged horse far higher than he had thought, almost above visual discrimination. He turned to ask Turran’s opinion.
Turran had missed it. Everyone had. All attention was on the Gosik.
Every magick in the valley had perished.
The Gosik itself came apart like a crumbling brick building, chunks and dusts falling in a rain that masked O Shing’s tower. It bellowed louder than Mist’s thunder had done.
Turran groaned, clawed at his chest, staggered. Ragnarson stared, thinking it was his heart.
Mist screamed, a cry of pain and deprivation. She fell to her knees, beat her forehead against parapet stone.
“It’s gone,” Turran groaned. “The Power. It’s gone.”
The Queen tried to stop Mist. “Help me!” she snapped at the messengers.
Ragnarson leaned over the parapet. His wizards appeared to have gone insane. Several had collapsed. Most were flopping about like men in the throes of the falling sickness. The Thing sped round and round in a tight circle, chasing its own forked tail. Only Varthlokkur seemed unaffected, though he might have been a statue, so still was he as he stared at the Gosik of Aubochon.
Ragnarson looked up again. The eagle slid toward Maisak, to all appearances a raptor going about its business. He frowned. That old man again. Who was he? What? Not a god, but certainly a Power above any other the world knew.
Ragnarson’s companions remained unaware of any-thing but the sudden vacuum of sorcery. For Turran and Mist it was a loss beyond description, almost a theft of the soul.
V) Opening round
O Shing wasted no time. The legions moved. High on the Thing’s brew and Bragi’s quickly spread tale that western sorcery had conquered the eastern, the troops waited with renewed confidence.
Shinsan advanced behind a screen of Sir Andvbur’s infantry, the rebels more driven than leading the assault. Theirs was the task of neutralizing the traps. Theircasualties were heavy. Ragnarson’s bowmen had a tremendous stock of arrows, and easy targets.
Before the lines met, Ragnarson’s troops sprang one of their surprises. He had had the Alteans armed with javelins, a tactic unseen since Imperial times. Their shower reassured his troops of the foe’s mortality.
“Runner!” Ragnarson snapped. He sent orders to ready the second line.
“So much for being Shinsan’s ally,” Bragi muttered. Several thousand rebels, between his own and Shinsan’s lines, were being cut down by friend and foe.
Bragi’s first line held better than he had expected. He blessed the Thing.
The Alteans held the Third. The flanking legions, under merciless bombardment from Phiambolos’ and Kiriakos’ engines, had increasing difficulty maintaining formation.
The enemy commander sent Sir Andvbur to clear Seidentop. Karak Strabger he would not be able to reach unless the Alteans broke. Kimberlin’s men got entangled in nasty little battles in brushy ravines and around Phiambolos’ fortifications.
Ragnarson had his heliographers send a message. Altenkirk and a thousand Marena Dimura were hidden on the slopes east of Seidentop. They were to take the rebels and Sixth Legion in the rear. Ragnarson didn’t expect them to do more than keep the enemy off balance. What Ragnarson wanted most was to compel O Shing to commit his reserve. The First Legion, waiting patiently before their emperor’s tower, would be the key.
The first line wouldn’t compel its commitment. The Altean left had begun to waver. He ordered his archers withdrawn behind the second line. He didn’t want them lost in a sudden collapse. He then sent messages reminding his second-line commanders that under no circumstances were they to leave their positions to aid the first line.
The Alteans yielded slowly. The enemy wedged open their junction with the mercenaries. Altenkirk attacked. The fighting round Seidentop grew bloody. The Marena Dimura, high on the Thing’s brew, refused to be driven offtill they had taken terrible casualties. They, too, did better than Ragnarson had expected. They forced Sir Andvbur to abandon his assault. And they gave better than they got. Kimberlin’s troops were unable to pursue them. But in the meantime the Alteans had gotten split off the mercenaries. The commander of the Third Legion was ready to roll up both halves of the line.
Ragnarson expected the reserve legion to drive through the gap, against his second line. But no. O Shing held it.
“They’re burning the bridge,” Turran said from behind him. The man had recovered, though now he seemed a little insubstantial.
Bragi turned. Yes. Smoke rose from the pontoon. Haaken had either lost or won his part of the battle. There would be no knowing which for a long time yet. He wished he had arranged some signal. But he hadn’t wanted any false hopes raised or despair set loose.
The mercenary regiments began to crumble. Crowding Seidentop for its supporting fire, they withdrew. Prince Raithel tried to do the same, but had more difficulty. The fighting washed up the foot of the sugarloaf. Kiriakos couldn’t give him much support.
Ragnarson glanced at the sun. Only four hours of light left. If Shinsan took too long, the battle would stretch into a second day. For that he wasn’t prepared.
Clearly victorious, the legions disengaged, puzzling Ragnarson. Then he understood. O Shing would send the fresh legion against the center of the second line while the third backed off to the reserve position.
For a time the battlefield was clear. Bragi was awed by the carnage. It would be long remembered. There must have been twenty thousand bodies on the field, about evenly distributed. The majority of the enemy fallen were rebels.
Sickening. Ragnarson loathed the toe-to-toe slugfest. But there was no choice. A war of maneuver meant enemy victory.
O Shing allowed the legions an hour’s rest. Ragnarson didn’t interfere.
Before, the numbers had been slightly in the enemy’sfavor. This time they would be strongly in his. But his men would be greener, more likely to break.
Two and a half hours till sunset. If they held, but Haaken couldn’t carry out his mission, could he put anything together for the morrow?
It began anew. The First Legion drove its silent fury against Kaveliners who outnumbered it three to one. The flanking legions held Anstokin and Volstokin while strong elements of each turned on Seidentop and Karak Strabger.
The Thing’s false courage continued to work. The Kaveliners stood and continued believing their com-mander was invincible.
Ragnarson turned away after an hour. Even with the support of the most intense arrow storm Ahring could generate, Shinsan was getting the best of it.
And, redoubt by redoubt, Kiriakos and Phiambolos were being forced to yield their fortifications. By nightfall Karak Strabger would be cut off. Seidentop would be lost. Captured engines would be turned on the castle come morning.
Then he caught moving glitter at the eastern end of the marsh. It was Sir Farace and the horse, come round the marsh through the narrow strip where Haaken and Reskird had pulled a near repeat of Lake Berberich.
At first O Shing was unconcerned, perhaps thinking the column was the Captal’s returning. H ow long would it last?
A while. Long enough for Sir Farace and Blackfang to ford the Ebeler. O Shing and his Tervola were intent on the slaughter before them. Anstokin was being driven into the streets of Baxendala. The Kaveliners were being decimated, though the arrow storm was wreaking its havoc too. Volstokin was desperately trying to retain contact with Phiambolos, who had begun evacuating Seidentop. A hundred pillars of smoke rose from pyres marking abandoned engines. The main battle was lost.
“Turran.” Bragi glanced at the sun. “Can we hold till dark? Would they keep on afterwards? Or wait till dawn to finish it?”
“We can hold. But you may have to send the mercenaries and Alteans back in.”
“Right.” He sent orders to Prince Raithel to stand by.
Peering toward Sir Farace, he saw that Haaken and Reskird had brought their infantry. Blackfang had had good reason for burning the pontoon. If Sir Farace failed, there would be no one to hold the right bank. Trolledyngjans. Proud men. Fools eager, even facing incredible odds, to balance their earlier defeat at Maisak.
The knights formed hurriedly, in two long ranks. O Shing’s generals finally awakened, began to form the reserve legion facing them.
Shrieking trumpets carried over the uproar around Karak Strabger; the best knights of four kingdoms trotted toward the best infantry in the world. Haaken, Reskird, and their infantry ran at the stirrups of the second wave.
Had he known there would be no magic, Ragnarson reflected, he would have chosen a knights’ battle. It wasn’t a form of warfare with which the easterners could easily cope.
The first wave went to a canter, then a full charge, hit before the Third Legion had finished reforming.
What followed was a classic demonstration of why heavy cavalry had become the preferred shock weapon of western armies. The horsemen plowed through the enemy like heavy ships through waves, their lances shattering the front ranks, then their swords and maces smashing down from the height advantage.