The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales (39 page)

             
"I shall never see you again!" she wailed. "I know Charsela meant you will be slain!"

             
"Oh, come, love. She did not say so, and we all have our time—"

             
"Nonsense!
That is one of those ph
il
osophers' arguments, sounding impressive and meaning nothing. I love you to madness and cannot give you up. You know I am no blushing
virgin, but never have I known a man so to stir me
…

             
He gave her passion for passion, but stubbornly refused even to defer his sailing for a day or two. She was still asleep when he stole from the palace with Ryn before dawn. As the Zhyskan galley creaked and crawled out of Sederado Harbor, Vakar leaned on the after rail, staring somberly back at the graceful city, pink in the sunrise. Ryn at his elbow said:

             
"Cheer up, my boy. Just think of me; you may have loved and lost, but with my hump I never—"

             
"Shut your mouth, you old fool! No, I don't really mean that. But if I'm killed on this expedition I'll haunt you to your urn."

-

             
At the grim craggy walls of Mneset, Vakar reined up as the guards crossed their halberds and said: "I'm Prince Vakar! Let me through, fools!"

             
"What's that?" said one of the guards. "Everybody knows Prince Vakar went a-travelling over the earth and fell off
the
edge."

             
"He
do
look something like the prince," said the other. "Who can identify you, sir?"

             
"Oh, hells!" growled Vakar.

             
He had ridden on ahead of Ryn in his impatience to learn how things went in Lorsk, and now he had to sit his panting mount until Ryn's chariot rattled up. Then the guards were profuse with apologies to which Vakar paid little heed as he spurred for the castle.

             
The first person of rank he met there was the chamberlain, whom he asked: "Where is everybody? Where are my father and brother?"

             
"The king lies sick, sir, and Prince Kuros has gone to the Bay of Kort with the army."

             
Vakar went quickly to his father's chambers. King Zhabutir lay on his bed, surrounded by servants and adherents and looking blankly up. Vakar pushed through them and said:

             
"Hail, Father."

             
The king's eyes looked out of their sunken sockets. He said faint
l
y:

             
"Oh, Vakar.
Where did you come from, dear boy? Have you been away? I haven't seen you lately."

             
Vakar exchanged glances with the people who crowded the room, and it seemed to him that they looked at him with pity. The king continued:

             
"How did you get that scar on your face, son?
Cut yourself shaving?"

             
Then Ryn came in and steered Vakar out by his elbow. The old wizard said:

             
"He's been like this for a month, gradually sinking until now he seldom talks sense."

             
"Shouldn't I stay until
he
either mends or dies?"

             
"Nay.
He might go any time and again he might last months more, while the army fights the Gorgons. We must set out for the Bay of Kort now, trusting to luck he'll still be alive when we return."

             
"Shouldn't I stop to sacrifice to Lyr and Okma, then, for bringing me through so many perils?"

             
"Not now. After all this time they can wait a few days."

             
Vakar went to his chambers feeling shaken, for though he had never been very close to his father the loss of a near relative is sobering. He armed himself with his jazerine cuirass of gilded bronze scales, his second-best helmet (not the solid gold one, which was too soft) and a bronze shield like that he had started his journey with. He kept the sword of star-metal, which in odd moments he had honed down to razor sharpness. Then he and Ryn set out for the Bay of Kort, where the Gorgonian fleet was expected.

-

             
Four days later they reached the pass through the hills around the bay, where from a bend in the road they could see the who
le bay and the crescent of flatl
and between it and the hills spread out below like a dinner-plate. The cool autumnal wind whipped their cloaks. In the foreground lay the Lorskan camp.

             
"Lyr's barnacles!" cried Vakar.

             
The Gorgon fleet was already drawn up along the beach
in a line miles
long, hundreds of vessels great and small with sails furled, oars shipped, and bows resting on the strand. The Gorgonian army had disembarked and was drawing up in a great rectangular mass, in regular ranks with big wood-an
d
-leather shields and helms in exact alignment, bristling with spears, while clumps of archers gathered on the flanks. Over each unit floated its vexilla, hanging from a gilded cross-yard.

             
A half-mile inland from the Gorgonian array, the forces of Lorsk were strung out in loose aggregations, each group comprising the followers of some lord or high officer.

             
"The damned fool!" croaked Ryn. "He told me he meant to attack while they were disembarking! A good enough plan, but it's gone somehow awry. Having failed to catch them with their kilts wet, he should withdraw into the hills to ambush and block them, meanwhile harrassing them with cavalry, of which they have none. On the plain that Gorgonian meat-grinder will make short work of our gallant individualists."

             
"We have an advantage of numbers.
"

             
"
That'll avail us little. The headstrong fool
...
"

             
"
Perhaps he's planned it that way," said Vakar, and told Ryn of the words of the dying Sol.

             
"Ye gods!
Why haven't you told me before?
"

             
"
I left Mneset in such a rush I had no time, and so much happened later that it slipped my mind."

             
Ryn muttered something about the dynasty's ending in a fitter of halfwits,
then
said: "Let's get on to the battle."

             
"It'll take us an hour," said Vakar, but started his horse down the slope. Ryn's chariot bumped behind.

             
As Vakar rode he saw the course of the battle like a game played on a table-top. The shrill Lorskan trumpets rang out and the horsemen and light chariots moved out to harrass the foe, dashing up to within a few feet of them to discharge bows or cast javelins,
then
wheeling away. A few such skirmishers swirled around the ends of the Gorgonian line, but the archers drove them off with flights of bone-tipped arrows.

             
Others galloped towards the ships drawn up along the beach beyond the ends of the Gorgonian army. As they came, these ships pushed off. Vakar saw the Lorskans catch one still beached. There was a scurrying of little figures and a twinkle of weapons in the sunlight, and then smoke rose from the ship as the Lorskans set it afire.

             
Now the deeper tones of the Gorgonian trumpets answered those of Lorsk. Vakar saw a ripple of motion go through the Gorgonian array as the phalanx began to advance. The Lorskan chariots and horses bolted back through the gaps in their own force to the rear, and the towering kilted Lorskan foot-soldiers loped forward under their bison banners, yelling and whirling their weapons.

             
Then Vakar could see clearly no more, for he had reached the level of the plain. Now the battle was a dark writhing line of figures on the horizon, the plan and progress of the bat
tl
e being hidden from view by the backs of the rearmost Lorskans and by the clouds of dust that now arose.

             
"I halt here I" called Ryn. "I'll cast a few spells; you go on and see what you can do."

             
Vakar rode forward, skirting the Lorskan camp whence camp-followers yelled unintelligibly at him. The roar of bat
tl
e strengthened until he could make out individual shrieks. Behind the main battle-front the Lorskan cavalry and chariotry stood awaiting orders. As Vakar approached he glimpsed the faces of foot-soldiers, first a few, then here, there, and everywhere. That meant that they were facing the wrong way—were running away. Had the
battle
been lost already?

             
The fleeing foot zigzagged between the horses and chariots and ran past Vakar through the grass towards the hills: first one or two, then hundreds, most without weapons.
Now the cavalry and chariots too began to move retrograde, sweeping past Vakar and overtaking and passing the infantry.
Once Vakar glimpsed his brother Kuros, riding rearwards with the rest.
Kuros would naturally be among the first to flee, knowing that his men would soon follow his
example and that his secret pact with King Zeluud would thereby be carried out. It was a full-fledged rout.

             
Vakar caught one foot-soldier by his crest. The chin-strap kept the helmet from coming off, and the jerk nearly broke the man's neck.

             
"What's happened?" roared Vakar into the dazed man's face.

             
"Magic!" gasped the man. "They had creatures like great lizards in front of their line, and as we closed with them the lizards hissed at us and our men fell as if struck by thunderbolts. Let me go! What can mere men do against such magic?"

             
Vakar released the man, who resumed his flight. The bulk of the Lorskan army had now swept past Vakar, who almost wept with rage. Never in the memory of man had the proud men of Lorsk suffered such a disgraceful defeat. After the Lorskans came the Gorgons under their swaying octopus banners, the sun gleaming on their cuirasses. Most of them had dropped their heavy shields of wood and bull's hide to run faster after their foes. In their pursuit they had abandoned their rigid rectilinear formation so that they now surged forward in a great irregular and scattered mass. From his height Vakar could see over the heads of the Gorgons the bodies of thousands of Lorskans lying stiff and stark in the grass. Off to his right King Zeluud stood in the Gorgons' only chariot, trotting at the head of his men.

             
Vakar drew his sword and put his horse towards one of the gaps in the Gorgonian line. The Gorgons stared at the single horseman hurling himself into their midst. One or two took a few steps in Vakar's direction, but he went past them like a whirlwind. A plumed Gorgonian helmet appeared in front of him. The Gorgon swung a batt
l
e-ax, but before he could strike, Vakar drove his sword into the man's face. He felt the crunch of thin bones and wrenched his point out as the man fell. Then he was through the hostile array and pulled up to look around.

             
Back towards the hills he now saw the backs of the Gorgon mass, still running after the Lorskans. Their officers urged them on with hoarse shouts; nobody bothered with the lone horseman whose mount had evidently gone mad and carried him willy-nilly through the army.