with horn, drum, and signal flags. He watched the plumed Mumbazans flow around him to fill the plain below, a flood of bronze and flesh.
The commanders were quiet. Tyro had determined to lead the northern cohort of three hundred men, but Tsoti bade him wait until the greater mass of the host was in position. Tyro sat patiently on his warhorse, eyeing the orderly rows of military splendor that would soon become a pit of seething, bleeding chaos. Lyrilan sat in silence near D’zan, his disciplined steed gnawing at the scrub-grass. D’zan spurred his own mount and it trotted toward the High General where he consulted with the six Adjutants. A flock of ravens from some distant grove scattered into the sky.
“General!” called D’zan. “Let me ride forth between the hosts before the battle. Let me fly the standard of my father before Yaskathan eyes. When they see me alive, some of them may join us.”
“Too risky,” said the general. “Stay on this high ground, Prince, where arrow and spear cannot reach you. It would not do to win back your throne and have you killed in the process. You must fight this war like a King, D’zan… not a foot soldier.”
D’zan watched Yaskathan banners flapping in the breeze; they rose at regular intervals from the massed ranks of silver and crimson. Tsoti spoke with wisdom, yet his heart could not bear doing nothing while others fought for him. What kind of King would he be if he did such a thing? He sat brooding in his saddle when Tyro and the six Adjutants rode down the slope and took their places among the legions. Tyro’s ns. Tyrocohort guarded the southern flank.
Now there stood only Tsoti, D’zan, and Lyrilan upon the ridge, and a few mail-shirted servants bearing horn, flag, and flask. Well behind the ridge two legions of spearmen and a legion of cavalry lay in reserve. “Let them think we are weaker in forces,” Tsoti had explained. “Never show your enemy everything.” Although perhaps enemy scouts had already counted their exact numbers.
D’zan shifted in his saddle.
It was true that he must live through this to claim his throne. Yet he must do something now, or he would never be worthy of it.
He spurred his horse, galloping down into the corridor between the central formations. He ignored the shouting of the High General behind him, and the desperate voice of Lyrilan calling after him. If he would be a King, he must act like a King.
Riding at full speed he broke past the front cavalry lines and entered the no-man’s-land between the two hosts. Grass and sod flew from his stallion’s hooves as he pulled forth the Stone’s great blade. He hoisted it toward the sky with his right arm. Alone, he rode toward the gleaming wall of Yaskathan soldiery, the emblem on their round shields also blazing on his chest.
In the heavy calm he reined his horse a short distance from the silver-crimson front line. In the shadows of symmetrical helms, ten thousand eyes blinked at his approach. A High General in armor of burnished plate sat upon a black charger at the line’s center. D’zan could not recognize the man through the closed visor of his silver helm. A black cloak billowed from the commander’s metal shoulders, and the legions sat restless and attentive at his back.
D’zan stood high in his stirrups, the greatsword’s blade casting sunlight across their eyes, and he shouted: “I am D’zan, Son of Trimesqua, returned to claim what is mine by right of blood! You need not serve the tyrant usurper! Come across and join your King! I am D’zan! Rightful King of Yaskatha!”
He galloped north along the line and doubled back, riding south now and shouting his message twice more. A nervous mumbling grew among the Yaskathan ranks. Like a soft wind it began, gathering strength and volume, spreading from the vanguard toward the heart of the host.
The Yaskathan High General raised his right hand, sheathed in a bright gauntlet. In an instant an unnatural and pervasive silence fell across his legions. His black steed walked forward as if to treat with D’zan, and diamonds glittered along its mailed caparison. D’zan reined again to face him, and the general pulled up his visor.
D’zan nearly fell from his horse. The gaunt face of Elhathym stared at him from within the silver helm. The eyes were black without luster, as if they devoured the sunlight. He smiled and revealed white teeth, and D’zan thought of a lizard’s smile before it devours its prey.
“Prince D’zan, the long-lost heir,” Elhathym greeted him. “Welcome back. Many times I have tried to bring you hence, yet you resisted every one of my invitations. It pleases me that you have come now of your own will instead. Now you may accept your inheritance… by joining your ancestors in death.” A metallic note rang loudly as hg loudlye drew from his side a greatsword of black iron with a hilt of blazing silver. The sound of it wavered in the air above the hosts, so that every man on the plain heard it like the peal of some mystic gong.
It was like a clarion of thunder that begins a dreadful storm. War-horns sounded from both hosts. Legions of archers let their volleys fly. As the sky turned black beneath a rain of criss-crossing bolts, Elhathym’s blade crashed against D’zan’s sword. The shock of the blow traveled through D’zan’s body, rattling his bones. He gritted his teeth against the pain. There was far more than human strength in Elhathym’s arms; it was the strength of sorcery that drove his iron. D’zan turned his two-handed parry into a clever thrust, but Elhathym’s silver breastplate turned away his blade. The sorcerer laughed and hacked at him. D’zan ducked beneath the killing arc.
Their horses spun in a circle as the blades clanged between them. D’zan breathed through gritted teeth while Elhathym laughed, his mouth a feral grin. The sound of arrows raining down upon upturned shields hung over their battle. Then both sides launched a second volley, and metal rang like a million drums.
Now the great cavalries charged. The Yaskathans galloped past D’zan and Elhathym, speeding to engage the Mumbazans in the center of the plain. The thunder of hooves rocked the earth and the odor of torn grass filled D’zan’s nostrils. A fresh shock along his blade knocked him from the saddle. He landed on his back in the mud and pulped grass. His horse squealed as Elhathym hewed it down with a single stroke. It nearly fell on top of him, but he rolled away. The rushing hooves of a Yaskathan cavalryman almost brained him, but instinct jerked him backward. When D’zan regained his feet, Elhathym had dismounted as well. The clanging of bronze on bronze and the cries of men killing and dying joined the thunder-song of the horses’ hooves. The field was a swirling chaos of spear, shield, and sword.
D’zan faced Elhathym in the eye of this mad hurricane.
He raised the Stone’s blade high and brought it down on Elhathym’s head. The sorcerer’s blade was there to catch it, fast as lightning, and suddenly D’zan knew he could not win this duel. He had trained hard, but not for long enough. He had grown strong, but was not mighty. He had defied the wisdom of General Tsoti and now was beyond hope. He parried another strike from Elhathym’s blade and screamed his guttural fury. Words were long gone; there was only the sound of his anger, tempered by despair.
Elhathym laughed and drove the point of his blade through D’zan’s mail, a bolt of lightning through his heart. D’zan stood motionless for a single moment that seemed an eternity, impaled on the cold metal. It burned through his breast and burst from his back. The cold spread throughout his body, and his arms fell limp. They were useless things, hanging at his side like pieces of meat, but his right hand refused to let go of the sword hilt he had clutched so tightly for so many nights. The point of the greatsword lodged in the mire at his feet.
Elhathym drew back his elbow, and his black blade exited D’zan’s body. The sorcerer’s eyes blazed, twin stars of triumph swimming in dark lakes of malice.
D’zan’s chin fell upon his breast, and he watched the crimson flow of his lifeblood spilling to the earth, staining his black-and-silver mail to gleaming red. leaming Then he fell, face down in the muck at Elhathym’s feet. His eyes somehow still functioned, and he saw clearly the silvered iron of the sorcerer’s boots as one of them rose to his shoulder, flipping him onto his back. The cacophony of battle, the shrieks of wounded men and horses, the ringing of bloodied metal… all these things faded from his ears.
“Now, Prince of Yaskatha,” said Elhathym, staring down at him. The world faded to eternal night and silence, but his words echoed with clarity. “Time for you to embrace your destiny, as you always wished. Rise now, D’zan, Son of Trimesqua, and lead your armies to victory over the Mumbazans. Your living soul I cast off like a heavy chain, Your bones and flesh now belong to me. Rise up and serve your King…”
In the mute darkness, D’zan rose away from blood and dirt and pain. He was no longer even cold. Elhathym’s words faded. Something called him onward through the dark, toward a constellation of lights… a glimmering fog into which he fell with a great sense of contentment.
Why had his futile struggle been so important? Flesh and bone were such unimportant things… transitive… dancing dusts in a wind that blew forever. Now he rode that wind, and the memory of who he was and all he cherished began to fade, as the light and noise of the world had faded already.
