into skulls. Turko was yelling; but I did not hear him clearly, could see nothing in the world but the next opponent and do nothing in all Kregen but strike on. Two clansmen battered their broadswords down on my sword, and the blade slithered. I strained of myself to bring it up, and could feel no life, no response, could feel only a deadly leaden lumpiness of total fatigue. A six-inch-long sliver of steel appeared from the floor. It was grasped in a fist. It drove smartly into the left-hand Clanner and a second, precisely similar steel blade, gripped in a fist of precisely the same nature, struck the right-hand clansman. Both fell away.
Two Pachaks raged into the fight. With them, glorious in their red and yellow, men of the Sword Watch drove on. But, ahead of them, the Pachak twins, Modo and Logu Fre-Da, smashed on in defense of the Wizard of Loh to whom they had given their nikobi in all honor.
Then I let out a harsh snort of sound, a breathy explosion that might in Cottmer’s Caverns be taken for a laugh.
“What?” said Turko somewhere a million miles away.
Nodgen and Hunch pranced into the stone chamber, and Nodgen’s spear was darkly stained, and Hunch’s bill bore the marks of hard blows given and taken.
The First Sword Watch did not waste time on the clansmen. And, to be truthful, those clanners had fought heroically against sorcery. Very few other hardy warriors would have stood, let alone fought so determinedly, against wizardry like this. The 1ESW cleared out the clansmen, and arrows brought down those who sought to flee. But these four, the Pachak twins and Nodgen and Hunch, ran across toward me.
Their mouths were opening and closing and their eyes were popping and they were giving every indication of extreme animation. My viewpoint changed, and I was looking at the ceiling, with these four faces ringing the perimeter of vision. So I knew they were caring for Quienyin, all unknowing that Jak the Sturr stared through the wizard’s eyes!
In the next instant I was staring at the polished leather of Shadow’s saddle, twisting, and Turko was hauling me up, and saying, “Dray! Dray! For the sweet sake of Opaz-”
“I am all right, Turko — now. Let me see the battle.”
“Your eyes-?”
“Perfectly all right now. I will explain. Are there any of our vollers in sight?”
“Not one. I trust they are all safe.” He looked at me with all his old quizzical mockery; but he’d been shaken up, all right, no mistake about that!
All along that ravine of death the dead lay. The Tenth had stormed on with their pikes level and left nothing living in their wake. The rest of our little army, our Eighth Army, pushed on and Kapt Hangrol’s forces fled.
“They won’t come araiding over the borders again in a hurry, Dray.”
“That is what I would like to think. By Vox! But it is a melancholy sight. Pull Jiktar Brad the Berry and his Hagli Bush Irregulars out and get them to tend the wounded. Brad will understand.”
“Aye, he will. We are light on medical services.”
A battery of krahnik-drawn varters went rumbling past. They had limbered up the ballistae in record time, and the krahniks, powerful, deep-chested, full of fire, hauled with a will. They were off to try to take up new positions and harry the rout. Their darts and rocks had wrought fearful execution in that blood-soaked ravine.
Well, the aftermath of a battle is always a messy business, and we had to make sure Hangrol kept running and did not stop to try to regroup. Our little cavalry force swept out in pursuit. The Tenth Kerchuri halted and I sent word to Kervax[9]Orlon Sangar telling him of my pride in his men and my congratulations. All the units involved had done well. There would be bobs[10]aplenty in the wake of the Battle of Ovalia…
In all decency I could not leave at once. Some reassurance could be allowed in that the Sword Watch and Quienyin’s comrades had burst in to the rescue. But I vowed I wanted to know what had gone wrong over in the Northeast. By Krun, yes!
A Kerchuri of the phalanx, when arrayed in the normal formation of twelve men to a file, spreads out to cover a frontage of approximately three hundred and seventy paces. Drill movements can expand or contract this front, of course, containing as it does four hundred thirty-two pikes in each rank. The Tenth had swept up the ravine like a steel broom.
Turko and I and a few others of my officers walked slowly along the ravine. Everywhere our men were tending the wounded and carrying off the dead to be decently interred according to the rites suggested by the atras, the little amulets, the slain wore. Some of us made the usual trite observations about life and death. The scene was somber; but I did not feel — then — the chill I knew would near overwhelm me at all this waste.
I bent and picked up a shield from the phalanx. Its five-ply wooden construction was still intact, leather faced, bronze bound. The carrying strap was cinched tight; but the battle grips were broken. On the strip across the top the colors and symbols and numbers proclaimed this shield to have belonged to the Paltork — the second in command to the Relianchun — of the Sixty-fifth Relianch of the Eleventh Jodhri. In glowing yellow the stylized representation of the brumby, that long-horned, eight-legged, armored battering ram of destruction and an animal thought to be long extinct if not legendary, appeared on the face of the crimson shield. The brumby from which the brumbytes took their name was the symbol of the entire Phalanx Force. I put my finger alongside the painted symbol of the Tenth Kerchuri of the Fifth Phalanx, a Prychan grasping Thunderbolts, and I shook my head.
Yes, the Golden Prychan, the wrestlers inn, had yielded up the means to bring back Turko. But as I stared on this shield, I realized I did not know the name of the Paltork who had carried it into battle. How could I? But this seemed to me wrong. I felt I should have known his name. Tucked around the strap was a little cloth packet of cham. The Paltork no doubt chewed stoically as he marched forward; well, I fancied he would never return to claim his favorite chew. The group of officers did not dwell overlong on that depressing scene. Having made sure that everything that could be done was being done, we trailed back to camp in a heavy silence. Of our voller force, nine returned. We had lost five. The flutduins had done well and had taken minimal casualties. As the returns came in I realized the thorn-ivy ambush had worked, and worked extraordinarily well. Our casualties were exceeding light.
I took Turko and Deft-Fingered Minch and one or two others, and left the Eighth Army under the command of Orlon Sangar, with orders to recoup and to clear the area, and flew direct for the northeast. No one expressed any surprise or chagrin that I should be leaving. It was taking me some time to realize that emperors could behave in this peremptory way without causing comment. After all, every man knew the emperor’s concerns were wide, covering all of Vallia, and he was clearly needed elsewhere. We caught up with the grandly named First Army at a bleak little town of Northern Jevuldrin called Ithieursmot. Its chief claim to fame until now was a mildewed mass of ruins left over from the Sunset People. Drak lay in his camp cot in his tent and fumed and swore and was in a thoroughly bad temper.
“The wound in itself was not serious,” Quienyin told me as we stood looking down on the fractious Drak. The needlemen had worked well and Drak was in no pain. “But the prince had taken a savage knock on the head which Rendered Him Unconscious.”
Silda sat on a low stool at the cot side, holding Drak’s hand, and would not be moved. I thanked Opaz she was there, her own wound bandaged, and her ripped leathers replaced by a yellow gown. Had she not been, I think Drak would have blown up.
“Deb-Lu has explained it all to me, Father,” said Drak. “It seems I owe my life to you.”
“As to that, it is Deb-Lu-Quienyin in whose debt we both stand. And, Quienyin, you know my thanks is yours — aye! And I do not forget all we said in the Desolate Waste, and the Moder and the Humped Land. It is all coming together, now.”
“Did I tell you,” said the Wizard of Loh, “what your pair of rogues, Hunch and Nodgen said when they were apprised who you were?”
“I am not sure I wish to know that.”
Drak looked suspiciously at me. He had not seen me smile overmuch when his mother was not present. As to the fracas in the stone chamber, Drak had brought on a battle with superior forces, which was why he had been unable to spare me very many, in the complete conviction that Seg would come up with the Second Army. Seg had done so; but a flash flood had delayed his arrival by three burs. In that time Drak’s army had fought devotedly, but a wing of clansmen had broken through. What I had witnessed had been the last dying attempt on the clansmen’s part to slay the Prince Majister of Vallia before their whole force was broken and driven off. Seg’s arrival and Quienyin’s wizardry had saved us, and now the Second Army was hot-foot thrusting the minions of Zankov, cavalry, infantry, and air, farther north. The Hawkwas, a most savage bunch who were now devoted to the Emperor of
