“Sound the withdrawal!” he snapped finally.
Dayr signaled to his trumpeters, and a trio of heralds raised their brass instruments and brayed out the command to retreat. Immediately the men at the edge of the grove turned and raced toward the ford. Others broke from the shelter of the trees, coming down the road, converging from the right and left on the narrow ford.
“Dammit! They’re panicking, running like fools!” snapped the emperor. He put the heels to his horse and, with Dayr trailing behind, galloped down the hill.
There were a dozen companies clumped together on the near side of the river, waiting to cross, and they scattered out of the way of their enraged commander. Jaymes drew up his horse at the edge of the river, even as a hundred men splashed into the shallow flow. Fleeing, stumbling, falling, and choking, they clawed their way toward the safety of the south bank.
Jaymes pulled back his reins, and the roan reared. He brandished Giantsmiter; the blue flames that crackled on his legendary blade were visible even in the bright sunlight. The panicked men hesitated at the sight of their lord on his rearing horse.
“Hold your formations!” he shouted. “Remember your training!”
Some of the men responded, while others continued to flail through the water. More arrows showered from the woods, felling more soldiers. Even though Jaymes used the flat of his blade to slap at the first of the wretches to crawl up the near bank, he couldn’t stem the tide. The officers and commanders shouted themselves hoarse, trying to organize a proper withdrawal. The men of the New City, new to battle as well, did not listen.
The enemy captain-Jaymes fleetingly wondered if it was Lord Kerrigan’s son-saw his opportunity, and hurled forward his line of pikemen. The pikemen poured out the apple grove, their long weapons prodding at the disorganized retreat. Vainly, the Palanthian officers shouted and cursed, trying to get the ranks to wheel and face the deadly threat to their rear.
It was Dayr who saw what had to be done. He barked out commands to a large troop of longbowmen, who had been holding their position on the near side of the stream. Immediately they commenced a shower of arrows, which arced over the heads of the retreating soldiers, falling among the advancing Vingaard pikes. Quickly the pikemen halted their pursuit, withdrawing into the safety of the trees, as the weary and bedraggled attackers slogged through the stream and collapsed on the south bank of Apple Creek.
Jaymes rode his horse back and forth before the shamed, defeated men. Scorn dripped from his voice as he addressed them in loud, angry terms. “You men fought like you’d never heard the horn of battle before! I won’t fault you for failing to break a line-but to run like whipped curs at the first call of retreat? I would never have expected it, nor would I believe it if I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes.”
“Forgive us, my lord!” cried one commander, standing amid the seated, soggy ranks. “Let us try again. We’ll carry the line of these traitors-or die trying!”
A few of the soldiers raised a cheer at his brave statement, but most kept their eyes on the ground, humiliated and shaken. Jaymes spoke sternly. “You’ll have the chance to fight again. When you do, this shame will be scourged. Until then, you will all live with the memory of your failure-and you will not march with the rest of my army, but stay behind to lick your wounds and ponder your failure.”
Some of the men wept, others shouted in protest, but he ignored them all as he spun his horse and rode back to General Dayr. “We’re going to have to march down the road and take the bridge after all. I’ll leave these men here so the enemy will have to worry about another crossing-but I want the rest of the army on the march within the hour.”
“I’ve got them ready now, my lord. These hills along the stream should conceal us for the first few miles, so perhaps we can surprise them by our decisiveness and speed.”
“All right,” Jaymes replied. He looked again at the ranks of defeated, soaking men near the ford, his eyes narrowing with displeasure. He stared for a moment then shook his head and put his knees to his horse, ready to join the march column on the road.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At first, Ankhar was enchanted with the ogre wench he had claimed as his prize from the two arguing chieftains. Pond-Lily had many natural charms: the swelling cheeks that gave her face such a fetching roundness, the twin globes of her immense breasts, the sturdy, admirable muscles of her hamlike legs. She was a pretty little blossom, a change of pace from the emerald-green wilderness.
But after a month of sampling the delights of Pond-Lily’s physical attributes, he was forced to realize her name was a pretty fair estimation of her intelligence and conversational abilities.
In fact, he thought as he glowered into the dying coals of his campfire, there might be swamp flowers out there that had more personality, and more intelligence, than his current hut-mate. That was probably why he was still sitting and sulking, long after most of the village had gone to sleep, reluctant to seek the comfort of his own sleeping pallet.
With a sigh, the hulking half-giant got to his feet, pushing himself off of his log with both hands. He couldn’t help but notice the bulge of his gut, and he flushed with embarrassment when he thought of the trim physique that had carried him through his great war campaigns.
“Once I was master of half of Solamnia,” he declared aloud, as if amazed by the realization. “Now I am a master of the swamp and of a wench who is a pond-lily by any name.”
“How would you like a return to the power you once held-or to reach even greater heights?”
The question was whispered so softly that the half-giant whirled around, growling, ready to smite whoever had dared to sneak up on him and mock him. But no one could be seen.
“Who speaks to me?” he growled, his tiny eyes glaring from their fat-enfolded sockets as he stared into the darkness. “Who is there?”
A man-or at least, he thought it was man, based on size and shape-emerged from the darkness at the edge of the trees. The stranger was cloaked from head to toe in black, including a gauzy mask that utterly concealed his face. Most surprisingly of all, he approached the looming half-giant without any obvious display of fear.
“How dare you!” spat Ankhar, starting to take a step toward the interloper, to smite him with, at the very least, a powerful blow from the back of his hand. Surprisingly, however, the half-giant’s booted feet remained frozen in place, as if he had stepped into soft mire that had suddenly congealed around him. He stared in amazement as the man approached casually and took a seat on a log very near to the one where Ankhar had been sitting.
Abruptly, Ankhar’s feet came unstuck, and he stumbled, realizing that a magic spell must have gripped him for a moment. The man who had cast the spell had obviously released him from its thrall-so the interloper had to be regarded with suspicion, but also with a wary respect. The dark-cloaked man settled himself down and waited for a few moments until Ankhar, almost unconsciously, came back to the fire and sat down nearby his strange visitor. The half-giant’s anger had dissipated in the face of his visitor’s cool self-confidence, and he found himself more curious than angry.
“Who are you?” he asked
“Ask your mother-she will know me at once,” replied the man, his tone somehow courteous even though he had refused to answer the question. Somehow, his calm certainty only made Ankhar more uneasy.
“My mother sleeps-the hour is late. Tell me yourself,” he insisted.
Instead, the mysterious visitor said, “This is a nice village,” his masked face turning this way and that as he took in the crude huts, the wooden palisade, the muddy central square. Again, his tone was innocuous, even pleasant, but the half-giant felt himself bristling.
“It is nice enough for my needs,” he declared guardedly.
“But is it secure enough to hold your treasure? The vast wealth your armies took from Garnet and Thelgaard and other places of Solamnia? Don’t you worry that some army will come and batter down your palisade, make off with your cherished hoard?”
Ankhar growled, a deep, menacing sound by any measure, though the black-clad visitor seemed hardly to notice. And in truth, there was little vitriol behind the chieftain’s noisy bluster. Again, his curiosity was stronger
