something about that particular passion, they had fallen in love – sticky, sweet, gooey love – and had become hopelessly mired in emotion. They lapsed now entirely into unintelligible baby talk.
'Do you know,' Fost declared, 'I liked you both better when you fought all the time?'
'How could you take that seriously, Fost?' Erimenes shook his head in pity for his friend's ignorance. 'That was but gentle teasing. From the first sweet moment we met, we both knew that it was love.'
'Isn't he poetic?' Ziore sighed to no one in particular. 'No.' Fost rose and pulled on his gauntlets. Moriana pointed to a dark form high above. 'Ch'rri's signalling,' she said. 'The Zr'gsz skyrafts have taken to the air.
Fost shuddered, remembering Ch'rri and her lover, her dead, dismembered lover.
'At least the damned City's not with them. Nor the Demon.' Where City and Demon were, they didn't know. Moriana was blocked from directly scrying her lost Sky City, but her perceptions did tell her that it and its resident demon floated somewhere to the southeast. It was little enough that they wouldn't have to match strength with Istu. Yet.
'I'd best mount up,' Fost said, eyeing his war dog. He was not happy about riding into battle on the back of a dog. He managed to stay aboard one – and that was about all. But the fact remained no one in the Imperial Army took orders from any unmounted commander. Even the border men were peculiar that way.
After banging his head against the wall of noble obduracy and class pride, Fost had resigned himself from any direct role in the conduct of the battle. He knew he lacked the experience to be a field officer commanding vast armies of men, yet his choice still nagged him because few of the Imperial nobles and swaggering regular army officers had more experience than he. Fost had settled for command over Moriana's own guard, a unit of volunteers. To Moriana's surprise, the men from the Marches had joined her personal unit in large numbers, some of the veterans from the fiasco at Chanobit Creek. And even a hundred lancers from Harmis, domain of her lost lover and champion Darl Rhadaman, had joined the unit.
Moriana's unit had a vital role to play. They were to ensure that Moriana could work her magics in safety during battle. They were to keep out of the thick of fighting off on the left flank. That was fine with Fost. He had little taste for battle. Personal combat, yes, man to man, face to face. He savored that, sometimes. But not the wholesale butchery promised this day. That sickened and scared him.
A line of skyrafts appeared above the Zr'gsz army and floated silently forward. Fost swung into his saddle and waited.
Responding listlessly to the insistent notes of their officers' whistles and the lead-tipped cudgels of their sergeants, the conscript spearmen shuffled forward. The Zr'gsz moved toward them in a wedge, black massed ranks of low caste spearmen and slingers in the center. Higher caste Hissers rode giant lurching lizards on the trailing flanks. The wind shifted and brought a rank reptilian smell wafting across the Imperial lines. Dogs began an excited barking.
The first wave of skyrafts swooped toward the Medurimin ranks. Arrows sleeted down. Screams of agony and shocked surprise rose, spectrally thin at this distance. Moriana bit her lip. Her biggest concern was choosing the precise moment to use her magic. She had only so much strength and she had to marshal it against the moment of crisis, of greatest tactical need. She looked left and right along the bluffs, checking the preparations she'd made. All seemed in order, but the time for magic wasn't yet. 'It's hard to let those men die,' said Ziore quietly.
'My only consolation is knowing they trade their lives so future generations of humanity will be free of the Hissers. And Istu.'
Trying to psych his mount into believing he was both calm and in command, Fost looked to Oracle and asked, 'How're you doing?'
'Well, I think. Magister Banshau himself is overseeing the balance of nutrients in my pool.' There was a spot of light against the darkness – or Dark, as Fost thought with a thrill of horror. Despite the Hisser spear in his belly, Banshau lived and would recover. There are worse armors than several inches of flab.
The skyrafts rained down a continuous storm of arrows on the Imperial foot soldiers. Already, the ill-dressed lines began to waver, though the Medurimin had not yet come to grips with the foe. 'Poor bastards,' Fost said with feeling.
Moriana's fingers itched with the need to hurl spells, to smash the Hissers who fought from the smug safety of their skystone rafts. But she knew she had to conserve her strength.
The borderland archers had opened on the flitting rafts. The Zr'gsz craft were slower and less maneuverable than Sky City eagles. Many shafts found their marks. Small, twisting shapes began to fall among the ranks of spearmen.
Deep thrums punctuated by tocking sounds announced that the Imperial catapults had joined battle. A big skyraft suddenly slewed in air, spilling dozens of occupants to their deaths. The shot had probably been loosed by one of the crews of refugee Estil artillerists Fost had bribed away from Ortil Onsulomulo. They were superlative with their missile engines, though the Imperial crews were far from poor.
The lines of foot soldiers met. A clash of arms and clamor of voices went up. Fost thought it impressive, but Moriana found it almost anticlimactic. It was wholly unlike the rending clash with which her knights and Grassland allies had met at Chanobit.
Almost at once, the Imperial infantry began to be pushed back. Moriana's muscles started winding themselves into knots.
'Commit your cavalry, damn you!' she shouted at the enemy commander.
But the Zr'gsz general, whoever he was – Zak'zar? – was much too canny. He knew that to approach the Imperial cavalry too closely with his own mounted troops would trigger a charge. Haughtily disdainful of their border reserves, the knights would never think of charging in support of their own infantry. So the Vridzish held his mounted men back as long as possible, his infantry chopping up the footsoldiers unmolested by the knights.
'I see it,' Oracle murmured. 'If the Zr'gsz cavalry were not closing on the flanks, the knights would charge the foot soldiers. The lizard riders are bait of a sort, aren't they?'
'Of a negative sort, yes,' Fost said sourly. 'Shrewd of you to see it.' His mouth twisted. 'Shrewd of that damned serpent to think of it.'
It began as a tiny ripple along the line of conscript spearmen.
Men in the front rank turned in fear from the flashing stone-edged weapons of the Hissers. Poorly armored, they still had the advantage over the Zr'gsz, who wore none at all. But it would take men much better motivated to face the inhuman speed and ferocity of the Zr'gsz. The first rank turned and shoved back in panic on the men behind, who resisted and then sought flight themselves. In moments, the whole formation was beginning to erode like a dirt clod dropped into a fast-running stream.
A squadron of Imperial cavalry surged forward on the far right flank. Fost saw a black chalice on a white pennon at the fore and smiled grimly. Foedan led his Kolnith knights into Zr'gsz lines, knowing his fellows would have to cover him against a countercharge of Hisser cavalry. No sooner had the Kolnithin driven deep into the body of the Vridzish foot soldiers than the Imperial knights and the Zr'gsz lizard riders charged one another.
Moriana had seen the giant lizards the Hissers rode before, sprawling green monsters with a crest of long yellow spines running down their backs. Not even she had seen them in full charge. Awesome as the full charge of the Northern heavy cavalry was, the lizards' charge was even more awesome. The whip-tailed monsters raised their bloated bodies off the ground and sprinted with legs at full extension. Six thousand dog riders met fewer than half as many Zr'gsz, but the Hissers' lizard mounts gave them the edge in height and speed. At first contact, the Imperial squadrons on the right flank reeled and fell in confusion, while on the left the Hissers were brought to a halt. As the resounding surf-boom of the collision died, the battle degenerated into swirling melee, Zr'gsz and humans hacking one another with axe, mace and sword. Triangular lizard heads darted to snap knights from their mounts and crush them in sawtoothed jaws; dogs grabbed wattled throats of the dragons and clung, tearing out huge gobbets of flesh.
'Strike!' Moriana commanded, raising her arm. For hundreds of yards along the buffs, pageboys struck padded hammers against brass gongs. The Imperial treasurer winced at the expense of gongs and ridiculed them as an extravagance. But Moriana had got her way; the gongs were the most lethal weapon.
The reverberation of hundreds of gongs filled the air, dampening even the mad tumult of battle. Moriana closed her eyes and concentrated all her energy, her being, her very soul, on modulating the booming waves of sound.
With Ziore to help draw the memory from the depths of her mind, and Oracle to analyze the memories, Moriana had been able to determine the exact pitch which the undying toad creature Ullapag had used to induce
