riders. More screamed as they fell out of their saddles with arrows sticking out of them. But they were brave men. They kept charging up toward the archers, with the Galdan light infantry running behind them.
In truth, they were no match, man for man, with the Meshian archers, who now laid down their bows and drew their swords. But they were many, and our archers were few. Now the Galdan horse came pouring around the ends of the stake fence, as with a stream splitting in two. The archers met them with flashing kalamas; steel ran red as my countrymen slashed upward at the Galdans who were trying to stick their lances into them. My knights and I pounded closer, up the grassy slope from the north. Both Galdans and Meshians were dying by the tens and twenties — but more Meshians, for the light infantry had finally forced their way through the fence and were falling upon the archers with shield and spear. In front of us loomed a mob of men screaming and shouting out challenges as they hacked and stabbed at each other. Fifty yards only separated us from them. And then suddenly we were upon them, and the world narrowed into a corridor of rearing horses, red lance points and Galdans in their flimsy leather armor throwing themselves at me.
Within the first minute, I lost my lance through the ribs and back-bone of one of these. I drew Alkadur then, and my sword's silver gelstei gave me the strength to bear the agony that ripped through me. I swung this bright blade, once, twice, thrice — and three Galdans fell dead or dying to the ground. Maram fought to my right, working his lance against two horsemen opposing him. I heard him bellow out: 'Come! Come! Test your lances against Five-Horned Marant?' He stabbed one of his enemies through the face just as the lance of the other took him in the chest. But the point crunched against the diamonds of Maram's armor, and failed to penetrate. Maram pulled his lance out of the first horseman's cheek and thrust it through the other's groin. So it went ail around me, with Sar Vikan and our company of knights. Many of these had drawn their kalamas. and they slashed through the Galdan's armor as if it was paper. Founts of blood sprayed out into the air. The ground began to thicken with hacked limbs, torn bodies and men crying out as they held their hands over their necks or bleeding bellies.
Then a horn blared, signaling the Galdans to retreat. Many of them, however, had already broken; they cast aside their shields and ran back down the hill. Some of the archers pursued them and buried their kalamas in their backs. The Galdan horse fled in better order, and more quickly. I was tempted to ride after them, all the way down to the village and around the wing of Morjin's entire army. But the captain of the archers called for a halt just as I became aware of a new crisis in the middle of the battlefield.
'Lord Valashu!' the captain cried out. He was a tall man with a sharp nose and chin like the crags of a mountain. He stood grasping his dripping sword as he said to me, 'Where did
All around us the surviving archers were sheathing their swords and taking up their bows again. Sar Vikan and Maram, with our knights, formed up on the side of the hill behind me.
'You seemed hard-pressed,' I said to the captain. I did not want to tell him or his archers that their king had been slain.
'Hard-pressed and worse,' he said. He wore in his silver ring the three diamonds of a master knight, and I suddenly remembered that his name was Sar Yulmar. 'We might have died to a man keeping the Galdans front coming behind your brother's knights.'
At the base of the hill only twenty five yards away, the knights at the very edge of Asaru's command were battling against the Ikurians a broad-faced, thickset people from the central plateau of Sakai. Farther down the line of this mass of snorting horses and shouting men, two hundred yards to the east, I caught sight of a swan and stars blazing bright silver in the fierce morning light. Asaru sat on top of his gray stallion slashing his sword against two enemy knights in front of him. He, too, was hard-pressed, as were his hundreds of knights. I wanted desperately to ride down to them, to find Yarashan and join him in fighting to Asaru's side so that we might turn back the flood of these skilled and relentless Ikurians. But then Sar Vikan called to me, and pointed farther east, at the center of the Meshian line.
'Lord Valashu!' he said. 'They're about to break!'
The massed ranks of the Dragon Guard and the Blues, I saw, with phalanxes of mercenaries to either side of them, had pushed deeply into Lord Tanu's and Lord Tomavar's battalions. Our whole line, from Lord Avijan's command in the east to Asaru's knights, had now bent so far backward that it was near to buckling. It was like a long, curved wall of diamonds holding back a flood of steel. In several places only a single rank of warriors kept the enemy from breaking through.
I glanced behind me, taking the measure of the knights in our company. Maybe seven of a hundred and fifty had fallen. I looked back toward the center of our line. Somewhere, in all this fury of swords hacking apart shields and men dying, Mandru led a company of warriors in Lord Tomavar's battalion, as did Jonathay in Lord Tanu's.
'Back!' I shouted to Sar Vikan and the knights behind me. 'Back to the center!'
We rode down the hill too quickly and then burst into a full gallop as we pounded across a mile and a quarter of grass. We came up behind the center of the Meshian line just as Lord Eldru's reserve battalion came forward. But Lord Eldru no longer commanded it. He had finally weakened and fallen from an arrow that had pierced his neck in the first minutes of the battle. Sar Jessu had replaced him. He was a thickset, serious, master knight whose bushy black eyebrows were set with determination.
'Hold, Sar Jessu!' I called to him.
'Hold?' he called back. He stood facing me at the front of twelve hundred men formed up into three neat ranks.
'Wait!' I called to him.
'Wait?' he shouted. 'Our line is about to break!'
Ahead of us the Meshian line was like a bow bending nearly double under the pressure of attack. And as it bent, the Meshian warriors worked quickly to extend the line, and thin it, to two ranks and then only one.
'Lord Eldru ordered us forward!' Sar Jessu shouted. 'And I'm ordering you to hold!'
Horns sounded from hundreds of yards away back toward the Clear Brook. We still had enough height above the two armies to see the entire reserve of Galdan light infantry, in their thousands, pouring across the stream and marching forward toward the battlefront at double-pace.
'The enemy are too many!' Sar Jessu shouted. 'Don't you see! Don't you see!'
I saw the Dragon Guard, like a great red hammer, pounding at our very center. Next to them stood the hideous Blues, whose naked bodies had been stained with the juice of the kirque plant from head to toe. They howled and cursed as they swung their axes through our shields and chopped down our warriors by the dozen. To their sides, the mercenaries and Galdan heavy infantry, sensing victory, threw themselves forward against our bowing line, which forced them up against the Dragon Guard. Behind them, the Galdan light infantry had abandoned all sense and good order in their lust to rush forward and take part in the kill.
'Lord Valashu!'
I stared out at the diamond warriors in our line, which now looked more like a gigantic V than a line. I saw, in my mind's-eye, the funnel-shaped walls of the escarpment at Shurkar's Notch where my knights and I had fought Duke Malatam. I gripped my sword as my heart beat like an axe against my breastbone.
'When the line breaks,' I said to Sar Jessu, 'then we shall go forward!'
Now the Galdan light infantry came up behind the Dragon Guard and the mercenaries, and pressed their backs. The Guard fought furiously to cut down the thin wall of warriors who stood before them. Then the Meshian line, at the joint of the V between Lord Tanu's and Lord Tomavar's battalions, suddenly broke. The Dragon Guard, with the frenzied Blues, screamed out in bloodlust as they smelled victory. The whole center of Morjin's army fell mad with a rage to rush through this hole and destroy us. They threw themselves forward, no longer ranks of well- drilled warriors, but a great mob of murderous men.
'Sar Jessu!' I cried out. 'Forward to fill up the break!'
I turned to Sar Vikan and shouted to him and our knights: 'Cut down anyone coming behind our lines! Now! Attack!'
With Maram and Sar Vikan beside me, I galloped forward. The Meshian warriors at the mouth of the break were fighting with the last of their strength to keep the Dragon Guard and the Blues from streaming through and falling upon their rear. One of these warriors was Mandru. His shield, it seemed, had long since been hacked apart or riddled with spears and cast away. I watched in horror as he thrust his kalama through the throat of a red- armored warrior at the same moment that a great, squat Blue came up behind him with his bloody axe. He swung it down upon Mandru's helm, splitting apart steel, bone and brains. And so the fiercest of my brothers died before he
