town and its garrison will be the anvil.”
Hasos shook his head. “The risk is too great. We’ll lose too many.”
“Not if we do it right. Besides, Tchazzar doesn’t want to stay on the defensive. He doesn’t want to fend off the Great Bone Wyrm now, let it go at that, and have to do it all over again in a couple of years. The plan is to push north and make Threskel a part of Chessenta again. If I were you, I’d pack my kit.”
The giants had killed or driven back the dragonborn who’d dared to confront them on Black Ash Plain. The fighting had all moved inside Tymanther, in the fertile fields and patches of woodland south of Djerad Thymar.
A bat rider had spotted one of the raiding parties slaughtering people, pigs, and cattle. By good luck or ill, the scout had then found Medrash’s patrol within easy reach of the foe. As the paladin studied the terrain ahead for some sign of the enemy, he ran over Khouryn’s training in his mind. Even though his people considered him an expert warrior, he’d had to go through the exercises with everyone else because he’d never fought with a lance on horseback either. In fact, he still hadn’t-not in a real combat, not with his life on the line.
He wished Khouryn were there, but the dwarf was busy schooling other fighters. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that Torm the True was always with him.
But that reflection came with a measure of shame. Because he knew he’d failed the god of heroes repeatedly, even if others didn’t see it that way. His efforts to catch the Green Hand murderers had destroyed the alliance between Chessenta and Tymanther. And, commanding the first company that Clan Daardendrien fielded against the giants, he’d led his kinsfolk to disaster.
He had to do better this time. Had to. Even if the giants were not capable of actually conquering Tymanther- and that no longer seemed like such a preposterous possibility-somebody had to prove that it wasn’t only adherents of the Platinum Cadre who could defeat them. Otherwise, in their desperation, more and more of his people would embrace the cult’s vile, dragon-loving creed, corrupting themselves in the process.
“Look!” a rider said, pointing.
Medrash turned his head. A white dog lay half hidden in the grass with the rear part of its body more or less smashed flat. Somehow it was still alive, whimpering, its chest expanding and contracting rapidly.
“Put the poor beast out of its misery,” Medrash said. A rider dismounted, kneeled beside the dog, stroked its head and murmured to it for a moment, then slipped a knife between its ribs.
Medrash surveyed his comrades and saw the same mixture of determination and doubt he felt within himself. As leader, it was his responsibility to do something about the latter.
“All right,” he said, infusing his voice with the power to encourage and persuade that was one of the Loyal Fury’s gifts to his champions, “we’re obviously close, so let’s get ready. Let’s go give the brutes a surprise. Keep your heads, remember your lessons, and we’ll crush them.”
Some of the riders nodded or growled their agreement. Then they all pulled their lances from the tubular sheaths the saddlers had added to their tack. They placed the weapons on the rests, angling them upward for the time being. Inwardly, Medrash winced to see how clumsily some warriors still handled the long spears. But he didn’t let it show in his outward demeanor.
They walked their horses to the top of a rise. The gentle slope on the other side led down to a cluster of low huts adjacent to a cherry orchard. The trees were just beginning to flower.
The bodies of dragonborn lay scattered and in some cases dismembered on the ground. One corpse dangled from a wall, pinned there by an enormous flint axe. Each twice as tall as the average Tymantheran, hairless, gray- skinned ash giants were roasting an ox on a spit. Evidently too hungry to wait till their supper cooked, others yanked and gobbled handfuls of raw meat from a fallen plow horse.
Even before the current highly successful invasion, they’d always possessed their share of cunning. So it didn’t surprise Medrash that they had a sentry posted. The huge barbarian bellowed something in his own guttural language. His fellows oriented on the patrol, then moved to take up their weapons.
They were doing so reasonably quickly too, but not with frantic haste. Probably because they knew how dragonborn cavalry customarily fought. They dismounted, made sure their mounts would be there when they needed them again, then advanced on foot.
Medrash grinned and shouted, “Walk!” The patrol started their horses forward, slowly for the first few paces.
Some of the giants faltered and stared.
“Trot!” Medrash called. The riders in turn spoke to their steeds, or touched them with their spurs, and the animals accelerated.
A couple of giants were still frozen in surprise. Others were scrambling to get ready. One bawled, “Shangbok!”
Medrash wondered if that was somebody’s name. “Canter!” he yelled. Once again the riders urged their horses to go faster. “Lances!” Two and three at a time, the weapons swung down to parallel the ground.
By then the enemy was close enough for Medrash to clearly discern the sunken, pitch-black eyes in their long, gaunt faces. Then suddenly one horse, evidently realizing its rider had no intention of veering off, panicked. It turned of its own volition, and in so doing, plunged toward the steed and rider on its right.
Medrash flinched in anticipation of the impending collision. But somehow the rider who still had control swung around the other and drove on.
Medrash looked right and left and saw that only the one horse had balked. The mages’ charms were working on the rest.
Which didn’t mean everything was perfect. The line had gotten ragged. It wasn’t the moving wall Khouryn recommended. Nor did the riders have the open ground that would best have served their purposes. The huts and various pens broke up the space.
Still, he felt a sudden surge of confidence that the tactics would actually work. “Gallop!” he roared. “Kill the brutes!”
The giant directly in front of him whirled a sling. Sensing more than truly seeing the fist-sized stone hurtling at his head, Medrash raised his shield. The missile hit it with a crack, hard enough to jolt and sting his arm.
He hastily lowered his shield again so he could see. The lance still didn’t hit the spot he was aiming at, but at least it punched into his huge foe’s shoulder. In so doing, it nearly heaved Medrash out of the saddle. But he was bracing himself in the posture Khouryn had taught him, and that, combined with the high cantle of his newly altered saddle, held him in place.
The lance tore free in a shower of blood. The giant staggered, and Medrash plunged onward. At that moment, it would have been impossible for a human knight to make a follow-up attack. He was too close to his foe for a jab with the lance and had no time to drop it and ready a shorter weapon.
But Medrash had a weapon he didn’t need to ready, and so he used the tactic Khouryn had recommended for when a lance thrust failed to neutralize its target. He sucked in a deep breath, then spat bright, crackling lightning at the giant’s head.
His horse carried him by before he could see how much damage he’d done. As soon as he could arrest the animal’s forward momentum, he wheeled it around. Carnage spun past his eyes.
A giant with jagged black streaks of war paint supported himself on one hand and both knees. There was a broken lance stuck all the way into his belly and several inches out his back. Despite his size, his screams were shrill.
Another hulking barbarian swatted a lance out of line, then plucked the lancer out of the saddle. He gripped the dragonborn’s shoulder with one massive hand, seized his head with the other, and wrenched it off. Blood sprayed from the stump.
A horse repeatedly reared and hammered its front hooves down on a fallen giant, who writhed beneath the punishment but seemed capable of nothing more. The dragonborn on the animal’s back had lost his lance and uselessly brandished a war hammer. He wasn’t sufficiently adept at mounted combat to lean out of the saddle and land a blow. Fortunately, it didn’t look like the horse needed the help.
Another lancer missed. As he passed by his foe, the giant lunged after him, stone club raised for a blow that would at the very least dash him from the saddle. But another dragonborn rode at the barbarian’s back and speared him between the shoulders. Like Medrash, the rider had plainly finished his initial pass and turned his mount, because the animal wasn’t moving very fast. Still, the stab staggered the giant, and his intended victim galloped beyond his reach.
