gleamed. Golden sunlight fell about the horsemen, promising heat later in the day. Lord Breyhard removed his helmet, already sweating. His slightly paunchy frame and prematurely graying hair made him look older than his thirty years. Standing in the stirrups, he craned his neck in as wide an arc as his armor would permit. “Where are the damned lizards?” he growled. Fifty hordes were poised behind him on the rich flatlands of the Dalti’s floodplain, ready to sweep forward at his command. Three days ago they’d crossed the river after a brisk fight. Since then, no sign of the bakali army had been found. Another fifty-eight thousand warriors waited on the opposite shore. They were to cross the river and take the enemy in the flank-once the enemy was discovered.
“Send word to General Crumont,” Breyhard ordered his nearest aide. Crumont commanded the fifty-eight hordes on the other shore. “Tell him to head south to Traveler’s Cove, and begin his crossing at once. He will establish a bridgehead and remain there until I summon him.”
The aide saluted with his dagger and put spurs to his horse. Another warrior moved forward to take his place. Breyhard addressed him.
“Vintox, lead the Red Hawk and Solin Star hordes on a sweep of the countryside north and east of here. The enemy must be there. Find them.”
Breyhard had reasoned, not poorly, that the bakali would withdraw to rougher, more wooded ground. If imperial horsemen could catch the slower-moving enemy foot soldiers in the open, the bakali would find themselves at a disadvantage. He was certain the bakali had retreated to the pine hills northeast of the river bottoms.
Vintox departed, and another warrior guided his horse forward to his general’s side, but Breyhard looked around. He wanted someone else.
“Where’s Casselron? Where’s the wizard?”
A man in late middle age, his blond hair pulled back in a rough queue, rode slowly through the press of burly warriors. Casselron the White Robe, looking saddle-sore and wan, hoarsely hailed his commander.
“Find the enemy,” Breyhard snapped.
The wizard rubbed his chin. Spending so much time in the saddle did not allow him to keep to his usual standards of grooming. He grimaced at the feel of his unshaven face, and at the situation in which he found himself. A wearer of the esteemed White Robe should not be traveling in the company of such ignorant warriors, required to perform spells like a market fair entertainer, but this was his mistress Winath’s notion of how to please the emperor.
Casselron pulled his attention back to the matter at hand.
“As you command, my lord, but-” Breyhard’s eyes narrowed, and Casselron made his voice as deferential as possible. “General, I remind you that divination has consistently failed to locate the bakali since their entry into Ergothian territory.”
Like most Riders, Breyhard had a distrust of magic and those who wielded it, no matter which creed they followed. “So, your skills are inferior to the lizard-men’s,” he scoffed. “I’ve said it all along.”
Casselron flushed but wouldn’t be baited into an argument. It would be pointless. He promised to do his utmost and departed. Like its rider, his horse was unaccustomed to the rugged life of a warrior. At a shambling trot, the animal carried the wizard a few paces away to open ground.
At home, in the Tower of High Sorcery, Casselron would have employed a full invocation before a polished pan of sacred oil, calling upon Manthus, Corij, and Draco Paladin to reveal the enemy to his eyes. Here, on a damp hilltop leagues from any city, he was forced to improvise.
He turned his back on the troop of anxious, yet arrogant warriors surrounding Lord Breyhard. From a leather sheath on his saddle, he drew his staff. The wooden stave was some two paces in length, topped by a golden dragon’s claw. The claw gripped an opaque white disk slightly larger than Casselron’s palm. Lips moving silently, Casselron gazed into the white disk.
His vision pierced the milky surface. Distance melted away and flowed past his probing gaze. Leagues flashed by-north, east, and south. He saw farms, emptied and abandoned, roads clogged with overturned carts, fields devoid of activity. Unlike the rampaging nomads, the bakali didn’t slaughter and loot indiscriminately, but their advance across Ergoth had driven common folk from hearth and home into the walled cities, where they waited for the emperor’s hordes to subdue the invaders, making it safe for them to return home again.
But Casselron saw no lizard-men. The farther he looked, the fewer signs he saw of the bakali’s passage. They must be close.
Something touched the wizard’s consciousness as he roamed over field and farm. It was a fleeting sensation, as though a shadow had crossed the sunlight of his vision.
Casselron was one of the best scryers in Daltigoth-he’d been chosen to accompany Lord Breyhard for that reason-and this delicate contact alerted him at once. The bakali were provided with magic of their own! It cloaked their movements and befuddled every attempt by Ergothian mages to use their powers against the invaders. Such protection did not require an army of powerful sorcerers. One dedicated practitioner, if skillful enough, could block all prying eyes.
This was Casselron’s theory, at any rate: a single adept mage was assisting the bakali. The mage could be a rogue wizard with an axe to grind against the empire, like Mandes, or a forester shaman of unusual skill, a heathen priest, even a Silvanesti. The gods alone knew what mischief elves were capable of.
Abruptly, Casselron found himself face to face and mind to mind with the other. The confrontation happened so suddenly it had to be a deliberate revelation.
“You!” Casselron cried, utterly astonished. Gray eyes, curly, sand-colored hair-he knew this face!
A sharp blow to his chest ended Casselron’s vision. He looked down. An arrow protruded from his chest. That wasn’t right-
Lord Breyhard saw the White Robe topple slowly from his saddle. Breyhard fumed. Weakling! The fool had fainted before providing any useful information!
A hail of arrows showed Breyhard he was wrong. Horses reared as missiles struck home. Warriors fell to the ground, arrows in faces or shoulders. Someone shouted, “Ambush! Ambush!”
As the shafts fell around him, Breyhard called for his own bowmen. “Get those spawn of snakes!” he roared.
A contingent of Seascapers from the far west rode forward, short bows ready. The arrows had come from a copse of trees atop a nearby low hill. The gray-green bakali were hard to spot among the leafy branches, but a few Seascaper arrows found their targets. With shrill cries, injured lizard-men plummeted from their perches.
“If any of those live, I want them!” Breyhard ordered.
Warriors around him drew sabers and spurred forward to sweep up the fallen. They hadn’t ridden ten steps before noise erupted behind them. From the hilltop, Breyhard could see a melee breaking out on the floodplain. Fully armed bakali had sprung up out of nowhere among the idle troops.
The general bellowed, “Cornet, sound formation!”
The boy put his brass horn to his lips. An arrow in the back knocked him forward over his saddle, but the young Ergothian bravely managed to sound the horn, relaying his commander’s order, before he succumbed.
The bakali had buried themselves in the soft black loam of the river bottoms. Apparently, they could go without air for an amazing length of time. So utterly still had they lain, the Ergothians had rode right over them, ignorant of the danger beneath their feet.
More lizard-men were appearing every moment. Brawny, scaly, stained with dirt, they uttered high-pitched screeches as they raised high their axes and swords. They cut at the legs of the Ergothians’ horses, and when the riders were thrown down, three or four lizard-men would fall upon them and hack them to bits. Blood and soil mixed to make a dark and fearful clay.
The Ergothians tried to sort themselves into the usual fighting formation, but the enemy was among them, all around them, shrieking, slashing. Breyhard could not rally his confused, frantic men. He allowed himself another moment to curse the vile beasts he faced, then drew his saber.
It was not the sort of battle the Ergothians were accustomed to. There were no lines, no maneuvering, no great, sweeping charges. Fifty thousand Ergothians, more or less stationary on horseback, had been surprised by at least an equal number of bakali. A vast, formless brawl ensued as both sides fought to the death. Swords clashed, spears thrust, blood flowed. Men and horses screamed as they perished, and bakali keened their strange, shrill cries. Unhorsed soldiers, filthy from the same black earth that had hidden the bakali, continued to fight on foot. In the awful confusion, sometimes man fought man and lizard slew lizard. It was every warrior for himself.
Gradually, Ergothians gathered on the strand, pushed to the edge of the river by the great mass of lizard-
