descended again with a crash, and the monster bellowed as the darkness encircled it.
Verminaard shouted again, held the dripping mace aloft, then steered the black stallion toward the rise, toward the ogres, and toward his father. Caught up in the blind rush, the roaring swirl of the mace, and the chaos of fire and noise, Judyth whistled shrilly, and the mare followed Orlog, picking her way over the few remaining spots of unburned ground.
Now the ogres loomed before them, hulking, ash-covered shapes lurching from the smoke, their weapons raised as they charged toward the rattled party. Judyth had heard the stories the knights told back in Solamnia- how the monsters strayed out of the mountains, ravaging livestock, caravans, occasional drowsy villages. One of them, it was said, was a fighting match for five men, ten of them for a whole company of knights.
But here on the plain there were twenty… thirty… forty against a mere eight men.
She looked toward the castle, where yet another score advanced, beating their breasts and roaring, pummeling the ground with stone, axe, and club.
There were far and away too many. It was a massacre in the making.
Judyth brought the mare to a struggling halt twenty yards from the gathering monsters as two ogres, rushing out from the smoke, closed ground rapidly, their stony teeth chattering in fury. Aglaca leapt from the saddle as the girl grabbed vainly for his arm. He twisted through the air like a cyclone, shouting and kicking out at the nearest ogre, who toppled forward, choking from a crushing blow to its windpipe. Aglaca hurdled onto the shoulders of the other ogre, a big fellow with a club the size of a fence rail, who swatted at him vainly, like a bear fending off a darting wasp. And then Aglaca slammed an elbow to the side of the monster's baffled face and sprang back for the saddle while the ogre staggered and dropped to its knees, its head and shoulder in a new and grotesque arrangement.
'Judyth! Ride toward those three!' Aglaca shouted, pointing toward a trio of ogres in the gathering smoke.
Judyth did not stop to question. With a shrill whistle and a slap of the reins against the mare's withers, she goaded the willing little beast to a gallop.
The ogres were caught unaware. The smallest raised its club and bellowed, but Aglaca was plunging from the saddle before the weapon descended, his sinewy arms wrapped about the creature's wrist, his weight pulling the thing over backward. The ogre reeled, teetered, then suddenly, surprisingly, flew through the air, as the young
Solamnic tossed it over his shoulder with a levering move he had learned from L'Indasha Yman. Crashing into its two oncoming companions, who fell dazed to the hard, fire-blackened earth, the monster roared, grunted, and lay still.
'Take the horse, Judyth!' Aglaca shouted. 'Ride for the castle! They're bound for Daeghrefn. Perhaps we can hold them off until-'
'It'll be too late!' she protested. '
Aglaca nodded. 'All the more reason to stand with the soldiers,' he declared calmly.
She stared down at him, reached for him, tried to speak.
Then overhead, a dark shape eclipsed the white moon, and the plains themselves shadowed for a breath. Judyth paled.
'Don't look up!' she shouted at Aglaca, shielding his eyes with her hand. In front of them, Verminaard, the ogres, and the horsemen from Nidus stared into the night sky, where the dragon swooped and vanished in smoke and cloud. A long moment passed.
'Wh-what was that?' Aglaca asked, still holding her gaze.
'I'm not sure,' Judyth replied, 'but I know we shouldn't look on it directly.'
'But look now,' Aglaca said. 'What, in the name of Pal-adine…'
Most of the ogres were scattering in panic, lumbering toward the foothills or toward the fire itself, covering their heads, grunting and shrieking. The others stood still in fear, like a circle of stones around the frozen riders of Nidus.
All were still except Verminaard. He reeled for a moment with Dragonawe, then righted himself in the saddle, clutching Orlog's mane until the dizziness passed. Then he raised his mace and brought it thundering down onto the head of a panic-stricken ogre, and a black wind muffled the screams of the dying monster.
Verminaard swung again, shouting wildly, as a passing ogre, a large one, ducked, dodging the blow. The creature lunged at the mace-wielding rider and passed through the whirl of darkness that followed the weapon's arc through the air. At once, the ogre fell to its knees, clutching its eyes, then groped and gibbered as it crawled toward the fire wall and vanished into the white-hot flames.
Slapping the mace excitedly against his broad thigh, Verminaard guided his horse through the dazed monsters and rode to the side of the Lord of Nidus.
'Lord Daeghrefn?' he called, tugging on the scorched sleeve. 'Father?'
Daeghrefn stared blankly at the northern sky.
Propped against a sturdy young vallenwood in the foothills, Robert had watched the plains below through the swirl of smoke and moonlight. By the red light of Lunitari, his eyes had followed Verminaard's path through the ogres to Daeghrefn, the mace-wielder untouched by the scattering ogres. And as the druidess set and splinted Robert's shattered leg, the seneschal had seen the new battle begin, the moon darken and the deepest of shadows pass over the battlefield.
She had told him to close his eyes then, and he had done so. But still he felt a breathless, sweating dizziness, overwhelming nausea, and the sudden, brief impulse to run.
Indeed, he would have run, had his leg allowed it, the rough old seneschal thought bitterly.
'What was that shadow, Lady?' he muttered, but the druidess shook her head. Her auburn hair shimmered in the faint moonlight, and for a moment, Robert was again breathless.
'Not yet,' she cautioned. 'The world is not yet ready to see it, nor even to hear again the stories and rumors.'
'But it… it laid out half of 'em!' the seneschal protested. 'Put most of the ogres to flight! What in the-'
''Tis the Awe, if my guess is right,' L'Indasha Yman explained cryptically. 'The creature inspires the Awe in most mortals. They break, panic-stricken, for safety, or else they are frozen dead.'
'Then Daeghrefn's boy must be a god,' Robert replied in perplexity. 'Not that I ever fancied him one. But did you see how he didn't run? Didn't freeze? Why, he stood alone against it!'
'He's no god,' L'Indasha replied with an ironic smile, 'but that mace he carries will give him illusions of it.'
Robert lowered himself painfully to the ground, lifting his battered leg onto the litter the druidess had fashioned of vines and fallen limbs. 'He had illusions to begin with, Lady. Right curious ones, of runes and hocus- pocus.'
The druidess laughed softly, musically. 'Rest now, loyal Robert. You have earned this brief holiday.'
'We need help here, Verminaard,' Aglaca insisted. Come down from your horse and help us lift Tangaard.'
Judyth and Aglaca struggled with the dazed cavalryman, a man noted in his company for strength and bulk. Between the two of them, they had scarcely the strength to lift the enormous soldier to his feet, much less to hoist him over aiiorse's back.
The others, however, were ready to be carried into Nidus. Daeghrefn and his surviving soldiers lay draped across the saddles of their horses, and Aglaca's wondrous little mare, still shaking from the shadows across Solinari, was pawing the earth, ready to guide the lot of them into Nidus.
'Verminaard?' Aglaca called again, but the lad sat astride Orlog, staring out at the fading fire as though he, too, had been paralyzed by something in its depths. 'Verminaard!'
Verminaard turned, regarding Aglaca with a wild, exuberant stare.
'Help?' he asked, his strong hands shaking on the stallion's reins. 'Oh, rest assured I'll help, Aglaca. While you take them into the castle, I shall cover our escape.'
'Cover our… I don't understand.'
'Quickly, Aglaca,' Judyth urged. 'Before the ogres waken.'
She glanced nervously at the circle of monsters. Nine ogres remained after the darkening of the moon and the panic and flight of their comrades. Stunned by the Dra-gonawe, they lay stiff and scattered like tomb effigies in the
