together the grand illusion of their careers.
They began by re-creating the ghost of the Company they had used in that forest up north, where we captured the bandits, I think both for sentimental reasons and because it was easier to do something they had done before. They brought them out in front of the army, behind me and Lady and the standard. Then I ordered the elephants brought forward and spread them on a broad front, each supported by ten of our best and most bloodthirsty soldiers. It looked like we had a horde of the beasts because their numbers had been tripled by illusion. I assumed the Shadowmaster would see through the illusions. But so what? His men would not, and it was them I wanted to panic. By the time they knew the truth it would be too late.
Cross your fingers, Croaker.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” Lady said.
The cavalry withdrew, and just in time. The Shadow-master had begun to express his ire. I gripped Lady’s hand a moment. We leaned together and whispered those three words that everybody gets embarrassed saying in public. Silly old fart me, I felt weird saying them to an audience of one. Elegies for youth lost, when I could say them to anyone and mean it with all my heart and soul for an hour.
“All right, Murgen. Let’s do it.” Lady and I raised pur flaming swords. The legions began to chant, “Taglios! Taglios!” And my phantom brigade began its advance.
Showmanship. All those elephants would have scared the crap out of me if I’d been over on the other side.
Where the hell did I ever get the idea a general was supposed to lead from the front? Fewer than a thousand of us going to whip up on fifteen thousand of them?...
Arrows came to greet us. They did no harm to the illusions. They slid off the real elephants. They bounced off Murgen, Goblin, One-Eye, Lady, and me because we were sheltered by protective spells. Hopefully, our opponents would be unsettled by our invulnerability.
I signalled for an increase in speed. The enemy front began to shudder in anticipation of the impact of all those elephants. Formations started to dissolve.
About time for the Shadowmaster to do something.
I slowed down. The elephants rumbled past, trumpeting, gaining speed, and in a moment all swerving to rush straight at the Shadowmaster.
A hell of an investment just to take out one guy.
He realized the object of the assault while the elephants were still a hundred yards from him. They were going to converge and trample right over him.
He cut loose with every spell he had ready. For ten seconds it seemed like the skies were collapsing and the earth being racked. Elephants and parts of elephants flew around like children’s toys.
The whole enemy front was in disarray now. I heard the signals ordering the cavalry forward again, ordering the infantry to advance.
The surviving elephants rolled over the spot where the Shadowmaster floated.
A trunk seized him and tossed him thirty feet into the air, flailing and tumbling. He fell between massive grey flanks, screamed, flew upward again, possibly under his own power. A flock of arrows darted at him as the soldiers following the elephants used him for target practice. Some got through to him. He kept spinning off spells like a fireworks show, but they seemed purely reflex.
I laughed and closed in. We had the bastard and all his children. My record as a general was going to stay unblemished.
Murgen was there when the Shadowmaster flipped into the sky for the third time. He skewered the sonofabitch with his lance when he came down.
The Shadowmaster screamed. Gods, did he scream. He flailed around like a bug impaled on a needle. His weight carried him down the shaft of the lance till he hung up on the crosspiece that supports the standard.
Murgen struggled to keep the lance upright and get out of the press. Our boys were his worst enemies. Everybody with a bow kept sniping away at the Shadowmaster.
I spurred my mount forward, got beside Murgen and helped him carry our trophy away.
That bastard wasn’t spinning off any spells now.
The advancing legions roared their Taglios chant twice as loud.
Otto and Hagpp smashed into the confusion in front of Mogaba’s legion. There wasn’t quite as much confusion as I’d hoped. The enemy soldiers had realized they’d been snookered, though they had not yet gotten into formation again.
They absorbed the elephant charge and the cavalry charge both, taking heavy casualties, but they seemed to have given up the idea of running. Hagop and Otto pulled away before the legions arrived, but the elephants continued to be mixed in with the foe. Just as well. They were beyond control. They had been pricked by enough darts and spearheads and swords to go mad with pain. They no longer cared who they stomped.
I yelled at Murgen, “Let’s get this over on that mound where everybody can see that we got him.” One of the mounds that dot the plain was about a hundred yards away.
We struggled through the oncoming infantry, climbed the mound, faced the fighting. It took both of us to keep the standard upright, what with all the kicking and screaming and carrying on the Shadowmaster was doing.
It was a good move tactically, carrying him up there. His boys could see they’d lost their big weapon at a time when they were getting their asses kicked already, and mine could see they didn’t have to worry about him anymore. They went to work figuring on getting it over with in time for lunch break. Hagop and Otto took the bit in their mouth and circled around the enemy right to get at them from behind.
I cursed them. I did not want them so far away. But the thing was beyond control now.
Strategically, our move was not the best. The boys in the encampment got a whiff of onrushing disaster and decided they’d damned well better do something.
Out they came in a mob, their own gimp Shadow-master floating in front, slipping and sliding around drunkenly but getting off a couple of killer spells that rattled the armed prisoners.
Cletus and his brothers opened fire from the wall and pounded Shadowmaster number two around, cut him a little, and got him so pissed he stopped everything and turned on them with a spell that blew them and all their engines right off the wall. Then he led his mob on out, looking to cause the rest of us just as much grief.
His bunch never did get into a formation, and neither did the prisoners, really, so that turned into a sort of barroom brawl with swords real quick.
The boys at the west gate slid out and hit the camp from behind and got over the wall easily. They went to work on the wounded and camp guards and whoever else got in their way, but their success did not affect the bigger show. The men from the camp just kept after the rest of us.
I had to do something.
“Let’s get this thing planted somehow,” I told Murgen. I looked out across the chaos before I dismounted. I could not see Lady anywhere. My heart crawled into my throat.
The earth of that mound was soft and moist. Grunting and straining, the two of us were able to force the butt of the lance in deep enough that it would stand by itself, rocking whenever the Shadowmaster had a wriggling, screaming fit.
The attack from the flank made progress against the prisoners. Some of the fainthearted ran for the nearest city gate, joining fellows who had not bothered to come out. Ochiba tried to extend and rotate part of his line to face the onslaught, with limited success. Sindawe’s less disciplined outfit had begun to disintegrate in their eagerness to hasten the demise of the enemies they faced. They were unaware of the threat from the right. Only Mogaba had maintained discipline and unit integrity. If I’d had half a brain, I’d have flip-flopped his legion with Ochiba’s before we started this. Out where he was now he wasn’t much use. Killing off the entire enemy right wing, sure, but not keeping everything else from falling apart.
I had a bad feeling it was going sour.
“I don’t know what to do, Murgen.”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do now, Croaker. Except cross your fingers and play it out.”
Fireworks spewed over in Ochiba’s area. For a while they were so ferocious I thought they might halt the coming collapse there. Goblin and One-Eye were on the job. But the crippled Shadowmaster managed to quiet them down.
