reasoned. As I said, they are instinctive. If we live through this you will learn much.”
“Do you think we will?” asked Orases.
“If we are strong,” lied Delnar smoothly, surprised at himself.
The Panthians came again at dawn, creeping up through the pass as the Drenai waited, swords drawn. But they did not attack. Under the bewildered eyes of the defenders, they hauled away the bodies of their comrades.
It was a bizarre scene. Delnar ordered the Drenai back twenty paces to make room for the work, and the warriors waited. Delnar sheathed his sword and moved alongside Druss in the front line.
“What do you think?”
“I think they’re preparing the ground for chariots,” said Druss.
“Horses will never attack a solid line. They’ll pull up short,” the Earl pointed out.
“Take a look yonder,” muttered the axeman.
On the far side of the stream, the Ventrian army had parted, making way for the gleaming bronze chariots of the Tantrians. With their huge wheels bearing sickle blades, serrated and deadly, each chariot was drawn by two horses and manned by a driver and a spear carrier.
For an hour the clearing of bodies continued, while the chariots formed a line in the valley below. As the Panthians withdrew, Delnar ordered forward thirty men carrying the wicker shields retrieved from the battle the day before. The shields were spread in a line across the pass and doused with lantern oil.
Delnar placed his hand on Druss’s shoulder. “Take the line fifty paces forward, beyond the shields. When they attack, break formation left and right and make for the cover of the rocks. Once they are through we will fire the shields. Hopefully that will stop them. The second rank will engage the chariots while your line holds the following infantry.”
“Sounds good,” said Druss.
“If it doesn’t work we won’t try it again,” said Delnar.
Druss grinned.
Along the line of chariots the drivers were pulling silken hoods over the eyes of the horses. Druss led his two hundred men forward, hurdling the wall of wicker shields, Diagoras, Certak and Archytas beside him.
The thunder of hooves on the valley floor echoed through the crags as two hundred charioteers whipped their horses into the gallop.
With the chariots almost upon them Druss bellowed the order to break ranks. As men raced to the safety of the mountain walls on either side, the enemy thundered on towards the second line. Flaming torches were flung upon the wall of oil-soaked wicker shields. Black smoke billowed instantly, followed by dancing flames. The breeze carried the smoke towards the east, burning the flaring nostrils of the hooded horses. Whinnying their terror, they tried to turn, ignoring the biting whips of the charioteers.
Instantly all was confusion. The second line of chariots tore into the first, horses falling, vehicles overturning, hurling screaming men to the jagged rocks.
And into the milling chaos leapt the Drenai, hurdling the dying flames to fall upon the Ventrian spearmen, whose lances were useless at such close quarters.
Gorben, from his vantage point a half-mile away, ordered a legion of infantry into the fray.
Druss and the two hundred Drenai swordsmen re-formed across the pass, locking shields against the new attack, presenting a glittering wall of blades to the silver-armoured infantry.
Crushing the skull of one man and gutting a second, Druss stepped back, casting a lightning glance to left and right.
The line held.
More Drenai fell in this attack than on the previous day, but their numbers were few compared with the losses suffered by the Ventrians.
Only a handful of chariots burst back through the Drenai front line, there to crash and cut a path through their own infantry in their desire to be free of the pass.
Hour upon bloody hour the battle continued, savagely fought by both sides, with no thought of quarter.
The silver-clad Ventrian infantry continued to press their attack, but by dusk their efforts lacked conviction and weight.
Furious, Gorben ordered their general forward into the pass.
“Lead them hard, or you’ll beg to be allowed to die,” he promised.
The general’s body fell within the hour, and the infantry slunk back across the stream in the gathering gloom of twilight.
Ignoring the dancing troupe performing before him, Gorben lay back on the silk-covered couch, conversing in low tones with Bodasen. The Emperor wore full battle-dress, and behind him stood the massively muscled Panthian bodyguard who for the last five years had been Gorben’s executioner. He killed with his hands, sometimes by strangling his victims slowly, at other times gouging his thumbs through the eye sockets of the hapless prisoners. All executions were performed before the Emperor, and scarcely a week passed without such a grisly scene.
The Panthian had once killed a man by crushing his skull between his hands, to the applause of Gorben and his courtiers.
Bodasen was sickened by it all, but he was caught within a web of his own making. Through the years, naked ambition had driven him to the heights of power. He now commanded the Immortals and was, under Gorben, the most powerful man in Ventria. But the position was perilous. Gorben’s paranoia was such that few of his generals survived for long, and Bodasen had begun to feel the Emperor’s eyes upon him.
