searched returning faces for a sign of his prince. His mount pranced and skittered back from the overwhelming stench of blood, shying from the brutal laughter on the air.
'A message for the prince! A message for Prince Ricardo!'
A thick, choking mist of fireball smoke and spell-fog rolled across the ground. Silent within the gloom, a knot of riders materialized: three men leading a team of pages who carried a litter made of broken spears. Lolling lifeless on the stretcher was a figure armored all in gold with a helm topped off with purple plumes.
'My lord!'
The herald surged forward in alarm; he dismounted all in a rush and flung himself at his dead prince's feet.
'My liege!'
Above him, the leading cavalryman made a face of scorn.
'You'll have to speak louder than that. He's shot his bolt and gone.'
'But how?' The herald laid an astonished hand upon his prince's lifeless breast. 'Who could possibly have bested such a man in battle?'
Many possibilities sprang to mind. The Sumbrian boys chorus? The guild of circus clowns? The armored horseman almost made a contemptuous reply, then thought better of it and helped himself to some of the herald's stock of wine.
'One minute he was fighting, and the next… he was down. He must have taken a concussion on the helm.' The rider sounded too tired to make much of his prince's death. 'He slowed down, missed a parry or three, and got torn to pieces like a lamb thrown to the wolves.' The cavalryman nudged at the herald with a broken, filthy sword. 'You'll have to go and find a real man's employment for yourself from this day on.'
'You will regret this!' The herald shot to his feet, puffing up his breast in wounded pride. 'His spirit can be welded back into his body! It will cost a kingdom's ransom, but it can be done! You have delivered us his body whole-so I advise you to repent your hasty words!'
The cavalryman gazed with one cocked eyebrow at the herald's face. He then slid heavily down from his horse, leaned across the golden armor, and wrenched open the helm.
Inside the armored suit, there lay nothing but empty air.
'Like a lamb thrown to the wolves. We brought this back for his widow; the rest is out there in the mess. Perhaps you're better at identifying anatomy than I.' The horseman shoved the herald so that the boy fell backward into the mud. 'We'll have a new prince by tomorrow dawn. One who knows what to do with his army.'
The soldiers spared a glance at the sky above, where a jet-black hippogriff could be seen wheeling through the wild melee. Hoisting up the empty golden armor, the stretcher bearers trudged on into a field littered black with nameless carrion.
'Victory, my lords! Victory!' A Colletran Blade Captain, his voice hoarse from screaming in triumph with his men, rode a limping horse toward his colleagues as they stood their mounts under a sheltering tree. All across the battlefield, the crackle of spellfire and the ring of steel still filled the air, magnified by the close-pressing mountains into a deafening, blurring roar.
The newcomer sheathed his sword and swept his open helmet from his brow.
'The valley is ours! We need only make a pike assault on the pass, and we can spill down into Sumbria by nightfall!'
A disdainful, indolent air met the man's announcement; Colletro's inner circle of Blade Captains had little time for Svarezi's clique of coarse young men.
'There is no need for an assault.' An elegant courtier who looked very much like a long-faced sheep decked out in a metal skin made a studied gesture of one hand. 'Sumbria has blown the signal for a truce; they will capitulate upon our terms, surrender the valley, and a ransom. I believe the day is ours.'
'No!' The newcomer, the commander of scarcely a hundred men, furiously slammed his saddle pommel with his sword. 'Destroy their field army, and we can have it all! Sumbria is at the mercy of our blades!'
'Is that what Svarezi tells you?' A polite spatter of laughter tinkled out from the courtiers. 'Sumbria has walls, boy! Walls and catapults, moats and sorcerers. What point in battering ourselves to death against their stones?'
High above, the black hippogriff circled. The young Blade Captain tried to will Svarezi to intervene before his victory could be frittered clean away.
Far across the battlefield, the sounds of conflict stilled. Heralds met-terms were discussed. The Sumbrian prince threw in his baton and impotently accepted fate. Pleased with the results of a well-fought day, the Colletran high command ordered itself bottles of chilled wine, watched by the disbelieving eyes of their own soldiery.
The Sumbrian troops abandoned their positions, winding off into the narrow mountain pass. Soon, only the prince of Sumbria's men remained, taking the place of honor as the last division off the battlefield. Prince Mannicci gave his opponents a heavy, stiff salute, spurred down the pass, and swiftly disappeared. Behind him, his pikemen, crossbowmen, and footmen shuffled slowly backward until they crammed the narrow passageway, watching the opposing Colletrans for betrayal.
With their general once more snubbed by his peers, the Colletran troops were in no mood to attack mere Sumbrians; the entire army converged on the hillock that held their high command. The roar of battle cries seemed dim compared to the anger of the enraged soldiery.
A battered, seething mass of bloodstained men crammed itself in a vast ring about the golden nobility. Within the ranks were the weaker Blade Captains, common soldiers, and mercenaries, all joined in shouting their generals down with a roar. Men fought through to the inner circle and gave an edge to the savage screaming of the crowd.
'Victory! We want our victory!'
One courtier rose in his stirrups, drawing a deep breath to address the crowd in an actor's studied, flawless tones.
'Good soldiers, you have your victory! Sumbria has left us in possession of the field!' The man gave an authoritarian sweep of his armored hand. 'Now go! Disperse! The task of employees is to obey, and not to howl like beasts for blood!'
The answer came as a vicious, angry snarl; one of the crossbow regiments produced a gangly camp lawyer who balanced himself upon a war-horse's flyblown corpse.
'Then we abandon your employ. The contract is dissolved!' The soldier adjusted his grimy breastplate, whipping out a stained old parchment and waving it in the air. 'The Articles of Association allow us to recontract once per year! We'll hire ourselves to Svarezi or to none at all!'
'Rabble!' A Blade Captain gazed at the filthy soldier with undisguised hatred. 'Do as you're ordered, or I'll have one man in ten dragged off and flogged!'
A stone whipped out from the crowd and rebounded from the Blade Captain's helm. The noble swore and then ripped out his unbloodied sword, lunging his horse forward at a suspected enemy.
The action instantly sparked off a storm. Soldiers dragged at the courtier's stirrups; he flailed at them with his sword, then screamed as a billhook snaked out to hook behind his neck. The sharp metal blade worried furiously back and forth under the gilded gorget, tearing flesh and bone until it jerked the man free from his saddle with a scream of fear. He disappeared beneath a tidal wave of stabbing dagger blades. Led on by Svarezi's carefully prepared provocateurs, the troops stormed forward, up and over the remaining Blade Captains, and simply tore the men apart.
On a ridgeline to one side, Ugo Svarezi watched the bloody death of his erstwhile peers. Black armor sheathed with velvet seemed to absorb every last speck of sunlight; not a ripple nor a highlight sheened the man's silhouette.
The city of Colletro had spilled into his hands. Unmoved by the fruition of his plans, Svarezi turned his back on the distant carnage and consulted his sorcerers.
'Well?'
'Prince Mannicci confers with his Blade Captains at the far side of the pass.'
'And his men?'
'They now march beneath the first overhang, my lord.' A magician bent above a crystal ball, making gliding
