the field by Zankov and Stromich Ranjal. Their infantry waited in dense masses for the outcome. But the charge, the charge of the voves -
that was the battle winner!
Watching, lifting in my stirrups, I saw the way the leading masses roared up the first of the slope to the ridge. Would nothing stop them? On and on they raged, beating on and up, and the pikes all came down as one, and the trumpets pealed, and the crimson and bronze stretched out, taut and thin to my eye, firm and like a rock in a raging sea.
The three Phalanxes had been arranged with the First on the right of the line and the Second on their left and half of the Third, the Fifth Kerchuri, on the left of the line. The Sixth Kerchuri stood fast in reserve to the rear. All the emotion of two worlds concentrated down for me in that impact. I was aware of the flanks surging on and of churgur infantry and spearmen clashing on the wings. I was aware of the ceaseless flights of arrows. I was aware of the cavalry fights taking place all over the plain. But the impact, nearer and nearer, took my attention and I could not tear my eyes away from that enormous collision.
Irresistible and immovable objects? No, by Krun, not quite. For the Phalanx had been bested before by the clansmen, and the clansmen knew nothing of defeat. The impact, when it came, racketed such noise, such clamor, such soul-searing horror, that I felt the salt taste of blood on my lips. That was where I should be, down there, in the front rank of the files with the faxuls, down there, wielding my pike against that onrushing host. And I sat my nikvove and watched and could only judge the time to send forward the Sixth Kerchuri and order in the churgurs and the spearmen. The Hakkodin were slashing and slicing away, the front swayed, locked, striking in insane fury. Incredible, the ferocity of the charge and sublime, insane, the solidity it met.
The Second swayed.
The Second Phalanx swayed and its front crumbled.
I saw the yellow and red flags go down.
Voves began to pour through a narrow gap that rapidly widened. At my instant order Volodu blew Sixth Kerchuri; but Nath was before me and I saw the Sixth moving up, solid and dense in their masses, the crimson and bronze shouldering forward to plug the gap. The Second recovered. The officers down there were raging and bellowing and the files reformed and the pikes came down again, all in line. But the lines were thinner, now.
The confusion down there tantalized me. The voves recoiled and came on again. The Phalanx held. I saw the rear markers going up, the Bratchlins urging the men on. I saw the swaying movement as though the very sea itself sought to pour on and over a line of rocks. And the zorcamen were in among the voves now, prancing around on their nimble steeds, striking and sliding return blows. The state of flux might continue, or it might break on an instant.
Zankov flung his infantry in, before they had time to decide if the day was lost or won, hurling them on intemperately to support the charge, to get in among the Phalanx. Our own infantry moved to mask the flanks, channeling the attack onto the melee. The Hakkodin now had fresh targets for their axes and halberds and two- handed swords.
This was the crucial moment.
Even when he fights in the melee a clansman is an opponent greatly to be feared. Even when he does not hurl forward in the charge, he is a fighting man of enormous power. The slogging match had begun. At that instant a troop of zorca riders flew up the long slope to my left side, riding hard, and I saw they were girls, Jikai Vuvushis.
Some of the Emperor’s Sword Watch angled out to halt them; but I saw the leader, drooping in the saddle, saw the arrow in her shoulder.
“Let her through!” I bellowed.
Jilian hauled her lathered zorca up before me. Her pale face was so white I fancied she had no blood left at all, and knew that was not so, as the blood stained around the ugly shaft in her shoulder. She tried to smile and the pain gripped her.
“I am sorry to see you in such case, Jilian.” I spoke with anger. “I had thought you in the reserve where-”
“Where you ordered my girls, aye, Jak, I know. But I have had another zhantil to saddle. My regiment is in the reserve and will go forward with the victory.” She swayed and I leaned down from the nikvove and got a hand under her armpit. “But there is no time. You must fly-” Her gaze flicked to the reserve troop of flutduins who waited beside Karidge’s Brigade, in the reserve, under my hand. Her girls were there, brilliant and chattering, and every eye fixed on that titanic fight going on along the face of the ridge. I looked there, alert for any change; but the slogging match continued and the Phalanx had not moved and the clansmen had not retired. Men were dying down there, dying by the hundred.
“The empress. .” Jilian swayed and I was off the nikvove and hauled her off her zorca, and held her, looking down, and my face must have appeared like a chunk of granite.
“What of the empress?”
Jilian caught her breath. And I saw she bore an axe wound in her side, gashing and horrible, exposing pink and white ribs.
“That is nothing, Jak. The empress needs assistance — the Sakkora Stones-”
“I know it.” I placed her down, gently, for she was a great spirit, and bellowed at my company of brilliant aides. “Send to Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, commanding the vaward. My compliments. He is now commanding the army.” I was running toward the flutduins as I shouted, and each one of the great birds ruffled his feathers, as though asking me to pick him. “Tell the Kov to send in the reserve the moment the line wavers. Not before, not afterwards. He will know.”
Then I was hauling the flutduin Jiktar off his bird and mounting up, disdaining the straps of the clerketer. Everyone was yelling. Shouts of consternation broke from the Emperor’s Sword Watch. The flutduin troop gaped. I cracked the bird and he rose at once, his wings wide and gorgeous and of immense power. Together we rose into the air.
Below us a tremendous battle raged. Thousands of men were locked in hand-to-hand combat. I barely saw the red horror of it, barely heard the screeching din.
Over the clangor, over the blood, over the agony and death below I flew. I left the battle in the culminating moments of victory and defeat. Headlong, caring for one person and one person only in all of Kregen, I flew like a maniac across the gory battlefield of Kochwold. Delia…
Chapter Twenty-one
Desertion. Infamous conduct. Lack of moral fiber in the face of the enemy. Lack of judgment of issues. Nothing of that mattered. Vallia did not matter, nor Kregen itself.
Only Delia mattered.
I knew the Sakkora Stones.
Like the Kharoi Stones of my island of Hyr Khor in distant Djanduin, it had been raised by the Sunset People who had lived on Kregen before the Star Lords had brought diffs to that beautiful planet to make it the wild and terrible world it is today. Ruined, tumbled into moldering stones, mysterious, unforgettable, the buildings of the Sunset People yet lived in legend and song.
Over the battlefield I flew and mirvols attacked me and I shot and slew them and their riders, and with the long whippy aerial sword strapped to the saddle fought off those who would have stopped me. In a straight line across the front I flew. The Sakkora Stones had been figured into our calculations in picking this site for the battle, and had been reckoned as not having any influence, one way or the other. They stood some ulm or so in rear of the position taken up by Zankov and we expected them to be used as a field hospital or supply dump. They lifted from the moorland, quite plainly, fallen columns, walls and roofs marking a once-vast star-shaped structure whose function remained obscure. As on Earth today, when an archaeologist is faced with an artifact whose manner of use he does not know will say it is a cult object or a ritual object, so we said the Sakkora Stones were a cult object.
