Lord of Lies (82 page)

'Father,' I whispered, gazing out at all this carnage. 'Father.'

Sar Vikan and Maram came up to me as our company of knights drew up behind us. We held quick council, deciding what we should do.

'The center is hard-pressed,' Sar Vikan called out, pointing at the Meshian line, which was beginning to bow back toward us under the great weight of men massed in front of it.

'Yes,' I called back, 'but there is still a reserve.'

I drew Sar Vikan's attention to the single battalion of warriors two thousand yards to our left and standing a few hundred yards behind our lines. They were under Lord Eldru's command. I thought I could make out the red and white of his charge gleaming in the sun.

'It seems,' Sar Vikan said, holding up his hand to shield his eyes, 'that Radomil Makan holds back the Galdans, too.'

The enemy, I saw, had reserves of their own, at least twenty times more numerous than ours. Culhadosh Commons spread out to the south, too, down a gentle slope toward a little winding water called the Clear Brook, and beyond. Grouped along this stream, half a mile beyond the killing zone, was the greater part of the Galdan light infantry, nearly twenty thousand strong. A thousand archers gathered to the right of them, behind a curve in the stream. And further to the west, just where the stream bent back toward the village of Balvalam, the Galdan light horse assembled in neat lines with a battalion of the light infantry behind them.

'Look!' Maram cried out. 'I do believe they're going to attack!'

Directly in front of them was grouped the very far right of Asaru's knights, pushed up against the lowest part of Balvalam Hill only four hundred yards from us. And farther up its slopes, most of our archers had been stationed. They stood behind a fence of stakes pounded into the ground, with their sharpened ends pointing outward, toward the enemy. The archers wore only light armor and were without shields, and were vulnerable to attack - which is why they had taken a position on ground that would be difficult to attack. But it seemed that the Galdans were going to try.

A horn blared out, and the Galdans began moving forward. How long, I wondered, would it take them to charge across half a mile of clear ground?

'What shall we do, Lord Valashu?' Sar Vikan shouted at me. I could hardly make out his words against the tumult of shields banging at fields, axes splitting steel, and men and horses screaming as they died. I stared out across the battlefield, west to east, north to south. I looked for a flashing yellow banner, with its great, red dragon, that might tell me where Morjin was. I looked for the red and gold of Morjin's surcoat and his steel armor, said to be stained red like that of his Dragon Guard. Two thousand of these masterful warriors fought on foot, still working furiously at our center, but where were the rest of them? Perhaps, i thought, Morjin was holding them in reserve to the far southeast, where the Clear Brook disappeared into the woods. At any moment a horn might sound, and these men might come crashing out of the trees in a charge that would cave in our army's entire left flank.

'Val, what shall we do?' I heard Maram say.

I looked for Kane, where the fighting was the thickest, but all across the field men were hacking at men with a fury that seemed to grow more desperate with every moment. I looked for Atara, too. Morjin
might
be in hiding, waiting to charge against our left, but our right flank was being attacked even as we stood watching.

'Forward!' I called out, drawing my long lance. 'Half speed, and stay together!'

It wouldn't do to charge recklessly up Balvalam Hill, where its uneven ground could trip a horse and send both horse and rider crashing down with a snap of broken limbs. The Galdans, however, had different considerations. In the face of the arrows that the archers began firing into them, they galloped up the south slope of the hill as quickly as they could. Some of their mounts did stumble and break their legs - and the necks of their riders. More screamed as they fell out of their saddles with arrows sticking out of them. But they were brave men. They kept charging up toward the archers, with the Galdan light infantry running behind them.

In truth, they were no match, man for man, with the Meshian archers, who now laid down their bows and drew their swords. But they were many, and our archers were few. Now the Galdan horse came pouring around the ends of the stake fence, as with a stream splitting in two. The archers met them with flashing kalamas; steel ran red as my countrymen slashed upward at the Galdans who were trying to stick their lances into them. My knights and I pounded closer, up the grassy slope from the north. Both Galdans and Meshians were dying by the tens and twenties - but more Meshians, for the light infantry had finally forced their way through the fence and were falling upon the archers with shield and spear. In front of us loomed a mob of men screaming and shouting out challenges as they hacked and stabbed at each other. Fifty yards only separated us from them. And then suddenly we were upon them, and the world narrowed into a corridor of rearing horses, red lance points and Galdans in their flimsy leather armor throwing themselves at me.

Within the first minute, I lost my lance through the ribs and back-bone of one of these. I drew Alkadur then, and my sword's silver gelstei gave me the strength to bear the agony that ripped through me. I swung this bright blade, once, twice, thrice - and three Galdans fell dead or dying to the ground. Maram fought to my right, working his lance against two horsemen opposing him. I heard him bellow out: 'Come! Come! Test your lances against Five-Horned Marant?' He stabbed one of his enemies through the face just as the lance of the other took him in the chest. But the point crunched against the diamonds of Maram's armor, and failed to penetrate. Maram pulled his lance out of the first horseman's cheek and thrust it through the other's groin. So it went ail around me, with Sar Vikan and our company of knights. Many of these had drawn their kalamas. and they slashed through the Galdan's armor as if it was paper. Founts of blood sprayed out into the air. The ground began to thicken with hacked limbs, torn bodies and men crying out as they held their hands over their necks or bleeding bellies.

Then a horn blared, signaling the Galdans to retreat. Many of them, however, had already broken; they cast aside their shields and ran back down the hill. Some of the archers pursued them and buried their kalamas in their backs. The Galdan horse fled in better order, and more quickly. I was tempted to ride after them, all the way down to the village and around the wing of Morjin's entire army. But the captain of the archers called for a halt just as I became aware of a new crisis in the middle of the battlefield.

'Lord Valashu!' the captain cried out. He was a tall man with a sharp nose and chin like the crags of a mountain. He stood grasping his dripping sword as he said to me, 'Where did
you
come from?'

All around us the surviving archers were sheathing their swords and taking up their bows again. Sar Vikan and Maram, with our knights, formed up on the side of the hill behind me.

'You seemed hard-pressed,' I said to the captain. I did not want to tell him or his archers that their king had been slain.

'Hard-pressed and worse,' he said. He wore in his silver ring the three diamonds of a master knight, and I suddenly remembered that his name was Sar Yulmar. 'We might have died to a man keeping the Galdans front coming behind your brother's knights.'

At the base of the hill only twenty five yards away, the knights at the very edge of Asaru's command were battling against the Ikurians a broad-faced, thickset people from the central plateau of Sakai. Farther down the line of this mass of snorting horses and shouting men, two hundred yards to the east, I caught sight of a swan and stars blazing bright silver in the fierce morning light. Asaru sat on top of his gray stallion slashing his sword against two enemy knights in front of him. He, too, was hard-pressed, as were his hundreds of knights. I wanted desperately to ride down to them, to find Yarashan and join him in fighting to Asaru's side so that we might turn back the flood of these skilled and relentless Ikurians. But then Sar Vikan called to me, and pointed farther east, at the center of the Meshian line.

'Lord Valashu!' he said. 'They're about to break!'

The massed ranks of the Dragon Guard and the Blues, I saw, with phalanxes of mercenaries to either side of them, had pushed deeply into Lord Tanu's and Lord Tomavar's battalions. Our whole line, from Lord Avijan's command in the east to Asaru's knights, had now bent so far backward that it was near to buckling. It was like a long, curved wall of diamonds holding back a flood of steel. In several places only a single rank of warriors kept the enemy from breaking through.

I glanced behind me, taking the measure of the knights in our company. Maybe seven of a hundred and fifty had fallen. I looked back toward the center of our line. Somewhere, in all this fury of swords hacking apart shields and men dying, Mandru led a company of warriors in Lord Tomavar's battalion, as did Jonathay in Lord Tanu's.

'Back!' I shouted to Sar Vikan and the knights behind me. 'Back to the center!'

We rode down the hill too quickly and then burst into a full gallop as we pounded across a mile and a quarter of grass. We came up behind the center of the Meshian line just as Lord Eldru's reserve battalion came forward. But Lord Eldru no longer commanded it. He had finally weakened and fallen from an arrow that had pierced his neck in the first minutes of the battle. Sar Jessu had replaced him. He was a thickset, serious, master knight whose bushy black eyebrows were set with determination.

'Hold, Sar Jessu!' I called to him.

'Hold?' he called back. He stood facing me at the front of twelve hundred men formed up into three neat ranks.

'Wait!' I called to him.

'Wait?' he shouted. 'Our line is about to break!'

Ahead of us the Meshian line was like a bow bending nearly double under the pressure of attack. And as it bent, the Meshian warriors worked quickly to extend the line, and thin it, to two ranks and then only one.

'Lord Eldru ordered us forward!' Sar Jessu shouted. 'And I'm ordering you to hold!'

Horns sounded from hundreds of yards away back toward the Clear Brook. We still had enough height above the two armies to see the entire reserve of Galdan light infantry, in their thousands, pouring across the stream and marching forward toward the battlefront at double-pace.

'The enemy are too many!' Sar Jessu shouted. 'Don't you see! Don't you see!'

I saw the Dragon Guard, like a great red hammer, pounding at our very center. Next to them stood the hideous Blues, whose naked bodies had been stained with the juice of the kirque plant from head to toe. They howled and cursed as they swung their axes through our shields and chopped down our warriors by the dozen. To their sides, the mercenaries and Galdan heavy infantry, sensing victory, threw themselves forward against our bowing line, which forced them up against the Dragon Guard. Behind them, the Galdan light infantry had abandoned all sense and good order in their lust to rush forward and take part in the kill.

Where was Morjin?
I wondered.

'Lord Valashu!'

I stared out at the diamond warriors in our line, which now looked more like a gigantic V than a line. I saw, in my mind's-eye, the funnel-shaped walls of the escarpment at Shurkar's Notch where my knights and I had fought Duke Malatam. I gripped my sword as my heart beat like an axe against my breastbone.

'When the line breaks,' I said to Sar Jessu, 'then we shall go forward!'

Now the Galdan light infantry came up behind the Dragon Guard and the mercenaries, and pressed their backs. The Guard fought furiously to cut down the thin wall of warriors who stood before them. Then the Meshian line, at the joint of the V between Lord Tanu's and Lord Tomavar's battalions, suddenly broke. The Dragon Guard, with the frenzied Blues, screamed out in bloodlust as they smelled victory. The whole center of Morjin's army fell mad with a rage to rush through this hole and destroy us. They threw themselves forward, no longer ranks of well-drilled warriors, but a great mob of murderous men.

'Sar Jessu!' I cried out. 'Forward to fill up the break!'

I turned to Sar Vikan and shouted to him and our knights: 'Cut down anyone coming behind our lines! Now! Attack!'

With Maram and Sar Vikan beside me, I galloped forward. The Meshian warriors at the mouth of the break were fighting with the last of their strength to keep the Dragon Guard and the Blues from streaming through and falling upon their rear. One of these warriors was Mandru. His shield, it seemed, had long since been hacked apart or riddled with spears and cast away. I watched in horror as he thrust his kalama through the throat of a red-armored warrior at the same moment that a great, squat Blue came up behind him with his bloody axe. He swung it down upon Mandru's helm, splitting apart steel, bone and brains. And so the fiercest of my brothers died before he could even open his mouth to scream.

'Mandru!'

I urged Altaru forward, straight toward two Blues working their way behind Lord Tomavar's battalion. My sword took off the head of the first, and then I chopped down at the second, cleaving him from his neck through his thick body and out the opposite side. Other Blues came at me; one tried to vault off the ground and knock me from my horse. I killed them all. I turned to look for more victims for my sword. The enemy were all around me.

How easily a man is made into meat! With every stroke of my sword, it seemed, I cut someone else into pieces. Blood soaked the grass beneath me; it sprayed over me, reddening my hands, chest and face, and ran in rivulets from the grooves in Altaru's steel armor. I kept cutting and thrusting until my arm burned like a knot of fire, like the valarda burning inside me. And still men came at me trying to kill me.

And then a terrible scream split the air, and 1 looked through a mass of the Dragon Guards toward the frantically struggling warriors in Lord Tanu's battalion. Jonathay stood there. One of the Guards had thrust his spear through Jonathay's armpit and deep into his body. It drove all the sweetness from his face so that only agony remained. He fell beneath the boots of the Dragon Guard, and I did not see him rise again.