by Melvin, Jim
“Are you sure you’re all right, my love?” he said to her, tenderly stroking the greave above her solleret.
“If I can’t handle a simple fall off a horse, how am I going to survive a battle with druids?”
Torg smiled sheepishly. “I know I can’t protect you every moment. And I know you don’t need my protection, even if I could. Actually, I was more concerned by your reaction to seeing Invictus, not by your falling. You’ve got a hard head, remember?”
Laylah laughed. “My skull is harder than the helm.”
“And far more beautiful.”
Like lovers alone in the world, they stared at each other.
Then Navarese and Rajinii approached, breaking their reverie. “The druids come, Torgon,” the general said. “It is as if the appearance of the dragon called them forth.”
“We are ready,” the queen said, her voice fell.
AT FIRST, THE sight of the dragon and its rider had terrified the queen, causing her to scream and cover her face with a gauntleted hand. Rajinii also had seen the yellow blob, and it reminded her of the constant nightmares she’d endured before The Torgon and Laylah had removed the sorcerer’s influence. While Invictus was present, all seemed hopeless. But when the dragon carried him away, Rajinii was infused with a frantic desire to kill. The druids were dangerous, but they were an enemy she could confront without hopelessness.
“We are ready,” she said to The Torgon and Navarese. And she meant it. Even Arusha seemed emboldened, pounding her front hooves on the grass. “General, gather your army.”
“The white horsemen heed your call, your highness,” Navarese said. “But I beg you, one final time. Please retreat with me to the back.”
“No!” the queen shouted. The square chunk of jade on the head of her staff flared like green fire, eliminating any further desire by Navarese for debate. In terms of military strategy, he was her superior, but in terms of physical and magical prowess, he was nowhere near her match.
The general turned his horse and retreated through the ranks. No one viewed this as cowardice. Navarese’s most dangerous weapon was his mind. He would direct his army from the rear on a specially built platform that towered one hundred cubits above the plains.
No sooner had Navarese disappeared than the humming intensified tenfold. Rajinii watched with dismay as dozens of her horsemen cast off their helms and pressed their gauntlets against their ears. The sound was as loud as thunder, only ceaseless. Eyes watered. Teeth chattered. Hearts beat out of control. Rajinii realized with sudden horror that it was worse than even she had expected. The tumultuous cacophony robbed the mind of clarity and stole courage from the stoutest of warriors. Would the Assarohaa flee in terror? She wouldn’t blame them if they did.
And then The Torgon was beside her, shouting in a voice even louder than thunder. “Murder and mayhem!” The wizard raised the Silver Sword high above his head, and from its point blazed an eruption of blue-green fire that superheated the surrounding air. “Murder . . . and . . . Mayhem!”
“Murder and mayhem!” Rajinii responded. And others joined the chant.
As if meeting the challenge, the druids appeared, their fiery eyes bleeding hatred. The first row of the Jivitan army moved forward to greet them—and with it rode The Torgon, Laylah, Sir Elu, Ugga, Bard, Manta, more than ten-score Tugars, and of course, Rajinii.
Impossibly, the humming intensified to an even higher level.
But Rajinii was not dismayed—and her strength gave courage to the others.
When the two sides were only twenty paces apart the humming ceased. In some ways, the silence was more disturbing than the torrent of noise. Both sides halted and glared at each other, though the darkness obscured much, even at close range. A voice from behind the druids scorched the air like a revulsion.
“Rajinii . . . a word!”
“Show yourself!” Rajinii called back.
“I will not . . . not yet.”
“Identify yourself!”
“Do you not know me? For I know you.”
“Have you come to banter?”
Cackling. “I offer terms of surrender.”
“Yours or ours?”
At that, the white horsemen guffawed—and then cheered.
Growling replaced the cackling. Then: “Term number one. Surrender Laylah to me.”
Rajinii turned to Torg and giggled. “That’s not such a bad idea,” she said.
The wizard arched an eyebrow.
“I’m just teasing,” Rajinii said. Then she turned back toward the wall of druids. “Denied!”
More growling. “Term number two. Surrender The Torgon to me.”
Rajinii looked at Laylah. “What do you think?”
The sorceress smiled. “Not today. But the next time he misbehaves . . .”
Torg arched his other eyebrow.
“Very well,” the queen said, before shouting, “Denied!”
A throat-wrenching screech. “Term number three: Lay down your arms and surrender. If all these terms are met, you will be permitted to return to Jivita and live in peace, as long as you never enter Dhutanga or re-arm yourselves.”
“Are you finished? Then I answer again . . . denied! I deny your terms. I deny your words. I deny your right to exist. As for my own terms, I have none. I am ready to fight . . . now! None among your horde shall leave the Green Plains alive.”
“You know naught what you say, fragile queen. Nor to whom you speak! I am servant to Kattham Bhunjaka, ruler of Dhutanga and all surrounding lands, including the Green Plains. If you refuse to bow, then you choose to die.”
“I bow only to Ekadeva, the One God, he who is almighty. I fight in his name and for his glory. Even if I stood alone, without weapon, your army would fall. But I do not! The white horsemen are with me. You should have considered more carefully before trampling the Green Plains with your foul feet. In Jivita, such an act is punishable by death.”
“You will not be so bold when you are brought before the throne of Kattham.”
To Rajinii’s surprise, Laylah rose up in her saddle and shouted. “Urbana? Do you remember me?”
A pause, then: “How could I forget, little bitch.”
“There is something you need to know . . .”
“I’m dying with anticipation.”
“While imprisoned in Avici, there were many times that I dreamt of killing you. I couldn’t then . . . because my brother protected you. But as you saw for yourself, he has flown away and left you to your own devices. There is nothing now to stop me. Tonight I shall witness your demise!”
More cackling. “We shall see . . . we shall see.”
Then the humming resumed, louder than ever.
THE LEAD PORTION of the druid horde thundered forward. The first row of cavalry met the challenge. There was a titanic clash of man and destrier against the keepers of Dhutanga. Each druid stood at least seven cubits tall and weighed as much as a war horse. Due to the excellence of their armor, the white horsemen bore no shields, swinging their longswords with both hands while maintaining their balance by gripping the high saddles with their inner thighs.
The druids spat acids at the eye slits of their helms and attempted to knock the Jivitans off their horses with long, angular arms. Several horsemen were torn from their mounts, screaming as the attackers dragged them away. But wherever a Tugar was present, the druids were beaten back.
Rajinii swung her staff this way and that, its fiery chunk of jade incinerating any druid it touched. Laylah wielded Obhasa with deadly fury, slaying the enemy by the dozen. Ugga’s heavy axe splintered the bark-like flesh, and none could stand before it. Even Elu got into the act, killing a druid three times his height with Sōbhana’s Tugarian dagger. But it was Torg who wrought the most damage. Without fear, Bhojja bore into the horde, purposely allowing Torg to become surrounded. Then he brought the Silver Sword to bear, slashing, stabbing, and hacking in a blur of movement. The tough hide of the enemy was no match for the ancient weapon, the greates
t of its kind ever to exist, far surpassing even the finest uttara. Torg killed more than a hundred; yet it represented just a few drops in a sea of monsters.
“First row, fall back!” Torg heard Captain Julich shouting.
Bhojja responded without prompting, tearing through the enemy until she and Torg again were in the open. The first row, less a score of fallen riders, spun around and rushed through the ranks all the way to the back, except for Torg, Laylah, Rajinii, Ugga, Elu, Julich, and Manta, who halted at the sixth row, the next of the armored riders.
Now in the front, four files of mounted archers, twelve squadrons in all, prepared to enter the fray, with Bard anchoring the middle of the lead row. Even before the armored horsemen were clear, the archers, arranged in pairs, scraped the pitched-coated heads of their arrows together, causing them to flare and catch fire. As one, they drew back their bowstrings to their chins and then loosed thirty-six hundred flaming arrows into the sky. The shafts blazed in the firmament like a flock of tiny dragons before hissing downward upon the leading edge of the druid army. In rapid fashion each archer loosed five more arrows, so that more than twenty thousand fell among the stunned enemy, causing it to briefly halt its forward momentum.
“Fall back!” shouted a master bowman. In unison the four rows of mounted archers retreated to the rear. Row six came next: seven hundred armored horsemen and two hundred Tugars again led by Torg, Rajinii, Laylah, and Ugga.
The leading edge of the druid army was in disarray. Thousands bore wounds. The armored horsemen waded into the chaos, finishing off those most seriously inflicted. For Torg, especially, it was easy pickings, and he and Bhojja again wandered farther than the others, slaying any that came within reach. But during the second wave, Torg noticed something disturbing. Interspersed among the ordinary druids were hundreds of larger and stronger ones, and none of these appeared to have been punctured. Were their hides impenetrable? Torg rode one down and hacked at it with the Silver Sword. Its insect-like head fell away, gushing hot green blood, but the supernal blade encountered more resistance than Torg had expected. These bigger druids, which he had first seen guarding the entrance to Kattham’s lair in the heart of Dhutanga, appeared to be far more dangerous than the ordinary ones. This did not bode well.
Julich ordered the retreat. The sixth row spun around and galloped toward the rear, sluicing through the ranks like rivulets of water. This time more than fifty horsemen had fallen. Torg and the others halted at the eleventh row and waited. The next four rows of archers, again anchored by Bard, loosed the ensuing barrage.
Rajinii came over to Torg, her white armor splashed with green blood. Arusha leaned against Bhojja, as if already exhausted. The queen raised the visor of her helm. In the darkness, her gray eyes glowed like burning pitch.
“Did you see them?” she shouted above the tumult of humming. “The big ones?”
“Yes,” Torg said. “They were unharmed.”
“The normal ones . . . the smaller ones . . . are falling like flies. But these others . . . I was nearly bested by one. I don’t think that Navarese is aware of the difficulties they present.”
Laylah rode beside them. “They are much harder to kill than the others.”
Manta, the necromancer, agreed. “They resist our magic.”
Julich’s white breastplate bore a long gash. “Navarese must be told, but I am needed here. Your highness, who should I send in my place?”
Instantly Rajinii turned to Elu. “Sir! We have an urgent message for General Navarese. You must go to him immediately.”
The Svakaran didn’t like that one bit. “Sir Elu’s place is by your side.”
“Your place is to obey my orders. Feel free to return once you have done so.”
Elu snapped down his visor and guided his pony toward the rear of the army.
“I have to admit that I’m glad he’s gone, at least for a while,” Laylah said. “I was more worried about him than anyone.”
“Me too,” Ugga said. “The little guy is a toughy, but some of these druids are big even for me.”
Meanwhile, twenty thousand more arrows had been loosed. The master bowmen called the retreat. Then Julich ordered another armored charge.
“Kill as many of the big ones as you can,” Torg shouted to Ugga and the others. “We must keep them from advancing too quickly.”
During his third charge, Torg paid even closer attention to the threat of the larger druids, and his worst fears were confirmed. Though it was difficult to see long distances in the darkness, he still came to believe that there were more of them than before, and none had been severely injured by arrows. Torg estimated that already five thousand druids were dead, but now fully a third of the druids that came forward were the more dangerous kind. Torg was confused. When he had been battling the druids in the clearing that surrounded Kattham’s lair during the rescue of Laylah, he remembered seeing just a few dozen of the larger ones. All the others had been what he considered normal-sized.
“Why are there so many of you?” he screamed, before riding down and beheading a particularly nasty-looking one, easily nine cubits tall and weighing more than one hundred stones. While he was slaying this giant, another of the big ones spit a ball of acidic sputum onto his back, burning away a patch of his jacket, though doing little harm to his Tugarian flesh.
“Retreat!” he heard Julich shouting. Yet again, Bhojja responded without prompting.
When they fell back, it was half a bell past midnight. Torg saw with dismay that at least five score armored horsemen did not return. While the rest rode to the rear, Torg, Laylah, Rajinii, Ugga, and Julich stopped at the sixteenth row. His companions looked exhausted. A sizeable portion of the sorceress’ left cuisse had been torn away, padding and all, revealing a milky thigh. The queen’s breastplate was dented and scarred, and Ugga’s oversized helm looked as if a tree had fallen on it. Though Julich had done little fighting, his responsibility as captain of the ranks was wearing on him. If he called the retreat too soon, the druids would advance on the archers and rout them, but the longer he delayed, the more horsemen he was dooming to unthinkable deaths.
While the next volley of flaming arrows was being launched at the enemy, Elu rode up in a rush.
“Lord Torgon!” he shouted in greeting.
“Sir Elu,” Torg responded.
“General Navarese requests that you call all Tugars to the front.”
Even as they spoke, Julich ordered another charge.
“There is no time now. I shall summon them after the next withdrawal,” Torg said, knowing that he would have done so, regardless. Then Bhojja bore him forward again.
DURING THE FOURTH charge, Ugga sensed his barded destrier beginning to tire. Of all who rode into battle, the crossbreed was the heaviest, even more so than Torg. Though Ugga’s warhorse was larger than any but Arusha, it still struggled to carry him. The crossbreed wasn’t sure how much longer it could remain standing.
The druids were even worse than black mountain wolves. Some of the stuff they spit from their mouths had worked its way between gaps in his armor, burning his skin. And they were strong, too, especially the big ones. If not for his axe, he would have been in trub-bull.
To make matters worse, the crossbreed had to keep a constant eye on Elu. The little guy had a heart as large as a dragon’s, but he was overmatched in this battle. The Svakaran’s pony also was brave, but it was less than half the size of Ugga’s destrier. At least a dozen times, Ugga chopped down druids just before they got to Elu.
At one point, a score of the bigger wood-eaters encircled Ugga and tried to force him off his mount. Ugga growled with rage, killing them one at a time. When he finally worked himself free, he saw that Elu’s pony had been knocked on its side and that the Svakaran was standing next to it, fending off more than a dozen druids with his nasty dagger. The crossbreed raced to his rescue, lifting Elu off the ground and dropping him onto his lap. Just then, Julich ordered another retreat. As they rode away, Elu’s pony was slau
ghtered. Elu screamed and screamed.
LAYLAH HAD BEEN unsure how she would respond to battle. Would terror render her useless? As it turned out, her concerns were unfounded. A bloodlust came upon her, and Obhasa responded in kind. The larger druids seemed immune to flaming arrows, but they were no match for the blue-white fire that spewed from the ivory staff. During the first charge, she had killed at least two score, but slightly fewer during the second and less than a score during the third.
The druids weren’t just becoming stronger, they were becoming smarter, evading the most powerful of them while going after the ordinary horsemen. By the third charge, Laylah found herself having to chase after the druids, who fled at her presence like schools of fish shying from a single predator. This was time-consuming and exhausting, for both she and Izumo. She might have to sit out at least one charge, just for the stallion’s benefit.
During the third charge, she paid little heed to the ordinary druids, and it almost cost her. One managed to slip close enough to strike her with his hand, gashing through the armor that protected her left thigh. The strength of the beast stunned Laylah. She looked down at her leg, expecting to see her flesh torn to the bone, but instead saw no visible damage.
“I’m as strong as a Tugar,” she thought proudly, and then renewed her assault, first slaying her immediate attacker and then going for more.
During the fourth charge, Laylah noticed that the flaming arrows had not harmed at least half the druids within her vision, and when the sixteenth row crushed into the attackers, the result stunned her. Almost an entire squadron fell in the first frantic moments, torn from their mounts and dragged into the darkness. She saw Torg and Bhojja charging from place to place, trying to fend off the worst of it, but the druids shied from the wizard even more than from her, making it difficult for him to kill them in sufficient numbers. Julich rode along the rank, his eyes wild with exhaustion, waiting for what he considered the right moment to order another withdrawal.