Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  "Who are you, and by what right are you here?"

  There was a collective gasp of surprise in the enemy ranks at this audacity. Thru took no notice.

  "This is not your land. We are not your people. Why do you do us these great wrongs?"

  The towering man looked down at him with cruel eyes. Thru felt a slow mounting pressure on his mind. The huge man sought to compel him to fall on his knees and beg for mercy. The pressure intensified.

  Thru shrugged as if dislodging a fly. Then he looked up into the face of his great enemy and sang his defiance:

  "Who'd be a jolly beekeeper

  And always suffer stings..."

  The rider snarled a sudden curse, drew his sword, and raised it high.

  "Silence, animal! Your time is over. Extermination awaits you and all your kind. The world is now to be mine."

  From the sword came a great flash of red light. The pyluk roared en masse. The enemy forces began to beat their swords and spears against their shields. The drums began to boom.

  "Prepare to meet thy doom!" roared the Old One, and every spirit on the line quailed as death rose above them like a great, unstoppable wave.

  And yet the wave never fell. At that crucial moment, another sound cut across the battlefield: the scream of trumpets and with it the battle cry of Sulmo. Sulmo was come at last!

  Thru and the rest of his battered little army looked south in wonder and were rewarded with the sight of banners streaming forward through the trees. Four thousand fresh troops, landed at Warkeen village that same morning, came driving forward in two brigades.

  As they went, they sang out their war cry. The mots of Dronned cheered them on and raised their banners high.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Sulmese columns struck the enemy on either end of his line. On the left, the Old One's men defended stoutly and gave ground bitterly and slowly. But on the right, the mots slammed into the pyluk, and the lizard-men collapsed. They were fought out; no matter how great the sorcery that gripped them, they could not stand against this fresh assault.

  The pyluk broke and ran, or died where they stood. The mots cut through the enemy's host and broke into the rear. The horsemen were caught in the process of reforming and were routed. Now the entire force facing the mots began to crack apart. Only the Old One's infantry, formed in a square, remained intact, retreating slowly and steadily while the Sulmese lapped around it.

  The battered but unbeaten army of Dronned now jumped forward with a glad shout to support the Sulmese.

  Thru was still standing there, amazed, barely able to cheer, when a tall figure strode up and slapped him on the back. It was a brilby with a battered face in the uniform of Royal Sulmo.

  "Ter-Saab!"

  "At your service, General Gillo."

  Right behind Ter-Saab was Janbur of the Gsekk, his sword in hand and bloodied.

  "Janbur, old friend. You came in time!"

  "We had to get past the enemy's watch. Could only manage to land the troops this morning."

  "Juf!"

  And there was the ruined face of old Juf Goost.

  "Not too late for us to get in a blow for the Land!"

  Thru had no words left. He could only embrace his old companions and weep tears of gratitude.

  The battle was not ended, though. The Old One on his mighty steed had withdrawn at the first cry of the trumpets of Sulmo, but his infantry had not broken. The horsemen were scattered, but they would soon reform. The allies had halted the Old One's killing stroke, but they had not yet forged a victory.

  As soon as word reached Aeswiren of the arrival of Sulmo, he called on his men to make one last supreme effort. With the cry "Aeswiren!" on their lips, they surged forward and pressed hard on the enemy along their own front. The enemy wavered, their will to fight shaken by the change of fortune. In the center they cracked, on the left they gave ground, and on the right, suddenly flanked by parties of Sulmese mots, they broke altogether and streamed back across Blue Hill until they were among the horsemen. In vain did their commanders ride among them, calling on them to halt.

  With the collapse on the right side, the rest tried to form a square to resist, but Aeswiren's men were ready for that maneuver and lapped around the enemy too quickly. Surrounded, companies, even whole regiments, threw down their arms and surrendered. Others, isolated from the main mass, simply fled.

  Ter-Saab's columns kept up their pressure on the remaining infantry, and the collapse of the force facing Aeswiren disrupted the cavalry. Before they could reform, Aeswiren's vanguard arrived to harry them and press them hard. As a result, the horsemen never regained the initiative and instead were driven off the hill.

  On the northern end of Blue Hill, where Toshak and Aeswiren had set their line the previous day, the fight teetered briefly. More and more mots came up to join in, and soon they outflanked the enemy on the right and the position collapsed once more.

  This time there was no chance of a stand. The enemy broke and fled downhill. The infantry streamed in panic for the bridge, and the mots of Sulmo and Dronned pursued them with sword and spear.

  At the bridge, the fugitives jammed together, panicked, and there was great slaughter made of them. Elsewhere, fleeing men abandoned their weapons and armor and swam for it. The river was high and many drowned or were swept out to sea.

  Avoiding this ruin, the enemy horsemen withdrew in companies inland. They outpaced the pursuit, but alone, without support, they could offer no real threat.

  As for the pyluk, their horde had shattered entirely. The survivors, barely a third of those that had marched down from the mountains, were heading eastward in small groups as quickly as they dared. The magic that had gripped them was broken. They would play no further part in the deadly affairs of other races.

  The mots held the bridge and all the southern side of the river. The surviving regiments of the Old One's host were a huddled mass of fugitives on the northern bank, waiting for the boats.

  When Thru reached the scene by the bridge, Ter-Saab had already made an end to the killing. His regiments were massing on the northern shore, prepared to finish the job if necessary.

  The boats were at work, but there were too many men waiting on the strand. It would be hours before they were all taken off.

  Thru cast about for a messenger. Simona was with the Emperor. Finally he located Sergeant Rukkh, who had stayed in the vanguard all the way to the bridge with his cadre of Blitzers.

  "Sergeant, will you take a message to whoever is in command of those men?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Rukkh went away with an escort of six other Blitzers. He was back within half an hour.

  "They agree to the terms, sir. They will lay down their arms if you will spare their lives."

  "And their leader?"

  "He is not among them, sir. Some claim he was lost in the fighting. Perhaps he is already dead."

  And so the battle of Shelly Fields came to an end. Across the Land, the word was sent out by pigeon and fire beacon and tireless messengers running the roads from Nurrum to Sulmo and from Creton to Ajutan. The Land was saved. General Toshak was dead. The war was over.

  The command of the enemy fleet faced a strange predicament. Most of the troops they had landed had been captured or killed. The horsemen had retreated inland and were out of contact. The Old One had vanished. Emperor Aeswiren commanded the victorious allied army in conjunction with the natives. To surrender to the Emperor seemed the logical choice, but to the Gold Tops this was anathema. The fleet was in the grip of several thousand fanatical Red Tops. The sailors wished to surrender, but the Red Tops refused. Fighting broke out within an hour of the surrender ashore. Ship by ship across the fleet, sailors and soldiers rose up against the hated Red Tops and put them to the sword.

  The fighting in the fleet was still going on when Thru and a small party returned across Blue Hill to find Aeswiren's command post. The Emperor was lucid, and Mentu was with him. Seeing both brothers together brought a s
trange joy to Thru's heart.

  Simona came running up to embrace him. She was weeping tears of gladness. "It is over, Thru. We have beaten him. Everything will change now. The Emperor has said so."

  "Then I am sure it is so. Most of the enemy foot soldiers have surrendered. The horsemen are still at large, but on their own they can do little harm. They will have to surrender, too. The ships are a scene of conflict right now. We think the priests are losing and that the fleet also will wish to negotiate a surrender."

  "It is over, General Gillo!" said Aeswiren from his litter.

  Simona stepped back. Thru turned to find Nuza with a bandage wrapped around the top of her head.

  Thru swept her up in his arms. "You're alive! I was so afraid when I heard that the pyluk had broken through."

  "Oh, my Thru, we have come through a great shadow, but we have survived the darkness."

  There was still much to be done, however. The prisoners, more than eleven thousand strong, had to be corralled and fed. The dead had to be buried, and the wounded had to be collected and brought in for care.

  Thru and Aeswiren sent out a joint statement to the defeated men. They were absolved of blame. They would be given the opportunity to join Aeswiren's army. Those that did not would be shipped back to Shasht but not put down into slavery.

  When this had gone out, Thru found a pair of ancient Assenzi waiting to speak with him.

  "General, please accept congratulations for your work today," said Utnapishtim, squeezing his arm with joy.

  "And mine, General Gillo," said Melidofulo.

  "We held on just long enough. Sulmo got here in time. A new age dawns for us."

  Utnapishtim held up a bony finger. "It is not quite over. Our great enemy still lives."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Into the night, the victors worked to complete their victory. Scouts and strong skirmishing parties were sent inland to pursue the horsemen and compel their surrender. Of particular concern was the whereabouts of the Old One. He was sought dead or alive, but no trace of him had been reported. Meanwhile, the great mass of prisoners was broken into four groups and marched south toward Dronned. When darkness fell, the prisoners were made to set up tents and crowd inside them. A strong guard of Sulmese mots was set on each group.

  The exhausted army of Dronned had reorganized its own camp and was in the process of celebrating the victory. The war was over. Around their fires they danced and sang, though there was no ale and no chance of getting any for days to come.

  Here and there among them were parties of Aeswiren's men. Mostly Blitzers and men from the Third Regiment who had fought right alongside the mots and now held radically changed views of their new-found friends.

  The rest of Aeswiren's men were celebrating, too, relaxing around the fires or seeking treatment for their wounds at the surgeon's tent. It had been the hardest-fought battle any of them had ever seen, and they had all fought at Dronned in the first summer and remembered that battle very well. This one had lasted three days and taken them to the very brink of defeat. But the monkeys had come through in the end, and the hated Red Tops were going down to defeat on the enemy fleet.

  The thought of a couple thousand Red Tops getting their comeuppance was a tremendous boost to the men's celebration. They had found and confiscated a few flasks of brandy from the enemy camp, and that was fueling their good spirits, too.

  Thru Gillo had scarcely rested long enough to eat a small meal in the hours since the fighting had ended. There was so much to do. His immediate concern was tracking the fugitive horsemen. Though impotent against an army, they could still wreak havoc in the countryside if they got south of the Dristen. After that came the concern for the prisoners. Though they were disarmed, Thru wanted to get them into a secure camp near Dronned as quickly as possible. Then there were the wounded, of both sides. Three days of battle, with endless attacks and counterattacks, had taken a grim toll. Thousands of wounded had already been sent south to the city, and thousands more were collected in two huge groups north and south of the ruins of the field hospital. Nuza and her staff were struggling to cope. Filek Biswas and his team of surgeons also faced a mountain of desperate needs. More than a thousand mors from Dronned had come north to help. With their strength to call on, the army was able to place the wounded in some degree of proper care.

  Finally, there was the need for proper disposal of the dead. Another army of older mots, mors, and children had also marched up from Dronned to dig pits for the enemy dead and graves for the dead of the allies. This work would go on for days. The tally of the dead stood at more than three thousand for the army of Dronned alone, and perhaps two thousand of Aeswiren's men. The enemy had suffered even greater losses, and huge mounds of pyluk corpses were strewn along the eastern margins of Blue Hill.

  Thru received a set of scouting reports in the first hour after dusk. The news was mostly good. The pyluk horde continued to flee eastward without any sign of halting. Better yet, the pyluk were moving in small bands once again—their horde behavior had ended.

  The horsemen had gone inland then moved north into Shellflower, and were now camped fifteen miles away. They were under constant surveillance, though they did not know it. There had been several arguments and fights among them, and there was no obvious sign of their evil leader.

  Thru decided to confer with Aeswiren and his commanders about how best to approach the horsemen. He left his command post, now back on the north side of Blue Hill, and strode the two hundreds yards that separated it from Aeswiren's, which was back where it had been in the evening of the second day, with good views across the country to the north.

  Several tents had been set up. Some were a bit battered following the vicissitudes of the past days, but with the Emperor's banner flying above on a new pole and with a large fire crackling in the center, there was an atmosphere of celebration here, too. Thru found Aeswiren inside the main tent. Filek Biswas had replaced the bandages and examined the wound. The Emperor was weak but able to speak clearly. By his side was his brother, Mentu.

  "Hail, General Gillo!" said the Emperor, who tried to struggle up, but Filek and Simona restrained him.

  "Hail, Great King of Shasht. You attacked at just the right time."

  "The arrival of your friends from the south is what saved us. That was the key development. We were beaten otherwise."

  Thru had come to expect this kind of candor from Aeswiren. "Yes, Lord, it did look that way."

  "But now the enemy forces are truly done for. I have had news in the last twenty minutes that the fighting among the fleet is over. The Red Tops have been locked down belowdecks, and all the captains have thrown in their lot with me."

  "Wonderful news, Lord. I think we have achieved an end to the war." Thru turned, his eye catching another figure. "Hail to thee, Mentupah! You found your moment of destiny, did you not?"

  Mentu embraced Thru. "Exactly the moment that my brother had feared for twenty years, and it turned out to be essential."

  "Vital for all our survival, Mentupah, who once called himself the Eccentric."

  "Ha, that seems like another life."

  "And, Janbur, it is well indeed to find you here."

  Janbur had been standing to one side, waiting to greet Thru. "I'm so glad we were able to get here in time to lend a hand. I would never have forgiven myself if we had missed it."

  "Never was an arrival better timed, my friend."

  "Simona!" Thru embraced her next and then held her close.

  "We have won, Thru. We did it."

  For a moment, their eyes met and they recalled those desperate days in faraway Shasht, when a pair of fugitives fought for their lives and almost starved to death amid the snow.

  "We came back, Simona, and we have defeated our enemy."

  Suddenly both were aware of another presence. Thru half turned and found Nuza had arrived. She fell into their arms, so that all three of them were held close together. They stayed that way while tears of happiness ran down
their cheeks.

  When all had been greeted and hosannas had been sung, it was time to get down to business. Sergeant Rukkh entered the tent under guard. He came forward and, in a brief but moving ceremony, was rewarded with a gold pin from the Emperor in recognition of valor and courage above all expectation.

  As Rukkh stepped back from the Emperor's litter, Thru saw a glint of moisture on the sergeant's hard-bitten cheek.

  "May I be first to offer my congratulations, Sergeant." Thru shook the man's hand.

  "Thank you, General. That was a hard fight we had there."

  "But for you and your quick thinking, we'd have lost it."

  "Well, sir, your army has done its share of quick thinking. You've come a long way since first we found you."

  Thru nodded. "Our lives will never be quite the same."

  "And I am sorry for all those who were killed. We should never have come here. But now your people have learned to fight. In the long run, they will be safer."

  "That is so, but there are many of us who might wish never to have been stirred from our old lives."

  Just then, there came a message for Aeswiren from the troops who were scouring the enemy camp.

  "Great heavens!" said the Emperor. "They've found Admiral Heuze, and he's alive."

  "The admiral is alive?" Filek Biswas spoke up.

  "Yes, Surgeon Biswas, it appears he has survived captivity. They are bringing him here at once."

  "Well, thanks be given for that. The admiral was very kind to me. Indeed, without his help, I fear I would long since have been murdered or made a slave."

  Soon afterward, six men carried the admiral into the tent on a stretcher. His clothes were reduced to rags, he had no peg for his leg, and he could hardly move because his hands were swollen into red and purple lumps.

  Heuze apologized to the Emperor for allowing himself to be captured. He made no excuses.

  "Well, Admiral, you appear to have paid a price already. I will not exact more from you."