by Dragon Lance
His words struck home, at least among Zannian’s men. None of them had been happy to find ogres in their midst, allies or not. Amero’s words reinforced their fears.
They could be heard muttering among themselves. Their leader glared at them.
“No more talk!” Zannian shouted. “And no guarantees. Surrender or die!”
“That’s no choice,” Amero replied. “To surrender is to die.”
“Very well.” Zannian walked confidently back to his waiting warriors. He donned his skull-mask again and, whipping a hand over his head, signaled the attack to resume.
There followed an eternal interval of bloody struggle, a seemingly endless clash over possession of the last barricade. Dismounted raiders climbed the apple trees to bolster Zannian’s assault while those on horseback peppered the villagers with thrown spears. The defenders dwindled. Soon Amero and Lyopi had only a handful of wounded comrades around them.
More horns blared out in the valley. Amero felt his heart shrivel with despair. Were even more raiders coming to trample them into the dust? Where did Zannian get his endless supply of men?
Packed shoulder to shoulder, the raiders pushed and heaved harder at the barricade. Afraid of being trapped when everything fell, Lyopi grabbed Amero by the collar and dragged him to the ramp. Grunting in unison, the raiders as one slammed against the tottering barrier.
The horns sounded again, closer. Lyopi pushed sweat-drenched hair from her face and peered out over the wall. Columns of horsemen filled the eastern valley. She felt numb as she watched them charging down from Cedarsplit Gap. Numb and hopeless. It was all over now.
What was this? She blinked suddenly, not crediting the evidence of her eyes.
Were the horsemen fighting each other?
She shook the dazed Arkuden. “Look, Amero!” she cried. “Look!”
He forced himself to follow her pointing hand. A mass of riders, most on tall, light-colored horses, were pouring into the valley. The mid-afternoon sun showed their faces were clean of paint, and many wore bright bronze on their heads. With sword and spear and ringing cries they attacked the mounted raiders already pressed against the walls of Yala-tene. To his confusion and shock, Amero saw many of Zannian’s men fall from their horses as though clubbed, yet no enemy was close enough to strike them. What spirit power was at work here?
Then the barricade came down with a crash, and Amero, Lyopi, and the surviving villagers were forced to concentrate on the battle closer to home. They braced themselves for a final onslaught.
It never came. A few intrepid raiders leaped over the ruined barrier, now a heap of rubble, but the majority hung back, shouting and pointing at the battle raging beneath them. One by one they abandoned the wall, streaming across the baffle to the tree-ladders. Amero saw Zannian himself urging his men away from Yala-tene and back to their tethered horses.
“By all our ancestors,” Lyopi said, sinking to her knees, tears glistening in her hollow, dark eyes. “We are saved!”
“But who can it be?” murmured a battered man behind her.
“Spirits, elves... I cannot tell, and I do not care,” she said weakly, then slumped to the parapet, unconscious.
Though equally exhausted, his wounded leg throbbing with every beat of his heart, Amero flung his arms wide and shouted, “No, not spirits! Not elves! Nomads! They’re nomads! Nianki’s band has come at last!”
*
From the moment he’d risen, Hoten knew the day was an ill-omened one. Raider dead, slain in the previous day’s battle, lay in heaps outside the camp. Though it was a grim sight, he’d seen much death since joining Zannian’s band. It was the eerie silence hanging over everything that had halted him in his tracks. Crows and vultures should have been circling, but the sky above was as empty of scavengers as it was of clouds. It was as though nature itself was rejecting the dead, and this troubled Hoten deeply. Such a thing had never happened. Never, until the ogres came.
After washing himself in the river, Hoten had awakened his mate and found her different this morning. Nacris came to life unusually animated. She told him of a wager the men had going, on whether it would be Zan or the ogres who entered Arku-peli first. Though betting favored Ungrah-de, Nacris wagered on her son.
“Losing faith in your allies?” Hoten asked, helping her rise and placing the crutch in her hand.
“Gaining faith in myself,” she replied. “I will lead my Jade Men to Arku-peli today. With them as his spearhead, Zan will prevail.”
“But Zannian commanded the Jade Men to remain in camp.”
“A stupid order. I shall lead them to victory!”
All the remaining raiders were summoned to Zannian a short time later. Hoten lingered at the rear of the formation, watching Nacris in her litter and the Jade Men surrounding her. Though Zannian offered him command of this attack, Hoten let the fiery young captains lead the morning’s assault. Shouting war cries, they galloped off to the north baffle to help storm the fading village defenses.
Still Hoten hung back. Nacris did not follow the horsemen when they turned toward the town. She led her twenty-two surviving Jade Men into the center of the valley and halted, facing the rising sun.
Hoten cantered to her. “What are you doing?” he called. “The battle is there. Why have you stopped out here?” Nacris’s lean, lined face was alight with rapturous excitement. Her normally cold, flinty eyes glowed with a strange happiness. She looked years younger. It was astonishing how the emotion transformed her, yet the sight only added to Hoten’s feeling of nameless worry.
“She’s coming,” his mate said. “She’s coming, and I’ll be here to greet her.”
“Who’s coming? Nacris, what are you talking about?”
She looked up at him with shining eyes. “Karada.”
“Karada’s dead and gone, like her brother,” he said with a disgusted snort. Then, in spite of himself, he asked, “What makes you think she’s coming?”
“I feel it. Here.” The crippled old woman pressed a fist to her heart. “All night I dreamed I could hear the hoof-beats of Karada’s band, riding and riding. When I awoke I could still hear them. I know it is true, Hoten. The Great Spirits have granted me this boon. This is the day I will see Karada again, and one of us is fated to perish!”
He couldn’t tell if she was mad or inspired. In either case, Hoten felt he was losing the woman he loved. He palmed the sweat from his blistered brow and made one last attempt to reach her.
“If what you say is true, then you shouldn’t be standing out here, alone. Karada always led a band of superb warriors. If she comes, you and the Jade Men will be trampled into the dirt.”
Nacris drew a light javelin from a socket in the frame of her litter. She laid the weapon across her lap. In the same strange, lilting voice, she replied, “We will fight and we will win. The spirits are with me. Haven’t you understood this? Everything that has happened in my life has been done so to bring me here! You don’t believe me?
Broken, lame, I was found by you and spared. The Master enlisted me in his cause, not knowing he was really serving mine! Zannian raised a mighty band to fulfill his ambition, but it was mine he was achieving!
“The bronze dragon abandoned his people, why? Because I willed it! The Dragon’s Son was slain – by my Jade Men! Even Ungrah-de has subordinated himself to my design. All that remains is to destroy Karada herself, and my revenge will be complete! I cannot possibly fail now.”
Hoten stared at her. He had lived too long to believe in anything so childish as heartbreak, but at that moment he knew, win or lose, Nacris was lost to him forever. The knowledge left him feeling empty.
He dismounted and came to her side. Her glittering eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon. Bending down, he kissed her gently on the forehead. She paid him no heed whatsoever.
Back astride his horse, Hoten turned toward Arku-peli, already ringing with the sounds of combat. “Farewell, Nacris. Hoten, son of Nito, salutes you.”
She did not loo
k up as he rode away.
Chapter 10
By the time the nomads entered Cedarsplit Gap, day was well advanced. Though tired from their all-night ride, not one wanted to stop. Before sunrise they had flushed a party of raiders camped on a ridge overlooking the pass. From them, they’d learned the ogres and raiders were close to capturing the town. Karada united the different segments of her band and set off immediately for the Valley of the Falls.
The Silvanesti, on foot, had fallen behind during the night but caught up at the ridge. Ironically, it was the elves who had the stiffest fight in the mountains.
As Karada had ordered, Balif led his soldiers to the cliff top and immediately ran into a force of five-score raiders. Outnumbered three to one, Balif attacked. The raiders had detected Karada’s large, mounted band moving through the pass and closed ranks in expectation of an assault on horseback. They did not expect thirty metal-armed Silvanesti on foot.
Balif spread his elves out in skirmishing order, taking a small pinnacle above the plateau first. From there, the Silvanesti hurled bronze-tipped javelins down on the tightly packed raiders.
Outflanked, half the raiders bolted there and then. The rest charged the elves with their long stabbing spears leveled. Balif drew his soldiers back on the crag where the raiders’ horses couldn’t reach them. The undisciplined raiders broke into small groups and attacked at will, which allowed Balif to pick them off, equally at will. By midday, the elf lord was master of the plateau.
Sending a messenger on a dead raider’s horse, Balif informed Karada he held the cliff tops. To his surprise, the messenger returned with Karada herself and an entourage of twenty nomads.
She looked over the field of Balif’s small victory. The elf lord, long hair tied back with a leather strap in nomad fashion, was sweating in the heat but as composed as ever.
“Well done,” she said. “How do they fight?”
“They’re fell foes. With better leadership, they’d have driven us off the mountain.”
They went to the edge of the high precipice and looked down on Yala-tene. Smoke drifted over the beleaguered town, and a mass of horsemen was milling about below the wall on the north end of the village. Whatever pangs of memory and loss Karada felt looking at her brother’s home she quickly suppressed.
“Pakito!”
“Aye!” The giant appeared at his chiefs side.
“Take two out of three in the band and hit those yevi-spawn! Go now!”
“Aye, Karada!” Pakito kissed Samtu and started shouting orders. His booming voice carried across the open plateau, putting the heat of battle into everyone’s veins.
“Bahco! Wait here with the third that Pakito doesn’t take,” Karada ordered. The young nomad grimaced with disappointment but did as she said.
Beramun slipped in beside Karada. “Can you see the ogres? How many do you think there are?”
Karada shaded her eyes with her hands. Her vision was proverbially keen, but even she couldn’t distinguish ogres from men at this distance, and she said so.
Hawk eyes still fastened on the scene below, she suddenly exclaimed, “By my ancestors! On the valley floor, there – folk on foot. Do you see?” Beramun and Balif agreed they did. “Do they look green to you?”
Balif frowned. “They do.”
“The Jade Men!” Beramun breathed.
The grim calm of the nomad chieftain gave way to the fury of Amero’s sister. “Bahco!” Karada said, voice cracking with rage. “Take the rest of the band down there and get them!”
“Yes, chief. Do you want prisoners?”
“I want corpses! Those are the snakes who killed my brother! Not one of them is to live, Bahco! Kill them all!”
The dark warrior nodded gravely and departed.
Beramun stared after him, her hand resting on the mark on her chest. Strangely, when she’d escaped Yala-tene to search for Karada, the green brand had saved her life. The Jade Men had captured her but, seeing their master’s sign, had let her go, thinking she was one of them. Their calm assurance had frightened her, but she’d proven she was not Sthenn’s tool, hadn’t she? She was returning with Karada and her nomad warriors.
“I must get to the village as soon as possible,” Beramun said. “May I go with Bahco?”
Karada glanced at Beramun and at Mara, standing behind her and quietly observing everything. “All right,” the chieftain said. “Leave Mara here, and mind what Bahco tells you. He leads in my place.”
Soon only Karada, Mara, Balif, and his elves remained on the cliff. Anyone else might have felt vulnerable being surrounded by armed former enemies, but not Karada. She knew Balif well enough by now to know he would not try any treacherous coup.
They remained overlooking the scene until Pakito’s column hit the raiders from behind. Zannian’s men were crowded in close to the wall, awaiting their chance to come to grips with the weakening villagers, and they never knew what hit them. Pakito, disdaining the use of bows, closed with spear and sword.
“That’s it!” Karada cried, racing along the edge of the cliff, following the fight. One wrong step, and she would have plunged hundreds of paces down the mountain. She was oblivious to the danger. “Drive in! Keep them against the wall, Pakito. No room to maneuver! Give them no room!”
Turning suddenly, Karada sprang onto her horse. “Why am I here? To battle!”
Mara said, “Take me with you!”
Karada gave the girl her hand. “Hold on!” she said as Mara scrambled aboard. “If you fall off on the way down, I’m not stopping to pick you up!”
Mara wrapped both arms around Karada’s narrow waist. The nomad chief waved to Balif, who mustered his elves and started them jogging into Cedarsplit Gap. At a bone-jarring gallop, Karada passed the Silvanesti and hurtled down the slope, drawn by the intoxicating tumult of battle.
*
The Jade Men formed a circle around Nacris, each facing outward. The youth who’d led the killers after Amero said, “Mother, we await your will.”
“Good boys. Be patient. She will come.”
The din of battle waxed and waned behind them as Zannian tried to bludgeon his way into Yala-tene. More distant was the noise of Ungrah and his ogres resuming their attack, having now demolished the west baffle and part of the outer wall. The sound of ogre war drums could be heard again throughout the Valley of the Falls.
It was high summer, and the Jade Men suffered in the heat, though they wore nothing but green kilts and leggings. They made no complaints and kept formation as the hot sun beat down on them. The ground around them became stained with their dripping sweat.
A strong breeze blew down Cedarsplit Gap, driving eddies of dust before it. The Jade Men on the east side of the circle sniffed the air and immediately stiffened with alarm. They looked to Nacris, reclining in the litter, the javelin still on her lap.
“Mother —”
“Yes, my child. I know. Horses are coming. Are you ready?”
They were.
“Present your arms.”
Each Jade Man knelt on one knee, butting the end of his long spear against his foot. Their circle was now a fence of keen points.
Tiny mounted figures appeared on the cliffs overlooking the valley. Their horses were taller than the ponies the raiders rode, and most were light-colored – tan, gray, white. They stood out boldly against the darker stone of the cliffs.
A heavy cloud of dust rose from the pass, soaring as high as the cliffs around it. The drone of massed hoofbeats gradually overcame the tumult of the battle for Yala-tene, and the first riders emerged from Cedarsplit Gap. Obviously scouts, they took in the scene and reentered the pass. Moments later, a column of riders six abreast burst into view. They thundered down the trail, making for the rear of Zannian’s band and veering away from the Jade Men’s position. Nacris said nothing. The Jade Men held their places.
The moving column of nomads passed within a hundred paces of the Jade Men. The riders saw the strange, green-painted youths on open ground b
ut held their course to hit the engaged raiders hard. A gigantic melee developed, with hundreds of horses churning up the dry earth, filling the air with dust.
A second band of nomads descended the pass in a more leisurely fashion. They halted briefly, then came toward Nacris at a steady walk.
“Steady, children,” she said. “Remember your Master! He will hear of how well you fight today!”
The nomads spread out, plainly seeking to encircle their unmoving enemy. Nacris admired their tall mounts, their buff deerskins, and tanned, healthy faces. She’d been one of them once and remembered how it felt to have sound limbs, a good horse, and the endless plain as your domain.
At a distance of forty paces, the nomads halted. They put aside their spears and swords and took strange devices in their hands – slender staves of wood, their two ends joined by a taut length of cord.
Nacris furrowed her brow. What was this?
Each rider fitted a little spear to the cord. That was enough to warn Nacris these were weapons of some sort. She cried, “Jade Men! At them!”
With a concerted shout the green-skinned youths threw themselves forward. The nomads waited, implacable, drawing back the cords on their odd weapons, stretching the staves into deep arcs. When released, the little spears were thrown with incredible force. The air was filled with the thrum of tight strings and the hiss of flying feathered-tufted missiles.
It should have been over in a few heartbeats – two hundred nomads loosing arrows at less than twenty-five targets. Yet, the fight did not go that way. Slender green bodies twisted and spun, dodging the first volley of arrows sent at them. Screaming in high-pitched, boyish voices, the Jade Men came on. Unnerved, the nomads hesitated before loosing a second hail of arrows.
This time many of the arrows found their marks. Jade Men toppled, chests sprouting with slender wooden shafts. Those not hit dropped to the ground and scrambled forward on all fours, each with a spear clenched in his teeth. Horses reared as the weird youths scampered under them. Some nomads were thrown down and slain by the waiting Jade Men. Others dropped their bows in favor of spears and swords to better combat their strange enemies.