by Jeffrey Lord
Blade ran it all through his mind in a split instant and made his plans. There was still a chance.
Now he pointed to where some half-dozen of the women, wounded or dead, had been dragged into the Pethcine ranks and were being raped. There was no system about it, no order, and Org, if he even noticed, did not seem to mind this contravention of discipline. The women had been stripped of their armor and lay naked on the plain. Some moved, writhed, showing signs of life. Some were obviously dead. It made no difference to the Pethcine warriors who were so inclined: they dropped their weapons, raped the dead or badly wounded women for a minute or so, then recovered their weapons and got back into the ranks. The moans of the still living women could be heard at times above the battle din.
Blade pointed with his sword. “That will happen to you, Isma, and all your people unless you obey me!”
She glowered at him. “It will not. Nothing can defeat me - I am Isma, High Priestess of Tharn!”
It was useless to argue. Blade knew it. She would not be cajoled. He would have to make the best of it.
He stepped close and seized her arm. She tried to pull away and he was brutal, tightening his grip until she would have cried out in pain but for her fierce pride. One of the Lordsmen, bolder than the rest, stepped forward. Blade glared at him. The man shrank back.
“Very well,” Blade said. “We will fight your way, Isma. And the Gods have pity on us. Look. See that?”
He released her arm. She followed his pointing finger. Org had sent a column of Pethcines to get behind them, cutting the square off from the fort and the glacis.
Blade shrugged. “It is decided now. We fight here.
But listen to me, listen well, and there may still be a chance.”
Isma, with the fickleness of women, did listen. She had had her way, and she knew that Blade planned well.
Blade loosened the square. He formed six ranks, detaching the Lordsmen and sending them into the front rank, and remained with Isma in the center of the square. The catapults had ceased firing now, for which Blade was thankful, but there was no sign of Xeno. The ceboids on the flanks had reformed and were waiting for orders. The glacis and the plain around the square were choked thick with the dead and dying. Org’s column, once it had moved in to cut them off from the fort, had halted and was waiting. Blade noted that many of the savages in that column were wounded or battle weary. He did not think they would attack. Org was running short of manpower and was using his wounded as a cork, to plug up Blade’s escape.
The wind had fallen off now and the rain stopped. Rays of faint sunlight fought through the massy clouds and set the Pethcine banners to shimmering. Still the main attack did not come.
Isma sank white teeth into a scarlet nether lip and stared at Blade. “Why do they wait? They are cowards, then? Afraid!”
“Not Org,” said Blade with a grim smile. “Be patient. They will come when they are ready.”
He gave orders and had a platform of corpses built so that he could see above the battle. He must know how it was with Zulekia and Honcho.
Four bodies this way, four bodies that, then another cross-hatching of dead women and Lordsmen and another, and he had a platform. He leaped up and peered in the direction of the Pethcine tents. What he saw gave some slight encouragement. He was gambling that Honcho, to save himself in the bitter end, would try to save the Maiduke girl if Org was defeated. Then he would try to bargain.
So far the gamble was a good one. The horses and drivers were gone now, no doubt pressed into the battle, and Zulekia was staked out on the plain near the tents. The neuter Honcho, peering beneath his hand at the square, was pacing anxiously to and fro. Blade’s smile was cold. Honcho was a worried neuter! He could not know when, or if, Blade and Sutha would again summon the Power. Until they did Honcho was himself shorn of all technical tricks. If Blade never did have recourse to the Power - and by now Honcho must suspect that such was the case, a thing he would not understand at all - then the Pethcines had to win the day or the neuter was in the deepest trouble.
Blade, peering across the death strewn plain, could almost read Honcho’s thoughts.
Blade watched Org step from the ranks and raise a small horn to his bearded lips. Org had found new armor and helmet, and was carrying a new and larger shield. He looked as fat and fierce as ever, and appeared not in the least bit battle weary. Blade extended a reluctant admiration to his foe. Barbarian, savage, yet he was all warrior. He watched as Org began to sound the little horn, wondering at the significance. Why the horn instead of the braying trumpets?
A moment later he understood. Org was playing a little tune on the horn, a reedy, high pitched, simple little strain with four notes. Immediately the massed Pethcines separated and reformed, marching and counter-marching into a new formation. Blade cursed fervently. They were going to attack three sides of the square at once. Blade shot a look at the glacis. There Org’s column, set to interdict any escape, was unmoving. It had formed into two ranks, one kneeling with long spears, the other back three paces with swords and a small contingent of bowmen. They would, Blade knew, wait until the square began to break and then cut down those who tried to flee up the glacis and into the fort Org meant to make a thorough job of it this time.
Org was playing a different note on the horn now. Totha brought her crescent of chariots a little closer up behind Org’s center. Blade leaped from the platform of corpses and shouted at Isma. She nodded understanding, and in turn gave orders to several of her women officers.
Xeno tugged at Blade’s sword belt and made slaveface. Blade growled at him. “You were long enough!”
Xeno clutched at the necklace Blade had given him, as though his Lord meant to take it away then and there. “It was very bad among the catapults, Lord Blade. They would not obey at first, would not stop firing. I had to take harsh steps, summon whippers, before the Maidens would listen to me. Their senses had left them and they did not care where they fired or whom they killed.”
Blade nodded and patted Xeno’s shoulder. Battle frenzy took strange forms. “You did well enough. Now stand by. I want you always close to me. Understood?”
“Understood, Lord Blade.”
And now the time had run out. The trumpets blared their harsh summons and the Pethcine hordes came on for a last attack. Blade watched it with some trepidation and not a little sense of triumph. He had bled them! He had bled them terribly, a fast reckoning made them no more than two thousand odd. Now, if only Isma and her women would obey orders for once, and execute them properly, and if Totha’s chariots could be handled.
Org sounded his little horn again and the barbarians broke into a run, shouting bloodthirsty threats. They came in from three sides, the trumpets clamoring brazenly and incessantly. Terror tactics.
Blade swung his great sword in a glittering arc and called down to his troops: “Stand steady. Hold fast and remember your orders. Above all - obey, orders when they are given!” He could only hope they would.
Xeno handed Blade a standard with a long pennon attached. He waved it over his head. The catapult crews saw it and went into action again. This time they were on target and the machines fell into a regular chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk rhythm as their missiles began to chew up Org’s lines. As the front ranks went down Org pushed new men in to nil the gaps.
Blade gave another signal and arrow and airgun fire began to come from the flanks and the smaller forts. It was wavering and inaccurate, but now every dart and arrow counted.
He had arranged the front rank of the square with spearwomen kneeling. Behind them the second rank wielded swords and a few bows and airguns. The third rank stood ready to step into the gaps. The next three ranks, back to Blade and Isma, stood ready in reserve.
Org had timed it well. The attack washed against the embattled square on three sides, simultaneously. The din was outlandish, deafening, a garbled symphony of hate and fear, a howling of demons unfettered. The 926 screeching their battle songs. The Pethcines snarled like wol
ves as they began to hew a lane into the square.
Org led the first threat, as Blade had known he would. He meant to be there. If he could kill Org before the chariots, under Totha, could be brought into action it might well carry the day. But Org was too cunning to send his war chariots against a square - he knew the horses would die and pile up and form a barrier. Org knew the chariots were his last resort and he would not use them until the square had been broken and thinned. Then he would send in the chariots, with their cruelly scythed wheels, to finish the job.
Org, at the point of a spear of barbarians, savaged his way into the square. His was the only breakthrough. Otherwise the square held fast as the Pethcines, dying on spears and swords, piled up and blocked the passage of the warriors behind them. But Org had pushed a mortal enclave into the Tharnians, mortal unless it was healed at once. Blade went in to heal it.
Their swords glinted and chimed together, hack and slash, counter and parry. Org, his beard soaked with blood, his piggy eyes gleaming red through a mask of fury, let out a hoarse shout as their swords crossed.
“You again, Lord Mazda! Ha - Ho…Blade, the traitor who calls himself Mazda…I, I, Org, will show you who is a God!” For a moment he drove Blade back with the sheer ferocity of his attack.
Blade taunted him. “Where is Totha? Where is your slut of a daughter, Org? I would bed her once more, before I give her to my ceboids for their sport.” He began to press Org furiously, the big sword licking in and out like a steel tongue, wounding Org in the shoulder, the thigh, slashing his sword arm above the elbow. Org began to drop back. Most of his men had fallen now as the Tharnian women closed in to heal the gap in the square.
Blade slashed off part of Org’s beard. “You should not have listened to Honcho,” he taunted anew. “You see where it has led you. You are being defeated by women!”
That was too much for Org to bear. He might have slipped back and disengaged, fought his way out of the square, but instead he let out a dreadful yell and rushed at Blade. All his men were down now and the square close in behind him.
Blade parried a blow, then slashed at Org’s hand. The hand, with the sword still in it, flew high into the air. Org screamed and stood staring down at his arm. Before Blade could strike again Org reached and wrested a sword from one of the last Lordsmen. He charged at Blade again, using his left hand now, waving his bloody arm like a battle flag.
Blade took a backward step and held the long sword straight before him. Org, in a raging and baffled fury, ran straight onto the sword. It cut through his armor just below the breastbone and, as he still pushed on, stood out two feet behind the broad back. Org, defiant and hating until the last, ran right up on the jeweled hilt, face to face with Blade. Then, with his eyes dying, he tried to spit.
Blade lowered the sword and let the Pethcine King’s body slide off to the blood drenched earth. Isma watched him, and Xeno, and all of the inner ranks. On the perimeter of the square the battle still raged loud and feral. The Pethcines did not yet know their King was dead.
Blade hacked off Org’s head and impaled it on the sword. He leaped high on the corpse platform and brandished the bloody head at the Pethcines. He cleared his powerful lungs and bellowed so that he was heard above the wailing trumpets.
“Pethcines. Here is your King!”
For a moment there was no effect, then as more and more of the barbarians saw the lifeless eyes of Org staring from the sword point, his blood still dribbling down the steel, the battle clamor began to still. The Pethcines in the rear, those not yet committed, began to wail. The front ranks, so fierce only a minute before, began to disengage and fall back.
Blade spoke sharply to Xeno. “Signal the catapults. They must fire everything now - everything they have! Fire until the last arrow is gone.”
Blade raised on his toes and waved the head at Totha, still waiting out on the plain with her chariots. Totha was impulsive, a murderous little savage to the core. But would she take the bait?
Totha did. The watching Blade saw her scream in fury at the chariot driver beside her. She raised a shell horn to her lips and sounded a blast. The crescent of war chariots began to move forward, slowly gaining momentum. Blade grinned like a tiger over meat and shouted his commands at Isma.
“Break your square. Wheel out, wheel out! Double ranks, close order. You all know the trick, but wait, wait until you hear me give the order!”
The Tharnian women broke the square and began to wheel into a thin double line. There were less than 500 of them left. Blade was everywhere, praising, cajoling, threatening, cursing, trimming and dressing the line. He was close to victory now. He could smell it. If only Totha, mad for revenge, brought her war chariots into the trap…
But there was now new chaos on the plain before the Tharnian front. Blade groaned. To lose total victory now, when he was so close, would be a cruel blow. To lose it because of the panic inspired by Org’s death, for which he was himself responsible, would be ironic. Blade stared out at the deadly confusion and scowled. Totha was being given time for second thoughts - she could still disengage and order a planned retreat, and the Pethcines would live to fight another day, the last thing Blade wanted.
The fleeing Pethdne warriors, as the rout gained momentum, ran straight into the advancing chariots. Totha sounded the charge and the war chariots picked up speed. There was no turning back now. Running men met speeding chariots in one great shock wave. Instantly the plain was a wilderness of awesome disorder, or screaming legless men, flashing wheel scythes, cursing and frantic drivers and warriors, rearing and plunging horses. The chariots slowed, the charge blunted, and some of the Pethcine warriors, in their confusion and fear, began to attack their own people in an effort to get clear.
Totha, in a frenzy of screaming rage, set about putting matters straight. Blade watched admiringly as she wheeled around and around in her chariot, shouting orders and spearing anyone who got in her way. Gradually she got her chariots free of the crush of retreating men, and back into battle line. She sounded her shell horn again and the chariots came on. Blade nodded and waited. It had worked out well for him. Totha was coming into the trap, thinking the Tharnian line an easy prey for the chariots. But now there would be no time for the chariots to pick up speed again, and Totha could not guess at Blade’s guile.
Totha was well in the van as the scythed chariots crunched down on the line of women. Each chariot carried a warrior and a driver. As the chariots drew near the warriors began to send a hail of arrows into the Tharnian line and a few women fell. Blade, with Xeno, at his side, stood a little back of his right flank. Isma and her by now pitifully small bodyguard had the same position on the left.
Fifty yards. The drivers were whipping up the horses. They came on with eyes wild and flashing, manes tossing, hooves drumming out a sullen beat on the packed bloody earth. The drivers and warriors were screaming in a thin threatening crescendo. The Tharnian line waited in silence, as Blade had ordered. They must hear his command when it came.
Twenty-five yards. Blade took a step nearer the line and tucked his sword under his left arm. He cupped his hands around his mouth.
Ten yards. Five yards. Blade drew air deep into his lungs. A wheel came off a chariot and bounded high in the air, skipping toward him. Horses, chariot, and occupants went down in a bloody screaming heap.
“Now,” Blade yelled. “Now!”
The Tharnian line parted nimbly to left and right in segments, to let the chariots race through. Those who could not get out of the way threw themselves beneath the gleaming scythes, and some rose unharmed. Still there were casualties aplenty. Some of the women did not move fast enough and lost both legs above the knees. Others fell on the scythes and were cut in half or disemboweled. But in large part the maneuver worked.
Blade gave the order, trumpeting through his cupped hands. “Wheel about! Charge and destroy!”
He might have saved his breath. The women knew what to do and they set about it with screams of triumph and r
age. They, as did Blade, scented victory.
Even then Totha could have recovered had she kept her head and given the right order, set the right example. She could have whipped up her horses and kept going, slashing through the ceboids now closing in on the flanks, and come around for another try. Or retreated. She did neither. She ordered her driver to hold up sharply, wheel, and charge back directly at the Tharnian line. The other war chariots, obeying her, did the same. It was fatal, as Blade had hoped it would be. Before the chariots could wheel about and pick up new speed they were inundated by the Tharnian women, some of whom had been given special orders to hamstring the horses. The orders were carried out furiously and efficiently. The poor beasts began to go down, taking the chariots with them, in a kicking, screaming melee. Drivers were speared and hacked to pieces with swords and the warriors, fighting back valiantly, fared little better. They were not accustomed to fighting on foot and they were outnumbered now by the women who swarmed over them like vengeful Furies.
Blade kept a watchful eye on Totha. She was still fighting magnificently. As soon as she realized the trap, she had pushed her driver from the chariot and taken the reins herself. She cut a scarlet swathe through the ceboids coming up in the flanks, then whirled and whipped her horses back into the midst of the fray. Blade, watching, knew that Totha meant to die here, near where her father had died. His smile was grim. It was fitting enough.
The Tharnian women, mindful of what had been done to their sisters, were taking revenge. As the Pethcines died, or fell badly wounded, they began to cut up the remains. One towering war maiden ran past Blade, smiling and screaming at him, and holding up a pair of bloody genitals.
Blade turned to Xeno. The battle was won, all but the mopping up, and he had not much stomach for this. He tried to see beyond the melee, over the plain to the Pethcine tents, but swirling dust obscured his vision.
Blade nodded toward a chariot and team that stood nearby, the horses unharmed and calmly grazing on some errant mani that had somehow seeded here. The chariot was intact, the driver slumped in it with a spear through him.