by George Tome
Somehow, he was expecting that, but what he didn’t expect was the animal’s speed of reaction. He hadn’t even managed to catch the ear chain, and now he had no chance of doing so because the violent shaking was forcing him to hold on to the net for dear life. It was rightly said there’s nothing more dangerous than an out-of-control moulan…
In a desperate attempt to stop it, he frantically grabbed the closest rein, which was the attack one. An obvious beginner’s mistake—the attack rein had no use in steering the beast. The maneuver proved fateful; in the next second, he flew from the animal’s rump, pulling the rein after him.
With one movement he managed not only to fall under the eyes of the orzacs but to trigger the tail reflex right in the direction of his tumbling. The collective sigh of the army accompanied his contact with the discoidal grass and the tangential blow of the lethal spikes, which knocked off his helmet, fortunately without flinging his head off his neck in the process.
Boiling with rage, Gill leaped to his feet and ran back at the beast, which was staring at him indolently while chewing a mouthful of juicy grass. He put on the helmet and jumped on the moulan’s net.
He had learned his lesson, so he grabbed the ear chain first. The moment the moulan broke loose, he was well lodged on its rump, his back straight and his eyes on the bumps ahead—hoping to clean some of the earlier dishonor. The damage was done, and the morale of his troops would surely suffer after this demonstration of clumsiness—but knowing the stakes, he wasn’t expecting anyone to run from the battlefield. Yet.
He let the moulan run without steering it in any way, but then he jerked the ear chain hard to show the beast who was in charge. It was essential to remain astride during the next several minutes until the beast’s anger subsided. It seemed, however, that he pulled too hard—the surprised moulan roared in pain and rose on its hind legs, promptly collapsing on its left side. He was back in the grass!
Kizac galloped past him to catch the moulan before it vanished into the forest.
Calm down, the voice of reason screamed in his kyi. You lost your smell? You didn’t even breathe Acanthia’s scents three times and already think you’re Huxile? Remember your task to hand over the brocat? You don’t need to ride for that! He immediately relaxed, realizing the folly of letting himself be lured by the game’s realism. The moulan could have killed him easily. The female was right—there was no way of helping her but to stay hidden.
He glimpsed her in the distance riding a moulan toward him—and she was riding flawlessly—followed by a bunch of creatures. Obviously, she had seen his pathetic attempts to straddle the moulan… Enough is enough! His pride deeply wounded, he turned to Kizac.
“Bring me my moulan!” Gill ordered.
He grabbed the net, refusing any assistance, and rolled onto the rump. As expected, the moulan went berserk, but this time, he didn’t let it speed away.
“Stop!” he ordered the beast, pulling gradually stronger on the ear chain until the animal stopped, trembling in rage, but no longer trying to overthrow him.
Gill had no time to savor his small victory. He turned and searched for his ratrap.
“Kizac?” he shouted.
“Yes, Your Greatness!”
“Take a few orzacs and follow me.”
About ten soldiers joined him. Ignoring the mad roaring of his moulan, he gently released the rein, steering it toward Sandara. As he approached her, he realized she had dressed in the light blue armor of the grahs, one of the marvels of their blacksmiths. The armor had beautifully rounded shapes to deflect the sarpan blows or projectiles as well as long, sharp spikes along the forearms and elbows to provide the wearer an advantage in close combat.
Sandara was accompanied by fifteen grah footmen, dressed just like her. The grah soldiers always fought in groups of three—two of them holding the enemies at bay with their falchies78 while the third slammed his gorg between them. He also threw the trilates, the throwing axes, of which the group always carried twelve.
Although his main concern was to remain saddled and avoid further dishonor, he couldn’t ignore the strangeness of the meadow where he was supposed to meet her. He was trying in vain to understand the geological forces that carved the hillside like that, his archivist knowledge unable to provide a plausible explanation. The discoidal grass was pierced by massive marblelike blocks resembling the ones in the tekal forest. However, they didn’t appear milky and were covered in a muddy crust. The water puddled around them, flowing from hundreds of tiny springs that seemingly emerged from the very heart of the stones…
“Is it marble?” he asked Kizac, pointing to the rock formation.
“I don’t know, Your Greatness; I’ve never seen something like that before.”
“What do you mean you’ve never seen—” He stopped the acid remark on his lips, realizing that the AIs had no way of remembering the details from one game to another—otherwise, they would influence the results of future battles. “Could it be ice?”
“You finally got your tail in the saddle?” Sandara shouted, but the inflections of her voice didn’t smell of chaffing. On the contrary, the female seemed to appreciate his clumsy efforts to show himself with all the dignity of a baitar.
“Sandara,” he yelled back, pointing at the muddy fangs, “what’s with the—”
He didn’t get to finish the question because the “stone” blocks started to tremble in their mud shells, waking to life. It took him only a fraction of a second to realize that the things dug in the hillside were dogans—Dedris’s ice monsters, melting under the unforgiving starlight.
They had fallen into a trap!
“Watch out!” he shouted, grasping both reins in the left hand—the tail attack coiled around the first two fingers and the ear ring around the other two—while he drew the sarpan from the armor’s tube.
His companions saw the danger and jumped to his defense. An ice brute reached him first, though, stretching its long paws ending in daggerlike ice claws to drag him down from the moulan. With great impetuosity, Gill managed to cut both its arms in one blow, and then, in an elegant wrist move, he chopped its head off.
The speedy maneuver confused the monster. It fell on its back, shaking its trimmed stubs and abundantly bleeding clear water. He wasn’t so lucky with another dogan that rose in front of his moulan. While Gill was busy getting rid of the first one without losing his balance, the huge fists of the second one savagely hit the moulan’s snout. The blow took him by surprise, throwing him off the net. It’s over, he thought, his kyi drained of hope like a hollow seed gnawed from inside by the hunger of an unforgiving disease…
He waited for the finishing blow… but it didn’t come. Instead, another moulan appeared nearby. Looking up, he saw Kizac riding it. Gill quickly climbed onto the net, squeezing his sarpan handle to make sure he wouldn’t lose it. Holding the net with his left hand, Gill turned just in time to slice another monster that jumped on them while Kizac carved the head of another one.
It appeared that the high temperatures had softened the ice “muscles” of the dogans. The small band was doing well, raising a metal wall between him and the enemies. He started to hope he could reach Sandara to give her the Brocats, but then he heard an intense rustle—something heavy rubbing against the grass…
In a loud creaking of ice joints came the horror of the monsters’ attack. Some dogans behind the front line sprang forward, and using the shoulders of the first row like trampolines, they jumped into the air, landing on the orzacs in the ravine. Gill found himself next to a white colossus that had fallen right beside him. At the last moment, he managed to avoid a disaster by cutting it open before the acrobat had time to pull itself together. Others were not that fortunate. He could hear the groans of the soldiers hit by the mountains of ice, which buried them alive.
“Fall back! Retreat to the camp!” he screamed to Kizac.
In great haste, Kizac turned his moulan and broke into a desperate run up the hill toward the orzacs’ c
amp. Looking back, Gill saw only three of his ten companions following them. And his moulan. The bastard wasn’t hurt.
From up high, he realized that Ugo-Voran’s plan had still worked: Sandara had fallen into the trap! They overwhelmed her easily because she had rushed toward him with the recklessness specific to the grahs, far from her escort.
Ugo’s perfidy didn’t escape his nostrils: he made sure she wasn’t disconnected from the game. Dedris’s monsters absorbed her arms in their bodies to block her from doing it herself, while the female screamed, “Run! Wait for—”
An ice claw strangled the rest of her words.
The ice creatures fused their melting feet in a compact block to slide quickly, leaving behind a trail of dirty water. Hundreds of dogans followed the group that held Sandara. On the left wing, Nibala’s grahs appeared in the meadow, in a futile attempt to stop their retreat. Unfortunately, they had no way of reaching them. All they could do was crush a few monsters that had strayed too far behind.
The dogans had almost reached the valley, but Gill knew that the speed of his moulans was greater. Most likely, he couldn’t stop the small vanguard that held Sandara before it reached Ugo’s position. One thing was sure, though: if he led a charge against the monsters’ rear guard, he would shatter them like a swarm of helpless licants.
He overcame the inhibition of straddling the moulan; each of his cells was consumed by the pure essence of revolt boiling in his veins, burning him from the inside like acid. It wasn’t a simple impulse to fight, to punish Ugo for his infamy: he felt the burning desire to rebel against the madness of the last days, against the miasma that drew the whole Antyran population on his tail.
Therefore, he decided to ignore Sandara’s order to run like a coward and hope that Forbat would read her message. To wait to be rescued by the parhonte would mean relying on a stranger, on a situation beyond his control, to move the weight of Ugo’s defeat to someone else’s tail. That would be stupid beyond words. Gill knew all too well that the only Antyran he could trust was himself. He was a soldier and had to fight. He had to reach the jure to make him pay for his rudeness, to make him a brand-new hole with his sarpan, to disconnect him with his own hands. Once, not long ago, he regretted that he had answered Tadeo’s call and ended up wearing the bracelet on his arm. Now, he regretted nothing.
His right hand was burning with eagerness, squeezing the sarpan’s handle. The weapon was singing into his ears to get it out and use it. “Have a little patience, my beauty, just a little bit,” he whispered to the gorgeous purple blade.
“Kizac, gather the troops,” he ordered, jumping on his own moulan, which didn’t dare to show any sign of disobedience this time. “I want to save Sandara.”
“Sandara, Your Greatness?”
“Nibala. If you’re ready, follow me!” he yelled, raising the sarpan to the sky.
A loud shout came from the soldiers, its echoes resounding through the hills. About two hundred orzacs in shiny armor jumped on their moulans; the others hurried frantically to dress in their battle gear and join them.
At once, the cavalry trudged downhill, leaving behind a trail of moist earth plowed by the thick claws of the moulans.
He descended the ravine that bordered the gravel road through a less steep area on the right. Only the river now lay between him and the ice creatures. With little concern for how closely he was followed by the escort, in a superb gesture of recklessness typical for the mentality of the cavalry in those times, he charged his moulan toward the enemies. He knew, however, that his soldiers were riding hastily in his wake, ready to cover him with their chests, to die if necessary, to save his life.
Once he crossed the river, he saw the problem. The slaughter was going to take place, all right, but Gill wasn’t sure anymore who the victims would be. The ice monsters had taken shelter behind the thorny bushes at the base of the hill, and the bushes were studded with sharp stakes hardened by fire, all pointed at the valley. A grotesque pack of soldiers swarmed behind them.
It wasn’t hard to recognize the slobberings: horribly deformed, fat creatures, flaunting their azziles.79 Each had an enormous head that wiggled over three stained goiters, and the large mouth was packed full of conical, brown teeth; in addition, the toxic slobber gave it a poisonous bite. Each wore a tiny, useless steel helmet that had four black horns. The helmet seemed so ridiculous, so without any trace of utility, that it became obvious that the architects didn’t lack a sense of humor—although Gill felt no urge to be amused at this point. The bloodthirsty monsters were waiting for the orzacs like an immovable wall of metal. Needless to say, the slobberings never existed in reality, being conceived by the fecund imagination of the ancient aromaries.
The situation had changed radically. He bridled the moulan, deciding to cancel the hopeless assault. Unfortunately, it was too late for that. In a few moments, a loose line of about a hundred riders charged past him, the earth trembling under the weight of their moulans. Another line closely followed. He had nothing to do but to join them. After all, he was the fool to order the assault…
Less than fifty yards from the stockades, he saw a bunch of silvery flashes climbing up in the sky. It took him little time to realize that a rain of rikanes80—the sinister spears of the kerats81—were coming after them.
Cruel and inexorable, the metal rain fell with deadly precision over the lines in full charge. The armor of the orzacs, despite its formidable strength, had no chance of resisting. Immediately, a group of soldiers made a wall around him. The noise of their canter was covered by the sound of the rikanes ripping through armor and sinking in flesh, followed by the wails and roars of the orzacs and moulans falling in front of the palisades at grotesque angles.
The first salvo cleared the space around Gill, who escaped unharmed thanks to the sacrifice of his soldiers. The second wave coming from behind had no better fate. Few escaped the rain of rikanes to reach the scraps of the first line who had engaged the palisades. The orzacs jumped on the slobberings, but their ranks were compact, and the skillfully handled azziles thundered over their helmets, thwarting any attempt to breach through. He heard the sinister rustle once again. Already aware of what was about to happen, he looked upward, ready to greet them. The ice creatures on the hillside started to jump over the stockades and wreaked havoc among the soldiers. Another pack of orzacs caught up with him. At least, what was left of them…
No more than a hundred riders gathered around him, and their ranks were shrinking fast. The soldiers had already been fighting for several minutes, their attack turning into a desperate fight for survival. Seeing that the assault had all but wound down, the slobberings jumped over the stakes, blaring and twirling the azziles over the heads like deadly pinwheels. The sarpans of the orzacs were shorter and couldn’t stop the monsters from knocking them off and crushing them to death.
Gill had trouble steering his moulan away from the heavy fighting. Suddenly, a crazy slobbering managed to break a path through the wall of orzacs, jumping in front of him with an azzile raised overhead. Deciding not to allow him the pleasure, Gill jerked the attack reins. There was a loud whiplike snap: the four metal-covered spikes hit the slobbering in the chest, knocking him down. Despite the devastating blow, the monster didn’t die—he scrambled on his shaking legs, growling angrily. Not for long, though, because Gill thrust his thirsty sarpan into the monster’s huge goiters, stopping his stinky breathing.
The surviving soldiers used the same desperate method to keep the slobberings at bay. The ranks of the enemies became thicker—if they couldn’t disengage quickly, they wouldn’t be able to do it at all. The stupid, senseless attack risked sealing the fate of the battle, as more and more orzacs finished dressing and joined the slaughter in small, ineffective clumps.
It was said that even the best strategies break at the first contact with the enemy, and Gill didn’t have the slightest plan against the greatest strategist of Ropolis. Moreover, Ugo wasn’t fighting fair; the ice monsters hidden in the
hillside were surely placed for a nasty backstab in the middle of the fight, and only the unexpected appearance of the grah female forced Ugo to use them before the intended time. That incident showed Gill what kind of surprises he could expect from the jure…
I’ve done enough stupid things for today, he reproached himself. He breathed deeply, feeling the knot of time expanding like a tekal seed thrown in a hot oven. The scent of the pathkeeper was still his kyi; he decided to abandon himself to it, to find again the un-Antyran force that gave him the strength to fight on the streets of Alixxor, to face a million tarjis when he had no hope of survival. This time he couldn’t use the bracelet to help him, but he had something much more valuable: his knowledge of ancient history that Ugo was not aware of.
Above their heads, other shiny volleys crossed the sky, hunting those who tried to come to their rescue.
“Fall back!” he thundered to his soldiers.
“Your Greatness, look!” exclaimed Kizac, pointing at the gravel road in the valley.
A cloud of white dust was rising in the distance, pierced by countless rows of shiny poles. He wasn’t mistaken: llandro.82 A huge army of snaky beasts was marching quickly toward them!
Despite their natural armor, they came equipped with short tunics and silly little helmets—no more useful than the ones worn by the slobberings.
“Llandro!” the terrified soldiers shouted and broke their ranks in disorder.
The slobberings didn’t chase them; they raised the azziles over the heads, howling in victory.
Another large army appeared from the edge of the forest on Gill’s right, searching for a fjord to cross the meandering river, whose water was deeper in that area. He didn’t recognize them at all. There were hundreds of gray-white spots—most likely some large animals running on four legs—followed by thousands of tall, green silhouettes.
The catapults stopped firing, and he reached the orzacs’ camp without further mishap. He had only minutes to spare before the real battle would commence. A massive grah approached and handed him the Brocat of Loyalty. He took it and hung it on his belt, next to the other two.