by George Tome
“Stop the llandro,” he ordered, pointing at the steep ravine that bordered the road below the grahs’ position. “Your armor resists their thorns. By all means, don’t let them reach the valley!”
“It will be done, Your Greatness,” he shouted. The grah turned around and ran to his troops to deliver Gill’s order.
He realized that his army’s morale was already shaken, for he saw their eyes gazing at the bodies strewn in the valley, no doubt expecting to join them soon. However, he had made the decision to fight to the bitter end, and he wouldn’t change his mind. The fate of the battle wasn’t sealed yet!
“Kizac, are the orzacs ready to fight?”
“Yes, Your Greatness! They’re waiting for your speech.”
“My speech?”
Of course! Any baitar was supposed to rally his troops before the battle. Often, a good speech could win the war… Since he knew all too well the legend of the Acanthia-under-Star, he had no problem addressing them just the way Huxile might have done it.
He bridled the moulan to bring him in front of his orzacs, slowly, ritually, prancing with all the pride of a baitar prepared to lead them on the path of eternal glory destined for the legendary heroes. Gill turned to face them, searching for their eyes, trying to instill the power of the Sigians in the depths of their kyis, to heal their fears like he healed himself in the fight with the prophet’s tarjis.
“Soldiers of Gondarra!” he thundered over their heads. “The fangs of coldness strangle our world!”
He started to gallop faster and faster in front of them, rising up in the moulan’s net.
“You want to live the day when our bloodline wastes away?”
Their stern looks told him that they knew all too well the stakes of the battle, that no matter how afraid they felt, nobody was going to back away, that they understood they had nowhere to back away. If they lost the battle, their world’s current cycle would come to an end…
“You want to see Voran winning?”
Shouts of anger exploded from their chests.
“Only we stand against the night! Only we still fight to the death! We live, we die—it doesn’t matter. Our feats will live forever in legends!”
He stretched his fist toward the hill that teemed with enemies.
“Let’s show Voran that this day doesn’t belong to him, that in our veins still flows the blood of the Gondarran assassins, that our sarpans can’t be broken! For Antyra!” he roared, jerking his sarpan overhead.
“Antyra!” thundered the answer of the excited orzacs.
Gill galloped fast in front of the troops, encouraging them, while they kept shouting “Antyra.” He felt determined to the tip of his tail to bring them to victory, to stomp Ugo under his moulan’s feet. He was about to give the battle orders when the cheers abruptly ended.
“Your Greatness!” Kizac shouted, pointing at the opposite hill.
He turned in time to see hundreds of rikanes climbing up in the sky—and the target was… his tail! A split second before impact, he jumped off the moulan, putting its massive body between him and the silver spears. Then came a terrible hit, and he lost consciousness.
Dozens of hands rushed to open a path through the forest of rikanes stuck in the ground, to undress his armor and help him pull the crushed helmet off his head. Still dazzled by the smell of death, he looked around and realized that he wasn’t disconnected. He had a gash on his head and another one on the left arm from a rikane passing right under his armpit, but other than that, he was unharmed. The same wasn’t true of the poor moulan, speared by at least a dozen rikanes, living its last breath.
He would have never imagined that the rikanes could reach such a distance. It was true that they had little accuracy when fired at great distances, but in this case, they fully compensated by sheer number. He was immensely lucky to have survived.
Yet another one of the jure’s traps… but this time Ugo had passed all the limits of decency. No one, not even the greatest enemies, would conceive such cowardice. The jure’s attempt on his life did more to mobilize the orzacs than any of his words; they were now boiling with anger to revenge him. Seeing him on his feet, unharmed, they started to howl until their shouts merged in a common battle cry, carried by the wind along the valley.
“Death to Voran! Death to Voran! Death to Voran!”
He promptly received another set of armor and a large moulan. To his surprise, his new ride didn’t try to smack him to the ground. The beast shivered in anger, snuffling its disapproval, and then it followed his orders quietly, as if nothing had happened. Gill steered it toward the orzacs’ ratrap.
“Kizac, send two utrils to follow Nibala.”
“Your Greatness, the utrils can’t fly over the rikanes,” he said, looking at the hill across the valley. “We send them to their death!”
“Tell them to go behind our hill, one to the left and one to the right. Fly around Voran’s army, far from their lines. Make sure they’re not spotted!”
Kizac turned around to carry his orders.
“Wait a moment,” Gill ordered.
It was about time to surprise the enemy, to cast the stench of uncertainty into Ugo’s nostrils. He had already made some stupid mistakes, and it might be a good idea to keep making them—or, at least, to give the impression that he had no idea how to run an army. That’d make Ugo underestimate him… Of course, another suicide attack was out of the question, but he could surprise the jure with an asymmetrical disposition.83 The only problem was the damned catapults…
“Kizac, send the utrils to fly behind our hill. I want them to go far to the right to avoid detection. If needed, cross the river on foot, reach behind the position of the kerats, and attack them in three flying columns, to break the catapults. None shall escape—do you hear me?”
With a bit of luck, the kerats will be absorbed with butchering my riders, he thought, They will be too hypnotized by the river of blood to smell their own death.
“Your Greatness, they can’t fly so long with boulders!”
“Then fly without them. There’s a rocky ridge behind Voran’s hill—tell them to take the stones from there. And don’t forget Nibala. Two utrils to chase her!”
“They’ll fly away to follow your orders,” said Kizac, bowing his head in submission.
He returned soon, accompanied by the discreet fluttering of the utrils taking off on their perilous mission. But they weren’t the only ones moving—Voran’s hill was swarming with activity. The monsters had started the attack!
“Kizac, take a thousand orzacs and move near the grahs,” Gill said, pointing at a spot on the left side of the meadow. “Form your ranks facing the glade to protect their flanks from the assault of the slobberings.”
The terrain near the grahs was steep and wooded. It would provide some protection against the rikanes and the slobberings, he thought. They’d have a chance to hold the line until the utrils arrived.
“In the center, I want five hundred orzacs. Spread them out to avoid the rikanes,” he continued.
“Five hundred?” exclaimed Kizac, astounded. “That’s too few, Your Greatness, the slobberings will punch through them in a pinch of a tail!”
“Tell them to use the tails of the moulans. They may retreat slowly to the hilltop. But no matter what happens to them, you cover the flank of the grahs!”
“Your wish is my command, Your Greatness,” exclaimed Kizac, dumbfounded. Gill could read his distrust; however, Kizac departed without arguing over the order.
“The rest of you, follow me on the right wing,” he shouted.
He was about to do something unprecedented in the history of ancient warfare—he would allow Ugo to break his army in two through the center. Gill was hopeful that the jure would order his slobberings to attack the flank of the grahs, to ease the pressure on the llandros. Everything depended on Kizac now—would he be able to withstand the onslaught, separated from the rest of the army?
On the right side of the hill, he spo
tted patches of tall shrubs growing near the outskirts of the thick tekal forest, which reached down to the river. The outline of the terrain was ideal for an ambush.
“What’s your name?’ he asked the ratrap of the chameleons, the dwarf who gave him the loyalty brocat.
“Ralamil, Your Greatness.”
“Ralamil, take your chameleons to the outskirts, close to the river,” he said, pointing to the place. “You’ll attack the enemies from behind once they pass your position.”
“It will be done, Your Greatness.”
“You there,” he called a prodac84, “take a thousand orzacs and hide in the bushes above the dwarves. Charge when the enemy gets near you!”
As soon as the orzacs went to their position, he turned to the other riders.
“The rest of you, follow me!” he yelled. “We charge from above!”
We’re going to hit them from three sides and finish them in one blow. He grinned, pleased by how he had devised the trap.
A shrieking sound told them that the llandros had reached the battlefield. They made the horrifying noise when they raised their thorns to launch them at the enemies.
Although he couldn’t see the battle, Gill was sure that his grahs were fighting valiantly. He could hear the whistle of the trilates and the thuds of the heavy rocks thrown from the edge of the ravine, followed by the rattles of the slain monsters. Something was telling him that the llandros wouldn’t pass Nibala’s fighters.
The rikanes climbed in the sky, wave after wave, aimed at the exposed orzacs in the center. Being so scattered, the troops weathered the bombardment without heavy losses—but then the slobberings appeared at the base of the hill. They charged with haste, waving their azziles. Obviously, the orzacs couldn’t resist for long, and there was no way of saving them. He had to swiftly defeat Ugo’s left wing and turn on the slobberings before Kizac’s orzacs would be crushed to death, exposing the flank of the grahs.
He moved to the front of his riders, waiting for the enemies to fall into the ambush before launching his charge.
A scout appeared from the bushes.
“Your Greatness, the arcanians are approaching!” the scout yelled from a distance.
“The arcanians!”
The word hit him like an electric shock; he had to use all his strength to fight against the panic because he finally understood what the gray specks were: guvals! Guvals running toward them! The news spelled death, and there was no way of cheating it…
Even though he couldn’t see them from there, he knew that the arcanians—the guval tamers—were marching right behind the monsters.
The arcanians couldn’t be more different from the beasts they handled. They were usually described as tall and extremely thin creatures with little to no muscles in their bodies. According to the legends, they always fought in the same way: they bridled the guvals into battle from a long leash, and as they approached the enemies, they pulled vigorously from a specially crafted metallic wire inserted in the strap. A ring of poisoned thorns85 around the necks of the beasts pierced their flesh, torturing them with the most atrocious pain possible.
It was easy to imagine the slaughter they made in front of them before they died in horrible spasms from overheating. In the highly unlikely situation that someone dared to survive, the arcanians speared them to death with their long spears, called shtitzes.
Needless to say, no army—no matter how large or well prepared—ever withstood such an attack. His cleverly devised plan collapsed like a dome of smoke in front of the abominations lured by Dedris’s hidden aromas!
“Do we have stakes? Something to stop them?” he asked a prodac.
“No, Your Greatness,” he answered.
“Anyway, that wouldn’t help,” he exclaimed. “The guvals would easily jump over them. How do we fight, then?”
“Your Greatness, we’re awaiting your orders!”
He was alone. In the old days, the baitars often relied on the advice of their most experienced soldiers, but here, he was on his own.
Disaster, he thought, shaking his head. If we attack from three sides, the guvals are going to rip us to pieces. They have to release all the monsters in one direction before the dwarves blow their cover.
If the guvals had to run uphill, they would overheat quickly… which could only mean one thing: he, and the orzacs around him, had to attack in haste! Obviously, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the poisoned monsters. But the guvals would die anyway—the essential thing was that their arcanian tamers would fall into what remained of his trap after the threat of the guvals disappeared.
It was almost funny how things connected. He was on a virtual hill, in a virtual world, in the middle of a virtual army, in a fight created for the amusement of the bixanids. Thousands of similar battles happened on the islands floating in Uralia’s skies, thousands of fights with no consequences, save for the pride of the defeated players. Yet, his fight had a deadly stake…
What were the chances of surviving a charge against a pack of guvals? Insignificant, at best, insignificant. That, of course, wouldn’t stop him from doing it, just as it hadn’t stopped him before now, just as it hadn’t stopped any Sigian soldier. For a moment, he felt the absurdity of the situation, the absurdity of playing the secrets of the Sigians in a fantasy, the absurdity of charging poisoned guvals…
Perhaps watched from great heights, things had a logic of their own—but if he dissected them, the logic disappeared. And no real army ever fought over edible grass. He regretted now that he had missed the chance to taste it in the prison meadow. I’m going to fix that, he promised solemnly. If I fall in battle, I’ll take a mouthful before someone beheads me! Then, he would escape through the skylight. And if the Ropolitans tried to stop him, he would show them a poisoned guval…
He turned to his soldiers. Everyone knew what they were up against and that they were going to certain death.
“Courage, my orzacs, courage!” he shouted. “I know you’re afraid, I know we can’t survive this ordeal. Nevertheless, we’ll charge, to give the others a chance to win!”
He pranced his moulan and raised his purple sarpan over his head.
“Our fight will live forever in Antyra’s memory! Follow me, my riders! Charge!” he roared, storming downhill.
The orzacs unleashed a terrifying battle cry. Its thundering echo, carried over the hills and valleys, warmed his kyi. Why not admit that he liked it? He was Huxile, like he dreamed of countless times in his childhood. Anxiety, yes; fright, plenty of it—but he also felt impatient to reach the heat of the battle, despite it being so hopelessly suicidal.
A familiar rumble started to roll on his trail. The moulans also sensed the proximity of the danger, the ubiquitous smell of the cold sweat of fear swinging them out of their usual apathy.
They were galloping downhill like an avalanche of molten metal, their speed increasing with every passing moment.
Less than a hundred yards stood between them and the guvals… Even though Gill kept telling himself that it was a virtual world, his mouth dried out, filling with a bitter taste. He felt his muscles become as tense as the tarcan’s vein; his right hand spasmodically clenched the sarpan while his left clutched the attack reins, ready to open a path through the flesh of the gray beasts in front of him.
A sharp howl burst from the chests of the guvals as they broke free from their leashes. They were poisoned! A gray torrent of monsters sprang forward to tear them into small pieces, their tiny red eyes bulged by the unbearable pain. The last ones ripped apart several arcanians who didn’t move out of the way fast enough, and nothing was standing between them and Gill’s army, nothing to stop them.
He felt the knot of time expanding again. He could see the monsters through a thick fog, eating the space between them… Just a few more jumps and… He squeezed the moulan between his thighs, bracing for impact. Three… two… one… then came the terrible blow. The orzacs, in their suicidal charge, went deep into the pack of monsters. The first
rows of both camps fell in disarray, piled in mangled heaps.
Gill pulled the attack reins without picking a target, but considering how many they were, it didn’t really matter. A few moments later, his moulan took a hit, losing its balance. He didn’t fall off the rump, but the shock pressed his face into the fur of a guval. His nostrils were assaulted by the heavy stench of the wild beast, sweating in its death throes.
He let go of the reins and grabbed the long hairs with his left hand; he thrust his sarpan twice, thirsty for blood, before the mad monster howled and grabbed his left hand in its fangs. Luckily, he pulled it out of the glove before it was crushed in the terrifying jaws.
He pierced its neck again, and the warm blood burst in his face, blinding him. Another blow coming from behind finally threw him off the moulan, but his right foot became tangled in the net. His moulan got rid of a guval hanging on its neck and dragged him a few dozen feet before three other monsters jumped on the poor animal and knocked it down, scattering its entrails.
Gill managed to release his foot by cutting the net, landing facedown in the grass. Even though he remembered his promise to taste it, he suddenly lost the urge to do it, seeing it all trampled and soaked in blood.
He scrambled to his feet, screaming, and jumped on the nearest guval, which was busy crushing a helmet in its huge jaws, head included. He grabbed the guval’s neck crest, slipped his sarpan under its chin, and in a broad move, he sliced its throat. He continued to hit it frantically, holding on to its fur as best as he could.
Gurgling loudly, the monster abandoned what was left of the soldier and threw Gill several yards away. With the last spark of life in its bloodshot eyes, it rushed toward him, gasping for air, deciding to drag him into the dark nothingness. Before doing so, however, another rider whipped the monster with his moulan’s tail and threw it back, dead.
The whole hillside was quivering in a furious slaughter. His riders were fighting valiantly against the monsters, even though they realized the futility of their efforts. The guvals were jumping over them, biting and slicing with tremendous vivacity for a species that normally slept for three-quarters of the day. Some beasts mowed down three or four orzacs before being slain.