“Durlrang!” He gasped. “Are you alright?”
23.
Durlrang understood clearly why his master had sent him to fight on the left with the rest of his kin – Lord Aram wanted the old wolf kept out of the thick of things. Because of their physiognomy and their unorthodox method of waging battle, it was always better for wolves to fight on the fringe where there was freedom of movement rather than in the middle where their tactics were negated and their lives unduly endangered.
But Durlrang had grown to love Aram more than life itself and hated any separation from him. He had decided long ago that he would gladly give up his right to existence, if by doing so he could guard the life of his master. Being apart from him when death and danger came near was almost physically painful.
For centuries before the coming of Aram, the old wolf had wandered the wilderness of madness that the world became after Lord Kelven was destroyed upon the mountain. Then, after many centuries, the one that slew Kelven, Manon the Grim, had arisen to demand the subservience of the wolf people. Like all the rest of his kin, Durlrang was created to serve a master and in the absence of Kelven, he had paid obeisance to the new lord.
Nonetheless, as chief of the northern tribes, and the grandson of Urfang the First, he was used to thinking for himself. For a long time he harbored doubts about the new order of things, especially when it came to pass that some wolves began to kill and consume their own kind in lieu of expending the effort to bring down more elusive prey.
But time passed.
Centuries passed.
No new master rose up to challenge Manon. Kelven, if he yet lived and dwelled upon his mountain, remained silent. Durlrang gradually sank along with the rest of his people into savage barbarism.
But then his mate, Reuning, had died during the course of a particularly severe winter. Fearful that others would find her and consume her, he had dragged her body high into the mountains and had diligently guarded her remains in that place until time and nature did their inevitable but more acceptable work. After that deeply personal loss, though he still doubted Manon, he had become as savage as any wolf on the earth. Memories of the laws of Kelven faded almost completely away, slipping one by one beyond the horizons of his mind, leaving only dim recollections – but onto these recollections, dim though they were, the old wolf held grimly and stubbornly, even as he slipped into barbarism.
Yet more centuries passed into the depths of time, and Durlrang’s memories of the age of Kelven faded further. The world had devolved into a place of cruel, savage darkness, and it seemed that it would remain so forever.
And then, onto the light-starved landscape of the earth, Aram came.
Durlrang had never slain a man, for men did not come onto the high plains, but he had no fear of their kind. The wolves of the high plains had brought down more than their share of horses. A man, being smaller and weaker, surely would present no real challenge.
The man that appeared upon the rolling grasslands of the horses, however, was tough and hard and armed with sharp and vicious steel. Just as the wolves did not fear him, neither did he fear them; and he began to kill with alarming ease. After the man was perceived as a danger to the whole of the band, and especially after he allied with the large black horse and began slaughtering with impunity, Durlrang ordered him destroyed and sent eight of his best warriors to do the deed.
None returned.
He sent another cadre, sixteen in all.
They found the man.
Not wanting to contend with the horse at the same time, Durlrang cast about for a means of separating his enemies for the coming confrontation. The horse could be slain later; for now he wanted the life of the man that threatened the existence of his band. The chief of the northern wolves sent the sixteen warriors down along the bottom of a narrow ravine where the actions of the horse would be hindered, perhaps negated, in hopes that the man would take the bait, abandon the use of the horse, and so be ambushed.
The ruse worked. The man went down into the ravine and hid himself between two spires of rock. Durlrang sent the wolves loping past his “hiding” place until the man, thinking that he was initiating his own ambush, showed himself, driving his sword into Gerung’s guts. Immediately the rest of the wolves turned and attacked, coming at him from both sides. And he was isolated. The ravine was too steep; the horse could give no aid.
They had him now.
The chief of the northern wolves, having recently injured his right forepaw, could not engage in the battle himself. And this injury saved his life. He watched from a distant knoll, stunned, as the man with the steel slew them all, one by one. At the end of it, every one of his sixteen warriors was dead and the man barely injured.
Then Durlrang knew the truth.
This man was something more than he had imagined – something with which he and his people could not contend.
If the old wolf could not find a way to make peace with this man – or at the least a truce of some kind – his band, already reduced by half, would disappear completely from the earth. The man with the steel would slay them all.
And so he ordered his people from the plains, telling them to congregate at the foot of the northern mountains. It was his hope that the man would follow, and that they could find a way to communicate and end the slaughter.
And the man and the horse had followed.
The day came when they faced each other across the valley of the River Long, the band of wolves and the man. Long ago, before the death of Kelven and the coming of the age of Manon, Durlrang had talked with horses, settling disputes. He tried now, sending his desire for peace into the mind of the black horse on the top of the ridge opposite. To his immense relief, the message was received and forwarded to the man.
The man, fearless as always, came forward alone.
“Will you slay us all?” Durlrang asked him.
And the man with the steel answered that he would, unless the wolf band changed its ways and met certain conditions. They must return to the use of their natural prey, like deer and rabbits, and refrain from killing either horses or men. It came like a bolt of cleansing fire into Durlrang’s mind when the man further insisted that they refrain from killing and consuming one another. Most importantly, however, and shockingly, the man with the steel insisted upon mastery. This stunning demand was met with savage consternation from most of the band, who, having been subjected to the mastery of the grim lord of the north for thousands of years, could conceive of no other.
Almost on the instant, Durlrang felt differently.
At the moment that these words registered in his mind, the old wolf perceived a tiny light wink into existence in the vast darkness of the world. And when the grim lord made no reply to the challenge of the man with the steel to show himself, that tiny light strengthened and grew.
The chief of the northern wolves turned and made a simple statement to his band.
“Do what you will,” he told the rest of them. “It has been long since the darkness came and altered the earth for ill. But I remember Kelven. I remember the world as it was. If this man will return us to the old ways, Lord Kelven’s ways – to the ways we followed before the darkness; then I will submit to him. Do what you will,” he repeated, “but I will submit.” Then he turned and placed his forehead upon the ground, acknowledging his new master.
Durlrang had been their fierce, strong, and unquestioned chieftain for as long as any of them could remember.
After but a brief hesitation, the entire band followed his lead.
The man with the steel was now their master.
Afterwards, the man had commanded Durlrang to come forward and meet him upon the sand of the riverside. As the wolf gazed into the eyes of this man, he saw implacable fierceness and an iron will, but there was also goodness there, and kindness. The man, whose name was Aram, had then removed the offending sliver of stone that threatened to cost Durlrang his foot and perhaps even his life.
At that moment of unexpected
kindness on the part of his new master, Durlrang’s mind, darkened by so many centuries of subservience to evil, saw the tiny light in the darkness grow and brighten and overspread the world, like the welcome dawn after the longest night of a seemingly endless winter.
Eventually, Lord Aram invited Durlrang to leave the high plains and be his comrade in arms. Over time, in the heart of the wolf, willing subservience became love.
Now he lay hidden atop the rocky ridge on the left flank of Aram’s army as the grim hosts of his former master splashed through the shallow water of the brook and lowered their pikes in preparation for contact. Durlrang watched for signs that the gray line would attempt to envelope the Lamontan flank as Aram had instructed him, but he also kept one eye on the figure of his beloved master, ranging back and forth across the center of the field.
He was watching when Aram and Thaniel drove into the center of the conflict where lashers were attempting to pierce the army’s heart and instantly he came up out of his hiding place, tense with concern. When Thaniel went down and Aram disappeared, Durlrang gave one sharp, hot command, Go! and the wolves flowed down off the ridge and into the rear of the enemy host. As his kin swerved to the right to tear at the limbs of the gray men that were assaulting Lamont, Durlrang sped on up the stream toward the growing clot of monsters surrounding the place where Aram was last seen.
Taking no thought for his own safety, he smashed into the roiling melee of beasts.
Desperately he bit and slashed at the beasts’ thighs and lower legs in an attempt to clear a path into the middle of the fight. He could not see Aram and this drove the old wolf to frenzy. Tearing and ripping at muscle and sinew, he dodged this way and that, making for the center. But the mob of lashers was dense and concentrated and intent on convergence. In the heart of the ancient wolf chief, desperation devolved into a sort of madness.
Pikes were thrust at him, and swords slashed at him in response to pain, but Durlrang moved as one possessed with the capricious speed of lightning.
Once he came very near something bright and blazing with power that heaped the bodies of the monsters like windrowed grass after the storm. He veered back the other way. But bodies were piled there, too and he perceived that these were the work of his master. Aram, then, must be just a short distance to his front. But the grim lord’s beasts were intent on Aram’s destruction and remained true to their appointed task; their massive legs were like the trunks of trees in an impenetrable forest. Durlrang bit and chewed and clawed while avoiding the plunging steel but could make no headway.
As the battle lengthened and time failed, the mad need to reach his master grew in him until there was nothing else in his mind or heart or indeed in the whole of the world.
Then, there came a terrible cry of pain and anguish that roared above the din of battle and faded away. Upon the instant, silence descended over the battlefield. A moment later, a horn sounded. The beasts around Durlrang suddenly turned and began moving away.
The wolf froze in a paroxysm of terror. Why did they so abruptly quit the field? Had they accomplished that which they’d sought? Had they succeeded in slaying his beloved master? Had the terrible death-cry been Lord Aram’s?
Willing his legs to work again, he darted to the right, around a pile of enemy bodies.
And there was his master, bleeding, panting from exhaustion, his shining sword still held at the ready – but alive. The old wolf nearly collapsed with relief.
Lord Aram looked down at him, and true to his nature, made inquiry – before anything else – as to the welfare of his trusted servant.
“Durlrang! Are you alright?”
24.
Boman, finding the field to his front abruptly empty as the gray men broke away and moved leftward, pushed through his re-formed lines and looked after them. The gray men had formed into a broad deep column and were pushing upstream toward the site of a tremendous singular convulsion occurring in the stream bed near the center of the field. All the lashers were there, in a circular mass, straining forward to get at something at the middle of the melee. Pikes were thrust violently in toward the center of this convulsing mass and broad razor-edged halberds were swung with fury.
Deep in the center of the maelstrom, from two distinct places, bright white fire erupted and flashed, and lashers roared and screamed with pain. Nonetheless, they continued to relentlessly push forward into the morass of straining bodies.
Behind them, just beyond the stream, the enormous lasher commander whipped his troops forward into the whirling, noisome fight.
Suddenly, Boman understood.
They were trying to kill Lord Aram.
It was why they had come.
There was nothing straight about this fight; it had never been intended by the enemy to be a general battle. They cared nothing about Lamont or Duridia, or even the extent of their own casualties. They had come simply to kill Aram. There was no doubt in the governor's mind that it was the prince that they had trapped at the center of that howling, slashing mass of raging monsters. Apparently, the enormous lasher commander intended to use every troop at his disposal to accomplish his purpose, for he had come upon the field with but this one goal in mind.
To kill Lord Aram.
Boman stepped down off the bank and into the stream bed. Drawing his sword and indicating his right wing that stretched toward the road, he yelled down the long line of men.
“Everyone, swing to the left! On me – I'm the hinge – swing left!”
“What are we doing, Governor?” Semper called out, even as he worked to reposition his men.
In answer, Boman pointed his blade at the lasher commander, snarling at the rear of his troops. “See that big bastard? The Commander? We're going to try and kill him. Move into place now – quickly! Ready crossbows!”
Yelling at the right wing of his troops, he tried to pull them forward by the force of his own will. “Pivot, turn left, on me! Ready crossbows! There's your target.”
Over on the right, deployed at the head of the column of horses on the road, Jared watched Boman and understood immediately what it was that the governor intended. The lasher commander had to die. He abruptly sent this thought into the mind of every horse with him. Lunging forward and swinging to the left as he cleared the end of the bridge, he charged to the west up the stream.
“Tell your riders to ready lances, Nikolus! We have to destroy that big one!”
Surprised by Jared's unexpected action, Nikolus nonetheless looked to the front, saw Boman re-positioning his men, gauged the situation, and immediately concurred.
“Lances!” He yelled at his men, and then he spoke to Jared. “Have your people circle up the slope, then take us straight in, and angle to the right in a column when we get close to him. We'll put our lances into him as we pass. Then Ruben and Varen and their column can do the same. If that doesn't bring him down, we'll go around again and resort to swords. Look! Boman has the same idea. Stay right, up the slope, so that the Duridians can put some arrows into him, and then we'll go in.”
Boman had succeeded in turning about a hundred of his men toward the left, though only a few dozen had unobstructed lines of fire at the big lasher. He knelt to get out of the way of the missiles.
“Loose!” He yelled, then, “Get down! Second rank – get up and loose!”
It was tangled and messy but the small deadly missiles began to fly toward the unsuspecting enemy commander. Many missed, injuring those beyond him, but enough struck him that he turned in surprise, staggered by the sudden and unexpected damage that had been inflicted on him. He turned to meet the new threat, only to be assaulted by the next wave of arrows. Some of these struck him in the head. Though most careened harmlessly off the dome and the eye-guards of his helmet, a few got past the nose guard and found his fleshy cheeks. Clawing at the offending bolts in his visage, the commander bellowed at his troops near him to turn and face this new attack. But Boman, bringing his men up in small albeit disorganized groups, nonetheless succeeded
in sending wave after wave of deadly missiles toward him. And now, as the men fully understood their governor's intent, the flights of arrows became more fully concentrated on their target.
Then, seeing Jared and Nikolus and the rest of the cavalry sweeping down off the grassy slopes, he called for a halt.
“Regroup!” He shouted. “Reload! Let the horses pass through and then we'll go at him again.”
As Jared charged down the slope and onto the level, he could see that the massive lasher was hurt. The fletching of many arrows protruded from his back, chest, arms, legs, and even his face. Brackish blood stained the front and sides of his leather armor. Assenting to Nikolus' plan of attack, the big brown horse charged straight in – even as other lashers and clumps of gray men turned from the assault upon Aram to come to the aid of their embattled commander. At the last moment, Jared and the horses angled sharply to the right.
Nikolus and his troopers drew back with their might and ignoring those monsters to either side, hurled their lances straight into the big lasher's bulk. Foolishly, angrily, the lasher attempted to charge the horses racing past him, breaking away from the throng of his own troops that had come to his aid. Lances found him and several bit deep. One caught him in the massive thigh and he tripped and went down. Howling with rage, he got back to his feet beneath the hail of lances and again made to rush the horses.
It was a mortal error.
By this time the horses had moved beyond his range and were circling up the slope while their riders drew their swords for a second pass. In his fury, the big lasher charged after them, becoming even further separated and isolated from his troops.
Over to the right, with his men formed up and more organized now, Boman was ready. He'd succeeded in bringing almost two hundred of his men online, facing west up the stream bed, no more than thirty or forty yards from the lasher commander. And the men of Duridia could smell victory.
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 18