“Have I given you reason to think I’ll abandon you?”
“No, my lord. But—”
“Call me Valentine, if you will. But what?”
Her cheeks colored. She drew her hand from him and ran it tensely through her dark glossy hair. “Your Duke Heitluig, yesterday, saw us together, saw your arm around me—Valentine, you didn’t notice his smile! As though I were some pretty toy of yours, some pet, some little trinket to be discarded when the time comes.”
“You read too much into Heitluig’s smile, I think,” said Valentine slowly, although he had noticed it too, and had been troubled by it. To Heitluig, he knew, and to others of his rank, Carabella would seem only an upstart concubine of unimaginable lower-class origins, to be treated at best with scorn. In his former life on Castle Mount such distinctions of class had been an unchallengeable assumption of the nature of things; but he had been down from the Mount a long time, and saw things differently these days. Carabella’s fears were real. Yet it was a problem that could be conquered only in its proper moment. There were other conquests to deal with first. He said gently, “Heitluig is too fond of wine, and his soul is a coarse one. Ignore him. You will find a place among the high ones of the Castle, and no one will dare slight you when I am Coronal again. Come now, finish the song.”
“You love me, Valentine?”
“I love you, yes. But I love you less when your eyes are red and puffy, Carabella.”
She snorted. “That’s the sort of thing one would say to a child! Do you see me as a child, then?”
With a shrug Valentine replied, “I see you as a woman, and a shrewd and lovely one. But what am I supposed to answer, when you ask me if I love you?”
“That you love me. And nothing more by way of decoration.”
“I’m sorry, then. I must rehearse these things more carefully. Will you sing again?”
“If you wish,” she said, and took up her pocket-harp.
All morning they rode higher, into the open spaces beyond the Free Cities. Valentine chose the Pinitor Highway, which wound between Ertsud Grand and Hoikmar through an empty countryside of rocky plateaus broken only by sparse copses of ghazan-trees, with stout ashen-colored trunks and gnarled convoluted arms—trees that lived ten thousand years and made a soft sighing sound when their time was come. This was stark and silent land, where Valentine and his forces could gather their souls for the effort that lay before them.
All this while their climb went unopposed. “They will not try to stop you,” Heitluig said, “until you are above the Guardian Cities. The world is narrower up there. The land is folded and wrinkled. There will be places to trap you.”
“There will be room enough,” said Valentine.
In a barren valley rimmed with jagged spires, beyond which the city of Ertsud Grand could be seen only some twenty miles to the east, he drew his army to a halt and conferred with his commanders. Scouts had already gone forward to inspect the enemy force, bringing back news that weighed on Valentine like a leaden cloak: an immense army, they reported, a sea of warriors filling the broad flat plain that occupied hundreds of square miles below the Inner City of Bombifale. Most were foot-soldiers, but there were floater-cars gathered as well, and a regiment of mounted troops, and a corps of great thundering mollitors, at least ten times as many of the massive tanklike war-beasts as had been camped in wait for them by the banks of the Glayge. But he let no hint of disheartenment show. “We are outnumbered twenty to one,” Valentine said. “I find that encouraging. Too bad there aren’t even more of them—but an army that size ought to be unwieldy enough to make life easy for us.” He tapped the chart before him. “They camp here, on Bombifale Plain, and surely they can see that we are marching straight toward that plain. They’ll expect us to attempt to make our ascent via the Peritole Pass, west of the plain, and that will have the heaviest guard. We will indeed go toward Peritole Pass.” Valentine heard a gasp of dismay from Heitluig, and Ermanar looked at him with sudden pained surprise. Untroubled, Valentine went on, “And as we do, they’ll send reinforcements in that direction. Once they’ve begun to move into the pass it should be difficult for them to regroup and redirect themselves. As they start into motion, we’ll swing back toward the plain, ride straight into the heart of their camp, and go through them and on to Bombifale itself. Above Bombifale is the High Morpin road that will take us unhindered to the Castle. Are there questions?”
Ermanar said, “What if they have a second army waiting for us between Bombifale and High Morpin?”
“Ask me that again,” Valentine replied, “when we get beyond Bombifale. Any other questions?”
He glanced around. No one spoke.
“Good. Onward, then!”
Another day and the terrain grew more fertile, as they entered the great green apron that encircled the Inner Cities. They were in the cloud zone now, cool and moist, where the sun could be seen, but only indistinctly, through the coiling strands of mist that never lifted. In this humid region plants that, below, were merely knee-high grew to giant size, with leaves like platters and stems like tree-trunks, and everything glittered with a coating of shining droplets of water.
The landscape here was a broken one, with steep-sided mountain ranges rising abruptly out of deep-cut valleys, and roads that wound precariously around fierce conical peaks. Choices of route became fewer: to the west were the Banglecode Pinnacles, a region of impassable fanglike mountains that had scarcely ever been explored, to the east was the wide and easy slope of Bombifale Plain, and straight ahead, bordered on both sides by sheer rock walls, was the series of gigantic natural steps known as Peritole Pass, where—unless Valentine entirely missed his guess—the usurper’s finest troops lay in wait.
In an unhurried way Valentine led his forces toward the pass. Four hours forward, camp for two, travel five hours more, make camp for the night, late start in the morning. In the exhilarating air of Castle Mount it would have been easy enough to travel much faster. But beyond doubt the enemy was watching his progress from on high, and he wanted to give them plenty of time to observe his route and take the necessary countermeasures.
The next day he stepped up the pace, for now the first of the huge deep steps of the pass was in sight. Deliamber, sending forth his spirit through wizardry, returned with word that the defending army was indeed in possession of the pass, and that secondary troops were streaming westward out of Bombifale Plain to give support.
Valentine smiled. “It won’t be long now. They’re falling into our hands.”
Two hours before twilight he gave the order to make camp, at a pleasant meadow beside a cold, plunging stream. The wagons were drawn up in defensive formation, foragers went out to collect timber for fires, the quartermasters began distributing dinner—and, as night came on, word suddenly circulated through the camp that they were to pull up and take to the road again, leaving all fires burning and many of the wagons still in formation.
Valentine felt excitement rising thunderously within him. He saw a renewed gleam in Carabella’s eyes, and Sleet’s old scar stood out angrily against his cheek as his heart pumped faster. And there was Shanamir, going this way and that but never foolishly, handling many small responsibilities and large ones with sober-faced expertness, at once comic and admirable. These were unforgettable hours, taut with the potential of great events about to be born.
Carabella said, “In the old days on the Mount, you must have studied the art of war deeply, to have devised a maneuver such as this.”
With a laugh Valentine said, “Art of war? Whatever art of war was once known on Majipoor was forgotten before Lord Stiamot was a hundred years dead. I don’t know a thing about war, Carabella.”
“But how—”
“Guesswork. Luck. A gigantic kind of juggle. I’m making it up as I go along.” He winked. “But don’t tell the others that. Let them think their general’s a genius, and they may make him into one!”
In the cloud-shrouded sky no stars could be seen and the
light of the moon was only the faintest of reddish glows. Valentine’s army moved along the road to Bombifale Plain by the illumination of lightglobes at their dimmest intensity, and Deliamber sat beside Valentine and Ermanar in deep trance, roving forward to search for barriers and obstacles ahead. Valentine was silent, still, feeling strangely calm. This was indeed a sort of gigantic juggle, he thought. And now, as he had done so many times with the troupe, he was moving toward that quiet place at the center of his consciousness, where he could process the information of a constantly changing pattern of events without being in any overt way aware of processing, or of information, or even of events: everything done in its proper time, with serene awareness of the only effective sequence of things.
It was an hour before dawn when they reached the place where the road swung uphill toward the entrance to the plain. Again Valentine summoned his commanders.
“Three things only,” he told them. “Stay in tight formation. Take no lives needlessly. Keep pressing forward.” He went to each of them in turn with a word, a handclasp, a smile. “We’ll have lunch today in Bombifale,” he said. “And dinner tomorrow night in Lord Valentine’s Castle, I promise you!”
10
This was the moment Valentine had dreaded for months, when he must lead citizens of Majipoor into war against citizens of Majipoor, when he must stake the blood of the companions of his wanderings against the blood of the companions of his boyhood. Yet now that the moment was at hand he felt firm and quiet of spirit.
By the gray light of dawn the invading army rolled out across the rim of the plain, and in the mists of morning Valentine had his first glimpse of the legions that confronted him. The plain seemed to be filled with black tents. Soldiers were everywhere, vehicles, mounts, mollitors—a confused and chaotic tide of humanity.
Valentine’s forces were arrayed in the form of a wedge, with his bravest and most dedicated followers in the lead wagons of the phalanx, Duke Heitluig’s troops forming the middle body of the army, and the thousands of unwarlike militia from Pendiwane, Makroprosopos, and the other cities of the Glayge forming a rear guard more significant for its mass than for its prowess. All the races of Majipoor were represented in the forces of liberation—a platoon of Skandars, a detachment of Vroons, a whole horde of burning-eyed Liimen, a great many Hjorts and Ghayrogs, even a small elite corps of Su-Suheris. Valentine himself rode at one of the triple points of the wedge’s front face, but not the central point: Ermanar was there, prepared to bear the brunt of the usurper’s counteroffensive. Valentine’s car was on the right wing, Asenhart’s on the left, and the columns led by Sleet, Carabella, Zalzan Kavol, and Lisamon Hultin just to their rear.
“Now!” Valentine cried, and the battle was begun.
Ermanar’s car plunged forward, horns blowing, lights flashing. A moment later Valentine followed, and, looking across to the far side of the battlefield, he saw Asenhart keeping pace. In tight formation they charged into the plain, and at once the huge mass of defenders was thrown into disarray. The front line of the usurper’s forces collapsed with startling abruptness, almost as though it were a deliberate strategy. Panicky troops ran this way and that, colliding, entangling, scrambling for weapons or merely heading for safety. The great open space of the plain became an ocean of desperate surging figures, without leadership, without plan. Onward through them the invading phalanx rode. There was little exchange of fire; an occasional energy-bolt cast its lurid glare over the landscape, but chiefly the enemy seemed too bewildered for any coherent pattern of defense, and the attacking wedge, cutting forward at will, had no need to take lives.
Deliamber, at Valentine’s side, said quietly, “They are strung out across an enormous front, a hundred miles or more. It will take them time to concentrate their strength. But after the first panic they will regroup, and things will become less easy for us.”
Indeed that was happening already.
The inexperienced citizen-militia that Dominin Barjazid had levied out of the Guardian Cities might be in disarray, but the nucleus of the defending army consisted of knights of Castle Mount, trained in warlike games if not in the techniques of war itself, and they were rallying now, closing in on all sides around the small wedges of invaders that had thrust deep among them. A platoon of mollitors had somehow been rounded up and was advancing on Asenhart’s flank, jaws snapping, huge clawed limbs seeking to do harm. On the other side a cavalry detachment had found its mounts and was striving to get into some kind of formation: and Ermanar had run into a steady barrage of fire from energy-throwers.
“Hold your formation!” Valentine cried. “Keep moving forward!”
They were still making progress, but the pace was slowing perceptibly. If at the outset Valentine’s forces had cut through the enemy like a hot blade through butter, now it was more like trying to push through a wall of thick mud. Many of the vehicles were surrounded and some were altogether stopped. Valentine had a glimpse of Lisamon Hultin on foot, striding through a mob of defenders and hurling them like twigs to left and right. Three gigantic Skandars were out on the field also—they could only be Zalzan Kavol and his brothers—doing terrible carnage with their many arms, each wielding a weapon of some sort.
Then Valentine’s own vehicle was engulfed, but his driver pulled it into reverse and swung it sharply around, knocking the enemy soldiers aside.
Onward—onward—
There were bodies everywhere. It had been folly for Valentine to hope that the reconquest of the Mount could be achieved bloodlessly. Already it seemed hundreds must be dead, thousands injured. He scowled and aimed his own energy-thrower at a tall hard-faced man who was bearing down on his car, and sent him sprawling. Valentine blinked as the air crackled about him in the wake of his own energy discharge, and fired again, again, again.
“Valentine! Lord Valentine!”
The cry was universal. But it was coming from the throats of warriors on both sides of the fray, and each side had its own Lord Valentine in mind.
Now the advance seemed altogether blocked. The tide had definitely shifted; the defenders were launching a counterattack. It was as though they had not quite been ready for the first onslaught, and had merely allowed Valentine’s army to come crashing through; but now they were regrouping, gathering strength, adopting a semblance of strategy.
“They appear to have new leadership, my lord,” Ermanar reported. “The general who guides them now holds powerful control, and spurs them fiercely toward us.”
A line of monitors had formed, leading the counterthrust with the usurper’s troops coming in great numbers behind them. But the dull-witted unruly beasts were causing more difficulty from sheer bulk than with their claws and jaws: simply getting past their mammoth humpbacked forms was a challenge. Many of Valentine’s officers were out of their vehicles now—he caught sight again of Lisamon Hultin, and of Sleet, and Carabella fighting furiously, all with knots of their own troops doing their best to protect them. Valentine himself would have left the wagon, but Deliamber ordered him to stay off the field. “Your person is sacred and indispensable,” the Vroon said brusquely. “The hand-to-hand warriors will have to make do without you.”
“But—”
“It is essential.”
Valentine scowled. He saw the logic of what Deliamber said, but he despised it. Nevertheless he yielded.
“Forward!” he roared in frustration into the dark ivory horn of his field communicator.
But they could not go forward. Clouds of defending warriors were coming now from all sides, driving Valentine’s forces back. The new strength of the usurper’s army appeared to be centered not far from Valentine, just beyond a rise in the plain, and radiated outward from there in bands of virtually visible power. Yes, some new general, Valentine thought, some powerful field commander providing inspiration and strength, rallying the troops that had been so dispirited. As I should be doing, he thought, down on the field among them. As I should be doing.
Ermanar’s voice came to
him. “My lord, do you see that low knoll to your right? Beyond it is the enemy command post—their general is there, in the midst of the battle.”
“I want a look at him,” Valentine said, signaling his driver to move to higher ground.
“My lord,” Ermanar went on, “we must concentrate our attack there, and remove him before he gains greater advantage.”
“Certainly,” Valentine murmured remotely. He stared, narrowing his eyes. The scene seemed all confusion down there. But gradually he discerned a form to the flow. Yes, that must be he. A tall man, taller than Valentine, with a strong wide-mouthed face, piercing dark eyes, a heavy shock of glossy black hair braided in back. He looked oddly familiar—so very familiar, beyond question familiar, one whom Valentine had known, and known well, in his days on Castle Mount, but his mind was so muddled by the chaos of the battle that for a moment he found it hard to reach into his store of renewed memory and identify—
Yes. Of course.
Elidath of Morvole.
How could he have forgotten, even for an instant, even amidst all this madness, the companion of his youth, Elidath, at times closer even to him than his brother Voriax, Elidath, the dearest of all his friends, the sharer of so many of his boldest early exploits, the nearest to him in abilities and temperament, Elidath whom all considered, even Valentine himself, to be next in line to be Coronal—
Elidath leading the enemy army. Elidath the dangerous general who must be removed.
“My lord?” Ermanar said. “We await your instructions, my lord.”
Valentine faltered. “Surround him,” he replied. “Neutralize him. Take him prisoner, if you can.”
“We could center our fire on—”
“He is to be unharmed,” Valentine ordered bluntly.
“My lord—”
“Unharmed, I said.”
“Yes, my lord.” But there was not much conviction in Ermanar’s reply. To Ermanar, Valentine knew, an enemy was merely an enemy, and this general would do least damage if he were quickly slain. But Elidath—!
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