Domes of Fire
‘Good point,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘Let’s get to it.’
‘I thought that being a military person just involved banging on people with axes and swords,’ Emban conceded.
‘There’s a lot of that involved too, your Grace,’ Ulath smiled, ‘but it doesn’t hurt to outsmart your enemy a little too.’ He looked at Bevier. ‘Engines?’ he asked.
Bevier blinked. Ulath’s cryptic questions always took him by surprise for some reason.
‘As long as we have some time on our hands, we could erect some catapults on the hilltop. Attacking through a rain of boulders is always sort of distracting. Getting hit on the head with a fifty pound rock always seems to break a man’s concentration for some reason. If we’re going to set up for a siege, we might as well do it right.’ He looked around at them. ‘I still don’t like sieges though,’ he added. ‘I want everybody to understand that.’
The warriors set to work, and the ladies and the young men attending them renewed their festivities, although their hilarity was even more forced now.
Sparhawk and Kalten were re-enforcing the breastworks atop the hill. Since his wife and daughter were going to be inside those fortifications, their strength was a matter of more than passing interest to the prince consort.
The party under the pavilion had begun to show gaps, and Stragen was increasingly obliged to fill them with his lute.
‘He’s going to wear out his fingers,’ Kalten grunted, lifting another large rock into place.
‘Stragen enjoys attention,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘He’ll keep playing until the blood runs out from under his fingernails if there’s anybody around to listen.’
Stragen’s lute took up a very old air, and he began to sing again. Sparhawk didn’t really have much of an ear for music, but he had to admit that the Thalesian thief had a beautiful voice.
And then Baroness Melidere joined in. Her voice was a rich contralto that blended smoothly with Stragen’s baritone. Their duet was perfectly balanced, smooth and rich with the dark tones of their deeper voices. Sparhawk smiled to himself. The baroness was continuing her campaign. Once Aphrael had alerted him to the blonde girl’s designs on Stragen, Sparhawk could see dozens of artful little ploys she was using to keep her intended victim’s attention. He almost felt sorry for Stragen, but he concluded that Melidere would be good for him. The pair concluded their duet to loud applause. Sparhawk glanced toward the pavilion and saw Melidere lay one lingering hand almost caressingly on Stragen’s wrist. Sparhawk knew just how potent those accidental-seeming contacts were. Lillas had explained it to him once, and Lillas had been the world’s champion seductress – as probably half the men in Jiroch could have sworn to.
Then Stragen turned to another traditional air, and a new voice lifted in song. Kalten dropped the rock he had been lifting. It fell onto his foot, but he did not even wince. The voice was that of an angel, high, sweet, and as clear as glass. It soared effortlessly toward the upper reaches of the soprano range. It was a lyric voice, uncontaminated by the subtle variations of the coloratura, and it seemed as untaught as bird-song.
It was Ehlana’s maid, Alean. The doe-eyed girl, always so quiet and unassuming, stood in the centre of the Pavilion, her face luminous as she sang.
Sparhawk heard Kalten snuffle, and he was astonished to see great tears streaming down his friend’s face as the blond Pandion wept unashamed.
Perhaps his recent conversation with the Child Goddess had alerted Sparhawk to the potentials of intuition, and he suddenly knew, without knowing exactly how he knew, that two campaigns were in progress – and, moreover, that the one being waged by Baroness Melidere was the more overt and blatant. He carefully concealed a smile behind his hand.
‘Lord, that girl’s got a beautiful voice!’ Kalten said in stunned admiration as Alean concluded her song. ‘God!’ he said then, doubling over to clutch at the foot he had unwittingly injured five minutes earlier.
The work progressed until sunset, and then the combined army pulled back behind the reinforced palisade and waited. Sir Bevier and his Cyrinic Knights retired to the hilltop, where they completed the construction of their catapults. Then they amused themselves by lobbing large rocks into the forest seemingly at random.
‘What are they shooting at, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana asked after supper.
‘The trees,’ he shrugged.
‘The trees aren’t threatening us.’
‘No, but there are probably people hiding among them. The boulders falling out of the sky should make them a little jumpy.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, Bevier’s men are testing the range of the engines, dear. If our friends in the forest decide to attack down those avenues we’ve provided for them, Bevier wants to know exactly when to start shooting.’
‘There’s a great deal more involved in being a soldier than just keeping your equipment clean, isn’t there?’
‘I’m glad you appreciate that, my Queen.’
‘Shall we go to bed then?’
‘Sorry, Ehlana,’ he replied, ‘but I won’t be sleeping tonight. If our friend out there makes up his mind and attacks, there are some things I’ll have to do rather quickly.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Danae?’
‘She and Talen are over there watching Bevier’s people throw rocks at the trees.’
‘I’ll go get her. You’ll probably want to keep her close to you tonight.’ He crossed the basin to where Bevier was directing the activities of his knights. ‘Bed-time,’ he told his daughter, lifting her into his arms.
She pouted a little at that, but raised no other objections. When Sparhawk was about half-way back to his wife’s tent, he slowed. ‘How much of a stickler are you for formality, Aphrael?’ he asked.
‘A few genuflections are nice, father,’ she replied, ‘but I can live without them – in an emergency.’
‘Good. If the attack comes tonight, we’re going to need some light to see them by.’
‘How much light?’
‘Sort of noonish would be good.’
‘I can’t do that, Sparhawk. Do you have any idea of how much trouble I’d get into if I made the sun rise when it wasn’t supposed to?’
‘I wasn’t really suggesting that. I just want enough light so that people can’t sneak up on us through the shadows. The spell’s a fairly long one with a lot of formalities involved and many, many specifics. I may be a little pressed for time, so would you be terribly offended if I just asked you for light and left the details up to you?’
‘It’s highly irregular, Sparhawk,’ she chided him primly.
‘I know, but just this once maybe?’
‘Oh, I guess so, but let’s not make a habit of it. I do have a reputation to maintain, after all.’
‘I love you,’ he laughed.
‘Oh, if that’s the case, it’s perfectly all right then. We can bend all sorts of rules for people who really love us. Just ask for light, Sparhawk. I’ll see to it that you get lots and lots of light.’
The attack came shortly before midnight. It began with a rain of arrows lofting in out of the darkness, followed quickly by attacks on the Atan pickets. That last proved to be what might best be described as a tactical blunder. The Atans were the finest foot-soldiers in the world, and they welcomed hand-to-hand combat.
Sparhawk could not clearly see the attacking force from his vantage-point on the hilltop, but he firmly controlled his curiosity and held off on illuminating the battlefield until such time as the opposing force was more fully engaged. As they had anticipated, their enemies used the cover of these first probing moves to attack the log-jams designed to impede their progress through the belts of trees set off by Sir Ulath’s avenues radiating out from the base of the hill like the spokes of a huge wheel. As it turned out, Bevier’s Cyrinics had not been lobbing rocks out into the forest entirely for the fun of it. They had rather precisely pin-pointed the range of those jumbles of fallen trees with their catapults, and they hurled basketfuls of fist-sized rocks into the air to rain down on the men attem
pting to tear down the barricades or to widen the narrow gaps which had been deliberately left to permit the Peloi to ride out in search of entertainment. A two-pound rock falling out of the sky will not crush a man, but it will break his bones, and after ten minutes or so, the men out in the woods withdrew.
‘I confess it to you, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa said gravely, ‘I had thought your elaborate preparations a bit silly. Atans do not fight so. Your approach does have certain advantages, though.’
‘Our societies are different, Atan Engessa. Your people live and fight in the wilderness where enemies are encountered singly or in small groups. Our wilderness has been tamed, so our enemies come at us in large numbers. We build forts to live in, and over the centuries we’ve devised many means to defend those forts.’
‘When will you make the light come?’
‘At a time when it’s most inconvenient for our enemy. I want him to commit a large part of his force and to have them fully engaged before I sweep away the darkness. He won’t expect that, and it takes time to get orders through to men who are already fighting. We should be able to eliminate a sizeable part of his army before he can pull them back. Defensive warfare has certain advantages if you make the proper preparations.’
‘Ulath-Knight does not like it.’
‘Ulath doesn’t have the patience for it. Bevier’s the expert on defence. He’d be perfectly willing to wait for ten years if need be for the enemy to come to him on his terms.’
‘What will the enemy do next? We Atans are not accustomed to interrupted fights.’
‘He’ll draw back and shoot arrows at us while he thinks things over. Then he’ll probably try a direct assault down one of those avenues.’
‘Why only one? Why not attack from all directions at once?’
‘Because he doesn’t know how much we can hurt him yet. He’ll have to find that out first. He’ll learn in time, but it’s going to cost him a great deal to get his education. After we’ve killed about half of his soldiers, he’ll do one of two things. He’ll either go away, or he’ll throw everything he’s got at us from all sides at once.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we’ll kill the rest of his soldiers and be on our way,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘Assuming that everything goes the way we’ve planned, of course.’
At two hundred paces and with only starlight to see by, the figures were hardly more than shadows. They marched out into the centre of one of Ulath’s corridors and halted while others filed out to join them and to form up into a kind of massed formation.
‘I can’t believe that!’ Kalten exclaimed, gaping at the shadowy soldiers at the end of the corridor.
‘Is something wrong, Sir Kalten?’ Emban’s voice was a little shrill.
‘Not in the least, your Grace,’ Kalten replied gaily. ‘It’s just that we’re dealing with an idiot.’ He turned his head slightly. ‘Bevier,’ he called, ‘he’s forming up his troops on the road to march them into place.’
‘You’re not serious!’
‘May all of my toenails fall out if I’m not.’
Bevier barked a number of commands, and his knights swung the catapults around to bring them to bear on the unseen avenue leading toward the road. ‘Give the word, Sparhawk,’ the young Cyrinic called.
‘We’re going on down now,’ Sparhawk called back. ‘You can start as soon as we reach the bottom. We’ll wait so that you can pound them for a while, and then we’ll charge. We’d take it as a kindness if you’d stop about then.’
Bevier grinned at him.
‘Look after my wife while I’m gone.’
‘Naturally.’
Sparhawk and the other warriors began to climb down the hill. ‘I’ll break my men into two groups, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring said. ‘We’ll circle around and come up onto the road about a half mile behind them on either side. We’ll wait for your signal there.’
‘Don’t kill all of them.’ Engessa cautioned. ‘My Atans grow sulky if there’s fighting and they aren’t allowed to participate.’
They reached the bottom of the hill, and Bevier’s catapults began to thud, launching large rocks this time. There were sounds from off in the direction of the road indicating that the Cyrinic Knights had found the proper range.
‘Luck, Sparhawk,’ Kring said tersely and melted off into the shadows.
‘Be careful, Sir Knights,’ Khalad cautioned them. ‘Those tree-stumps out there are dangerous in the dark.’
‘It won’t be dark when we charge, Khalad,’ Sparhawk assured him. ‘I’ve made some arrangements.’
Engessa slipped quietly through an opening in the palisade to join his warriors out in the forest.
‘Is it just my imagination, or does it seem to the rest of you that we’re dealing with someone who’s not really very sophisticated?’ Tynian said. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any conception of modern warfare or modern technology.’
‘I think the word you’re groping for is “stupid”, Tynian,’ Kalten chuckled.
‘I’m not so sure,’ Tynian frowned. ‘It was too dark for me to make out very much from the hilltop, but it looked almost as if he were forming up his troops into a phalanx. Nobody’s done that in the west for over a thousand years.’
‘It wouldn’t be very effective against mounted knights, would it?’ Kalten asked.
‘I’m not so sure. It would depend on how long his spears are and the size of those overlapping shields. He could give us trouble.’
‘Berit,’ Sparhawk said, ‘go back up the hill and tell Bevier to shift his catapults a bit. I’d like the enemy formation broken up.’
‘Right.’ The young knight turned and scrambled back on up the hill.
‘If he is using a phalanx formation,’ Tynian continued, ‘it means that he’s never come up against mounted troops before and that he’s used to fighting in open country.’
Bevier’s catapults began to hurl boulders at the shadowy formation at the far end of the cleared avenue.
‘Let’s get started,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘I was going to wait a while, but let’s see what we’re up against.’ He hauled himself up onto Faran’s back and led the knights to a position outside the palisade. Then he drew in a deep breath. ‘We could use a bit of light now, Divine One.’ He cast the thought out without even bothering to frame it in Styric.
‘That’s really improper, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael’s voice in his ear was tart. ‘You know I’m not supposed to respond to prayers in Elenic.’
‘You know both languages. What difference does it make?’
‘It’s a question of style, Sparhawk.’
‘I’ll try to do better next time.’
‘I’d really appreciate it. How’s this?’
It began as a kind of pulsating lavender glow along the northern horizon. Then long streaks of pure, multi-coloured light spread upward in seething, curtain-like sheets, wavering, undulating like a vast curtain shimmering against the night sky.
‘What is it?’ Khalad exclaimed.
‘The northern lights,’ Ulath grunted. ‘I’ve never seen them this far south – or quite so bright. I’m impressed, Sparhawk.’
The shimmering curtain of light, rising and falling, crept up and up into the darkness, erasing the stars and filling the night with rainbow light.
A huge groan of consternation and awe rose from the army massing near the road. Sparhawk looked intently down the stump-dotted avenue. The soldiers facing them wore antique armour – breastplates, horse-hair crested helmets and large, round shields. They wore short swords and carried twelve-foot spears. Their front rank had evidently been formed with overlapping shields and advanced spears. Bevier’s catapults, however, had broken those tightly-packed ranks, and the rain of boulders continued to smash down among men so jammed together they could not flee.
Sparhawk watched grimly for a few moments. ‘All right, Ulath,’ he said at last, ‘sing the Ogre’s song for them.’
Ulath grinned and lifted his curled Ogre-horn to his lips a
nd blew a single, deep-toned blast.
The massed foot-troops, their ranks broken by the catapults and their minds filled with wonder and dismay by the sudden brilliant light covering half the sky, were in no way prepared to meet the awesome charge of the armoured knights and their massive horses. There was a resounding crash, and the front ranks of the massed foot-soldiers fell beneath the churning hooves of the war-horses. The knights discarded their lances, drew their swords and axes and fell to work, carving great swathes through the tightly-packed ranks.
‘Ulath!’ Sparhawk bellowed. ‘Turn loose the Peloi!’
Sir Ulath blew his Ogre-horn again – twice this time.
The Peloi war-cries were shrill and ululating. Sparhawk glanced quickly along the road. The warriors Kring’s Peloi were attacking were not the same as the ones facing the knights. Sparhawk had led a charge against infantry, men in breastplates and horse-hair crested helmets who fought on foot. Kring was attacking mounted men, men wearing flowing robes and cloth head-coverings, all armed with curved swords much like the Peloi sabres. Quite obviously, the attacking force was comprised of two different elements. There would be time later to ponder those differences. Right now, they were all very busy.
Sparhawk swung his heavy broadsword rhythmically in huge overhead strokes that sheared down into the sea of horsehair-crested helmets surrounding him. He continued for several minutes until the sounds from along the road indicated that the Peloi were fully engaged. ‘Sir Ulath!’ he roared. ‘Ask the Atans to join us!’
The Ogre-horn sang again – and again – and yet once again.
Sounds of fighting erupted back among the trees. Enemy soldiers who had fled the charge of the knights and the slashing attack of the Peloi found no sanctuary in the woods. Engessa’s Atans, silent and deadly, moved through the eerie, multi-coloured light streaming down from the pulsating sky, seeking and destroying.
‘Sparhawk!’ Kalten shouted. ‘Look!’
Sparhawk jerked his head around, and his heart froze.