“Not to surrender, but to return your allegiance to the great lord who once was your friend. Prestimion’s doomed, Svor. We know that, and in your heart you must surely know that too. Look at our army, and the position it occupies. Look at his. You know what today’s outcome will be. Why die for him? When we die, we are dead forever, Svor. The dead drink no wine and they know no lovers’ embraces.”
“The last time I saw you,” said Svor, “it was in Muldemar House, where we all drank wine aplenty, especially you, and I listened to you pledge yourself most warmly to Prestimion. You would do your duty, you told him, and help return the world to the proper path. You would do so at whatever risk to your personal position might be entailed. Those were your own words, Admiral. Of course, you were a little tipsy when you spoke them, but that was what you said. I see that the pursuit of your duty has somehow brought you to the side of the field opposite Prestimion’s. And now you want me to do the same? To turn my back on him and come back over to the other side with you this minute?”
“Hardly that, Svor,” said Gonivaul in a stony voice. “Nothing so blatant.”
“What, then?”
“Remain on your side of the field during the battle. You can hardly do otherwise. But in the thick of the fray, go among Prestimion’s captains and let them know one by one that they’ll be treated well by Korsibar if they cast off their allegiance to Prestimion as the day goes along. Tell them there’s no reason to give up their lives in a lost cause, and that rewards await them if they abandon it Do it quietly; but do it. Provide us your cooperation, and Korsibar will reward you beyond your wildest dreams, Svor. You need only make your request of him, and it will be yours. Nothing will be denied you. Nothing. Not even a place in the Coronal’s own family, should you want that. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Svor?”
“I think that I do.”
“Or else continue on your present course, and you’ll surely die today on the battlefield, along with Prestimion and Septach Melayn and all the rest. That much is certain. The stars have shown us our victory. There can be no doubt of the outcome.”
“None, eh?”
“None.” Gonivaul undid his helmet, so that the thick fur of his head sprang from its confinement, and extended his hand to Svor. “You have our offer. Say to me that you’ll give it thought, and then we should return to our places.”
Svor touched his hand briefly to Gonivaul’s.
“It will have the most careful consideration,” he said. “Tell that to the Coronal Lord Korsibar. And tell him also that I remember the old days of our friendship with the greatest warmth.”
He turned away, clambered atop his mount, and rode back toward Prestimion’s lines, thinking with some astonishment of what it would be like to be brother-in-law to the Coronal and husband to the Lady Thismet, and all he would have to do to achieve it was to commit an act of treason against Prestimion no greater than those already done by Gonivaul, Oljebbin, Serithorn, and Dantirya Sambail. A nice transaction, that would be. Treason was epidemic these days.
“Well?” Prestimion asked when Svor had returned. “What was it that he told you?”
“That I would be well rewarded if I defected and brought some of your captains over to Korsibar’s side with me.”
“Ah,” said Prestimion. “He told you that. How well rewarded, exactly?”
“Very well indeed,” said Svor simply, and no more than that.
“And what did you tell him, then?” asked Septach Melayn.
“Why, that I would give his offer the most careful consideration,” said Svor. “No sensible man would have said anything else.”
9
ALL THAT DAY and far into the night the two armies faced each other across Beldak marsh without moving; and as dawn drew near, Prestimion gave the order for the ascent of Thegomar Edge.
“They are well set forth,” said Septach Melayn.
“So I see. We’ll strike again at their strongest point: break them there, and the rest will yield quickly enough.”
The loyalist forces were ranged in one great solid mass from end to end of the hill’s crest, packed shoulder-to-shoulder to form a solid wall of shields. Korsibar’s front-most men, clad in chain mail and wielding spears, javelins, two-edged swords, and heavy long-handled axes, were a fearsome sight. It was still too early to see what lay behind them, but Prestimion had intimations of an enormous horde of men, stretching on and on into the forest on the eastern side of Thegomar and when the hierax-men went up on their birds, they confirmed that guess: troops stretched out to the east as far as could be seen.
“The Divine be with you today,” said Thismet as he made ready to enter the field; and she kissed him tenderly in front of all the men. But he could see conflict and tension on her face, and fear lurking in her eyes, and he knew that her fear was not only for him. There was a bond between this brother and sister that he could only just begin to understand.
Prestimion’s own force was drawn up in three divisions. In the center were the battle-hardened men of the earlier contests, under his own command, with Septach Melayn and Gialaurys beside him. To his left were the troops of Spalirises of Tumbrax and the men of six foothill towns, with Prestimion’s brother Abrigant in general charge, and on the other flank was Gynim of Tapilpil and his band of sling-casters at the apex of a mass of more recently recruited warriors. In each division the light-armed foot-soldiers armed with bows and crossbows were in the front, heavy-armed infantry with spears in the second rank, and cavalry in the rear.
“Up the slope now,” Prestimion ordered. “Smash through that wall of shields in our first assault, and we’ll drive them panicking into the woods.”
At first light the advance began, covered by Prestimion’s archers. The arrows flew uphill only, with little reply from above, for Korsibar evidently had very few archers in his force. The rebel foot-soldiers went running joyously toward the enemy, with Prestimion’s heavier infantry pounding along behind them, bellowing a raucous chant of victory.
But the shield-wall held. That line was stronger and far more determined than Prestimion had supposed.
His front line crashed against it and it staunchly stood its ground, an impenetrable barrier, and the attackers were met with a fierce tumult of missiles of every kind, javelins, lances, axes, spears, the whole ancient armamentarium of weaponry, more suited to some primitive land than to this great kingdom. And then in one place near its left end the wall of shields suddenly parted and there came forth a battery of energy-throwers hurling bright red bolts into the rightmost wing of Prestimion’s force. That was a frightening sight. Clumsy and difficult to use though the energy-throwers were, as likely to explode in the faces of their own handlers as to do damage to an enemy, nevertheless they raised a great clamor, and where they were effective at all they did terrible damage.
“Hold firm!” Prestimion cried. “They are untrustworthy things, those machines! It’s scarcely possible to aim them straight!”
But it was hard to hold firm, and all but impossible to go forward, in the face of those bright destructive blurts of raw power, random and wild though they seemed to be. Few of Prestimion’s men had faced energy-throwers before. The confidence that had carried them swiftly and eagerly uphill wavered and slipped from them. There was uncertainty among them; and soon there was disruption and then chaos on the rebel right flank, men giving way, breaking formation, turning and fleeing down the hill into the marshy land at the foot of the slope.
Prestimion could feel the turning of the tide almost as a tangible thing. It seemed to him that his entire force might be transformed in a moment from a confident advancing army into one in frantic retreat, and the battle lost right here. Already Korsibar’s cavalry had come out from behind gaps in the shield-wall and was beginning a slow and steady advance down the hill, doing terrible damage as they came.
He rode back and forth, trying to be everywhere at once, even the front line, urging his men to hold steady. Then he heard his mount make a soft
sighing sound of a kind he had never heard a mount make before, and it sank down on its forequarters so suddenly that he nearly was pitched forward over its head. A fountain of blood rushed from its breast where some lucky stroke of a spear had caught it Prestimion freed himself from his stirrups just in time, leaping to the ground as the animal fell to its side.
“Prestimion! Behind you!”
He whirled with all his speed. And saw the cold eye and hatchet face of Mandralisca the poison-taster, rushing fiercely upon him with upraised sword. Prestimion managed a quick lunging parry, and parried another thrust instantly afterward. And another, and another, and another, without pause.
Dantirya Sambail has sent his man down into the heart of the battle particularly to kill me, Prestimion realized. I will bear that in mind later, if there is a later for me.
This Mandralisca, plainly, was a demon of a swordsman, every bit as good with steel as he had been that day at the Labyrinth games with the wooden baton. Prestimion had not forgotten the poison-taster’s deft movements then, the dizzying feints and pivots, the swiftness of his wrists, the baton-strokes quick as lightning. Those skills of Mandralisca’s had won Prestimion five crowns from Septach Melayn that day. But he had never expected to have them turned against him in deadly battle.
Mandralisca launched a new flurry of thrusts. Prestimion parried, and parried again, and managed a quick thrust of his own, which the poison-taster avoided with the greatest agility. Now Prestimion pressed his moment of advantage. Mandraliscá was better on the attack than he was on defense, but his speed served him well enough in that quarter too; and after each parry he came back on the attack, as ferocious as before. Septach Melayn himself would have been hard put to deal with him. Prestimion knew of no one else about whom that could be said.
They moved back and forth across the crowded noisy field in a private little arena entirely their own. Quick as Prestimion was, it was all he could do to ward off Mandralisca’s diabolically swift thrusts. Again, again, again the sword came at him; each time Prestimion managed to parry, but only barely fast enough, and his own thrusts fell ever short of the mark as Mandralisca darted mockingly away from them. The poison-taster’s speed was formidable; his handling of his weapon was unorthodox but masterly. It was impossible for Prestimion to pay heed to the battle while his own life was in jeopardy. He had a distant sense of swirling forces, of chaos everywhere; but for him the struggle had come down to a single opponent.
And for a moment it seemed that all was up for him. The poison-taster came at him with such a dazzling flurry of thrusts, seemingly from five directions at once, that Prestimion for all his whirling and bobbing could not avoid them all. A hot line of pain ran along his left arm as Mandralisca’s blade sliced into him. He swung about and dropped into a purely defensive stance as the poison-taster came at him again for a finishing stroke; and succeeded this time in beating the blade away, and even in regaining the offensive.
Mandralisca seemed suddenly to be tiring now. He was like a spirited racer who was at his best in brief spurts, Prestimion discovered. His blinding speed was not matched by an equal stamina. The poison-taster had gambled everything on a terrifyingly intense all-out onslaught, but had expended himself without reaching his goal. His parries were less assured, his offensive thrusts fewer and farther between. The malevolence of his gaze was tempered now by fatigue.
Sensing his advantage, Prestimion pressed forward, hoping to land a deciding stroke. For a moment he thought he had Mandralisca at his mercy. But then the battle line surged incoherently about him; he found himself swallowed up in the roaring madness of it and separated from the poison-taster by five or six shouting brawling men who passed between them. They swept him casually to one side as they hacked in a frenzy of blood-lust at each other and moved on, all in a single group locked together by their fury; and when things cleared again, there was no sight of his opponent.
As Prestimion paused to draw in deep breaths and look around the field in the midst of this confusion, he heard a great despairing cry suddenly go up, and a voice call out, “Prestimion is fallen! Prestimion is fallen!”
“Prestimion is fallen!” In an instant the cry was all over the field. “Prestimion is fallen!”
It was like a cold wind blowing across the battlefield. Its effect was felt everywhere. In an instant all the momentum of the battle, which had already been running toward Korsibar, shifted emphatically to his side. Hordes of his men now were moving downhill in triumph, and those of Prestimion, disorganized and dispirited, were helplessly giving ground before them. What had merely been a retreat until now abruptly threatened to turn into a rout.
Gialaurys rode up from somewhere and leaned down toward Prestimion, who was watching in dismay, leaning on his sword, for he was not quite recovered yet from the exertions of his contest with Mandralisca. “Quick! Show yourself to them!” Gialaurys cried. And descended from his mount in a quick leap and thrust Prestimion up into its saddle as easily as if lifting a child.
Prestimion bared his head and stood high in his stirrups as he rode up and down along the ragged ranks of his men. “Here I am!” he shouted in a voice to split the sky, and found strength somewhere and drew his bow and sent a shaft uphill that brought one loyalist down, and then slew a second and a third, all three almost in a single instant. His arm trembled from the wound he had had at Mandralisca’s hand, but the bow held steady.
Gialaurys too ran to and fro, shouting and pointing to show that Prestimion still lived. As the men caught sight of Prestimion’s golden hair and saw him wielding his great bow, another cry went up: “Prestimion! Prestimion! Lord Prestimion lives!” They began to rally their courage. The disorderly retreat on the right was continuing but elsewhere the rebel lines began to form again, and on the strong left flank Spalirises and Abrigant were beginning to move upward, toward the massed ranks of the loyalist force.
But they would only be thrown back a second time, of that Prestimion was certain. He felt a moment of despair. His confidence had led him to overreach himself in planning this attack. There was no way to take the high ground from Korsibar. Some new strategy was needed on the spot.
And then Septach Melayn came riding by and said in Prestimion’s ear, “Look you there, where our right flank’s falling back. Can you believe it? Korsibar’s infantry men are following them down the hill!”
Prestimion stared, incredulous. It was like a gift from Providence.
“Why, then this is our moment,” he said.
Indeed, the whole side of Korsibar’s shield-wall opposite the fleeing rebels had rashly broken its impenetrable rank and was giving pursuit down the slope, which forfeited them the great advantage of their position. A gift, yes, a gift of the Divine!
Prestimion sent word for the retreat to continue on the right and even to intensify, everyone without exception in that entire wing instructed to turn and flee, giving every sign of terror and panic. The feigned retreat drew the enemy, sensing victory, down the hill with them.
But at the same time Prestimion brought a host of fresh archers up on the left, ordering them to shoot their arrows high into the air so that they would come down behind the loyalists’ shields. And at a signal, Duke Miaule’s cavalrymen came into the fray, riding swiftly uphill to surround those loyalists who had left their line, cutting them off from hope of escape.
The tide, which had run so strongly in Korsibar’s favor only moments before, began quickly to turn back the other way.
In moments Korsibar’s entire force was hovering on the brink of utter chaos as Miaule’s men came at them unexpectedly from the side. That intimidating battery of energy-throwers had ceased its fire: in the frenzied melee the gunners no longer could distinguish friend from foe, and some had perished from the malfunctions of their own badly constructed instruments. And as the glare of their last few bolts died away, rebels on mountback came sweeping in over their fortification and fell upon them, slashing furiously with their swords. The loyalist ranks were broken an
d scattered in an instant. Everywhere on the field men were being trampled and cut down. Some, unable to rise, crawled toward safety. Others ran.
This was the time, Prestimion knew, to bring his ultimate weapon into play.
“The maguses!” he called. “Let them come forward!”
They marched forward from the camp in a single group: old Gominik Halvor, whom Prestimion had summoned down from Triggoin for this, and his son Heszmon Gorse, and ten or a dozen other high wizards of the northern city, men famed throughout the world for their skill at the mystic arts. All of them were clad in their most solemn regalia and bore the implements of their trade in their arms. A great gasp of dismay went up from Korsibar’s men higher on the hill as they saw this procession emerge from Prestimion’s rear lines. Protected every step of the way by a phalanx of Prestimion’s most trusted warriors, they advanced across the lowland plain. Then, to the accompaniment of trumpets and blaring kannivangitali, they gathered in a circle and setup a solemn droning chant and sent pyres of blue flame rising to the sky.
It was mid-morning now. The sun was bright overhead. But in a moment the sky began to grow-thick-with clouds and the sun seemed to dim, and then the blackness of a moonless midnight came over the field, and all those who fought there were wrapped so deep in that descending dark that they could barely see a dozen paces beyond their noses.
Prestimion’s men had been warned of this. Korsibar’s had not, and tumbled into a terrible confusion.
“Now!” Prestimion cried. “Now! Now! Up the hill again, and cut them to pieces!”
And from elsewhere on the battlefield, as the last shred of discipline among the bewildered loyalists was lost and they began to mill and churn in helpless disarray, came the roaring cry from Prestimion’s captains: “Now! Now! Now! Now!”
Gialaurys, in the darkness, saw a place before him that was darker even than the rest, and as his eyes adjusted to the change that had come over the battlefield, he realized that the darkness in front of him was a man who had the width of a wall, and he knew him to be his old nemesis, the brutish Farholt.