Sparhawk, as acting preceptor of the Pandion Order, should also be suitably
accompanied. They had haggled about the number of Pandions he should take
with him to Chyrellos. He had held out at first for Kalten, Berit and
perhaps one or two others, while the queen had been more in favour of
bringing along the entire order. They had finally agreed upon a score of
black-armoured knights. It was impossible to make any kind of time with so
large an entourage. They seemed almost to creep across the face of Elenia,
plodding easterly to Lenda and then southeasterly toward Demos and
Chyrellos. The peasantry took the occasion of their passing as an excuse
for a holiday, and the road was usually lined with crowds of country people
who had come out to gawk. ‘It’s a good thing we don’t do this very often,’
Sparhawk observed to his wife not long after they had passed the city oF
Lenda. ‘I rather enjoy getting out, Sparhawk.’ The queen and princess Danae
were riding in an ornate carriage drawn by six white horses. ‘I’m sure you
do, but this is the planting season. The peasants should be in the fields.
Too many of these royal excursions could cause a famine.’
‘You really don’t approve of what I’m doing, do you, Sparhawk?’
‘I understand why you’re doing it, Ehlana, and you’re probably right.
Dolmant needs to be reminded that his authority isn’t absolute, but I think
this particular approach is just a little friVolous.’
‘Of course it’s frivolous, Sparhawk,’ she admitted quite calmly. ‘That’s
the whole point. In spite of all the evidence he’s had to the contrary,
Dolmant still thinks I’m’ a silly little girl. I’m going to rub his nose in
‘silly’ for a while. Then, when he’s good and tired of it, I’ll take him
aside and suggest that it would be much easier on him if he took me
seriously. That should get his attention. Then we’ll be able to get down to
business.’
‘Everything you do is politically motivated, isn’t it?’
‘Well not quite everything, Sparhawk.’ They stopped briefly in Demos, ‘and
Khalad and Talen took the royal couple, Kalten, Danae and Mirtai to visit
their mothers. Aslade and Elys mothered everyone impartially. Sparhawk
strongly suspected that this was one of the main reasons his wife quite
often found excuses to travel to Demos. Her childhood had been bleak and
motherless, and anytime she felt insecure or uncertain, some reason seemed
to come up why her presence in Demos was absolutely necessary. Aslade’s
kitchen was warm, and its walls were hung with burnished copper pots. It
was a homey sort of place that seemed to answer some deep need in the Queen
of Elenia. The smells alone were enough to banish most of the cares of all
who entered it. Elys, Talen’s mother, was a radiant blonde woman, and
Aslade was a kind of monument to motherhood. They adored each other. Aslade
had been Kurik’s wife, and Elys his mistress, but there appeared to be no
jealousy between them. They were practical women, and they both realised
that jealousy was a useless kind of thing that never made anyone feel good.
Sparhawk and Kalten were immediately banished from the kitchen, Khalad and
Talen were sent to mend a fence, and the Queen of Elenia and her Tamul
slave continued their intermittent education in the art of cooking while
Aslade and Elys mothered Danae. ‘I can’t remember the last time I saw
a’queen kneading bread-dough,’ Kalten grinned as he and Sparhawk strolled
around the familiar dooryard. ‘I think she’s making pie-crusts,’ Sparhawk
corrected him. ‘Dough is dough, Sparhawk.’
‘Remind me never to ask you to bake me a pie.’
‘No danger there,’ Kalten laughed. ‘Mirtai looks very natural, though.
She’s had lots of practice cutting things – and people – up. I just wish
she wouldn’t use her own daggers. You can never really be sure where
they’ve been.’
‘She always cleans them after she stabs somebody.’
‘It’s the idea of it, Sparhawk,’ Kalten shuddered. ‘The thought of it
makes my blood run cold.’
‘Don’t think about it then.’
‘You’re going to be late, you know,’ Kalten reminded his friend. ‘Dolmant
only gave you a week to get to Chyrellos. ‘
‘It couldn’t be helped.’
‘Do you want me to ride on ahead and let him know you’re coming?’
‘And spoil the surprise my wife has planned for him? Don’t be sily.
They were no more than a league southeast of Demos the next morning when
the attack came. A hundred men, peculiarly dressed with strange weapons,
burst over the top of a low knoll bellowing war-cries. They thundered
forward on foot for the most part, the ones on horseback appeared to be
their leaders. The courtiers fled squealing in terror as Sparhawk barked
commands to his Pandions. The twenty blackarmoured knights formed up around
the queen’s carriage and easily repelled the first assault. Men on foot are
not really a match for mounted knights. ‘what’s that language?’ Kalten
shouted. ‘Old Lamork, I think,’ Ulath replied. ‘It’s a lot like Old
Thalesian.’
‘Sparhawk!’ Mirtai barked. ‘Don’t give them time to regroup!’ She pointed
her blood-smeared sword at the attackers milling around at the top of the
knoll. ‘She’s got a point,’ Tynian agreed. Sparhawk quickly assessed the
situation, deployed some of his knights to protect Ehlana and formed up the
remainder of his force. ‘Charge!’ he roared. It is the lance that makes the
armoured knight so devastating against foot-troops. The man on foot has no
defence against it, and he cannot even flee. A third of the attackers had
fallen in the initial assault, and a score fell victim to the lances during
Sparhawk’s charge. The knights then fell to work with swords and axes.
Bevier’s lochaber axe was particularly devastating, and he left wide tracks
of the dead and dying through the tightly packed ranks of the now-confused
attackers. It was Mirtai, however, who stunned them all with a shocking
display of sheer ferocity. Her sword was lighter than the broadswords of
the Church Knights, and she wielded it with almost the delicacy of
Stragen’s rapier. She seldom thrust at an opponent’s body, but concentrated
instead on his face and throat, and when necessary, his legs. Her thrusts
were short and tightly controlled, and her slashes were aimed not at
muscles, but rather at tendons. She crippled more than she killed, and the
shrieks and groans of her victims raised a fearful din on that bloody
field. The standard tactic of armoured knights when deployed against
foot-troops was to charge with their lances first and then to use the
weight of their horses to crush their unmounted opponents together so
tightly that they became tangled with their comrades. Once they had been
rendered more or less helpless, slaughtering them was easy work. ‘Ulath!’
Sparhawk shouted. ‘Tell them to throw down their weapons!’
‘I’ll try,’ Ulath shouted back. Then he roared something incomprehensible
at the milling foot-troops. A mounted man wearing a grotesquely decorated
helmet bellowed something in reply. ‘That one with the wings on his helmet
is the leader, Sparhawk,’ ulath said, pointing with his bloody axe. ‘What
did he say?’ Kalten demanded. ‘He made some uncomplimentary remarks about
my mother. Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen. I really ought to do
something about that.’ He wheeled his horse and approached the man with the
winged helmet, who was also armed with a war axe. Sparhawk had never seen
an axe-fight before, and he was somewhat surprised to note that there was
far more finesse involved than he had imagined. Sheer strength accounted
for much, of course, but sudden changes of the direction of swings implied
a level of sophistication Sparhawk had not expected. Both men wore heavy
round shields, and the defences they raised with them were more braced than
might have been the case had they been attacking each other with swords.
Ulath stood up in his stirrups and raised his axe high over his head. The
warrior in the winged helmet raised his shield to protect his head, but the
huge Thalesian swung his arm back, rolled his shoulder and delivered an
underhand blow instead, catching his opponent just under the ribs. The man
who seemed to be the leader of the attackers doubled over sharply,
clutching at his stomach, and then he fell from his saddle. A vast groan
rolled through the ranks of the attackers still on their feet, and then,
like a mist caught by a sudden breeze, they wavered and vanished. ‘where
did they go?’ Berit shouted, looking around with alarm. But no one could
answer. Where there had been two score foot-troops before, there was now
nothing, and a sudden silence fell over the field as the shrieking wounded
also vanished. Only the dead remained, and even they were strangely
altered. The bodies were pecu’liarly desiccated – dry, shrunken and
withered. The blood which had covered their limbs was no longer bright red,