would return to the end of the column, take up fresh lances and proceed in
an orderly fashion to the front rank again. It was, in effect, an endless
charge. Sparhawk was rather proud of the concept. It probably wouldn’t work
against humans, but it had great potential in an engagement with Trolls.
Shaggy carcasses began to pile up at the head of the gap. A Troll, it
appeared, was not guileful enough to play dead. He would continue to attack
until he died or was so severely injured that he could not continue. After
several ranks of the knights had struck the Trollfront, some of the brutes
had as many as four broken-off lances protruding from them. Still the
monsters came, clambering over the bleeding bodies of their fellows.
Sparhawk, Vanion, Kalten and Tynian made their charge. They speared fresh
Trolls in the raging front, snapped off their lances with well-practise
twists of their arms and veered off to the sides. ‘Your plan seems to be
going well,’ Kalten congratulated his friend. ‘The horses have time to rest
between charges.’
‘That was part of the idea,’ Sparhawk replied a bit
smugly as he took a fresh lance from the rack at the rear of the column.
The storm was nearly on them now. The howling wind shrieked among the
trees, and lightning staggered down in brilliant flashes from the purple
clouds. Then, from back in the forest there came a tremendous bellow. ‘What
in God’s name was that?’ Kalten cried. ‘Nothing can make that much noise!’
Whatever it was, was huge, and it was coming toward them, crushing the
forest as it came. The raging wind carried a foul, reptilian reek as it
tore at the visored faces of the armoured knights. ‘It stinks like a
charnel-house!’ Tynian shouted over the noise of the storm and the battle.
‘Can you tell what it is, Vanion?’ Sparhawk demanded. ‘No,’ the Preceptor
replied. ‘Whatever it is, it’s big, though – bigger than anything I’ve ever
encountered.’ Then the rain struck in driving sheets, obscuring the
knights’ vision and half-concealing the advancing Trolls. ‘Keep at them!’
Sparhawk commanded,in a great voice. ‘Don’t let up.’ The methodical charges
continued as the Trolls doggedly pushed through the mud into the killing
zone. The strategy was going well, but it had not been without casualties.
Several horses were down, felled by club strokes from wounded and enraged
Trolls, and a few armoured knights lay motionless on the rain-swept ground.
Then the wind suddenly dropped, and the rain slackened as the calm at the
centre of the storm passed over them. ‘What’s that?’ Tynian shouted
pointing beyond the howling Trolls: It was a’ single, incandescent spark,
brighter than the sun, and it hung just over the edge of the forest. It
began to grow ominously, swelling, surging, surrounded by a blazing halo of
purplish light. ‘There’s something inside it!’ Kalten yelled. Sparhawk
strained to see, squinting in the brilliant purple light that illuminated
the battle-ground. ‘It’s alive,’ he said tersely. ‘It’s moving.’ The ball
of purple light swelled faster and faster, and blazing orange flames shot
out from the edges of it. There was someone standing in the centre of that
fiery ball – someone robed and hooded and burning green. The figure raised
one hand, opened it wide, and a searing bolt of lightning shot from that
open palm. A charging Cyrinic Knight and his horse were blasted into
charred fragments by the bolt. And then, from behind that searing light, an
enormous shape reared up out of the forest. It was impossible that anything
alive could be so huge. The head left no doubt that the creature was
reptilian. The huge head was earlessly sleek, scaly and had a protruding,
lipless muzzle filled with row after row of back-curving teeth. It had a
short neck, narrow shoulders and tiny forepaws. The rest of the body was
mercifully concealed by the trees. ‘We can’t fight that thing!’ Kalten
cried. The hooded figure within the ball of purple and orange fire raised
its arm again. It seemed to clench itself, and then again the lightning
shot from its open palm – and stopped, exploding in midair in a dazzling
shower of sparks. ‘Did you do that?’ Vanion shouted at Sparhawk. ‘Not me,
Vanion. I’m not that faSt.’ Then they heard the deep, resonant voice
chanting in Styric. Sparhawk wheeled Faran to look. It was Zalasta. The
silvery-haired Styric stood partway up the steep slope on the north side of
the canyon, his white robe gleaming in the storm’s half-light. He had both
arms extended over his head, and his staff, which Sparhawk had thought to
be no more than an affectation, blazed with energy. He swung the staff
downward, pointing it at the hooded figure standing in its fiery nimbus. A
brilliant spark shot from the tip of the staff and sizzled as it passed
over the heads of the Peloi and the armoured knights to explode against the
ball of fire. The figure in the fire flinched, and once more lightning shot
from its open palm, directed at Zalasta this time. The Styric brushed it
disdainfully aside with his staff and immediately responded with another of
those brilliant sparks of light which shattered like the last on the
surface of the ball of fire. Again the hooded one inside its protecting
fire flinched, more violently this time. The gigantic creature behind it
screamed and drew back into the darkness. The Church Knights, dumbfounded
by the dreadful confrontation, had frozen in their tracks. ‘We have our own
work to attend to, gentlemen!’ Vanion roared his reminder. ‘Charge!’
Sparhawk shook his head to clear his mind. ‘Thanks, Vanion,’ he said to his
Friend. ‘I got distracted there for a moment.’
‘Pay attention, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said crisply in precisely the same tone
he had always used on the practice field years before when Sparhawk and
Kalten had been novices. ‘Yes, my Lord Preceptor,’ Sparhawk replied
automatically in the self-same embarrassed tone he had used as a stripling.
The two looked at each other, and then they both laughed. ‘Just like old
times,’ Kalten said gaily. ‘Well then, why don’t we go Troll-hunting and
leave the incidentals to Zalasta?’ The knights continued their endless
charge and the two magicians continued their fiery duel overhead. The
Trolls were no less savage now, but their numbers were diminished and the
huge pile of their dead impeded their attack. The bloody work on the ground
went on and on while the air above the battleground sizzled and crackled
with awful fire. ‘is it my imagination, or is our purple friend up there
getting a little pale and wan?’ Tynian suggested as they took up fresh
lances once more.
:His fire’s beginning to fade just a bit,’ Kalten agreed. ‘And he’s taking
longer and longer to work himself up to another thunderbolt.’
‘Don’t grow over-confident, gentlemen,’ Vanion admonished them. ‘We still
have Trolls to deal with, and that oversized lizard’s still out there in
the forest.’
‘I was trying very hard not to think about that,’ Kalten replied. Then,
very suddenly, as suddenly as it had expanded, ‘ the bit of purple-orange
fire began to contract. Zalasta ‘ stepped up his attack, the fiery sparks
shooting from his Staff in rapid succession to burst against the outer
surface of that rapidly constricting nimbus like fiery hail. Then the
blazing orb vanished. A cheer went up from the Peloi, and the Trolls
chered. Khalad, his face strangely numb, set another javelin on his
improvised engine and cut the rope to unleash ‘his missile. The javelin
sprang from the huge bow, and as it sped forward it seemed to ignite, and
it blazed with light as it arced out higher and farther than any of the
young man’s previous shots had done. The great lizard rearing up out of the
forest roared, its awful mouth gaping. And then the burning javelin took it
full in the chest. It sank deep, and the hideous creature shrieked a great
cry of agony and rage, its tiny forepaws clutching futilely at the burning
shaft. And then there was a heavy, muffled thud within the monster’s body,
a confined explosion that shook the very ground. The vast lizard burst open
in a spray of bloody fire, and its ripped remains sank twitching back into
the forest. A nebulous kind of wavering appeared at the edge of the trees,
a wavering very much like the shimmer of heat on a hot summer day, and then
they all saw something emerging from that shimmer. It was a face only,
brutish, ugly and filled with rage and frustration. The shaggy face sloped
sharply back from its fang-filled muzzle, and the pig-like eyes burned in
their sockets. It howled – a vast howl that tore at the very air. It howled
again, and Sparhawk recoiled. The wavering apparition was bellowing in
Trollish again it howled, its thunderous voice bending the trees around it
like a vast wind. ‘What in God’s name is that?’ Bevier cried. ‘Ghworg,’