them and Torak’s east flank. Then I’ll go talk with Brand and Ormik
and have them ease down from the north. I want those armies to
be in place and fresh when Beldin gets here the day after tomorrow.
Keep an eye on things here, Pol. Zedar might decide to get an early
start.’
‘I’ll see to it, father,’ I replied.
it was well before dawn when Zedar’s new engines began hurling
rocks at Vo Mimbre. He’d constructed mangonels, over-sized
catapults that could throw half-ton boulders at the walls. The
thunderous crashing of those boulders shook every building in Vo Mimbre,
and the sound was positively deafening. Worse yet, Zedar’s new
engines had enough range to put them back out of the reach of
Asturian arrows.
When father returned, he suggested that the twins could
plagiarize from Zedar and build mangonels for us as well. As is always
the case when there’s a parity of weaponry, the defenders of any
fortified place have the advantage. Zedar was hurling rocks at our
walls; we were throwing rocks – or fire – at people. Our walls stood;
Torak’s Angaraks didn’t. Our showers of fist-sized rocks brained
Angaraks by the score, and our rain-squalls of burning pitch created
new comets right on the spot, since people who are on fire always
seem to want to run somewhere.
Zedar became desperate at that point, and he uncharacteristically
risked his own neck to summon a wind-storm to deflect the arrows
Of the Asturian archers when he mounted his next frontal assault.
That was a mistake, of course. The twins knew Zedar very well,
and they recognized the difference between his Will and that of
some expendable Grolim’s. All they had to do at that point was
follow his lead. If Zedar didn’t evaporate in a puff of smoke when
he used the Will and the Word to do something, it was obviously
‘safe to do something similar in the same way. Zedar had to take
chances, but as long as we simply followed his lead, we weren’t in
any danger. Blazing the trail in a dangerous situation probably
didn’t make Zedar very happy, but Torak’s ultimatum didn’t give
him much choice. The twins erected a barrier of pure force, and
Zedar’s wind-storm was neatly divided to flow around the dead
calm which had been suddenly clapped over Vo Mimbre.
Then, driven to desperation, Zedar enlisted the Grolim priests to
help him dry out the sea of mud surrounding the besieged city. it
took father and the twins a while to realize what was afoot, but by
the time Zedar mixed the now-dry mud with his wind-storm to
send clouds of billowing dust toward our walls, I’d already arrived
at a solution. The twins and I broke off a piece of Zedar’s
windstorm, sent it swirling, tornado-like, several miles down the River
Arend, and then brought it back in the form of a waterspout. Then
we relaxed our grip on it. The resulting downpour laid the dust,
and we saw a horde of Murgos who’d been tiptoeing through the
obscuring dust-storm. The Asturian archers took it from there.
Father’s contribution to the affair was a bit childish, but he seemed
to enjoy it. Giving an enemy an abbreviated version of the seven-year
itch doesn’t really accomplish very much, but father was quite proud
of it, for some reason.
And so we’d survived the second day of the battle. I knew just
how significant that was, but I hadn’t bothered to share the
information – largely at mother’s insistence. ‘It would only confuse them,
Pol,’ she assured me. ‘Men confuse easily anyway, so let’s just keep
the importance of the third day to ourselves. Let’s not give your
father an opportunity to wallow in excessive cleverness. He might
upset the balance of things that are supposed to happen.’
I’m sorry to have let that out, mother, but father’s been just a little
too smug lately. Maybe it’s time for him to find out what really
happened at Vo Mimbre.
The Arendish poet, Davoul the Lame, a weedy-looking fellow with
a bad limp and an exaggerated opinion of his own rather mediocre
talent, perpetrated a literary monstrosity he called ‘The Latter Days
of the House of Mimbre,’ during which he made much of Torak’s
refusal to emerge from his rusty resting place. Davoul didn’t explain
the Dragon-God’s reluctance, but I think that those of you who’ve’
been paying attention have already guessed exactly what Was
behind it. To put it quite bluntly, Torak was afraid of that third day,
since the Ashabine Oracles told him that if his duel with the Child
of Light were to take place on that third day, he’d lose. Evidently,
he’d been forbidden to come out on the second day, so he’d been
forced to rely on Zedar to take the city. Zedar had failed, and now
Torak faced that day he so feared. When you get right down to it,
though, all he really had to do was stay home. If he’d done that,
he’d have won.
Don’t rush me. I’ll get to why he came out in my own time.
The key to our entire campaign was the Tolnedran legions, of course,
so just before dawn, I flew down the River Arend to make sure that
Eldrig’s war-boats were coming upstream with those vital
reinforcements. I’ll admit that I was enormously relieved to see that they
were approximately where they were supposed to be. Then Beltira
left the city to join the forces we had deployed to the east, Belkira
went north to join the Sendars, Rivans and Asturians, and father
and I simply flew out and settled in a tree to watch and to call out
our commands. Father, of course, was totally unaware of the fact
that I wasn’t alone in that now-familiar owl. Fooling my father
wasn’t very difficult – or very important. What really mattered was
the fact that Torak didn’t know that mother was there either. Mother
was the Master’s hidden disciple, and Torak didn’t even know that
she existed. I’m absolutely convinced that it was her presence at Vo
Mimbre that ultimately defeated the One-eyed God.
The business with all that horn-blowing had been father’s idea.
It didn’t actually serve any purpose – except to satisfy father’s need
for high drama. Members of our family were spread around among
our forces, and we had much more subtle ways to communicate
than tootling at each other, but father stubbornly insisted upon those
periodic horn-concertos. I’ll admit that the Arends absolutely loved
the idea of mysterious horn-blasts echoing from the nearby hills and
also that those calls and responses made the Angaraks very nervous.
The Nadraks in particular were edgy about the horn calls, and so
‘Yar lek Thun sent scouts out into the woods to see what was
happening. The Asturian archers with Brand’s force were waiting for them,
and Var lek Thun didn’t get the reports he yearned for.
‘then Ad Rak Cthoros of the Murgos sent out scouts to the east,
and the Algar cavalry disposed of them as well.
At the next call of the horns, we got the answer we’d been waiting
for. uncle Beldin and General Cerran responded with a chorus of
Tolnedran trumpets. The Chereks and the Tolnedran legions had
arrived on the battlefield.
‘that’s when father, our resident field-marshal, soared up to his
post high above to direct his forces. When everything on the ground
was to his satisfaction, he ordered Brand to give the signal for our
opening ploy. Brand sounded two horn blasts, and they were echoed
by Cho-Ram. Mandor’s answer was immediately followed by the
banging open of the gates of Vo Mimbre and the thundering charge
of the Mimbrate knights.
Zedar – who should have known better – took the form of a raven
and flew out of the iron pavilion to see what we were doing.
Mother surprised me at that point. Without any warning at all, she
launched our shared form from our perch and lifted us high above
that flapping black raven. Since we were so totally merged, I shared
her thoughts and feelings, and I was more than a little surprised to
discover that mother’s enmity for Zedar predated his apostasy.
Mother, it appeared, had disliked Zedar the first time she’d laid eyes
on him. I got the distinct impression that he’d said something to father
about her that’d earned him a special place in her heart. Father’s
always believed that the owl that came plummeting out of the sky
that morning was simply trying to frighten Zedar, but he was wrong.
Mother was trying her very best to kill Zedar.
I wonder how things might have turned out if she’d succeeded.
The charge of the Mimbrate knights at the Battle of Vo Mimbre has
spawned whole libraries of mediocre poetry, but from a strategic
point of view, its only purpose was to pin the Malloreans in place,
and it did exactly that. It was dramatic, noisy, noble, and very