“Stand and fight, you Murgo dog!” he roared.
Startled by that shout, Taur Urgas wheeled his horse to stare incredulously at the charging King of Algaria. His eyes suddenly bulged with the fervid light of insanity, and his lips, foam-flacked, drew back in a snarl of hatred. “Let him come!” he grated. “Clear the way for himl”
The startled members of his personal guard stared at him.
“Make way for the King of Algaria!” Taur Urgas shrieked. “He is mine!”
And the Murgo troops melted out of Cho-Hag’s path.
The Algar King reined in his horse. “And so it’s finally come, Taur Urgas,” he said coldly.
“It has indeed, Cho-Hag,” Taur Urgas replied. “I’ve waited for this moment for years.”
“If I’d known you were waiting, I’d have come sooner.”
“Today is your last day, Cho-Hag.” The Murgo King’s eyes were completely mad now, and foam drooled from the corners of his mouth.
“Do you plan to fight with threats and hollow words, Taur Urgas? Or have you forgotten how to draw your sword?”
With an insane shriek, Taur Urgas ripped his broad-bladed sword from its scabbard and drove his black horse toward the Algar King.
“Die!” he howled, slashing at the air even as he charged. “Die, ChoHag!”
It was not a duel, for there were proprieties in a duel. The two kings hacked at each other with an elemental brutality, thousands of years of pent-up hatred boiling in their blood. Taur Urgas, totally mad now, sobbed and gibbered as he swung his heavy sword at his enemy. ChoHag, cold as ice and with an arm as fast as the flickering tongue of a snake, slid the crushing Murgo blows aside, catching them on his sliding sabre and flicking his blade like a whip, its edge biting again and again into the shoulders and face of the King of the Murgos.
The two armies, stunned by the savagery of the encounter, recoiled and gave the mounted kings room for their deadly struggle.
Frothing obscenities, Taur Urgas hacked insanely at the elusive form of his foe, but Cho-Hag, colder yet, feinted and parried and flicked his whistling sabre at the Murgo’s bleeding face.
Finally, driven past even what few traces of reason were left to him, Taur Urgas hurled his horse directly at Cho-Hag with a wild animal scream. Standing in his stirrups, he grasped his sword hilt in both hands, raising it like an axe to smash his enemy forever. But Cho-Hag danced his horse to one side and thrust with all his strength, even as Taur Urgas began his massive blow. With a steely rasp, his sabre ran through the Murgo’s blood-red mail and through the tensed body, to emerge dripping from his back.
Unaware in his madness that he had just received a mortal wound, Taur Urgas raised his sword again, but the strength drained from his arms and the sword fell from his grasp. With stunned disbelief, he gaped at the sabre emerging from his chest, and a bloody froth burst from his mouth. He lifted his hands like claws as if to tear away the face of his enemy, but Cho-Hag contemptuously slapped his hands away, even as he pulled his slender, curved blade out of the Murgo’s body with a slithering whistle.
“And so it ends, Taur Urgas,” he declared in an icy voice.
“No!” Taur Urgas croaked, trying to pull a heavy dagger from his belt.
Cho-Hag watched his feeble efforts coldly. Dark blood suddenly spurted from the open mouth of the Murgo King, and he toppled weakly from his saddle. Struggling, coughing blood, Taur Urgas lurched to his feet, gurgling curses at the man who had just killed him.
“Good fight, though,” Cho-Hag told him with a bleak smile, and then he turned to ride away.
Taur Urgas fell, clawing at the turf in impotent rage. “Come back and fight,” he sobbed. “Come back.”
Cho-Hag glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry, your Majesty,” he replied, “but I have pressing business elsewhere. I’m sure you understand.” And with that he began to ride away.
“Come back!” Taur Urgas wailed, belching blood and curses and digging his fingers into the earth. “Come back!” Then he collapsed facedown in the bloody grass. “Come back and fight, Cho-Hag!” he gasped weakly.
The last that Cho-Hag saw of him, the dying King of Cthol Murgos was biting at the sod and clawing at the earth with trembling fingers. A vast moan shuddered through the tight-packed regiments of the Murgos, and a sudden cheer rose from the ranks of the Algars as ChoHag, victorious, rode back to join the army.
“They’re coming again,” General Varana announced with cool professionalism as he watched the waves of oncoming Malloreans.
“Where is that signal?” Rhodar demanded, staring intently downriver. “What’s Anheg doing down there?”
The front ranks of the Mallorean assault struck with a resounding crash. The Drasnian pikemen began to thrust with their long, widebladed spears, wreaking havoc among the red-garbed attackers, and the legions raised their shields in the interlocked position that presented a solid wall against which the Malloreans beat futilely. Upon a sharp, barked command, the legionnaires turned their shields slightly and each man thrust his lance out through the opening between his shield and the next. The Tolnedran lances were not as long as the Drasnian pikes, but they were long enough. A huge, shuddering cry went through the front ranks of the Malloreans, and they fell in heaps beneath the feet of the men behind.
“Are they going to break through?” Rhodar puffed. Even though he was not directly involved in the fighting, the Drasnian King began to pant at each Mallorean charge.
Varana carefully assessed the strength of the assault. “No,” he concluded, “not this time. Have you worked out how you’re going to make your withdrawal? It’s a little difficult to pull back when your troops are engaged.”
“That’s why I’m saving the Mimbrates,” Rhodar replied. “They’re resting their horses now for one last charge. As soon as we get the signal from Anheg, Mandorallen and his men will shove the Malloreans back, and the rest of us will run like rabbits.”
“The charge will only hold them back for so long,” Varana advised, “and then they’ll come after you again.”
“We’ll form up again upriver a ways,” Rhodar said.
“It’s going to take a long time to get back to the escarpment if you’re going to have to stop and fight every half mile or so,” Varana told him.
“I know that,” Rhodar snapped peevishly. “Have you got any better ideas?”
“No,” Varana replied. “I was just pointing it out, that’s all.”
“Where is that signal?” Rhodar demanded again.
On a quiet hillside some distance from the struggle taking place on the north bank, the simpleminded serf boy from the Arendish forest was playing his flute. His melody was mournful, but even in its sadness, it soared to the sky. The boy did not understand the fighting and he had wandered away unnoticed. Now he sat alone on the grassy hillside in the warm, midmorning sunlight with his entire soul pouring out of his flute.
The Mallorean soldier who was creeping up behind him with drawn sword had no ear for music. He did not know – or care – that the song the boy played was the most beautiful song any man had ever heard.
The song ended very suddenly, never to begin again.
The stream of casualties being carried to Ariana’s makeshift hospital grew heavier, and the overtaxed Mimbrate girl was soon forced into making some cruel decisions. Only those men with some chance of survival could be treated. The mortally hurt were quickly given a drink of a bitter-tasting potion of herbs that would ease their pain and then were left to die. Each such decision wrung Ariana’s heart, and she worked with tears standing in her eyes.
And then Brand, the Rivan Warder, entered the tent with a stricken face. The big Rivan’s mail shirt was blood-spattered, and there were savage sword cuts along the edge of his broad, round shield. Behind him, three of his sons bore the limp, bleeding form of their younger brother, Olban.
“Can you see to him?” Brand asked Ariana hoarsely.
A single glance, however, told the blond girl that the wound in Olban’s chest was mortal. “I can make him comfortable,” she replied a bit evasively. She quickly knelt beside the bleeding young man, lifted his head, and held a cup to his lips.
“Father,” Olban said weakly after he had drunk, “I have something I have to tell you.”
“Time enough for that later,” Brand told him gruffly, “after you’re better.”
“I’m not going to get better, father,” Olban said in a voice scarcely more than a whisper.
“Nonsense,” Brand told him, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“There’s not much time, father,” Olban said, coughing weakly. “Please listen.”
“Very well, Olban,” the Warder said, leaning forward to catch his son’s words.