The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

First into the fray was old Tamor, though he had not been so old as to warrant that name when he laid down to sleep. He was younger than Himaggery by a good bit. I saw him come toward the host out of the sun, saw his arrows darting silver, then a retreating streak as he fled away before the spears which came after him. Huld’s Tragamors were alert. I did not see him again for a time, then caught a glimpse of him, glittering and high, just before another flight of spears. This time the spears arched higher, and I thought I saw him lurch and fall, but he did not come to the ground. I felt Demon tickle, then Didir’s voice in my head. Evidently she knew me so well she could speak to me easily even now. “We see him, Peter. Kelver and Silkhands are working their way around to the west where he came to the ground. There are birds here who will carry them…”

So. Yittleby and Yattleby had returned, their recruitment done, to help us as best they could. Well, at least Silkhands would be out of the battle. At least she and Kelver would have some time to themselves, to share what had been growing between them all this long way from Reavebridge. If Tamor were not seriously injured, perhaps all three would survive. For a time. Looking at the army marching toward us, I thought there was little hope for any survival longer than a season or two. Huld would not stop with overrunning us. As Didir said, we were only an excuse to try his strength. If he had truly wanted Barish, he would have come with fewer and cleverer than he had brought. No, this was to be warning to the world, a flexing of his muscle. I hated him in that moment, hated him for all he cared nothing about¾for love and honor and truth and a word he had never heard: justice.

The bones had come closer. They were approaching a great chasm now, a canyon brimmed with thorn. The bones leapt across it, light as insects, not even brushing the branches. They came in dozens and hundreds and thousands, then the Gamesmen behind them, Bonedancers lifted over the tearing thorn in Armiger arms.

The chasm went up in flame, all at once, a sheet of fire leagues long and tower high. I was too far away to hear the Bonedancers screaming, but I saw them fall in fiery arcs into that towering pyre. The bones kept coming, piling in and burning, falling as the thorn burned away to make room for more. They never stopped, not even for an instant, but went on scrambling across like spiders. Somewhere inside my great grole shape Peter puzzled at what he had seen. Why had the bones kept coming when the Bonedancers died? Other Bonedancers back in the host? Or simply one of those special cases in which things once raised went on of themselves? If that were so, then whatever we might do against the Gamesmen themselves would not help us.

“Some are gone, Buinel,” I whispered to myself. “But there are more coming than all the thorn in the world can burn.”

The rock beneath me throbbed; boulders began to heave themselves up from the hillside to launch away in long curves toward the center of the host. They were aimed at Huld, surely, but his Tragamors deflected them. They flew aside, bowled through acres of bones, crushing a hundred skulls or more to leave the fragments dancing, a shower of disconnected white, like a flurry of coarse snow. The first great stone was followed by others, and the center of the host milled about, slowed for a moment. What did Huld intend? Would he merely overrun us, smother us under that weight of bones? Or were some among that host seeking us, seeking Barish, making an excuse for this Game, Great Game, the Greatest this world had ever seen?

Still they came on. We had done nothing to slow them, not with Tamor’s arrows or Wafnor’s great stones. I had seen no evidence that Dorn had tried to put this host down, and having seen the size of it, I did not blame him. It would have been like calming the sea with a spoonful of oil. Far to my right I saw the first files of bones entering the defile where Thandbar waited. “Good appetite, kinsman,” I wished him. He was not far from me. Even as I made my wish for him, the first of the horde poured onto the flat before me, threading between the mighty Wind’s Bones, the huge star-shaped skeletons of this world, bones arranged like my own grole bones. I settled myself, scrunching into the rock, mouth open.