Polgara groaned then, an almost strangled sound, and the fog began to swirl. The wet grass at Ce’Nedra’s feet, drenched with droplets of mist, bent slightly, and the dusty smell of the Thullish uplands grew stronger.
It seemed that the blanket of concentration that had held the fog motionless became more desperate as the Grolims fought to stop the quickening breeze pouring down the valley from the acrid stretches to the west. The blanket began to tatter and to fall apart as the weaker of the Grolims, pushed beyond their capacity, collapsed in exhaustion.
The breeze grew stronger, became a hot wind that rippled the surface of the river. The grass bent before it, and the fog began to seethe like some vast living thing, writhing at the touch of the arid wind.
Ce’Nedra could see the still-burning city of Thull Mardu now, and the infantry lines drawn up on the plain beside the river.
The hot, dusty wind blew stronger, and the fog, as insubstantial as the thought that had raised it from the earth, dissolved, and the morning sun broke through to bathe the field in golden light.
‘Polgara!’ Durnik cried in sudden alarm.
Ce’Nedra whirled in time to see Polgara, her face drained deathly white, slowly toppling to the earth.
Chapter Seventeen
Lelldorin of Wildantor had been nervously pacing back and forth along the ranks of his bowmen, stopping often to listen for any sound coming out of the fog from the field lying in front of the massed infantry. ‘Can you hear anything?’ he asked urgently of a Tolnedran legionnaire standing nearby.
The Tolnedran shook his head.
That same whisper came out of the fog from a dozen different places.
‘Can you hear anything?’
‘Can you hear anything?’
‘What are they doing?’
Somewhere to the front, there was a faint clink.
‘There!’ everyone cried almost in unison.
‘Not yet!’ Lelldorin snapped to one of his countrymen who was raising his bow. ‘It could be just a wounded Thull out there. Save your arrows.’
‘Is that a breeze?’ a Drasnian pikeman asked. ‘Please, Belar, let it be a breeze.’
Lelldorin stared into the fog, nervously fingering his bowstring.
Then he felt a faint touch of air on his cheek.
‘A breeze,’ someone exulted.
‘A breeze.’ The phrase raced through the massed army.
Then the faint breath of air died, and the fog settled again, seeming thicker than ever.
Someone groaned bitterly.
The fog stirred then and began to eddy sluggishly. It was a breeze!
Lelldorin held his breath.
The fog began to move, flowing gray over the ground like water.
‘There’s something moving out there!’ a Tolnedran barked. ‘Get ready!’
The flowing fog moved faster, thinning, melting in the hot, dusty breeze blowing down the valley. Lelldorin strained his eyes to the front. There were moving shapes out there, no more than seventy paces from the infantry.
Then, as if all its stubborn resistance had broken at once, the fog shimmered and dissolved, and the sun broke through. The entire field before them was filled with Malloreans. Their stealthy forward pace froze momentarily as they flinched in the sudden light of the sun.
‘Now!’ Lelldorin shouted, raising his bow. Behind him, his archers with one universal motion followed his action, and the sudden release of a thousand bowstrings all at once was like some vast, thrumming note. A whistling sheet of arrows soared over the heads of the solidly standing infantry, seemed to hang motionless in the air for a moment, then hurtled into the close-packed Mallorean ranks.
The creeping attack of the Malloreans did not waver or falter; it simply dissolved. With a vast, sighing groan, entire regiments fell in their tracks under the Asturian arrow storm.
Lelldorin’s hand flickered to the forest of arrows thrust point-first into the turf at his feet. He smoothly nocked another shaft, drew and released. And then again – and again. The sheet of arrows overhead was like some great slithering bridge arching over the infantry and riddling the Malloreans as it fell among them.
The storm of Asturian arrows crept inexorably across the field, and the Mallorean dead piled up in windrows as if some enormous scythe had passed through their ranks.
And then Sir Mandorallen’s brazen horn sounded its mighty challenge, the ranks of archers and infantry opened, and the earth shook beneath the thunder of the charge of the Mimbrate knights.
Demoralized by the arrow storm and the sight of that inexorable charge descending upon them, the Malloreans broke and fled.
Laughing delightedly, Lelldorin’s cousin Torasin lowered his bow to jeer at the backs of the routed Angaraks. ‘We did it, Lelldorin!’ he shouted, still laughing. ‘We broke their backs!’ He was half-turned now, not facing the littered field. His bow was in his hands; his dark hair was thrown back; and his face reflected his exultant delight. Lelldorin would always remember him so.
‘Tor! Look out!’ Lelldorin shouted, but it was too late. The Mallorean answer to the Asturian arrow storm was a storm of their own. From a hundred catapults concealed behind the low hills to the north, a great cloud of rocks hurtled into the air and crashed down into the close-packed ranks along the riverbank. A stone perhaps somewhat larger than a man’s head struck Torasin full in the chest, smashing him to the ground.
‘Tor!’ Lelldorin’s cry was anguished as he ran to his stricken cousin. Torasin’s eyes were closed, and blood was flowing from his nose. His chest was crushed.
‘Help me!’ Lelldorin cried to a group of serfs standing nearby. The serfs obediently moved to assist him, but their eyes, speaking louder than any words, said that Torasin was already dead.
Barak’s face was bleak as he stood at the tiller of his big ship. His oarsmen stroked to the beat of a muffled drum, and the ship raced downriver.
King Anheg of Cherek lounged against the rail. He had pulled off his helmet so that the cool river air could blow the stink of smoke out of his hair. His coarse-featured face was as grim as his cousin’s. ‘What do you think their chances are?’ he asked.
‘Not very good,’ Barak replied bluntly. ‘We never counted on the Murgos and Malloreans hitting us at Thull Mardu. The army’s split in two by the river, and both halves of it are outnumbered. They’re going to have a bad time of it, I’m afraid.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the half-dozen small, narrow-beamed boats trailing in the wake of his big ship. ‘Close it up!’ he bellowed at the men in the smaller boats.
‘Malloreans ahead! On the north bank!’ the lookout at the mast shouted. ‘About a half a mile!’
‘Wet down the decks,’ Barak ordered.
The sailors tossed buckets on long ropes over the side, hauled up water, and soaked the wooden decks.
‘Signal the ships behind us,’ Anheg told the bearded sailor standing in the very stern of the ship. The sailor nodded, turned and lifted a large flag attached to a long pole. He began to wave it vigorously at the ships strung out behind them.
‘Be careful with that fire!’ Barak shouted to the men clustered around a raised platform filled with gravel and covered with glowing coals. ‘If you set us ablaze, you’ll all have to swim to the Sea of the East.’
Just to the front of the platform stood three heavy-limbed catapults, cocked and ready.
King Anheg squinted ahead at the Malloreans gathered around a dozen or so siege engines standing solidly on the north bank. ‘Better send in your arrowboats now,’ he suggested.
Barak grunted and waved his arm in a broad chopping motion to the six narrow boats in his wake. In answer, the lean little boats leaped ahead, cutting through the water. Mounted at the prow of each arrow-boat stood a long-armed catapult armed with a loosely packed bundle of arrows. Aided by the current, the narrow little boats sped past, their oars bending.
‘Load the engines!’ Barak roared to the men around the gravel-based fire. ‘And don’t slop any of that ta
r on my decks.’
With long iron hooks, the sailors lifted three large earthenware pots out of the coals. The pots contained a seething mixture of tar, pitch, and naptha. They were quickly dipped in tar barrels and then hastily wrapped in naptha-soaked rags. Then they were placed in the baskets of the waiting engines.
As the arrow-boats, speeding like greyhounds, swept in close to shore where the Malloreans struggled to aim their catapults, the arrow-bundles were suddenly hurled high into the air by the lashing arms of the Cherek engines. The arrows rose swiftly, then slowed at the top of their arching flight, separating and spreading out as they flew. Then, in a deadly rain, they fell upon the red-tunicked Malloreans.
Barak’s ship, trailing just behind the arrow-boats, ran in close to the brush-covered riverbank, and the red-bearded man stood with both of his big hands on the tiller, staring intently at his catapult master, a gray-bearded old sailor with arms like oak stumps. The catapult master was squinting at a line of notches chipped into the railing in front of his engines. Over his head he held a long white baton and he indicated direction by pointing it either to the right or the left. Barak moved his tiller delicately in response to the movements of the baton. Then the baton cut sharply straight down, and Barak locked his tiller in an iron grip. The rags wrapped around the pots leaped into flame as they were touched by waiting torches.
‘Shoot!’ the catapult master barked. With a thudding crash, the beams lashed forward, hurling the flaming pots and their deadly contents in a high arch toward the struggling Malloreans and their siege engines. The pots burst open upon impact, spraying fire in front of them. The Mallorean catapults were engulfed in flame.
‘Good shooting,’ Anheg noted professionally.
‘Child’s play,’ Barak shrugged. ‘A shoreline emplacement isn’t much of a challenge, really.’ He glanced back. The arrow-boats of Greldik’s ship were sweeping in to rake the Malloreans with more arrows, and the catapults on his bearded friend’s decks were cocked and loaded. ‘Malloreans don’t appear to be any brighter than Murgos. Didn’t it ever occur to them that we might shoot back?’
‘It’s an Angarak failing,’ Anheg replied. ‘It shows up in all their writings. Torak never encouraged creative thinking.’
Barak gave his cousin a speculative look. ‘You know what I think, Anheg? I think that all that fuss you raised back at Riva – about Ce’Nedra leading the army, I mean – I think that it wasn’t entirely sincere. You’re too intelligent to be so stubborn about something that wasn’t that important.’
Anheg winked broadly.
‘No wonder they call you Anheg the sly,’ Barak chuckled. ‘What was it all about?’
‘It pulled Brand’s teeth.’ The King of Cherek grinned. ‘He’s the one who could have stopped Ce’Nedra cold if I’d given him the chance. Rivans are very conservative, Barak. I sided with Brand and did all the talking. Then when I gave in, he didn’t have any ground left to stand on.’
‘You were very convincing. I thought for a while that your reason had slipped.’
‘Thank you,’ the Cherek King replied with a mock bow. ‘When you’ve got a face like mine, it’s easy for people to think the worst about you. I’ve found that useful from time to time. Here come the Algars.’ He pointed at the hills just behind the burning Mallorean siege engines. A great crowd of horsemen came surging over the hilltops to sweep down like a wolf-pack upon the confounded Malloreans.
Anheg sighed then. ‘I’d like to know what’s happening to them back there at Thull Mardu,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out, though.’
‘Not very likely,’ Barak agreed. ‘We’ll all get sunk eventually, once we get out into the Sea of the East.’
‘We’ll take a lot of Malloreans with us, though, won’t we, Barak?’
Barak’s reply was an evil grin.
‘I don’t really care much for the notion of drowning,’ Anheg said, making a face.
‘Maybe you’ll get lucky and catch an arrow in the belly.’
‘Thanks,’ Anheg said sourly.
An hour or so later, after three more Angarak positions on the riverbanks had been destroyed, the land along the River Mardu turned marshy, flattening out into a sea of reeds and bending cattails. At Anheg’s orders, a raft piled high with firewood was moored to a dead snag and set afire. Once the blaze was going well, buckets of greenish crystals were hurled into the flames. A thick pillar of green smoke began to climb into the blue sky.
‘I hope Rhodar can see that.’ The King of Cherek frowned.
‘If he can’t, the Algars will,’ Barak replied. ‘They’ll get word back to him.’
‘I just hope he’s got enough time left to make his retreat.’
‘Me too,’ Barak said. ‘But as you say, we’ll probably never know.’
King Cho-Hag, Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria, sat his horse beside King Korodullin of Arendia. The fog was nearly gone now, and only a filmy haze remained. Not far away, the twin sorcerers, Beltira and Belkira, exhausted by their efforts, sat side by side on the ground, their heads bowed and their chests heaving. Cho-Hag shuddered inwardly at the thought of what might have happened if the two saintly old men had not been there. The hideous illusions of the Grolims that had risen from the earth just before the storm had struck terror into the hearts of the bravest warriors. Then the storm, its intensity deafening, had smashed down on the army, and after that had come the choking fog. The two sweet-faced sorcerers, however, had met and overcome each Grolim attack with calm determination. Now the Murgos were coming, and it was time for steel instead of sorcery.
‘I’d let them get a little closer,’ Cho-Hag advised in his quiet voice as he and Korodullin watched the veritable sea of Murgos advancing against the emplaced ranks of Drasnian pikemen and Tolnedran legionnaires.
‘Art thou sure of thy strategy, Cho-Hag?’ the young Arendish King asked with a worried frown. ‘It hath ever been the custom of the knights of Mimbre to meet an attack head-on. Thy proposal to charge the flanks puzzles me.’
‘It will kill more Murgos, Korodullin,’ Cho-Hag replied, shifting his weak legs in their stirrups. ‘When your knights charge in from either flank, you’ll cut off whole regiments of the enemy. Then we can grind the ones who’ve been cut off up against the infantry.’
‘It is passing strange to me to work thus with foot troops,’ Korodullin confessed. ‘I have a vast ignorance of unmounted combat.’
‘You aren’t alone, my friend,’ Cho-Hag told him. ‘It’s as alien to me as it is to you. It would be unfair of us, though, not to let the foot troops have a few Murgos, wouldn’t it? They did walk a long way, after all.’
The King of Arendia considered that gravely. He was quite obviously incapable of anything remotely resembling humor. ‘I had not considered that,’ he confessed. “Twould be selfish in the extreme of us to deny them some part in the battle, I must agree. How many Murgos dost thou think would be their fair portion?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Cho-Hag replied with a straight face. ‘A few thousand or so, I imagine. We wouldn’t want to appear stingy – but it doesn’t do to be over generous, either.’
Korodullin sighed. ‘It is a difficult line to walk, King Cho-Hag – this fine division between parsimony and foolish prodigality.’
‘One of the prices of kingship, Korodullin.’
‘Very true, Cho-Hag, very true.’ The young King of Arendia sighed again and bent all his concentration to the problem of how many of the advancing Murgos he could really afford to give away. ‘Thinkest thou that two Murgos apiece might content those who fight afoot?’ he asked rather hesitantly.
‘Sounds fair to me.’
Korodullin smiled then with happy relief. ‘Then that is what we shall allot them,’ he declared. ‘I have not divided up Murgos before, but it is not nearly so difficult as I had imagined.’
King Cho-Hag began to laugh.
Lady Ariana put her arms about Lelldorin’s shaking shoulders and drew him gently away from
the pallet upon which his cousin’s body lay.
‘Can’t you do something, Ariana?’ he pleaded, tears streaming down his face. ‘Perhaps a bandage of some sort – and a poultice.’
‘He is beyond my art, my Lord,’ Ariana replied gently, ‘and I share thy sorrow at his death.’
‘Don’t say that word, Ariana. Torasin can’t be dead.’
‘I’m sorry, my Lord,’ she said simply. ‘He is gone, and none of my remedies or skill can bring him back.’
‘Polgara can do it,’ Lelldorin declared suddenly, an impossible hope leaping into his eyes. ‘Send for Polgara.’
‘I have no-one to send, my Lord,’ Ariana told him, looking around the makeshift tent where she and Taiba and a few others were caring for the wounded. ‘The injured men here command all our attention and care.’
‘I’ll go then,’ Lelldorin declared, his eyes still streaming tears. He spun and dashed from the tent.
Ariana sighed mournfully and drew a blanket over Torasin’s pale face. Then she turned back to the wounded men who were being carried in a steady stream into her tent.
‘Don’t bother yourself with him, my Lady,’ a lean-faced Arendish serf told her as she bent over the body of the man’s companion.
Ariana looked at the thin serf inquiringly.
‘He’s dead,’ the serf explained. ‘He took a Mallorean arrow right through the chest.’ He looked down at the dead man’s face. ‘Poor Detton,’ he sighed. ‘He died in my arms. Do you know what his last words were?’
Ariana shook her head.
‘He said, “At least I had a good breakfast.” And then he died.’
‘Why didst thou bring him here, since thou didst know he was already dead?’ Ariana asked him gently.
The lean, bitter-faced serf shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to leave him just lying in a muddy ditch like a dead dog,’ he replied. ‘In his whole life, nobody ever treated him as if he mattered at all. He was my friend, and I didn’t want to leave him there like a pile of garbage.’ He laughed a short, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t suppose it matters very much to him, but at least there’s a little bit of dignity here.’ He awkwardly patted the dead man’s shoulder. ‘Sorry, Detton,’ he said, ‘but I guess I’d better go back to the fighting.’