"I delegate," she said at last in a small clear voice, "Lord Velteyn of Finiah as Second Creator, to defend our Guild's honor in the Grand Combat."
The Tanu contingent made such a bedlam hailing the bereaved former ruler—now presented with a perfect means of restoring his damaged prestige—that few heard the second part of Mercy's speech:
"And I call upon Aluteyn, late President of the Creator Guild, to choose between exile from this noble company or life-offering to our compassionate Goddess."
"I choose the offering," said proud Aluteyn. Virtually unnoticed, he walked without escort to the Great Retort and joined the other condemned ones who waited inside.
Mayvar Kingmaker stood forth unchallenged as leader of the Farsensor Guild. None were surprised when she designated Aiken Drum to lead the Guild's fighters, rather than the Host's nominee, the female warrior Riganone. Finally Thagdal the High King came forward, proclaiming Nodonn to be Tanu Battlemaster, and the manifestations ended.
With one last thundering cheer, the crowd dispersed to the two tent-cities that now stood on either side of the Well of the Sea. There they would spend the rest of the day and most of the night in feasting, drinking, and amusement, until dawn would begin the Third Day of the Grand Combat and the opening skirmish of the ritual war.
***
Some eight hundred kilometers to the west of the White Silver Plain, scorpions and spiders and alkali ants that lived on the slopes above the Alboran Basin were drowning by the millions. Small flying predators such as wasps and brown-flies survived longer, keeping ahead of the creeping saltwater until night coolness loaded their wing membranes with condensation and forced them down.
7
IT LACKED a few minutes until sunrise. The armies confronted one another, poised and ready.
The overwhelming numbers of Firvulag were on foot as always, dancing and leaping in undisciplined mobs around the battle-captains of their choice like great black-armored insects. The effigy standards with festoons of gilded skulls bounced up and down, daring the Foe to seize them—for in this manner, as well as in the taking of heads, was the Grand Combat victory judged. The Little People were armed with dark glittering swords, spiked clubs, chain-flails, and halberds with odd-shaped blades. They carried no bows and arrows or other projectile weapons, these, as well as the war-steeds, being contrary to their traditions of battle. Many of them had spears; but they were accustomed to fling these at the Foe rather than thrust, and so the weapons usually caused little damage to the heavily armored Tanu riders and mounts.
A few Firvulag could not resist shape-shifting in anticipation of the Mêlée. A ghastly winged serpent shot up amidst the cohort commanded by Karbree the Worm. In another part of the field, a stinking explosion heralded the temporary appearance of a cyclopean horror that splattered the salt with foul ichor, prompting obscene protests from its indignant comrades-in-arms. Out near the lagoonside flank, a formless mass of yellowy-green protoplasm went rolling and bumping along, hooting like an insane calliope.
The Tanu force faced this trollish rabble with dignity and splendor. In the front ranks, armored in bronze and glass and bearing colorful pennons, were the troops of gray-torc cavalry and the human charioteers; all were armed with bows, spears, and blades, and responsive to the mental commands of their hybrid and gold-torc human officers. Behind them the five great battalions of the metapsychic guilds sat their steeds, both warriors and chalikos aglow with near-fluorescent brilliance. The coercers and psychokinetics were most numerous, the creators somewhat fewer in number, and the farsensors and combatant redactors constituted the smallest units, since most of their membership undertook support roles during this part of the Grand Combat.
Contingents from the various Tanu cities gathered around local champions bearing banners that must not fall into the hands of the Foe. Certain knights of high repute had their own adherents, Tanu and human; and besides the golds and silvers there were among them numerous glass-armored grays who had proven themselves in the Low Mêlée. Later, when the battle heated up, the regional groups and even the guild segregation would be abandoned as fighters gathered to follow the banner and mental commands of the heroes who acquitted themselves most valiantly—and also showed the most powerful defensive shielding ability. The royalty and field generals of Tanu and Firvulag stood well apart at this early stage, ready to observe and evaluate strategy and commend noteworthy feats.
The sky above the Great Lagoon was golden. As the upper limb of the sun appeared, there was a vivid green flash that persisted for a full twenty seconds before dissolving into white dazzle.
"Omen! Omen!" Screeching like banshees, the Firvulag horde leaped forward. Their mailed feet raised a din that caused the salt to tremble.
The Tanu waited in arrogant rainbow array, banners high and chalikos held firmly in check.
The sunlight strengthened. Nodonn Battlemaster rose into the air mounted on his armored charger, blazing to rival the solar disk. His mind and storm-loud voice sounded the ancient Tanu war cry:
"Na bardito!"
Glass trumpets held by the fighting women blared. Seven thousand gem-studded shields rang like bells as they were struck with the flat of vitredur swords. The uncouth bellowing of the Firvulag was overwhelmed as the tall exotics and their human allies repeated the cry.
"Na bardito! Na bardito taynel o pogekône! Forward, fighters of the Many-Colored Land!"
The armies swept together, beginning the three-day encounter of massed minds and weapons. The clash of their meeting could be heard far away on the Mount of Heroes by those who had ears to hear.
***
"This year it will be different!" Sharn-Mes had vowed to Pallol.
The Firvulag Battlemaster, clothed in his illusionary guise of a monstrous black otter having six legs, flaming fangs and claws, and a coruscant opal the size of a dinnerplate lidding his Eye, professed scepticism. But then, he had not been, there at Finiah!
The young general and the old, surrounded by aides and cronies, watched from behind a formidable screen as the early skirmishes took place. But after the first hour, even Pallol had to admit that the Little People were handling themselves with singular éclat. There was a marvelous and fresh sense of valor among them. Finiah had lifted their spirits—and even more, it had opened them to new ideas.
Sham, wearing the shape of a three-meter albino scorpion, all waxy translucent, with glowing organs in his body cavities, pointed out an impending engagement with his farsense.
"They're coming close to us, Battlemaster. But no more tactical retreats now! Just you watch our lads when the Lowlife cavalry charges!"
A troop of gray-torcs came galloping hell for leather, ready to cut and trample a tight phalanx of some sixty Firvulag, who appeared to be making their customary stubborn and futile stand. But on this occasion, just before the mounts' pounding claws slashed down on the mound of overlapping black shields, the foot-soldiery scattered and went dodging among the tall animals, slashing at unarmored bellies with pole-knives, or swinging axes at the vulnerable leg tendons of the chalikos.
"I'll be damned!" interjected Pallol.
The gray-torc charge disintegrated. Hamstrung and mortally wounded steeds threw their riders and then staggered, screaming and tripping over their own gushing bowels, until they died. There were still the unhorsed humans to contend with; but in hand-to-hand combat the superior numbers of the Little People gave them the advantage, even though the grays were often physically stronger and compelled to fight to the death by their banner-carrying officers. Visions of battling goblins and other ghoulies and ghosties came and went in the midst of the struggle. The aether throbbed with hideous mental projections. The gold-torc human officer in coercer blue managed to zap out and hack to death half a dozen of the Firvulag before disappearing beneath a pile of stalwarts, but it was plain to see where the advantage lay now.
"That belly-sticking maneuver's not bad," Pallol had to admit.
"The humans used it at Finiah," Sha
rn said. "It was an innovation of some Lowlife metalcrafter who acted as an ad hoc leader. He said later that the tactic was traditional among members of his ancestral ethnic group. The hamstringing was suggested by a Lowlife holy woman, of all people. She had seen it used by the terrible Morigel in her murder of Epone."
"Morigel? The Raven —? Oh, you mean that human monster, Felice." Pallol shook his fierce carnivore head. "Te be thanked that one's out of the picture! Rumor has it she escaped the clutches of Handsome Cull and flew away in a big ball of scalding-hot blood. Damn superstitious claptrap! But wherever she's gone, I hope she stays there."
The Firvulag had finished butchering the last of the cavalry troop, and now raised thirty severed heads, still in crested bronze helmets, at the ends of their lances. One head wearing a blue-glass burgonet with draggled golden plumes was impaled on the pike of its own standard. The visor of the helmet was open and the dead eyes seemed to look down on the bloodied azure banner with mild astonishment.
The phalanx of Little People came rushing up to the knot of leaders. "Manifest, Battlemaster!" howled the dwarfs, dancing around Pallol and Sharn. "Manifest—like in the good old days!"
"You fellows ... I'm prouder'n hell of you!" croaked the demon otter, swallowing a lump in his throat. "You bet I'll manifest for you!"
He lifted the opal lid from his Eye and zapped the waving heads to white bone. The skulls flew up and spun like a swarm of meteors just over the cheering warriors' speartops, then swooped down to land in a pyramidal pile on the sidelines, surmounted by the disgraced blazon. Every one of the skulls was now plated with gleaming gold, ready to be picked up by the trophy makers.
"Slitsal, Pallol!" yelped the phalanx. Brandishing their freshly cleaned weapons, they went dashing off to seek a new engagement with the Foe.
***
In a tangled heap lay two Firvulag bodies and one human being only pretending to be dead, the latter praying that he would be able to hold out until sundown, when it might still be possible for him to desert.
With great caution, Raimo Hakkinen groped again in the region of his high-rising rump. Once more there was only the dull ching of a glass-plated gauntlet striking the skirt of articulated tassets that armored his derrière. Damn! Forget again. He had no hip pocket. He had no flask of good old Hudson's Bay Demerara. No water, even. Nothing to drink at all unless you fancied blood. From the ventilating slot in the visor of his pink-glass sallet came a faint sob. It went unheard in the battle tumult all around him...
They'd had to coerce him into it, of course.
Those giggling Tanu she-fiends had dragged him away from the War Banquet and stripped his poor emaciated husk of a body right in the middle of the armorer's showroom while they selected a suitable PK harness for him. A gray squire had snickered while dressing him in the undergarments: first a cotton singlet and briefs, then the beautifully engineered suit of padding, tough woven-gauze fabric enclosing pea-sized plass bubbles, fully protective, airy, and weighing only a few grams. The six exotic women themselves had strapped on all the sliding plates of gold-chased pink glass, telling him how brave he was going to be and how gloriously he would prove himself on the White Silver Plain. Armored to the neck, he had to kneel before them while they mockingly dubbed him "Lord Raimo" with a big sword of rosy vitredur. Then he was forced to pleasure all of them in the only way left to him, and after that humiliation was over they clapped on the magnificent crested helmet that rather resembled a visored sou'wester, sheathed his sword in a scabbard hanging at his side, and hustled him outside to the skittish armored charger all ready to bear him off to battle. The chaliko had its coat dyed a violent fuchsia with acid-yellow mane and fetlock featherings, a parody of the Psychokinetic Guild's heraldic rose and gold. When the women teleported him into the saddle he barely had time to grab the reins before the great brute reared, nearly flinging him ass over teakettle backward.
Somehow he stayed aboard and was rewarded with six separate zonks on his silver torc's joy-buzzer.
They all trotted over to the Plain together from the Tanu encampment, joining the vast parade of bejeweled fighters and well-wishers streaming along the torch-lit and bannered avenue in the gray false dawn. The six ladies waxed symphonic on his happy-circuits to work him up to a fine pitch of euphoria; and when they reached the staging area of the battlefield they switched abruptly to the hypothalamic trigger, charging him with adrenalin and insane hostility toward the Firvulag Foe that lurked less than a kilometer away in the murk. He joined the Muriah-town ranks of his fellow silver PKers, hyped to the eyeballs with battle ardor.
Then the army waited in place for another whole hour. And with the passing of time and the withdrawal of the women to the distant sidelines his frenzy weakened and what remained of sanity began to assert itself. He discovered that the Tanu witches had forgotten to turn control of their man-toy over to Kuhal or Fian or some other officer of the PK battalion. He was unfettered! No one was coercing him any more!
When the charge sounded at last and he was off and running, waving his sword with the amok multitude and yelling with both voices, he was cold sober and scared out of his mama-reamin' mind.
At first, his chaliko saved him. It was a well-trained destrier, for all its evil temper, and it knew how to lash out with its claws whenever members of the Firvulag infantry came running at them. Raimo charged in a middle Tanu echelon, between the elite grays and the splendid ranks of provincial champions. By the time he was in the thick of the fighting there was enough dust and shape-shifting and preliminary slaughter going on to keep his erstwhile comrades occupied with matters other than him.
It was time to think about escape.
He wheeled about, slashing at the air and hiding behind his shield when illusionary monsters loomed up in the uncertain sunrise glare. Waves of Firvulag-generated terror swirled around him and blended with his own home-grown funk. He rode through a nightmarish hullabaloo where the combatants of both armies flashed into and out of view like images on a fritzed holo-projector. Only one aspect of the war was relentlessly real—the headless bodies, mostly human and Firvulag, and the dying animals staining the salt with sticky crimson and hot excrement.
Once he raised the visor of his helmet and vomited with discretion so as not to spook his mount. For the most part, the tall beast stepped carefully among the corpses while he tried to guide it in the direction of the ascending sun, which looked like a cut-out white disk heavily curtained in dusty haze. In that direction lay the eastern arm of the lagoon. If he reached the shore, it might be possible to swipe one of the Firvulag boats; and if his broken-down PK had a few watts left, he just might make it to Kersic.
Luck. Just a little luck. Didn't he deserve some after these months of living hell? Just keep up the good work, Horsie, and kick! Kick the crap outa those little turdlings when they come at us!
The chaliko fought well. And the Firvulag, he discovered, only threw their lances and never made use of arrows or darts, so he was fairly secure behind his shield in the high saddle until—
Something like a gigantic purple spider came scuttling out of the misty dazzle and got behind him. One of its appendages thrust up under the armored tailpiece of the chaliko's crupper. The animal let out an earsplitting scream and fell heavily forward, impaled by some kind of long-shafted pole-arm. Raimo was pitched from the saddle and hit the ground with a sound like a demolished xylophone. He saw the spider waver and dissolve, and then, cavorting around and around him and chortling in a falsetto squeal was a Firvulag in gore-smeared half-armor—the spitting image of Grumpy the Dwarf in Disney's 2-D cinema classic.
"Now I gotcha! Now I gotcha!" the manikin shrilled, waving a black glassy blade with a terrible notched edge.
"Help!" Raimo cried. He tried vainly to rise. His chaliko thrashed in death agonies, its great claws almost on top of him. Helphelphelp-help...
Sweet houghmagandy, Chopper! That you?
Aik! Aik, for the love o' Christ!
A beam resembling th
at from a sodium-vapor searchlight stabbed from the clouds of dust. It flicked harmlessly over the collapsed pink knight, but when it detected Grumpy it steadied and intensified. The Firvulag warrior's limbs flew out in spasm and his obsidian sword arced away. Orange-yellow light licked up and down the exotic body, melting the cuirass and leaving a path of smoking wound. The Firvulag uttered piercing shrieks. A voice out of thin air said, "That's a good fix," and the astral beam swiveled to shine into the transfixed dwarf's open mouth. There was a small, exceedingly nasty explosion.
"Open your eyes, Chopper. Your shining knight has come to the rescue."
Still prone, Raimo tilted up his visor. A huge black chaliko all armored in gold looked down at him, its benign eyes peering from the openings of a gilded chamfron. It had a monocerine faceted spike of amethyst mounted on its forehead. Sitting the magnificent beast was a diminutive human glowing as from a self-contained power source. He carried no weapon, no shield. But he held high a purple banner whose golden-hand blazon gave the finger to the Exile world. A black-and-violet cape rippled unstained about Aiken Drum's gold-lustre armor. He grinned as he PK-hoisted Raimo to his feet.
"There you go, Chopper. Good as new and ready to raise hell! See you later!"
"Wait—" the former woodsman pleaded. But the Shining One was gone. The battle noise intensified and so did the clouds of smoke and dust. It sounded as though some desperate engagement were coming right at him.
He stumbled about until he recovered his sword and buckler. Avoiding the thrashing chaliko and the fearful mess that had been Grumpy, he started off in the direction opposite from the worst of the psychocreative detonations, away from the clang of glass and bronze weapons, the bellowing of thousands of human and inhuman voices that filled his ears and mind. Within a few minutes he was completely disoriented. There was no clue to show him the way to the shore, no sure route to escape.