Enchanter's End Game Part 25

"Taiba is boiling cloth for bandages over that fire there," she replied. "See to the fire first, then thou wilt find a cart just outside with blankets in it. Bring in the blankets, good Lammer. After that I will have other tasks for thee."

"All right," Lammer replied laconically, moving toward the fire.

"What can we do for her?" the Princess Ce'Nedra demanded of the misshapen Beldin. The princess was staring intently into Polgara's pale, unconscious face as the sorceress lay exhausted in the arms of Durnik the smith.

"Let her sleep," Beldin grunted. "She'll be all right in a day or so."

"What's the matter with her?" Durnik asked in a worried voice.

"She's exhausted," Beldin snapped. "Isn't that obvious?"

"Just from raising a breeze? I've seen her do things that looked a lot harder."

"You don't have the faintest idea of what you're talking about, blacksmith," Beldin growled. The hunchbacked sorcerer was himself pale and shaking. "When you start tampering with the weather, you're putting your hands on the most powerful forces in the world. I'd rather try to stop a tide or uproot a mountain than stir up a breeze in dead air."

"The Grolims brought in that storm," Durnik said.

"The air was already moving. Dead-calm air is altogether different. Do you have the remotest idea of how much air you've got to move to stir even the faintest breath of air? Do you know what kind of pressures are involved - how much all that air weighs?"

"Air doesn't weigh anything," Ce'Nedra protested.

"Really?" Beldin replied with heavy sarcasm. "I'm so glad you told me. Would the two of you shut up and let me get my breath?"

"But how is it that she collapsed and you didn't?" Ce'Nedra protested.

"I'm stronger than she is," Beldin replied, "and more vicious. Pol throws her whole heart into things when she gets excited. She always did. She pushed beyond her strength, and it exhausted her." The twisted little man straightened, shook himself like a dog coming out of water and looked around, his face bleak. "I've got work to do," he said. "I think we've pretty much worn out the Mallorean Grolims, but I'd better keep an eye on them, just to be safe. You two stay here with Pol - and keep an eye on that child." He pointed at Errand, who stood on the sandy beach with his small face very serious.

Then Beldin crouched, shimmering already into the form of a hawk, and launched himself into the air almost before his feathers were fully formed.

Ce'Nedra stared after him as he spiraled upward over the battlefield and then turned her attention back to the unconscious Polgara.

The charge of Korodullin's Mimbrate knights came at the last possible moment. Like two great scythes, the armored men on their ma.s.sive chargers sliced in at a thundering gallop from the flanks with their lances leveled and cut through the horde of Murgos rushing toward the waiting pikemen and legionnaires. The results were devastating. The air was filled with screams and the sounds of steel striking steel with stunning impact. In the wake of the charge lay a path of slaughtered Murgos, a trail of human wreckage a hundred yards wide.

King Cho-Hag, sitting on his horse on a hilltop some distance to the west, nodded his approval as he watched the carnage. "Good," he said finally. He looked around at the eager faces of the Algar clansmen cl.u.s.tered around him. "All right, my children," he said calmly, "let's go cut up the Murgo reserves." And he led them at a gallop as they poured down off the hill, smoothly swung around the outer flanks of the tightly packed a.s.sault forces and then slashed into the unprepared Murgo units bringing up the rear.

The slash-and-run tactics of the clans of the Algars left heaps of sabred dead in their wake as they darted in and out of the milling confusion of terrified Murgos. King Cho-Hag himself led several charges, and his skill with the sabre, which was legendary in Algaria, filled his followers with an awed pride as they watched his whiplike blows raining down on Murgo heads and shoulders. The whole thrust of Algar strategy was based on speed - a sudden dash on a fast horse and a series of lightninglike sabre slashes, and then out before the enemy could gather his wits. King Cho-Hag's sabre arm was the fastest in Algaria.

"My King!" one of his men shouted, pointing toward the center of several close-packed Murgo regiments milling about in a shallow valley a few hundred yards away. "There's the black banner!"

King Cho-Hag's eyes suddenly gleamed as a wild hope surged through him. "Bring my banner to the front!" he roared, and the clansman who carried the burgundy-and-white banner of the Chief of the Clan-Chiefs galloped forward with the standard streaming above his head. "Let's go, my children!" Cho-Hag shouted and drove his horse directly at the Murgos in the valley. With sabre raised, the crippled King of the Algars led his men down into the Murgo horde. His warriors slashed to the right and to the left, but Cho-Hag plunged directly at the center, his eyes feed on the black banner of Taur Urgas, King of the Murgos.

And then, in the midst of the household guard, Cho-Hag saw the blood-red mail of Taur Urgas himself. Cho-Hag raised his b.l.o.o.d.y sabre and shouted a ringing challenge.

"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 ma.s.sive 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.l.o.o.d.y gra.s.s. "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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sessed the strength of the a.s.sault. "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 gra.s.sy 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

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.

"At Riva - after Belgarion came - I was humiliated because you had been deposed. I couldn't bear it, father." Olban coughed again, and a b.l.o.o.d.y froth came to his lips.

"You should have known me better than that, Olban," Brand said gently.

"I do - now." Olban sighed. "But I was young and proud, and Belgarion - a n.o.body from Sendaria - had pushed you from your rightful place."

"It wasn't my place to begin with, Olban," Brand told him. "It was his. Belgarion's the Rivan King. That has nothing to do with position or place. It's a duty - and it's his, not mine."

"I hated him," Olban whispered. "I began to follow him every place. Wherever he went, I wasn't far behind him."

"What for?" Brand asked.

"At first I didn't know. Then one day he came out of the throne room wearing his robe and crown. He seemed so puffed-up with his own importance - as if he really was a king instead of just a common Sendarian scullion. Then I knew what I had to do. I took my dagger and I threw it at his back."

Brand's face suddenly froze.

"For a long time after that, I tried to avoid him," Olban continued. "I knew that what I had done was wrong - even as the dagger left my fingers. I thought that if I stayed away from him, he'd never find out that I was the one who'd tried to kill him. But he has powers, father. He has ways of knowing things no man could possibly know. He sought me out one day and gave me back the dagger I'd thrown at him and he told me that I should never tell anyone what I'd done. He did that for you, father - to keep my disgrace from you."

Grim-faced, Brand rose to his feet. "Come," he said to his other three sons. "We have fighting to do - and no time to waste on traitors." Quite deliberately he turned his back on his dying son.

"I tried to repay his mercy, father," Olban pleaded. "I pledged my life to protecting his queen. Doesn't that count for anything?" Brand's face was stony, and he kept his back turned in grim silence. "Belgarion forgave me, father. Can't you find it in your heart to forgive me too?"

"No," Brand said harshly, "I cannot."

"Please, father," Olban begged. "Don't you have one tear for me?"

"Not one," Brand told him, but Ariana saw that his words were a lie. The grim, gray-clad man's eyes were full, but his face remained granitelike. Without another word, he strode from the tent.

Wordlessly, each of Olban's brothers clasped his hand in turn, and then they left to follow their father.

Olban wept quietly for a time, but then his growing weakness and the drug Ariana had given him drained away his grief. He lay, half dozing on his pallet for a time, then struggled to raise himself and beckoned to the Mimbrate girl. She knelt beside him, supporting him with one arm about his shoulders and her head bent to catch his faltering words. "Please," he whispered. "Please tell her Majesty what I said to my father - and tell her how sorry I was." And then his head fell forward against Ariana, and he quietly died in her arms.

Ariana had no time to mourn, for precisely then three Sendars carried Colonel Brendig into her tent. The colonel's left arm was mangled beyond all hope of repair.

"We were bringing down the bridge that crosses to the city," one of the Sendars reported tersely. "There was a support that wouldn't give way, so the colonel went down himself to chop it away. When it finally broke, the timbers of the bridge fell on him."

Ariana gravely examined Brendig's shattered arm. "I fear there is no recourse, my Lord," she told him. "The arm will have to come off, lest it mortify and carry thy life away with it."

Brendig nodded soberly. "That's about what I'd expected," he replied. "I suppose we'd better get on with it then."

"There!" King Rhodar shouted, pointing downriver. "The smoke - it's green! That's the signal. We can start the retreat now."

General Varana, however, was staring at the riverbank upstream. "It's too late, I'm afraid, your Majesty," he said quietly. "A column of Malloreans and Nadraks have just reached the river to the west of us. It very much looks as if we've been cut off."

Chapter Eighteen.

THE NEWS OF the death of Taur Urgas spread through the Murgo army in a vast groan, and the heart went out of the black-robed troops. Taur Urgas had been feared by his men, but his savage madness had lent them all a peculiar sense that they were invincible. They had felt somehow that nothing could stand in his path, and that they, as the instruments of his brutal will, shared in some measure his apparent invulnerability. But with his death, each Murgo became aware with a sudden cold touch of fear that he also could die, and the a.s.sault on the armies of the west along the south bank faltered.

King Cho-Hag watched the crumbling of the Murgo resolve with a certain grim satisfaction, then rode down to the lines of infantry and the milling Mimbrate knights to confer with the other leaders. King Fulrach strode forward from the ranks of his Sendars. The dumpy, brown-bearded monarch looked almost comical in his burnished breastplate, but his sword showed signs of recent use, and his helmet was dented in a couple of places, mute evidence that the King of Sendaria had partic.i.p.ated in the fight.