He turned back toward the cottage. So did Maram, who took Atara's hand. Then Bemossed looked down upon Taitu's body and called out, 'Wait! Let us not leave the boy here like this to be trampled by horses.'
I nodded my head, and we quickly wrapped up Taitu again in the tarp - now his shroud. We bore him back into the cottage. Kane immediately grabbed up his bow and nocked an arrow to its string.
'They are within range,' he said as he looked out over the crumbled cottage wall.
I looked, too. Those who had come to us under the banner of truce had reached Lord Mansarian's companies. The neat lines of knights on their horses had collapsed into a chaos of men and mounts swarming around Lord Mansarian and Morjin. Angry shouts rang out across the field.
'Two hundred yards?' Atara said to Kane. 'That is too long a range. You can't be sure of hitting Morjin at that distance.'
'I'll hit
someone,'
Kane growled. 'And that will be one less to fight corning over these walls.'
'Why fight at all?' Maram said. He nodded at Estrella, who stood by the horses. 'Why don't we flee, while they argue?'
'No,' I said, shaking my head. 'If we do that, we might end their argument for them and force them to make common cause again. And we would expose our backs to them.'
'What shall we do then?'
And I told him, 'Wait.'
While the pasture rang out with shouts that grew louder and more numerous, Master Juwain examined Taitu's body to make sure that he really was dead. Estrella stood by my horse, feeding him some grain. Liljana, not knowing what else to do, went around with a waterskin so that we all might quench our thirst. Daj drank thankfully, then gripped his sword as he stood next to Maram behind the wall.
Then one of Red Capes near Morjin drew his sword and plunged it through the throat of a knight shouting at him. As if a trumpet had sounded, all the knights gathered around Morjin drew swords or brought their spears to bear. Dozens of them paired off, and began hacking or stabbing at each other. They fought fiercely as their enmity for each other drove them to a maddened melee.
'They'll kill each other for us!' Maram said.
He put his hand on Kane's bow as if to restrain him from loosing an arrow. But Kane had already come to the same conclusion, and he muttered, 'So they might.'
We all watched then as Lord Mansarian ripped free the crimson cape from his shoulders and cast it to the ground. He cried out: 'Captain Atuan! Captain Roarian! All my companions who would follow me! Let us be free!'
Perhaps eighty of the two hundred knights also cast off their capes. The green grass soon gleamed with a carpet of red. Those knights loyal to Lord Mansarian gathered near him, if they could. I clenched my fist to see Lord Mansarian's companions so badly outnumbered.
'Estrella!' I called out. 'Bring Altaru to the door!'
'Yes,' Maram said.
'Now
we can flee.'
'No, we can't,' I told him. I nodded at Bemossed, and said, 'Our new friend might be the Maitreya, but he
still
can't ride well enough to escape from Morjin.'
'Then what shall we do?' Maram asked. And I told him, 'We'll fight. Kane and I will.'
'But why?'
I pointed across the grass, where hopes trampled red capes with their hooves and men clashed sword to sword, trying to murder] each other. The melee had now grown into a battle. I said simply, 'If Lord Mansarian can prevail, then we will live.'
'But what about
us?'
Maram said, looking at Liljana and Estrella. 'You can't just leave us undefended!'
'We won't leave you,' I told him, clapping him on the shoulder. 'Kane and I will fight better mounted. And you will guard the wall.'
I told him to fire off an arrow at any of Morjin's knights who came within thirty yards of it. After we got the horses out of the doorway, I watched as Daj helped Atara into position facing this rectangular opening. She stood with an arrow nocked to her bow's string, waiting. If anyone should try to force the doorway, Daj would direct her to loose an arrow blindly at zero range.
Then Kane and I mounted our horses. Just before we rode forward, however, I turned toward the wall in hesitation. Bemossed stood there looking at me. He told me, 'Go and do what you must, Valashu. You are a warrior. And as you have said, war is still the way of this world.'
Altaru, smelling blood and battle, drove his hoof into the earth as he let loose a great whinny. I drew my bright sword. I said to Kane, sitting on top of his big brown horse beside me, 'We've no armor, and so you will have to watch my back.'
'Ha - and you mine!'
We hardly had to touch our horses to urge them into a gallop toward the mass of men before us. Many had already fallen, and their bodies lay sprawled upon the grass, along with many bright red capes. Knights, whether fighting for Morjin or defending Lord Mansarian, called out challenges and curses to each other as they hacked and stabbed and screamed and died. In seconds we drew within a hundred yards, and then fifty, and now I too smelled blood spraying out into the air. The wind whipped at my face, and carried to me other hateful scents. I could hardly bear these men's rage to kill each other. And then Kane and I charged straight into the heart of the madness.
A red-caped soldier spurred his horse toward me as he tried to intercept me with a spear thrust through my chest. I parried the spear with my forearm, then cut right through the bronze armor covering his belly. He cried out in agony, even as one of his companions tried to impale me, too. Him I cleaved from shoulder to side. A nearby soldier, seeing this, called out, 'The musician has a sword! Such a sword!'
Many of the men riding about now looked upon Alkaladur in astonishment and terror. My sword's silustria shone with a dazzling white light. They shrank back from it, and from me. Morjin, twenty yards away, surrounded by a wall of horses and knights fighting ferociously to protect him, looked toward me as he cried out, 'It is the Elahad! Kill him - kill him now!'
A dozen knights charged forward to carry out this command. And Lord Mansarian, off toward my left, shouted to
his
men: 'Spare the musician, the juggler, too! Protect them, if you can!'
If any of the knights who had remained loyal to Morjin still thought of Kane as just a juggler and knife-thrower, he now gave them cause to change their minds. With three blindingly quick strokes of his sword, he cut down three knights that had come too close to us, and then whirled about in his saddle to cleave the arm off a fourth knight trying to spear me through my back. His black eyes flashed with a wild joy, and for a moment met mine. Then he struck out again and again, even as my sword sliced through fish-scaled bronze as if it was leather.
'The errants are demons!' an enemy knight cried out. 'Demons from the Dark Lands!'
'They are from Hell!' another knight shouted. 'The musician's sword blazes like the sun!'
Demons Kane and I might be, I thought. But we were also something more. We had fought together in terrible battles, side by side and sword synchronizing with sword. And now, together, striking with steel and silustria in perfect rhythm, slaying in a fury of lightning cuts and thrusts, we fought as true angels of death. Our enemies gave way before us. Although they had been trained to war, they were not Valari. A few wielded their weapons with skill, but their heavy armor weighed them down and slowed their motions. It seemed they had spent too many campaigns hunting down poorly armed errants instead of sharpening their virtues against true knights. Kane and I charged at them with a practiced passion to slay, and so they fell before us and died.
Lord Mansarian used the terror that we created to deploy his knights around the mass of men protecting Morjin. They fought fiercely, pressing Morjin's men closer together. This offset their superior numbers, for soon Morjin's knights bunched together so closely that those nearest Morjin at their center could hardly wield their spears. It was possible, I saw, that through this strategem Lord Mansarian's men might actually prevail.
And then Morjin cried out to his knights, 'Move aside! I need no protection! Move, I say!'
As he had commanded, his men tried to make room for him, whipping or spurring their horses out of his way. He pushed his mount through the gaps between the horses around him, straight toward me. Then Lord Mansarian's knights tried to close in on him. He killed two of them with two quick cuts of his sword; another he stabbed through the throat. He fought with a fearful skill nearly equal to that of Kane.
'Damn him!' Kane shouted from next to me. He shook his sword at Morjin, and drops of blood went spinning through the air. 'Let's finally kill this beast!'
We urged our horses toward Morjin, even as five of his knights pressed toward us to cover his flank. Morjin turned to stare across the field at Kane and me. The black stone stuck to his forehead began glowing with a dark light. A vast, black chasm seemed to open in the ground before me. I felt it pulling at me, down through the layers of earth into death.
'Elahad!' Morjin screamed at me. 'Valari!'
And then, without warning, he unleashed a new weapon, dreadful and terrible. From deep inside his throat he let loose a sound like nothing I had ever heard. In its ear-shattering tones was something of an eagle's scream and the hyena's hideous call - and the shrieks of millions of men and women dying in torment. This cry pierced straight to the heart and turned hot blood to ice. I grasped my chest, and clung to my saddle. And all the while, Morjin cried out in a voice of death:
'Aiyiiyariii!'
Two of Lord Mansarian's knights spurred their horses toward Morjin; He whipped about in his saddle, and directed his voice toward the first of these, who froze in terror as he gasped for breath. Then he fell from his horse, dead. Morjin now screamed at the second knight, who clutched at his throat as he choked and died, too.
'Aiyiiyariii!'
Morjin now screamed out his death voice at me. I had a sense that he could strike out this way only at one person at a time. I sensed, too, that this weapon was new to him, awkward and untested. Perhaps what I had done to him earlier had broken open his being in such a way that all his evil and hate could now be carried through the air in a hideous sound, it fell upon me like a blast of dragon fire, and nearly killed me.
'Father!' I gasped. 'Mother!'
Sweat ran from every pore on my body, and I fought back the urge to vomit up blood. My heart beat with such a hard and violent pain that I thought it would burst. I wanted to drop my sword and clasp my hands over my ears. But it was my sword, I believe, that saved me. As often when I was near to death, I drew strength from it. I felt Alkaladur's bright silustria feeding into me the very life of the sun and the earth. I raised it up just in time to block a sword from slicing off the top of my head. Then Kane came forward to kill the knight who had so nearly killed me. He, too, I sensed, fought a desperate battle against Morjin's death voice, which now fell upon him.
'Val!' Kane shouted at me. 'Keep hold of your sword!'
Perhaps Alkaladur gave me the will to resist Morjin's voice; or perhaps years of battling him had inured me to the worst of its power. Whatever the cause of the new strength pouring through me, I found myself able to keep to my saddle and fight off the men who suddenly assaulted me. Seeing this, Morjin came forward to attack me with a more mundane and substantial weapon. In a fury of motion he drove his horse against mine and thrust his sword at my chest. It would have killed me if Altaru hadn't reared back, striking air with his iron-shod hooves. Morjin worked his horse around to my side and slashed at me, again and again. I didn't know how I parried his ferocious strokes. Any one of them, without the protection of my armor, might have cut me to the death. Kane moved in from the other side to help me, but Morjin - or his droghul - nearly chopped the edge of his sword through Kane's neck. I had never seen Kane lift
his
sword so slowly, so desperately, as if he were fighiing his way through an icy, raging sea.
Atara had warned us that each of the droghuls we faced would be more terrible than the last, but nothing had prepared me for the power of this dreadful being.
Was
he truly a droghul, I wondered? All of Morjin's ferocity and malice poured out him in his furious sword and murderous voice. It seemed impossible that he might kill either Kane or me, or both of us, but I knew that in another few moments he would.
'Damn you, Elahad! Damn the Valariii - Aiyiiyariii!'
Just then Roarian and Atuan came forward with three other knights, and pressed an attack against Morjin. Two of these Morjin killed with his fell voice, but the others seemed able to bear it. They joined Kane and me in trying to cut down Morjin. This caused Morjin suddenly to alter his strategy. He shouted out: 'Haar Igasho! Ra Zahur! To me! To me! Kill the Valari for me!'
The red-robed Salmelu, who called himself by the foul name of Igasho, now rode up to us with Ra Zahur and a half dozen knights. They began slashing at us with their swords. Three of them surrounded me, and I began fighting a furious battle for my life.
'Do you see the sword I bear, Elahad?' Salmelu shouted at me. It is no kalama, but I will put it through you, even so!'
I shouted out, too, in a terrible frustration because I could not quickly get away from the men surrounding me. I had only a moment to see Morjin turn his horse and gather up a dozen enemy knights to act as his cover. Then they charged en masse straight toward the cottage.
A sword whirled toward my throat, and I parried it. Kane came up beside me, and killed the enemy knight nearest to me. Then he turned to cross swords with the blocky and bestial Ra Zahur.
'I
will
have my revenge!' Salmelu screamed at me. He feinted with his sword toward my face, then tried to disembowel me. 'I will have it now!'
Aiyiiyaiiii!
Morjin's death voice rang out from across the field. I stole a quick glance to my left, and saw one of Lord Mansarian's knights grasp hold of his head and plummet from his horse's back. Lord Mansarian, charging upon Morjin even as Morjin continued galloping toward the cottage, lowered his spear and aimed it at Morjin's chest.