The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales (40 page)

             
Between Vakar and the sea the victims of the medusa attack lay in long rows, in stiffly unnatural positions like statues toppled from their pedestals. Their heads lay towards the sea, for when the screams of the medusas had petrified them in mid-charge their momentum had caused nearly all of them to fall forward.

             
Between Vakar and the fallen Lorskans he saw what he sought: the medusas and their attendant priests of Entigta. There were nine reptiles, each on a leash. At the start of the battle the priests had been spaced evenly along the Gorgonian front, but now that their part was over they were gathering in a single group in the middle of their line, a few hundred feet to Vakar's right as he faced the sea. Half a dozen of them had congregated there already, and the remaining three were walking towards this group.

             
Vakar spurred his horse and cantered in a wide curve that brought him up to the last of the priests from behind. Before he reached the Gorgon, the priest, aroused by hoof-beats behind him, looked around. The priest pointed at Vakar and spoke to the medusa, which opened its beak and hissed.

             
The horse shied, and Vakar felt a vibration run through him, but gripping the magical sword he plunged at the pair. So long as he gripped the hilt, the contact between his hand and the tang of the blade protected him. A downright slash sank into the medusa's scaly head and then he was past, sparing only a glance back to see the reptile writhing in the dust.

             
Then he was on the second. A sweeping backhand cut shore through the snaky neck and sent the medusa's head flying.

             
He swept past the clump of priests and rode towards the remaining individual who had not yet reached them. His swing missed a vital spot and sheared off one of the medusa's ears; he jerked his horse around in a tight circle and came back. This time another head flew off.

             
"Prince Vakar!" cried the priest, and Vakar recognized Qasigan.

             
But now he had no time to settle old scores with mere men. He rode at the remaining six priests who stood in a group and watched uncertainly. At the last minute
the
y grasped what he was doing. There was a flurry of movement as they tried to form a circle around the medusas, drawing knives from their belts to defend their beasts with their lives. Then Vakar crashed squarely into the group. There were screams of men and medusas as bones crushed under the horse's hooves and Vakar's sword
flashed down on shaven polls and scaly crania.

             
Then he was through and wheeling to charge back, blood spraying from his sword as he whirled it, yelling wordlessly. Crash! A sharp pain in his leg told him that one of them had gotten home with a knife, but he kept on, slashing and
thrusting
...

             
And he was chasing one surviving medusa over the grass. The reptile went in buck-jumps like a rabbit, the golden chain attached to its collar leaping and snaking behind it. Vakar rode it down and left it writhing with its entrails oozing out. Four priests, including Qasigan, were running for their ships, hiking up their robes to give their legs free play.

             
Back towards the hills the Gorgonian army still receded in pursuit of the Lorskans. Vakar knew that the road up to the pass would get jammed and the Gorgons would have a holiday massacre.
And now what?
The sword that had destroyed the medusas would also revive the fallen Lorskans, whom the Gorgons had not taken time to bind or slay.

             
Down at the waterfront, among the beaks of the beached ships, men were pointing at Vakar and shouting, but seemed undecided what to do. Most of them were mere unarmed servants.

             
Vakar rode down to one end of the windrows of stricken Lorskans and turned back. Holding his horse's mane with his shield-hand he leaned down as he passed the bodies and
slapped them on faces and hands with the flat of his blade. As he did so they lost their rigidity and scrambled up. Vakar shouted:

             
"Get up! Get in formation! Pick up your arms!"

             
There seemed to be no end to the process. He had to keep looping back to touch men whom he had missed, hundreds and hundreds of them. It was as tiring as a
battle
. But the crowd of recovered Lorskans grew and grew. For want of other guidance they obeyed him. Down at the shore the Gorgonian galleys, alarmed by the springing to life of an army of corpses, were putting to sea.

             
Time passed. Vakar's arm ached. Only a few-score more bodies to go... Vakar speeded up, careless of slicing off an occasional nose or ear. And then they were all on their feet. He rode back to the middle of the line and waved the sword, shouting:

             
"Get in line and follow me! The magical powers of the Gorgons have been destroyed. We can take them in the rear and wipe them out!"

             
He harangued them and got them into motion across the plain at a fast mile-eating walk: tall bearded Lorskan yeomen with their miscellany of weapons. As they neared the edge of the coastal plain, Vakar could see what was happening ahead. Many of the Gorgons had abandoned the pursuit to sack the Lorskan camp, where they were amusing themselves by butchering the cooks and sutlers and raping the women. The rest had caught the fugitives funnelling into the road leading up to the pass and had fallen upon them with spear and sword. The slaughter of the mixed mass of Lorskan soldiers and camp-followers had been terrific, checked only by the fact that the front ranks became so jammed up that they had no room to swing a weapon.

             
As Vakar neared the Gorgon rear with his force he could see Gorgonian officers rushing around trying to get then-men faced about to receive the new attack. Vakar, judging the distance, yelled: "Charge!"

             
Forward they went at a run with deep roars, stumbling over bodies. They plunged through the camp, sweeping the plunderers before them and trampling them down, and then the lines met with a crash and a crush that lifted men off their feet and snapped the shafts and spears and halberds. Weapons rose and fell like flails. Behind the Gorgonian array the Lorskan fugitives picked up courage and instead of trying frantically to elbow their way up the road or to scale the steep hillsides to safety, some turned back, picked up discarded weapons, and plunged into the fight. As most of the Gorgons now lacked shields, their advantage in equipment was neutralized.

             
Howls of dismay rose from the Gorgons as they realized that they were
trapped. Vakar, caught in the mel
é
e, hewed at every plume-crested head he saw until he could scarcely swing his blade. A spear-point gashed his leg again;
another drove through the chest of the already wounded horse. With a scream the animal died, but such was the press that it could not fall, but gradually subsided on to a struggling knot of fighters. Vakar, exhausted, dragged
himself
clear and then was knocked over and buried under a welter of bodies.

             
He dragged himself out from under the pile of wounded and dead, battered and bruised and covered with his own and others' blood, to find that the Gorgons had been split into several small groups being ground to nothing. In the midst of the largest knot rose King Zeluud's chariot. The horses had been killed and the king stood in the vehicle, swinging over his followers' heads with a long two-handed sword at any Lorskan who tried to break through to reach him. Vakar began to push through the press towards the chariot. The Gorgons around the chariot fought like fiends until a huge Lorskan burst through to climb up behind the king, seize him by the neck, and drag him over the side. King Zeluud disappeared.

             
Now the Gorgons began to lose heart. Some cast down their arms and cried for quarter. Most of these the infuriated Lorskans struck down without mercy, but Vakar managed to save a few from slaughter. There was much about Gorgonia that he wished to know, and dead men could tell him nothing.

             
The sounds of battle died away, leaving several thousand Lorskans leaning on the shafts of their weapons and panting. Those who had the breath to do so raised the shout of victory. Some cut the throats of the Gorgon wounded; others dragged their own wounded out from
the
piles of dead to see if they looked salvageable or whether they too should, as an act of mercy, have their throats cut. The ground was carpeted with bodies and severed members and with helmets, shields, swords, spears, daggers, axes, maces, halberds, trumpets, and all the other paraphernalia of war. Tattered
battle
-standards lay among the fitter, some so bloodstained that the bison of Lorsk could hardly be distinguished from the octopus of Gorgonia.

             
Where the ground could be seen it was dark red-brown wi
th
blood. Clouds of flies were settling upon the cadavers,
and v
u
ltures circled expectant
l
y overhead.

             
Vakar Zhu sheathed his blade and tied up his leg-wounds with strips of cloth from the garments of fallen men. He found Lord Kalesh (he who had brought word of the Gorgons' circumnavigation to Lorsk) astride a blood-spattered horse. Vakar put Kalesh in charge of the army with instructions to secure any Gorgonian ships that had not gotten away, and to camp on the plain that night. Then he borrowed Kalesh's horse and set off up the steep road for Mneset. At the top he picked up Ryn with his chariot. Vakar slid off his horse, saying:

             
"Mind you if I ride with you?
These wounds in my legs will heal faster."

             
"Get in, get in."

             
They creaked slowly homeward, learning that nearly everybody they met thought that the Lorskans had lost the battle, such word having been spread throughout the land by the early fugitives.

-

             
Nine days later they reached Mneset in a drizzle with several hundred men trailing behind them. They found the gate shut and signs of preparations for a siege. Vakar shouted:

             
"Ho there! Open for Prince Vakar! The Gorgons are beaten!"

             
An armed man stuck his head over the wall. "What's that, sir?"

             
"I said, the Gorgons are beaten.
Open up!"

             
"Just a minute, my lord."
The man disappeared, but others appeared in his place, looking down silent
l
y and fingering their bows and spears.

             
Vakar fidgeted with impatience. The stragglers from the army came seeping along the road, afoot and on the backs of horses and mules, until a crowd of them was gathered in a semicircle around the gate.

             
Vak
a
r fumed: "I don't
know what ails those fellows. T
hey've had plenty of time to open."

             
He shouted, but without effect; the armed men on the wall stared down silently. After a while the head of his brother Kuros appeared, saying:

             
"What's this lying tale of the
Gorgons' being
beaten?"

             
"Lying!" cried Vakar. "Come out here, coward, and I'll show you
what's a
li
e
!"

             
"What? No man speaks to a king like that and lives!"

             
"King?" ye
ll
ed Vakar. "What do you mean, king?"

             
"Just what I said.
The old man died while you were gone, first naming me his successor. He agreed it was high time we dropped the absurd old custom of ultimogeniture."