The Belgariad 5: Enchanter's End Game (34 page)

"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."

"What is thy name, friend?" Ariana asked.

"I'm called Lammer, my Lady."

"Is the need for thee in the battle urgent?"

"I doubt it, my Lady. I've been shooting arrows at the Malloreans. I'm not very good at it, but it's what I'm supposed to do."

"My need for thee is greater, then," she declared. "I have many wounded here and few hands to help with their care. Despite thy surly exterior, I sense a great compassion in thee. Wilt thou help me?"

He regarded her for a moment. "What do you want me to do?" he said.

"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 massive 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 clustered 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 assault 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 bloody 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 massive 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 bloody 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 bloody grass. "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 assault 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 assessed the strength of the assault. "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 grassy hillside in the warm, midmorning sunlight with his entire soul pouring out of his flute.