Seven Princes (56 page)

Advance scouts had reported these formations, so seeing them arrayed across the field was no surprise. Here would be the killing ground, the blood-soaked theatre of war. D’zan looked across glittering legions of his own countrymen and felt a pain in his heart, a sickening in his stomach. These were
his
people, and he rode against them today. If only they would break and rally under their true monarch, none would need to die. If he could win them over, with word or deed, thousands of Mumbazans and Yaskathans might live to see another sunrise.

The two great hosts lined up along the northern and southern
ends of the plain, and D’zan looked down upon them both. Generals and Princes would observe the fight from the ridge-top, sending commands to their captains with horn, drum, and signal flags. He watched the plumed Mumbazans flow around him to fill the plain below, a flood of bronze and flesh.

The commanders were quiet. Tyro had determined to lead the northern cohort of three hundred men, but Tsoti bade him wait until the greater mass of the host was in position. Tyro sat patiently on his warhorse, eyeing the orderly rows of military splendor that would soon become a pit of seething, bleeding chaos. Lyrilan sat in silence near D’zan, his disciplined steed gnawing at the scrub-grass. D’zan spurred his own mount and it trotted toward the High General where he consulted with the six Adjutants. A flock of ravens from some distant grove scattered into the sky.

“General!” called D’zan. “Let me ride forth between the hosts before the battle. Let me fly the standard of my father before Yaskathan eyes. When they see me alive, some of them may join us.”

“Too risky,” said the general. “Stay on this high ground, Prince, where arrow and spear cannot reach you. It would not do to win back your throne and have you killed in the process. You must fight this war like a King, D’zan… not a foot soldier.”

D’zan watched Yaskathan banners flapping in the breeze; they rose at regular intervals from the massed ranks of silver and crimson. Tsoti spoke with wisdom, yet his heart could not bear doing nothing while others fought for him. What kind of King would he be if he did such a thing? He sat brooding in his saddle when Tyro and the six Adjutants rode down the slope and took their places among the legions. Tyro’s cohort guarded the southern flank.

Now there stood only Tsoti, D’zan, and Lyrilan upon the ridge,
and a few mail-shirted servants bearing horn, flag, and flask. Well behind the ridge two legions of spearmen and a legion of cavalry lay in reserve. “Let them think we are weaker in forces,” Tsoti had explained. “Never show your enemy everything.” Although perhaps enemy scouts had already counted their exact numbers.

D’zan shifted in his saddle.

It was true that he must live through this to claim his throne. Yet he must do something
now
, or he would never be worthy of it.

He spurred his horse, galloping down into the corridor between the central formations. He ignored the shouting of the High General behind him, and the desperate voice of Lyrilan calling after him. If he would be a King, he must act like a King.

Riding at full speed he broke past the front cavalry lines and entered the no-man’s-land between the two hosts. Grass and sod flew from his stallion’s hooves as he pulled forth the Stone’s great blade. He hoisted it toward the sky with his right arm. Alone, he rode toward the gleaming wall of Yaskathan soldiery, the emblem on their round shields also blazing on his chest.

In the heavy calm he reined his horse a short distance from the silver-crimson front line. In the shadows of symmetrical helms, ten thousand eyes blinked at his approach. A High General in armor of burnished plate sat upon a black charger at the line’s center. D’zan could not recognize the man through the closed visor of his silver helm. A black cloak billowed from the commander’s metal shoulders, and the legions sat restless and attentive at his back.

D’zan stood high in his stirrups, the greatsword’s blade casting sunlight across their eyes, and he shouted: “I am D’zan, Son of Trimesqua, returned to claim what is mine by right of blood! You need not serve the tyrant usurper! Come across and join your King! I am D’zan! Rightful King of Yaskatha!”

He galloped north along the line and doubled back, riding south now and shouting his message twice more. A nervous mumbling grew among the Yaskathan ranks. Like a soft wind it began, gathering strength and volume, spreading from the vanguard toward the heart of the host.

The Yaskathan High General raised his right hand, sheathed in a bright gauntlet. In an instant an unnatural and pervasive silence fell across his legions. His black steed walked forward as if to treat with D’zan, and diamonds glittered along its mailed caparison. D’zan reined again to face him, and the general pulled up his visor.

D’zan nearly fell from his horse. The gaunt face of Elhathym stared at him from within the silver helm. The eyes were black without luster, as if they devoured the sunlight. He smiled and revealed white teeth, and D’zan thought of a lizard’s smile before it devours its prey.

“Prince D’zan, the long-lost heir,” Elhathym greeted him. “Welcome back. Many times I have tried to bring you hence, yet you resisted every one of my invitations. It pleases me that you have come now of your own will instead. Now you may accept your inheritance… by joining your ancestors in death.” A metallic note rang loudly as he drew from his side a greatsword of black iron with a hilt of blazing silver. The sound of it wavered in the air above the hosts, so that every man on the plain heard it like the peal of some mystic gong.

It was like a clarion of thunder that begins a dreadful storm. War-horns sounded from both hosts. Legions of archers let their volleys fly. As the sky turned black beneath a rain of criss-crossing bolts, Elhathym’s blade crashed against D’zan’s sword. The shock of the blow traveled through D’zan’s body, rattling his bones. He gritted his teeth against the pain. There was far more than human strength in Elhathym’s arms; it was the strength of sorcery that drove his iron. D’zan turned his two-handed parry into a clever
thrust, but Elhathym’s silver breastplate turned away his blade. The sorcerer laughed and hacked at him. D’zan ducked beneath the killing arc.

Their horses spun in a circle as the blades clanged between them. D’zan breathed through gritted teeth while Elhathym laughed, his mouth a feral grin. The sound of arrows raining down upon upturned shields hung over their battle. Then both sides launched a second volley, and metal rang like a million drums.

Now the great cavalries charged. The Yaskathans galloped past D’zan and Elhathym, speeding to engage the Mumbazans in the center of the plain. The thunder of hooves rocked the earth and the odor of torn grass filled D’zan’s nostrils. A fresh shock along his blade knocked him from the saddle. He landed on his back in the mud and pulped grass. His horse squealed as Elhathym hewed it down with a single stroke. It nearly fell on top of him, but he rolled away. The rushing hooves of a Yaskathan cavalryman almost brained him, but instinct jerked him backward. When D’zan regained his feet, Elhathym had dismounted as well. The clanging of bronze on bronze and the cries of men killing and dying joined the thunder-song of the horses’ hooves. The field was a swirling chaos of spear, shield, and sword.

D’zan faced Elhathym in the eye of this mad hurricane.

He raised the Stone’s blade high and brought it down on Elhathym’s head. The sorcerer’s blade was there to catch it, fast as lightning, and suddenly D’zan knew he could not win this duel. He had trained hard, but not for long enough. He had grown strong, but was not mighty. He had defied the wisdom of General Tsoti and now was beyond hope. He parried another strike from Elhathym’s blade and screamed his guttural fury. Words were long gone; there was only the sound of his anger, tempered by despair.

Elhathym laughed and drove the point of his blade through D’zan’s mail, a bolt of lightning through his heart. D’zan stood
motionless for a single moment that seemed an eternity, impaled on the cold metal. It burned through his breast and burst from his back. The cold spread throughout his body, and his arms fell limp. They were useless things, hanging at his side like pieces of meat, but his right hand refused to let go of the sword hilt he had clutched so tightly for so many nights. The point of the greatsword lodged in the mire at his feet.

Elhathym drew back his elbow, and his black blade exited D’zan’s body. The sorcerer’s eyes blazed, twin stars of triumph swimming in dark lakes of malice.

D’zan’s chin fell upon his breast, and he watched the crimson flow of his lifeblood spilling to the earth, staining his black-and-silver mail to gleaming red. Then he fell, face down in the muck at Elhathym’s feet. His eyes somehow still functioned, and he saw clearly the silvered iron of the sorcerer’s boots as one of them rose to his shoulder, flipping him onto his back. The cacophony of battle, the shrieks of wounded men and horses, the ringing of bloodied metal… all these things faded from his ears.

“Now, Prince of Yaskatha,” said Elhathym, staring down at him. The world faded to eternal night and silence, but his words echoed with clarity. “Time for you to embrace your destiny, as you always wished. Rise now, D’zan, Son of Trimesqua, and lead your armies to victory over the Mumbazans. Your living soul I cast off like a heavy chain, Your bones and flesh now belong to me. Rise up and serve your King…”

In the mute darkness, D’zan rose away from blood and dirt and pain. He was no longer even cold. Elhathym’s words faded. Something called him onward through the dark, toward a constellation of lights… a glimmering fog into which he fell with a great sense of contentment.

Why had his futile struggle been so important? Flesh and bone were such unimportant things… transitive… dancing dusts in
a wind that blew forever. Now he rode that wind, and the memory of who he was and all he cherished began to fade, as the light and noise of the world had faded already.

Yet inside his tight pale fist, back on the blood-splattered plain, lay the hilt of the sword that bore the Sun God’s sigil. And that same sigil was marked on his pallid forehead in black ash by the hand of that God’s High Priest. D’zan had prayed over that sigil when he lived, asked the Bright God for his blessing and the protection of the ward that had come to him across the ages.

Something dark and ethereal tugged at his lifeless bones, seeking entry into that house of drained flesh. At the words of Elhathym, this dark spirit struggled to invade the young corpse… but could not enter it. D’zan felt this as a living man might feel a mosquito crawling across his forehead. It nagged at him, it sliced him with memories, stabbed him with anger that refused to subside. He turned away from the celestial lights and swam back toward the cold flesh that belonged to him and him alone. He had lost a kingdom, lost a father, lost a throne, lost his very life… but he would not lose his own bones to some foul thing that obeyed the whims of Elhathym. His rage blossomed, and the blackness of eternity became a universe of blood and flame. He would have cried out, but he was a disembodied soul and had no throat with which to scream. So he merely claimed what was his… the last vestige of his existence.

D’zan’s corpse rose to stand before the outstretched hand of Elhathym, whose mouth was a hideous smile. D’zan glared at him with glazed eyes swiveling inside their sockets.

I am dead
.

Yet here I stand with my enemy before me
.

“Go now!” said Elhathym. “Take this steed and ride among your living troops! Lead them to victory in my name.”

I exist under the power of his will
, thought D’zan.
He wants me to
conquer in his name, the last threat to his rule now turned into an asset. His final stroke of victory
.

Living, I defied him
.

Dead, I must serve him
.

The Stone’s blade was still in his hand. He lifted it, and it seemed light as a reed.

“Yes!” said Elhathym. “Take up your ancestral weapon and fight!”

I must serve him
.

D’zan, dead and yet beyond death, raised the greatsword high. The sun-sigil on his forehead, like the one on his sword, gleamed bright as a torch.

Elhathym laughed at the greatness of his new slave.

No
.

He brought the sword down upon Elhathym’s helm with all the terrible might of a dead man.

The helm cracked and the skull beneath it split wide. Elhathym’s face slackened, and a black fluid that was more shadow than blood gushed from between his lips. He no longer laughed. His eyes bulged on either side of the iron blade. Astonishment gleamed in those bloodshot orbs.

D’zan pulled the blade free of Elhathym’s skull and swept it with uncanny grace in a sideways arc, cleaving the sorcerer’s body at the waist. His two halves fell into the muck where D’zan had lain. Neither half twitched, and there was no blood. Galloping horses trampled them to dusty fragments.

D’zan raised his free hand to his chest. He felt the jagged hole, the wound that had killed him. There was no heartbeat. He stared in awe at his milk-white hand. He stood in a pool of blood that was mostly his own. There was no more of the stuff in his body, or very little.

I am dead, yes
.

But I serve myself
.

I serve Yaskatha
.

He climbed upon Elhathym’s warhorse and raised his blade toward the sky. From his dry throat came a battle cry that froze mens’ hearts even in the midst of killing and savagery. He saw their faces turn upon him with fear, wonder, and terror. Then he laid about him with the sword, slicing a path through the Yaskathans. The battle was in full swing, and there was no stopping it now. He must fight for Mumbaza and hope that his own people would surrender once they realized their Tyrant-King was dead.