Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

The engagement began at sunrise: a bright clear sky, a brilliant hot sun. The whole formidable corps of mollitors was at the ready in the fore of the rebel force, each great beast with its rider perched above, ready to send the animal careering forward at the signal from Prestimion. The two armies were facing one another on a wide, flat, open field broken only by a few spindly bushes and occasional outcroppings of rock: a perfect place, thought Prestimion, for charging mollitors. He himself stood off to the left with his archers, set back a short distance from the line of battle; his spearsmen and slingers were in the center, led by Gialaurys and Septach Melayn, and they likewise were set back a little way. The cavalry, under Duke Miaule, waited hidden in a defile well over to the right.

It was Prestimion’s plan to be quick and economical about the battle, because they were so greatly outnumbered. Therefore he meant to strike the enemy not at his weakest but at his strongest point, in the very center.

An oblique advance was what he proposed: the center and left held back in the early moments, the mollitors coming on first to put Navigorn’s front line into disarray, and then, when a gap had developed there, to bring the cavalry in from the right for the decisive charge, with the other two wings pouncing in their wake. Overwhelming force at the decisive point that would be their strategy. Once more the army from Zimroel under the command of the brothers of the Procurator would be kept in the rear to provide the final overwhelming assault and to do the mopping-up as Navigorn’s routed men retreated.

Prestimion could see Navigorn across the way, standing at the head of his forces: an imposing dark-haired figure very much like Korsibar himself in appearance, bold and swaggering, grinning with confidence, with green-cloaked shoulders thrown back, deep chest swelling proudly beneath armor of gleaming silver scales, eyes even from so far away visibly bright with the joy of battle and an eagerness to be moving forward. A worthy enemy, Prestimion thought. A pity that they must be enemies, though.

He gave the order for the charge. The mollitors moved forward. Their heavy hooves made a sound as of a thousand hammers striking a thousand anvils.

Then a dozen or more of Navigorn’s brazen-hatted sorcerers, impressively garbed in golden kalautikois and scarlet and green lagustrimores, came suddenly into view. Prestimion saw them standing side by side on one of the rocky ledges above the battlefield. They were holding in their left hands great coiling bronze horns of an unfamiliar kind; and as the mollitors began their charge, the mages put the mouthpieces of those horns to their lips and brought forth such a devilish screech that Prestimion thought the heavens would crack apart from it. It was as though some witchery were at work to amplify the noise of those horns beyond the capacity of human lungs to create. That sound—again, again, again—wailed all about them like the crack of doom.

And the mollitors, some of them, at least, were flung into confusion.

Those at the frontmost of the charge halted abruptly when that terrible blast of sound hit them, turning away from it and running wildly in any direction that would not take them closer to the evil screeching. Some ran to the left, bursting into the midst of Prestimion’s archers, who scattered before them. Some ran to the right, vanishing amidst clouds of dust into the gully where Prestimion’s cavalry lay concealed, which surely would drive the mounts into a panic of their own. And some, perhaps braver or simply more stupid than the others, went plunging on toward Navigorn’s front line; but the royalist army simply stepped aside, creating aisles through which the oncoming mollitors could pass and letting them go rampaging harmlessly on and on into the open fields beyond.

For an instant Prestimion stood stupefied by the utter failure of the charge. Then he lifted his bow and with the mightiest shot of his life, stretching the bow almost to its breaking point, struck one of Navigorn’s mages off his rock, the arrow making its way easily into the rich brocade of his kalautikoi and the shaft emerging a foot through on the other side. The man tumbled and fell without uttering a word and his horn of burnished bronze went clattering down beside him.

But Prestimion’s wondrous shot was the last happy moment of the day for the rebels. The real momentum lay with the royalist side. As the mollitors scattered, Navigorn’s cavalrymen came thundering forward, with the infantry just behind, wielding their javelins and spears with awful effect. “Hold your formations!” Prestimion shouted. Septach Melayn, far across the way, called out the same command. But the rebel front line was breaking up. Prestimion watched his men turning and flooding backward into the second line, and to his horror saw that for a time a bizarre struggle was raging among his own men. For the second line, unable in the heat of the fray to distinguish friend from foe, was striking at those who came rushing into them, not realizing that they were their own fleeing companions.

Prestimion looked about for a messenger and caught sight of his fleet-footed brother Abrigant. “Get yourself to Gaviundar,” he ordered. “Tell them that all’s lost unless they join the battle immediately.”

Abrigant nodded and ran off toward the rear.

Navigorn was a masterly general, Prestimion saw now. He had complete control of every instant of the battle. His cavalry had sent the rebel front line into rout, his infantrymen were going at it fiercely, hand-to-hand, with Prestimion’s second line, which by now had reconstituted itself and was offering strong resistance; and now Navigorn’s own second line was coming forward, not along the expected wide front but instead as a lethal concentrated wedge, smashing ruthlessly into the heart of the rebel line. There was no stopping them. Prestimion and his men filled the air with arrows, but the best archers in the world could not have halted that advance.

The slaughter went and on.

Where were Gaviundar and drunken Gaviad? Crouching over a flask of wine somewhere safe behind the lines? Prestimion had a glimpse of Gialaurys skewering men with his spear, and Septach Melayn’s tireless flashing sword hard at work elsewhere, but it was hopeless. It seemed to him even that blood was streaming down Septach Melayn’s arm, he who had never known a wound in his life. They were beaten.

“Sound the retreat,” Prestimion called.

Just as the signal to withdraw went out, Abrigant came running up alongside him. “The Zimroel army is coming!” the boy said, panting.

“Now? Where have they been all this while?”

“Gaviundar misunderstood. He thought you would not want him until after the cavalry had gone into action. And Gaviad—”

Prestimion scowled and shook his head. “Never mind. I’ve already called retreat. Get you to safety, boy. We’re done for here.”

A sudden nasty disturbance of some sort was going on in the corridor outside the High Counsellor Farquanor’s office in the Pinitor Court. The High Counsellor, looking up in annoyance at this interruption of his work, heard the clacking of boots against the stone floor of the hallway, blustering angry shouts, the clatter of running feet coming from several directions. Then an astonishingly familiar voice rose above the melee, an impossible voice, loud and raucous and harsh, crying out, “Easy, there, easy! Get those filthy hands off me or I’ll have them chopped from your wrists! I am no sack of calimbots to be thrust about by you this way.”

Farquanor rushed to the door, peered out, gaped in amazement.

“Dantirya Sambail? What are you doing here?”

“Ah, the High Counsellor. Ah. Please instruct your men in the proper courtesy due a high lord of the realm, if you will.”