Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

He turned away, clambered atop his mount, and rode back toward Prestimion’s lines, thinking with some astonishment of what it would be like to be brother-in-law to the Coronal and husband to the Lady Thismet, and all he would have to do to achieve it was to commit an act of treason against Prestimion no greater than those already done by Gonivaul, Oljebbin, Serithorn, and Dantirya Sambail. A nice transaction, that would be. Treason was epidemic these days.

“Well?” Prestimion asked when Svor had returned. “What was it that he told you?”

“That I would be well rewarded if I defected and brought some of your captains over to Korsibar’s side with me.”

“Ah,” said Prestimion. “He told you that. How well rewarded, exactly?”

“Very well indeed,” said Svor simply, and no more than that.

“And what did you tell him, then?” asked Septach Melayn.

“Why, that I would give his offer the most careful consideration,” said Svor. “No sensible man would have said anything else.”

All that day and far into the night the two armies faced each other across Beldak marsh without moving; and as dawn drew near, Prestimion gave the order for the ascent of Thegomar Edge.

“They are well set forth,” said Septach Melayn.

“So I see. We’ll strike again at their strongest point: break them there, and the rest will yield quickly enough.”

The loyalist forces were ranged in one great solid mass from end to end of the hill’s crest, packed shoulder-to-shoulder to form a solid wall of shields. Korsibar’s front-most men, clad in chain mail and wielding spears, javelins, two-edged swords, and heavy long-handled axes, were a fearsome sight. It was still too early to see what lay behind them, but Prestimion had intimations of an enormous horde of men, stretching on and on into the forest on the eastern side of Thegomar and when the hierax-men went up on their birds, they confirmed that guess: troops stretched out to the east as far as could be seen.

“The Divine be with you today,” said Thismet as he made ready to enter the field; and she kissed him tenderly in front of all the men. But he could see conflict and tension on her face, and fear lurking in her eyes, and he knew that her fear was not only for him. There was a bond between this brother and sister that he could only just begin to understand.

Prestimion’s own force was drawn up in three divisions. In the center were the battle-hardened men of the earlier contests, under his own command, with Septach Melayn and Gialaurys beside him. To his left were the troops of Spalirises of Tumbrax and the men of six foothill towns, with Prestimion’s brother Abrigant in general charge, and on the other flank was Gynim of Tapilpil and his band of sling-casters at the apex of a mass of more recently recruited warriors. In each division the light-armed foot-soldiers armed with bows and crossbows were in the front, heavy-armed infantry with spears in the second rank, and cavalry in the rear.

“Up the slope now,” Prestimion ordered. “Smash through that wall of shields in our first assault, and we’ll drive them panicking into the woods.”

At first light the advance began, covered by Prestimion’s archers. The arrows flew uphill only, with little reply from above, for Korsibar evidently had very few archers in his force. The rebel foot-soldiers went running joyously toward the enemy, with Prestimion’s heavier infantry pounding along behind them, bellowing a raucous chant of victory.

But the shield-wall held. That line was stronger and far more determined than Prestimion had supposed.

His front line crashed against it and it staunchly stood its ground, an impenetrable barrier, and the attackers were met with a fierce tumult of missiles of every kind, javelins, lances, axes, spears, the whole ancient armamentarium of weaponry, more suited to some primitive land than to this great kingdom. And then in one place near its left end the wall of shields suddenly parted and there came forth a battery of energy-throwers hurling bright red bolts into the rightmost wing of Prestimion’s force. That was a frightening sight. Clumsy and difficult to use though the energy-throwers were, as likely to explode in the faces of their own handlers as to do damage to an enemy, nevertheless they raised a great clamor, and where they were effective at all they did terrible damage.

“Hold firm!” Prestimion cried. “They are untrustworthy things, those machines! It’s scarcely possible to aim them straight!”

But it was hard to hold firm, and all but impossible to go forward, in the face of those bright destructive blurts of raw power, random and wild though they seemed to be. Few of Prestimion’s men had faced energy-throwers before. The confidence that had carried them swiftly and eagerly uphill wavered and slipped from them. There was uncertainty among them; and soon there was disruption and then chaos on the rebel right flank, men giving way, breaking formation, turning and fleeing down the hill into the marshy land at the foot of the slope.

Prestimion could feel the turning of the tide almost as a tangible thing. It seemed to him that his entire force might be transformed in a moment from a confident advancing army into one in frantic retreat, and the battle lost right here. Already Korsibar’s cavalry had come out from behind gaps in the shield-wall and was beginning a slow and steady advance down the hill, doing terrible damage as they came.

He rode back and forth, trying to be everywhere at once, even the front line, urging his men to hold steady. Then he heard his mount make a soft sighing sound of a kind he had never heard a mount make before, and it sank down on its forequarters so suddenly that he nearly was pitched forward over its head. A fountain of blood rushed from its breast where some lucky stroke of a spear had caught it Prestimion freed himself from his stirrups just in time, leaping to the ground as the animal fell to its side.

“Prestimion! Behind you!”

He whirled with all his speed. And saw the cold eye and hatchet face of Mandralisca the poison-taster, rushing fiercely upon him with upraised sword. Prestimion managed a quick lunging parry, and parried another thrust instantly afterward. And another, and another, and another, without pause.

Dantirya Sambail has sent his man down into the heart of the battle particularly to kill me, Prestimion realized. I will bear that in mind later, if there is a later for me.

This Mandralisca, plainly, was a demon of a swordsman, every bit as good with steel as he had been that day at the Labyrinth games with the wooden baton. Prestimion had not forgotten the poison-taster’s deft movements then, the dizzying feints and pivots, the swiftness of his wrists, the baton-strokes quick as lightning. Those skills of Mandralisca’s had won Prestimion five crowns from Septach Melayn that day. But he had never expected to have them turned against him in deadly battle.

Mandralisca launched a new flurry of thrusts. Prestimion parried, and parried again, and managed a quick thrust of his own, which the poison-taster avoided with the greatest agility. Now Prestimion pressed his moment of advantage. Mandraliscá was better on the attack than he was on defense, but his speed served him well enough in that quarter too; and after each parry he came back on the attack, as ferocious as before. Septach Melayn himself would have been hard put to deal with him. Prestimion knew of no one else about whom that could be said.

They moved back and forth across the crowded noisy field in a private little arena entirely their own. Quick as Prestimion was, it was all he could do to ward off Mandralisca’s diabolically swift thrusts. Again, again, again the sword came at him; each time Prestimion managed to parry, but only barely fast enough, and his own thrusts fell ever short of the mark as Mandralisca darted mockingly away from them. The poison-taster’s speed was formidable; his handling of his weapon was unorthodox but masterly. It was impossible for Prestimion to pay heed to the battle while his own life was in jeopardy. He had a distant sense of swirling forces, of chaos everywhere; but for him the struggle had come down to a single opponent.