Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

And for a moment it seemed that all was up for him. The poison-taster came at him with such a dazzling flurry of thrusts, seemingly from five directions at once, that Prestimion for all his whirling and bobbing could not avoid them all. A hot line of pain ran along his left arm as Mandralisca’s blade sliced into him. He swung about and dropped into a purely defensive stance as the poison-taster came at him again for a finishing stroke; and succeeded this time in beating the blade away, and even in regaining the offensive.

Mandralisca seemed suddenly to be tiring now. He was like a spirited racer who was at his best in brief spurts, Prestimion discovered. His blinding speed was not matched by an equal stamina. The poison-taster had gambled everything on a terrifyingly intense all-out onslaught, but had expended himself without reaching his goal. His parries were less assured, his offensive thrusts fewer and farther between. The malevolence of his gaze was tempered now by fatigue.

Sensing his advantage, Prestimion pressed forward, hoping to land a deciding stroke. For a moment he thought he had Mandralisca at his mercy. But then the battle line surged incoherently about him; he found himself swallowed up in the roaring madness of it and separated from the poison-taster by five or six shouting brawling men who passed between them. They swept him casually to one side as they hacked in a frenzy of blood-lust at each other and moved on, all in a single group locked together by their fury; and when things cleared again, there was no sight of his opponent.

As Prestimion paused to draw in deep breaths and look around the field in the midst of this confusion, he heard a great despairing cry suddenly go up, and a voice call out, “Prestimion is fallen! Prestimion is fallen!”

“Prestimion is fallen!” In an instant the cry was all over the field. “Prestimion is fallen!”

It was like a cold wind blowing across the battlefield. Its effect was felt everywhere. In an instant all the momentum of the battle, which had already been running toward Korsibar, shifted emphatically to his side. Hordes of his men now were moving downhill in triumph, and those of Prestimion, disorganized and dispirited, were helplessly giving ground before them. What had merely been a retreat until now abruptly threatened to turn into a rout.

Gialaurys rode up from somewhere and leaned down toward Prestimion, who was watching in dismay, leaning on his sword, for he was not quite recovered yet from the exertions of his contest with Mandralisca. “Quick! Show yourself to them!” Gialaurys cried. And descended from his mount in a quick leap and thrust Prestimion up into its saddle as easily as if lifting a child.

Prestimion bared his head and stood high in his stirrups as he rode up and down along the ragged ranks of his men. “Here I am!” he shouted in a voice to split the sky, and found strength somewhere and drew his bow and sent a shaft uphill that brought one loyalist down, and then slew a second and a third, all three almost in a single instant. His arm trembled from the wound he had had at Mandralisca’s hand, but the bow held steady.

Gialaurys too ran to and fro, shouting and pointing to show that Prestimion still lived. As the men caught sight of Prestimion’s golden hair and saw him wielding his great bow, another cry went up: “Prestimion! Prestimion! Lord Prestimion lives!” They began to rally their courage. The disorderly retreat on the right was continuing but elsewhere the rebel lines began to form again, and on the strong left flank Spalirises and Abrigant were beginning to move upward, toward the massed ranks of the loyalist force.

But they would only be thrown back a second time, of that Prestimion was certain. He felt a moment of despair. His confidence had led him to overreach himself in planning this attack. There was no way to take the high ground from Korsibar. Some new strategy was needed on the spot.

And then Septach Melayn came riding by and said in Prestimion’s ear, “Look you there, where our right flank’s falling back. Can you believe it? Korsibar’s infantry men are following them down the hill!”

Prestimion stared, incredulous. It was like a gift from Providence.

“Why, then this is our moment,” he said.

Indeed, the whole side of Korsibar’s shield-wall opposite the fleeing rebels had rashly broken its impenetrable rank and was giving pursuit down the slope, which forfeited them the great advantage of their position. A gift, yes, a gift of the Divine!

Prestimion sent word for the retreat to continue on the right and even to intensify, everyone without exception in that entire wing instructed to turn and flee, giving every sign of terror and panic. The feigned retreat drew the enemy, sensing victory, down the hill with them.

But at the same time Prestimion brought a host of fresh archers up on the left, ordering them to shoot their arrows high into the air so that they would come down behind the loyalists’ shields. And at a signal, Duke Miaule’s cavalrymen came into the fray, riding swiftly uphill to surround those loyalists who had left their line, cutting them off from hope of escape.

The tide, which had run so strongly in Korsibar’s favor only moments before, began quickly to turn back the other way.

In moments Korsibar’s entire force was hovering on the brink of utter chaos as Miaule’s men came at them unexpectedly from the side. That intimidating battery of energy-throwers had ceased its fire: in the frenzied melee the gunners no longer could distinguish friend from foe, and some had perished from the malfunctions of their own badly constructed instruments. And as the glare of their last few bolts died away, rebels on mountback came sweeping in over their fortification and fell upon them, slashing furiously with their swords. The loyalist ranks were broken and scattered in an instant. Everywhere on the field men were being trampled and cut down. Some, unable to rise, crawled toward safety. Others ran.

This was the time, Prestimion knew, to bring his ultimate weapon into play.

“The maguses!” he called. “Let them come forward!”

They marched forward from the camp in a single group: old Gominik Halvor, whom Prestimion had summoned down from Triggoin for this, and his son Heszmon Gorse, and ten or a dozen other high wizards of the northern city, men famed throughout the world for their skill at the mystic arts. All of them were clad in their most solemn regalia and bore the implements of their trade in their arms. A great gasp of dismay went up from Korsibar’s men higher on the hill as they saw this procession emerge from Prestimion’s rear lines. Protected every step of the way by a phalanx of Prestimion’s most trusted warriors, they advanced across the lowland plain. Then, to the accompaniment of trumpets and blaring kannivangitali, they gathered in a circle and setup a solemn droning chant and sent pyres of blue flame rising to the sky.

It was mid-morning now. The sun was bright overhead. But in a moment the sky began to grow-thick-with clouds and the sun seemed to dim, and then the blackness of a moonless midnight came over the field, and all those who fought there were wrapped so deep in that descending dark that they could barely see a dozen paces beyond their noses.

Prestimion’s men had been warned of this. Korsibar’s had not, and tumbled into a terrible confusion.

“Now!” Prestimion cried. “Now! Now! Up the hill again, and cut them to pieces!”

And from elsewhere on the battlefield, as the last shred of discipline among the bewildered loyalists was lost and they began to mill and churn in helpless disarray, came the roaring cry from Prestimion’s captains: “Now! Now! Now! Now!”

Gialaurys, in the darkness, saw a place before him that was darker even than the rest, and as his eyes adjusted to the change that had come over the battlefield, he realized that the darkness in front of him was a man who had the width of a wall, and he knew him to be his old nemesis, the brutish Farholt.