Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

Prestimion made his way to Gialaurys’s side. “Clear a path for me to the waterfront,” he said. “My archers will be of more value down there.”

Gialaurys—grinning broadly, soaked through and through with rain and sweat—nodded and drew a platoon of his javelin-men from the main fray. Prestimion saw his brother Taradath just to his side, and pulled at his sleeve. “There’s work for us down by the water’s edge,” he said. And off they went, with their corps of archers behind them, around the left side of the camp under cover of the javelin platoon, and down the gentle muddy slope to the river.

It was madness down there. Septach Melayn had come ashore, as instructed, with his foot-soldiers only; the presence of cavalry battalions on the other bank had been intended only to mislead Farholt. But the invading force had been met, after its struggle with the roaring flood that was the river, with an implacable line of mollitors. The ponderous war-beasts ranged up and down the shore, clawing, stamping, impaling. Septach Melayn’s men were fighting back with spears and javelins, striking upward in the hope of hitting some vulnerable spot beneath their body-armor. But all was mud and blood and driving rain, and Prestimion saw fallen soldiers everywhere.

“Aim for the mollitor-drivers,” he called to his men. For every mollitor had its driver seated in the saddle formed by natural folds of the shoulder-armor, who by signals delivered with a mallet was able more or less to control his monstrous beast. Prestimion’s archers now began to pick them off, sending them tumbling one by one into the mud beneath their own animals’ clawed hooves. The mollitors, confused without their drivers and hemmed in an ever-narrowing space, moved in bewildered circles, trampling their own side; and then, unable to tell friend from foe, wheeled about and erupted in a charge away from the waterfront that carried them right into Farholt’s own cavalry, which was riding down to the shore in a counterattack.

Prestimion fought his way inward until he stood next to Septach Melayne. The tall swordsmen was fighting with wild exhilaration, slashing gleefully and to terrible effect. “I had not thought it would go so well,” he said, laughing. “They are ours, Prestimion! Ours!”

Yes. The battle was won. And now came the final blow. The regiments of Zimroel had been held in reserve; now, under Gaviad and Gaviundar, these troops were crossing the river in a multitude of boats and descending onto a shore no longer guarded by mollitors. Eyes agleam, their hideous faces shining with the joy of battle, the two ghastly brothers seemed transported with ecstasy as they led their men ashore.

What followed was butchery, not fighting.

The royalist army—an army no longer—went into wild retreat as this newest and most utterly unexpected of reinforcements appeared in their midst. The battlefield had become a bedlam of fallen mounts and wounded men and maddened uncontrolled mollitors, and rebel warriors rising up on all sides. Farholt’s forces swirled about wildly in an attempt to break into retreat while the rebels mowed them down on all sides. This was war of a ferocity no one had expected, and they were unprepared to hold their places in the face of such a bloodletting. When an opening appeared to the east, the royalist army melted away into it, first by the tens and twenties, then hundreds at a time taking to their heels and disappearing into the rainy darkness.

Prestimion caught sight of Farholt himself, a gigantic furious figure wielding an immense sword and bellowing orders. Gialaurys had spied him too, and set out in his direction with murder in his eyes. Prestimion called to him to come back, but it was no use, for he had little voice left and Gialaurys was already beyond the range of it.

But then Farholt vanished in a swirl of confusion. Prestimion saw Gialaurys standing alone, looking about, searching for the man who was his particular enemy, unable to find him.

The first light of dawn was in the sky. It showed the muddy field red with blood, bodies everywhere, Farholt’s proud army streaming off in chaos toward the east, leaving mounts and mollitors and weapons behind.

“All done,” said Prestimion. “And done very well.”

The battle by the riverbank had been a great victory for the rebel cause, but not without high cost. By brightening day, as the rains gradually halted and the warm sun appeared, the victors tallied their dead. Kaymuin Rettra of Amblemorn had fallen, and Count Ofmar of Ghrav; and one of the sons of Rufiel Kisimir was dead, and another gravely wounded. That useful guide Elimotis Gan of Simbilfant had perished also, and the master spearsman Telthyb Forst, and many more. Nor was Prestimion any less grieved when he saw the bodies of those who had died on the other side, for though they had chosen to oppose him for Korsibar’s sake, nevertheless they were men he had known for years, some since boyhood, and once had looked upon as good friends. Among them was Count Iram of Normork’s younger brother Lamiran, and Thivvid Karsp of Stee, who was close kin to Count Fisiolo, and also such great men as Belditan of Gimkandale and Viscount Edgan of Guand and Sinjian of Steppior. But Farholt, it seemed, had escaped, he and most of his commanders, fleeing back in disarray toward Castle Mount.

“These are all grave losses, both ours and theirs, and I mourn them all,” Prestimion said somberly to Duke Svor after they had had the rites for them. “And how it galls me that they won’t be the last! How many deaths must there be, do you think, before Korsibar steps aside and allows us to prevail?”

“Korsibar’s, for one,” said Septach Melayn. “Do you seriously think, Prestimion, that he’s merely going to resign in your favor now that he’s lost a battle? Did you renounce your hopes that time he smashed us at Arkilon?”

Prestimion made no reply, but only stared. That this war could only end with Korsibar’s death, or his, was something that he had understood from the first, and yet he could not easily abide the reality of it. It was a formidable thing to contemplate, that Korsibar must die for peace to be restored. And when he thought of all else that must be accomplished before that time, it seemed to him as challenging as making the ascent of Castle Mount on foot.

“And also a second army under Navigorn waits for us by the Jhelum to the north,” Gialaurys pointed out. “We’ll be back in the field before we have time to catch our breaths, and it may not go as nicely for us the next time.”

But it appeared that they would have time to catch their breaths after all, for news soon came from messengers out of the east that Korsibar had withdrawn Navigorn’s army from its position along the riverbank, and was holding meetings at the Castle to discuss the best manner of prosecuting the campaign against the rebels. The winter rains were a hindrance to battle just now in any case. So there would be a respite. The next battle, whenever it came, would at least find Prestimion’s forces rested and ready.

Prestimion set about now replenishing his army, and winning the support of the citizenry here in the hinterlands.

Dantirya Sambail had failed to arrive as promised. That was a problem. The Procurator had sent messages instead: he was, he said, finding affairs at home more complex than he had expected, but he hoped to conclude matters there quickly and join the rebel forces no later than in spring. Meanwhile he offered Prestimion his felicitations over the great victory at the Jhelum, about which he had heard in full detail from his brothers, and expressed the firm belief that Prestimion’s road to the Castle and the throne would be marked by steady success all the way. Which was all well and good, but Prestimion found Dantirya Sambail’s absence troubling. He was capable of being on too many sides at once, was Dantirya Sambail.