Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

More than five thousand Chaons lay in the pass, either dead or too badly wounded to flee. Another eight thousand warriors slogged their way forward through the rising tide of bodies, still rushing to avoid the deadly hail of arrows that filled the sky above. Dorlyth’s arms were beyond being tired. He had fired his bow until his fingers bled from being rubbed and snapped by (he gut of its string. He paused to gasp for breath, and looked to his left, down to the valley below where Pahd led the defense—for it had become a defense. Pahd’s depleted cavalry was being driven up the mountain, and more and more Chaons shifted to the southern flank, away from that deadly northern wall.

Across the plain, Dorlyth could see the standard of the King of Chaomonous moving to the center of the field. The golden riders that had battled before Tohn’s gates now regrouped around their ruler, and Dorlyth watched as Talith led them to join the battle against Pahd.

“He’s in trouble,” Dorlyth muttered, and he glanced back down into the pass. The arrows continued in a poisonous rain from Venad and his fellows; but Dorlyth could see that, in spite of all those killed in the pass, a huge force of Chaons had gained the field. The Mari northern flank was holding fast, as powerful a barrier as Tohn’s castle walls.

Dorlyth decided the best place now for himself and his archers was at the side of the Mari King. Not even Pahd mod Pahd-el could defeat fifteen to twenty thousand Chaons by himself—much as Pahd might think so.

Pahd’s cavalry, four thousand strong when the day began, had shrunk to four hundred by the time Dorlyth and his reinforcements arrived to help. Yet the King still was laughing. When he saw Dorlyth he shouted. “Never in my lifetime have I enjoyed a day more!”

“Then there’s more fun on the way!” Dorlyth shouted back gravely, as he ran his greatsword through a slow-moving Chaon pikeman. “King Talith rides to meet us, with all of Chaomonous at his back!”

“Bring him on!” Pahd shouted back merrily as his blade sliced cleanly through an enemy’s shoulder. “I’ve yet to meet any Chaon who would be a match even for you.” At least there seemed little chance of Pahd falling asleep again, Dorlyth thought to himself. Then he cleared his mind of everything save swordwork. Dorlyth loved life dearly, and he intended to survive.

Talith’s standard came streaking toward them up the hillside, just as they were driven back into a small meadow dotted with apple trees. Here Pelmen had first introduced himself to Bronwynn, and from this little meadow Bronwynn had fallen in love with the land of Ngandib-Mar. Here, too, Bronwynn’s father and Dorlyth came face to face for the first and only time.

It was by accident that they met, for Pahd had cried out that Talith was his and had ridden for Talith’s flag, while Dorlyth, remembering the saucy Princess that had so delighted his son, did his best to rein his horse away. He turned his back on the standard as Pahd rode past him toward it. But Talith had been separated from his standard-bearer almost the entire day; when Dorlyth left the golden flag, he rode abreast of the Golden King. He knew immediately this was Talith by the wealth of the engraving that adorned the man’s armor and the splendid workmanship of his helmet.

“You are Talith—the King!” Dorlyth cried. “I am! Stand and fight!”

“There are others who would choose to battle you, Talith! I choose to leave you to them!” Talith’s sword whistled over the head of his warhorse, and Dorlyth had to respond quickly to block it. “Your fear will not save you from my blade, Mari,” Talith shouted grandly, “for I have chosen you!” Once again Talith slashed at Dorlyth, and again the bearded old warrior was forced to react swiftly to keep himself alive.

“Will you hold off, man?” Dorlyth shouted, frowning fiercely. “I know your daughter! I won’t rob Bronwynn of her father, nor will I let you rob my Rosha of his!”

“You know my daughter?” Talith shouted. “I know her well,” Dorlyth began, “and am glad—”

“You are the man who holds her!” Talith screamed, trading his battle bravado for a father’s rage.

Dorlyth met the first thrust, and the second, but Talith attacked him like a madman, wounding him inside the left arm.

“I hate this,” Dorlyth said quietly, and he applied himself again to the task of survival. Talith shouted until he was hoarse, calling Dorlyth every name that came to mind. Soon it became apparent that Talith was no swordsman. Dorlyth slackened his attack, withholding maiming strokes in hopes that Talith would give up, and go to seek his death elsewhere in the apple orchard. But Talith continued to come, wearing himself out on Dorlyth’s tireless defense. At last he grew so impatient that he recklessly threw himself forward, his thrust calculated to run the Mart through. Dorlyth jerked away, struggling to maintain his saddle as Talith fell against him. Dorlyth’s sword was caught on something, and he pulled up on it, hard, to free it for the Golden King’s next attack.

But Talith was attacking no longer, and Dorlyth’s sword would not come free. The King had dived onto its point, and already his glazed eyes gazed upon the meadows of some other world. Dorlyth let the dead King’s weight carry his sword tip downward, and Talith’s body slipped from the saddle and crumpled into the grass.

“It appears I always arrive too late to help you!” Pahd shouted as he rode near. “But you always seem to manage so well without me.”

“Would that you had come sooner, Pahd. I already feel a weight from this killing like no killing has birthed in me before.”

“Don’t think on it overlong,” Pahd shouted, slashing a nearby Chaon’s face open. “We seem to be facing a limitless supply of these gold warriors.” But the heart had been cut out of the Chaon army when their King had fallen. They were leaderless now.

As Pahd and Dorlyth waded shoulder to shoulder into the crowds surrounding them, the Chaon attack on the southern flank crumbled and reeled backward down the mountainside.

Those three thousand warriors who had baited the trap now linked up with the Mari barrier on the northern side of the field. The Chaons were encircled on the north and west. As Dorlyth and Pahd labored down the mountain, the southern flank was also closing. There was but one outlet—the pass itself—and it was knee deep in bodies, with Mari archers still waiting along its northern face. Perhaps, had Joss been there, the outcome of the battle of the west mouth might have been different. But Joss was not there. The army of Chaomonous was destroyed.

“They have certainly littered our nest,” sniffed Heinox as he gazed at the stacks of bodies in Dragonsgate.

“And here they come again,” said Vicia. There was alarm in Vicia’s tone, and Heinox popped immediately up to eye level with Vicia and gazed into the pass for himself. A mob of howling warriors ran up the short incline from the plain.

There were thousands of them. The dragon had been just as uncomfortable as the Chaon warriors during the golden column’s march through Dragonsgate. Now, Vicia-Heinox became very tense.

“They are not attacking us,” Heinox reminded his companion.

“Yet,” Vicia snorted.

The fiery rain fell from heaven-arrows, everywhere the fleeing warriors stepped. No wonder they screamed for mercy, and charged desperately at the dragon. They now believed even Vicia-Heinox was preferable to the powerful Mari swordsmen on the field and those hidden demons who dropped darts on them from above. When those first trembling Chaons dashed into the heart of Dragonsgate, they only waved their swords and pike staves to try to force the beast aside. But when Vicia-Heinox refused to budge, they made the tragic error of thrusting those swords into the dragon’s scaly hide.