John Dalmas - The Yngling

They galloped away almost unmolested, then slowed, jogging their horses northward through the forest until they approached the marsh. Scouts sent down to the river reported large numbers of horse barbarians on the opposite side who had outflanked the fire, perhaps by swimming their horses down the river. Nils had his men abandon their horses, and they moved into the marsh, hidden in the wilderness of tall reeds and cattails and safe from any cavalry attack.

Not far downstream they found a ford, crossed the broad, sluggish current, and started westward. They moved concealed well within the marsh's edge. It wouldn't do to be detected. If they were, there'd be no chance of reaching the remounts they'd left the night before.

"What do we do if someone's found the horses?" asked a blood-spattered warrior.

Nils grinned at him. "You're spoiled by all the riding we've done in this country. Imagine you're back in Svealann and be ready to walk. We'll know in a few kilometers."

After a bit a scout came through the reeds to him. "Nils," he said in an undertone. "We can see the woods where we left the horses. It's crawling with enemy."

Nils turned to his runners. "Hold the men up. I'm going to see what possibility there is of drawing them into a fight. I don't think they're foolish enough to attack us in the marsh, but we don't want to miss any chances."

He moved to the marsh's edge and lay on his belly in the muck, looking through a screen of reeds across the narrow band of prairie separating him from the woods. There were hundreds of mounted orcs in the vicinity; it would be suicide to try to reach the horses. Then he recognized a banner and his eyes narrowed. They were the elite guard.

Nils called out strong and clear in thought. "KAZI! (He projected an image of himself, sword bloody, foot on a dead orc.) HOW MANY MEN DID YOU LOSE TODAY? THREE THOUSAND? MORE! AND I DOUBT WE LOST MORE THAN A HUNDRED."

There was a commotion among the orcs as several psi officers caught the taunt, and a huge figure in glistening black mail rode out from the trees on a magnificent horse. Although Nils lay concealed, the face looked exactly at him.

"So it's you, Northman." The thought entered Nils's mind, cold and quiet. "Have you come to die?"

"Not me. We're enjoying ourselves too much." Kazi's utter calm alerted him for some deadly surprise. "You like to watch butchery, Kazi. Why don't you send your orcs into the marsh?"

The great cold mind fixed on his without discernible thought or emotion, only deadly presence. Finally it spoke. "Will you fight me, Northman?"

"What assurance can you give that your men won't attack me if I come out?"

"I'll come most of the way to the marsh's edge," Kazi answered. "We'll be closer to your men than mine."

Again their minds locked for a moment, like eyes, and Nils read no sense of treachery there. Only grimness. He turned to his scouts. "The black giant is Kazi, the one called Baalzebub. We've spoken through the mind and agreed to fight, the two of us. If any of his people ride out toward us, blow a war horn and cover me so I'll have a chance to run for it."

Then he looked out through the fringe of reeds again while a line of archers formed behind him. Kazi was speaking to the officers with him in what seemed to be Arabic. Some of them rode in among the troops, but still Nils sensed no treachery.

After a moment Kazi dismounted and walked toward the marsh, slowly, his iron mind locked shut. When he had covered somewhat more than half the distance, he paused, and Nils came out of the reeds. They walked toward one another. To the northmen peering out, Kazi looked immense, emitting an aura of utter and indomitable force. When only a few meters separated them, they raised swords and shields, and then they met.

Kazi's first stroke would have severed a pine ten centimeters thick, but it was easily dodged, so that his sword nearly struck the ground and he barely caught Nils's counter on his shield. Shock flashed through Nils's mind: the man knew little of sword work. Kazi's second stroke followed too quickly after a feint, so that it lacked force and left him extended. Nils's shield deflected it easily and he struck Kazi's thigh, cleaving flesh and bone, knocked the black shield aside as Kazi fell, and sent his sword point through mail and abdomen, feeling it grate on the spine. A third quick stroke severed the head, and Nils turned and trotted for the marsh. But no orc rode out and no arrow followed him.

The northmen and Finns slogged westward along the edge of the marsh until, in early afternoon, the prairie beside it ended in forest. They turned south among the trees, rested awhile and went on. When night fell, they were still walking, following game trails by instinct and moonlight. At length Nils sensed thoughts that indicated Polish conversation. Leaving his men, he approached until he could hear quiet voices and called out an Anglic. "Ahoy. We're the northmen, back from the ambush. Where is Casimir?"

A knight moved warily through the shadowed moonlight, peered closely at Nils and recognized him. "The army is scattered and Casimir is with us. I'll take you to him."

He found Casimir squatting dour and tired beside the dying embers of a fire. The king's eyes fixed him in the darkness. "Well, they're through us, and that's that. Thousands of them, about midday, riding hard. We jumped them, and it was hot and heavy for a while, but we were getting too scattered and cut up, so I had retreat blown and we fought our way back into the timber the best we could. They disengaged then and rode west down the road through the forest."

"Were they all horse barbarians, or were there orcs with them?"

The king sat silently for a few seconds as if looking at the question. "All horse barbarians. We didn't see an orc all day."

"You probably won't. I killed Kazi, and the orcs took heavy losses at the river. Without Kazi I expect they'll turn back. He was the very source of their being, and they'll be lost without him."

"Kazi dead! Then we've won after all!" Fatigue slipped from Casimir as he got to his feet. "Without him the horse barbarians will split into raiding tribes, feuding with each other, and scatter all over Europe. Given time, we can destroy them or drive them out, and rape and destruction we can recover from."

"Yes," said Nils, grinning in the moonlight. "And you can bet the western kings will get their share of fighting now."

During the next few days the allied forces re-gathered and recovered. Knights counted bodies while northmen and Finns scoured the countryside rounding up the horses of the dead, replenished their stock of arrows, and smoked racks of horsemeat over fires. A head count showed nineteen hundred allied cavalry able to ride but fewer than four hundred dead or badly wounded, leaving about a hundred unaccounted for. One of the dead was the gangling Jan Rezske. The bodies of nearly six hundred horse barbarians were tallied.

The northmen had lost seventy-eight and the Finns nine.

It was dusk. Zoltan Kossuth and Kuusta Suomalainen squatted on the ground with Nils, a psi tuner beside them on a fallen tree. Nils was giving Raadgiver a resume of the fighting, ending with Kazi's death and the westward movement of the horse barbarians, bypassing the allied forces. "There'll be some ugly fighting yet, and the western kings can't rely on the Slavs to do it for them any longer. You need to hold the western armies together now, especially the French."

"And what will your northmen do?"

"We're going back to northern Poland until our people have finished landing. They have only freeholders there to protect them. We'll see more fighting yet. Then we'll go to Kazi's land, or the others will. I'll follow them later, with a little luck."

Briefly Raadgiver's mind boggled. The ragtag northern tribes with only twelve hundred warriors surviving were deliberately going to Kazi's land. And without their guiding genius. So Kazi was dead; his empire still was powerful. The old psi felt a wash of dismay: they would do this in the face of sure destruction, yet seemingly with full confidence! It threatened his reality.