Jeffrey Lord - Jewel of Tharn

Isma breathed hard beside him. The female odor of her, mixed with sweat beneath the body armor, was pungent. She said: "Who is the Maiduke, Blade?"

He shrugged and did not look at her. "I think Zulekia is her name. All I know is what Sutha has told me. She was sent to Honcho to be punished for karno, and Sutha used her as a spy. Honcho must have found her out and now he is going to punish her. Perhaps he thinks it will frighten us, seeing her torn apart by the horses."

"Then why doesn't he do it," said Isma. "What is he waiting for?" There was an odd, choked timbre to her voice and Blade looked at her. She was staring through the smoke at Zulekia and the horses, her dark eyes alight with expectation and her red mouth open. As he watched a dribble of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth. Blade turned away.

Isma said: "Why don't they tear her apart?"

"Honcho has his reasons," said Blade. "Get back to your women, Isma. The attack will come any moment now. And be sure you obey my orders exactly as they are sent to you!"

Isma licked her lips with her tongue. She looked at him sulkily. "Yes, Lord Blade! But I do not understand any of this - why do we not retreat into Urcit and simply destroy the Pethcines with the Power? I cannot understand why you wait."

Blade scowled. "I do not explain my orders. Even to you. Go, Isma, and do as you are told."

She scowled back and she muttered, but she went He watched her rejoin her women and the spindling, scrawny array of Lordsmen. Blade chuckled without glee. Now he was going to have to watch his back. And he must trust Sutha. There was no help for that.

Most of the tents had been burnt out by now. The Pethcines were ignoring them. They were forming into a long double line of skin clad warriors with pointed hats and each carrying a shield and sword and a long spear. Squads of bowmen were deploying in front of the line, on either flank. Trumpets called and echoed and there was much frenzied running to and fro. Blade nodded in satisfaction. It looked like a frontal attack.

He searched anxiously for the chariots and saw them forming up far to the rear, in leisurely fashion. For the moment Org was keeping them in reserve and Blade breathed a bit easier. He knew that his ceboid flanks could not stand up to a chariot charge.

The catapults had stopped shooting fire arrows now. Blade gave another signal, relayed by the vigilant Xeno, and the sound of the catapults changed to a deeper note as they hurled huge jagged blocks of teksin into the enemy ranks.

Whunaaaaggg...whunaaaaagggg...whunagggggggg...

One of the teksin missiles struck, bounced and skipped through a file of Pethcines, leaving behind a dozen shredded hunks of flesh. Screams of anger and pain and terror burst from the Pethdne ranks, but they were filled in at once. Org was striding up and down before his men, waving his sword and haranguing them. A teksin ball struck within a foot of him and he did not appear to notice. Blade nodded reluctantly. Org was a barbarian, a savage, but he was a brave one.

The rain had let up. The wind had stiffened and was whipping the Pethcines' banners straight out from their poles. A final trumpet rasped and then, as if both armies had taken a last deep breath, there was a tiny island of silence among the tumult.

Blade unsheathed the sword. High on the pyramid of bales, above them all, he brandished the sword at the Pethcine lines. His deep baritone roared above the wind.

"Here is your sword, Pethcines. Come and take it!"

Org made a cunning feint with his frontal attack. The Pethcines, their battle cries swelling into a sullen roar, charged forward fifty paces and then halted. They turned and ran back. Blade's catapults, depressed now, poured a hail of battle arrows and bags of teksin shrapnel into the area just vacated. Blade cursed. Wasted ammunition, and it was short. He shouted to the bowmen to hold their fire. He wanted the Pethcines to waste their arrows, not his own.

Org now sent his, or Honcho's, ceboids in a double flanking attack. Blade recognized the maneuver. Org was willing to sacrifice ceboids just as Blade was.

Blade sent half the Lordsmen to back up the ceboid officers who in turn were backing the whipping neuters. He saw Isma protesting the order, but the Lordsmen formed, wheeled and marched off. Blade was grim.

The ceboid skirmish was short and fierce. Honcho's beasts came on with animal grunts and howls, waving their swords. Blade held the fire of the catapults, though a flanking fire could have been deadly, because he did not have arrows and teksin bombs to waste on ceboids.

He kept an eye on the war chariots. They were still in ranks far to the rear. Zulekia was still spreadeagled between the nervous horses. Honcho stood nearby, his arms folded, staring at the developing fray. For a moment Org and Totha were out of sight Then, just before he turned his attention back to the ceboids, Blade saw Totha running back toward the chariots.

Blade's ceboids held because of his foresight in planting the ceboid officers behind the neuters. Several of the neuters panicked and tried to run, but the officers cut them down with snarls of joy. Blade knew that a lot of old scores were being settled.

Honcho's neuters, on the other hand, had no stiffening behind them. They whipped their ceboids forward, but when Blade's line held, and the melee broke down into dozens of individual fights - when their weapons did not serve the ceboids went for each other with teeth and claws - Honcho's neuters despaired and began to retreat. Blade gave a signal then and the catapults went into action once more. They hurled shrapnel and six-foot war arrows that skewered four or five neuters at a time. The rest threw down their whips in terror and ran. Without the whippers behind them the ceboids of Honcho broke and fled also. It was soon over and Blade's ceboids had the field. They began tearing the throats out of the wounded ceboids and neuters.

There was a new flare of trumpets as the flank attack subsided and washed back. This time the Pethcine ranks came on in earnest, stepping smartly to the thumping of a crude skin drum.

Blade sent his bowmen to the ramparts of the forts. They began to drop a deadly hail into the advancing Pethcines. Still they came on. Org was leading them and Blade gave instructions for one of the catapults, and a squad of bowmen, to concentrate solely on the King of the Pethcines. Org waded on through the cloud of arrows, untouched.

The bowmen, Blade was using a mixture of high-level neuters and Maiduke maidens, did better than he had expected. They were accurate enough and the barbarian ranks were already thinned by the time they reached the glacis and began to toil up it. The first rank became tangled on the stakes and the teksin wire and wavered to a halt, trying frantically to disentangle themselves. The rear ranks came on, foolishly and bravely, piling up like the surf on an unfriendly shore.

Blade shouted at Xeno and made a prearranged signal. The Maiduke girls with the few air guns trotted into position and began to hurl darts into the milling savages. The arrow fire kept on. The catapults, depressed now to the limit, worked with a steady chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk as they flung arrows and hundred-pound chunks of teksin and bags of jagged shrapnel into the mass of struggling and dying Pethcines. Still they came on, wave after wave of them, to die.

Blade rubbed his big hands together in glee. His battle plan was working. He cast a glance toward the lines of chariots far to the rear. Still no action there.

Org, in the midst of the chaos, was hacking a way through the stakes and wire with his sword. The fat King was bleeding and sweating and baying defiance like a wounded wolf, shouting and beating at his men with the flat of his sword and trying to urge them up the glacis.