Jeffrey Lord - Jewel of Tharn

Org sounded his little horn again and the barbarians broke into a run, shouting bloodthirsty threats. They came in from three sides, the trumpets clamoring brazenly and incessantly. Terror tactics.

Blade swung his great sword in a glittering arc and called down to his troops: "Stand steady. Hold fast and remember your orders. Above all - obey, orders when they are given!" He could only hope they would.

Xeno handed Blade a standard with a long pennon attached. He waved it over his head. The catapult crews saw it and went into action again. This time they were on target and the machines fell into a regular chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk rhythm as their missiles began to chew up Org's lines. As the front ranks went down Org pushed new men in to nil the gaps.

Blade gave another signal and arrow and airgun fire began to come from the flanks and the smaller forts. It was wavering and inaccurate, but now every dart and arrow counted.

He had arranged the front rank of the square with spearwomen kneeling. Behind them the second rank wielded swords and a few bows and airguns. The third rank stood ready to step into the gaps. The next three ranks, back to Blade and Isma, stood ready in reserve.

Org had timed it well. The attack washed against the embattled square on three sides, simultaneously. The din was outlandish, deafening, a garbled symphony of hate and fear, a howling of demons unfettered. The 926 screeching their battle songs. The Pethcines snarled like wolves as they began to hew a lane into the square.

Org led the first threat, as Blade had known he would. He meant to be there. If he could kill Org before the chariots, under Totha, could be brought into action it might well carry the day. But Org was too cunning to send his war chariots against a square - he knew the horses would die and pile up and form a barrier. Org knew the chariots were his last resort and he would not use them until the square had been broken and thinned. Then he would send in the chariots, with their cruelly scythed wheels, to finish the job.

Org, at the point of a spear of barbarians, savaged his way into the square. His was the only breakthrough. Otherwise the square held fast as the Pethcines, dying on spears and swords, piled up and blocked the passage of the warriors behind them. But Org had pushed a mortal enclave into the Tharnians, mortal unless it was healed at once. Blade went in to heal it.

Their swords glinted and chimed together, hack and slash, counter and parry. Org, his beard soaked with blood, his piggy eyes gleaming red through a mask of fury, let out a hoarse shout as their swords crossed.

"You again, Lord Mazda! Ha - Ho...Blade, the traitor who calls himself Mazda...I, I, Org, will show you who is a God!" For a moment he drove Blade back with the sheer ferocity of his attack.

Blade taunted him. "Where is Totha? Where is your slut of a daughter, Org? I would bed her once more, before I give her to my ceboids for their sport." He began to press Org furiously, the big sword licking in and out like a steel tongue, wounding Org in the shoulder, the thigh, slashing his sword arm above the elbow. Org began to drop back. Most of his men had fallen now as the Tharnian women closed in to heal the gap in the square.

Blade slashed off part of Org's beard. "You should not have listened to Honcho," he taunted anew. "You see where it has led you. You are being defeated by women!"

That was too much for Org to bear. He might have slipped back and disengaged, fought his way out of the square, but instead he let out a dreadful yell and rushed at Blade. All his men were down now and the square close in behind him.

Blade parried a blow, then slashed at Org's hand. The hand, with the sword still in it, flew high into the air. Org screamed and stood staring down at his arm. Before Blade could strike again Org reached and wrested a sword from one of the last Lordsmen. He charged at Blade again, using his left hand now, waving his bloody arm like a battle flag.

Blade took a backward step and held the long sword straight before him. Org, in a raging and baffled fury, ran straight onto the sword. It cut through his armor just below the breastbone and, as he still pushed on, stood out two feet behind the broad back. Org, defiant and hating until the last, ran right up on the jeweled hilt, face to face with Blade. Then, with his eyes dying, he tried to spit.

Blade lowered the sword and let the Pethcine King's body slide off to the blood drenched earth. Isma watched him, and Xeno, and all of the inner ranks. On the perimeter of the square the battle still raged loud and feral. The Pethcines did not yet know their King was dead.

Blade hacked off Org's head and impaled it on the sword. He leaped high on the corpse platform and brandished the bloody head at the Pethcines. He cleared his powerful lungs and bellowed so that he was heard above the wailing trumpets.

"Pethcines. Here is your King!"

For a moment there was no effect, then as more and more of the barbarians saw the lifeless eyes of Org staring from the sword point, his blood still dribbling down the steel, the battle clamor began to still. The Pethcines in the rear, those not yet committed, began to wail. The front ranks, so fierce only a minute before, began to disengage and fall back.

Blade spoke sharply to Xeno. "Signal the catapults. They must fire everything now - everything they have! Fire until the last arrow is gone."

Blade raised on his toes and waved the head at Totha, still waiting out on the plain with her chariots. Totha was impulsive, a murderous little savage to the core. But would she take the bait?

Totha did. The watching Blade saw her scream in fury at the chariot driver beside her. She raised a shell horn to her lips and sounded a blast. The crescent of war chariots began to move forward, slowly gaining momentum. Blade grinned like a tiger over meat and shouted his commands at Isma.

"Break your square. Wheel out, wheel out! Double ranks, close order. You all know the trick, but wait, wait until you hear me give the order!"

The Tharnian women broke the square and began to wheel into a thin double line. There were less than 500 of them left. Blade was everywhere, praising, cajoling, threatening, cursing, trimming and dressing the line. He was close to victory now. He could smell it. If only Totha, mad for revenge, brought her war chariots into the trap...

But there was now new chaos on the plain before the Tharnian front. Blade groaned. To lose total victory now, when he was so close, would be a cruel blow. To lose it because of the panic inspired by Org's death, for which he was himself responsible, would be ironic. Blade stared out at the deadly confusion and scowled. Totha was being given time for second thoughts - she could still disengage and order a planned retreat, and the Pethcines would live to fight another day, the last thing Blade wanted.

The fleeing Pethdne warriors, as the rout gained momentum, ran straight into the advancing chariots. Totha sounded the charge and the war chariots picked up speed. There was no turning back now. Running men met speeding chariots in one great shock wave. Instantly the plain was a wilderness of awesome disorder, or screaming legless men, flashing wheel scythes, cursing and frantic drivers and warriors, rearing and plunging horses. The chariots slowed, the charge blunted, and some of the Pethcine warriors, in their confusion and fear, began to attack their own people in an effort to get clear.

Totha, in a frenzy of screaming rage, set about putting matters straight. Blade watched admiringly as she wheeled around and around in her chariot, shouting orders and spearing anyone who got in her way. Gradually she got her chariots free of the crush of retreating men, and back into battle line. She sounded her shell horn again and the chariots came on. Blade nodded and waited. It had worked out well for him. Totha was coming into the trap, thinking the Tharnian line an easy prey for the chariots. But now there would be no time for the chariots to pick up speed again, and Totha could not guess at Blade's guile.