Volstokin's knights began to flee. Enraged, Vodicka prepared to sacrifice his infantry.
Mocker watched with delight and game-fan commentary. The Nordmen had no infantry of their own. Unhorsed, without the protection of footmen, they would be easy prey for Volstokin's more mobile men-at-arms.
The shaghun asked Vodicka to hold the infantry. He would turn the tide.
Mocker had encountered many wizards. This one was no mountain-mover, but was superior for a survivor of El Murid's early anti-sorcery program. If he were an example of what the Disciple had been developing behind the Sahel, the west was in for some wicked surprises.
He conjured bears from smoke, unnaturally huge monsters misty about the edges but fanged and clawed like creatures bred only to kill. The Nordmen recognized them harmless, but their mounts were impressed beyond control. They broke, many throwing their riders in their panic.
"Now your infantry," said the shaghun.
"Woe," Mocker mumbled, "am doomed. Am condemned to hopelessest of hopeless plights. Will never see home of self again." His fellow prisoners watched him curiously. They had never understood his presence. He had done nothing to enlighten them. But he had learned from them.
He knew who planned to betray whom, and when and how, and the most secret of their changing alliances. But Mocker suspected their scheming no longer mattered. Vodicka's and Bragi's armies were the real powers in Ravelin now.
Vodicka's leadership remained indecisive. Twenty miles from Vorgreberg he went into camp. He seemed to be waiting for something.
What came was not what he wanted. From his seat outside Vodicka's pavilion, Mocker listened to the King's curses when he discovered that the Queen's Own, though inferior in numbers, were upon him. While the surprise attack developed, Vodicka and the shaghun argued about why Tarlson was so confident.
Mocker learned why they had been waiting.
They were expecting another Siluro uprising.
But Tarlson should have anticipated that possibility. Had he rounded up the ringleaders?
Mocker supposed that Tarlson, aware of his position, had elected to rely on boldness and speed.
He brought his horsemen in hard and fast, with little armor to slow them. From the beginning it was obvious he was only mounting a raid in force.
Yet it nearly became a victory. Tarlson's men raged through the camp, trailing slaughter and fire. One detachment made off with cattle and horses, another drove for the Royal pavilion.
Mocker saw Tarlson at their head, shouted them on. But Vodicka's house troops and the shaghun's bodyguards were hardened veterans.
The shaghun crouched in the pavilion entryway, chanting over colored smokes. If there had ever been a time for a Mocker trick, this was it. He had begun to despair of ever winning free. He wracked his brain. It had to be something that wouldn't get him killed if he failed.
A not-too-kind fate saved him the trouble.
A wild thrust by a dying spearman slipped past Tarlson's shield and found a gap behind his breastplate. The Wesson plunged -from his saddle. With the broken spear still protruding, he surged to his feet.
A youth on a big gray, hardly more than a boy, came on like a steel-edged storm, drove the Volstokiners back, dragged Eanred up behind him. Tarlson's troops screened his withdrawal.
In minutes it was over, the raiders come and gone like a bitter breath of winter wind. Mocker wasn't sure who had won. Vodicka's forces had suffered heavily, but the Queen's men might have lost their unifying symbol...
Mocker reassumed his muddy throne. His future didn't seem bright. He would probably die of pneumonia in a few weeks.
"Ignominious end for a great hero of former times," he told his companions. He cast a promising, speculative glance the shaghun's way.
iii) Reinforcements for Ragnarson
Two hundred men sat horses shagged with winter's approach, forming a column of gray ragged veterans remaining death-still. The chill wind whipped their travel cloaks and pelted them with flurries of dead leaves while promising sleet for the afternoon. There were no young men among them. From beneath battered helmets trailed strands predicting life's winter. Scars on faces and armor whispered of ancient battles won in wars now barely remembered. Not one of that hard-eyed catch of survivors wore a name unknown.
From distant lands they had come in their youth to march with the Free Companies during El Murid's wars, and now they were men without homes or homelands, wanderers damned to eternal travel in search of wars. Before them, a hundred yards away, beyond the Kavelin-Altean border, stood fifty men-at-arms in the livery of Baron Breitbarth. They were Wessons, levies still scratching where their new mail chafed, warriors only by designation.
Rolf Preshka coughed into his hand. Blood flecked the phlegm. Paroxysms racked him till tears came to his eyes.
From his right, Turran asked, "You okay?"
Preshka spat. "I'll be all right."
On Preshka's left, Valther resumed sharpening his sword. Each time they halted, sword and whetstone made soft, deadly music. Valther's eyes sought something beyond the eastern horizon.
Preshka waved a hand overhead.
The column took on metallic life. The mercenaries spread out. Shields and weapons came battle-ready.
The boys beyond the border saw their scars and battered arms, and the dark hollows where the shadows of the wings of death had passed across their eyes. They could cipher the numbers. They shook. But they didn't back down.
"Be a shame to kill them," said Turran.
"Murder," Preshka agreed.
"Where're their officers? Nordmen might be less stubborn."
The scrape scrape of Valther's whetstone carried during a lull in the wind. The Kaveliners shuddered.
Rolf turned. Several places to his right were three old Itaskians still carrying the shields of Sir Tury Hawkwind's White Company. "Lother. Nothomb. Wittekind. Put a few shafts yonder. Don't hurt anybody." Qualifications for the White Company had included an ability to split a willow wand at two hundred paces.
The three dismounted. From well-oiled leather cases they drew the bows that were their most valued possessions, weapons from the hand of Mintert Reusing, the acknowledged master of the bowmaker's trade. They grumbled together, picking targets, judging the breeze.
As one three shafts sped invisibly swift, feathered the heads of leopards in the coats of arms on three tall shields.
The Kaveliners understood. Reluctantly, they laid down their arms.
Preshka coughed, sighed, signaled the advance. East of Damhorst he encountered a band of Kil-dragon's foragers. They were lean men with a few scrawny chickens. The larders of twice-plundered Nordmen were growing empty; Kildragon wouldn't permit looting the underclasses. Since Armstead Reskird had been fighting a guerrilla campaign from the Bodenstead forest, hanging on even after his enemies had given up trying to hunt him down. He had lost a third of his Itaskians, but had replaced them several times over with Wessons and Marena Dimura. He and Preshka joined forces, continued along the caravan route toward Vorgreberg. Other than Volstokin's army there was no force strong enough to resist them. The Nordmen had collapsed.
Preshka wondered where Bragi was. Somewhere deep in the east at last rumor. After Lake Berberich, Lieneke, and Sedlmayr, he had disappeared.
Rolf moved fast, avoiding conflict. There was little resistance. The faces he saw in the ruined towns and castles had had all the fight washed out. He always explained that he was bringing the Queen's peace. His force grew as angry, defeated, directionless soldiers abandoned the Nordmen for the Queen.
He passed south of Woerheide, heard the peasants mumbling about sorcery. It was chilling. What did this shaghun have in his bag of tricks?