The emperor’s loud commands agitated his horse, but he controlled Sirrion’s prancing with ease. “That is your task. Succeed, or never come before me again!”
Lord Janar’s round, sunburned face tightened. He saluted again and galloped away with his retinue.
Once they were gone, Ackal V turned to his nearest aide. The emperor was smiling. “Inform Lord Tumult he may attack,” he said. “Remind him of the tactics we set forth in our last council of war.” The messenger departed.
“Cornets!” the emperor shouted. “Sound the call to battle!”
Five hundred trumpeters raised brass horns to their lips and blew the age-old sequence of notes. A concerted shout went up from the Great Horde.
Ahead, in the advance guard, a corps of archers rode out from Havoc Tumult’s ranks. Once within bowshot of the bakali circles, they dismounted, braced their bows, and commenced bombarding the lizard-men. A concerted hiss rose from the bakali, and as one they raised their shields skyward to ward off the lethal rain of arrows.
Tumult sent forward two hordes, the Bulls of Ergoth on the right and the Silver Skulls on the left. They formed into narrow columns just four riders wide and trotted into the gaps between the bakali defensive circles. As expected, the lizard-men on either side of the advancing Ergothians lowered their shields to close in. When they did, more dense flights of arrows rained on them, felling many. Up went the shields again, and the bakali awkwardly tried to attack the horsemen while still protecting themselves from the arrows.
“Spearmen!” Tumult shouted.
The Red Thunder Horde had been armed with long spears in place of their traditional sabers. At the marshal’s command, they charged forward, spears leveled at the bakali trying to crush the Bulls of Ergoth. A terrible chorus of screams arose when the two forces collided. Bakali shields and axes were no match for iron-tipped spears, and the first two ranks went down like wheat before the scythe.
At that moment, something happened that had never happened: the bakali formation broke. The southern side of the circle, inundated by spearmen, disintegrated.
Shouting their emperor’s name, the Red Thunders galloped into the open field and fell upon the bakali circle from behind. The Silver Skulls and Bulls attacked from either side. In short order the enemy was annihilated.
Word of this success reached the emperor’s entourage and cheers erupted. Ackal V seemed unimpressed.
“One company destroyed,” he said coldly. “Now kill the rest!”
On the right, Lord Janar’s Riders crossed a shallow stream and climbed the opposite bank. A hidden ditch tripped the leading horses. Their riders were thrown onto a hedge of sharpened stakes. Janar held up his own horse by sheer strength and pushed through the obstacle, advancing more warily now. The bakali fortress was no more than half a league ahead of him.
Company after company of armed lizard-men poured down the ramps leading to the earthwork structure. Sunlight and humidity gave their green hides an iridescent sheen. Even at this distance their pungent smell seared the nostrils of men and horses alike. The animals rolled their eyes and champed their teeth. Warriors cursed, hawked, and spat.
Once the remainder of Janar’s force was through the ditch and stakes, he cried, “No quarter!” In companies of two hundred, his men charged.
Men and lizards met halfway between the ditch and the fortress. Ordinarily, twenty thousand Riders at full gallop could trample any number of enemy foot soldiers into the dirt, but the bakali set their clawed feet in the dry earth and took the full impact of the Ergothian charge like a cliff facing a crashing sea. Sabers rang off their helmets, their shields, and their thick, scaly skin. In turn their axes and spears wrought much damage among Havoc Tumult’s men. As the front ranks were reduced to bloody wreckage, the following companies charged home.
In time, a raging sea can wear down a stone cliff. So it was with Tumult’s companies. Little by little, they pushed the bakali back. The price was high; blood, both crimson and purplish red, ran thick over the parched soil.
Ackal V, watching from a knoll in the center of the battlefield, had not yet committed his left wing to battle. He was holding them in reserve, ten thousand warriors led by a young Daltigoth warlord named Vanz Hellman. They sat on their horses, motionless as statues, waiting for their emperor to summon them to battle.
Ackal V fed more and more warriors into the battle’s center, shifting his hordes sideways and forward like pieces on a game board. When the bakali formed a tough defensive position, archers and spearmen scourged them until saber-wielding Riders could break them.
Against fierce resistance, the Ergothian center slowly advanced. The casualties were appalling, especially among the sword-armed hordes. They had to close in to fight, and the lizard-men exacted a terrible toll.
The center pulled abreast of Janar’s Riders, then ground ahead. The bakali stronghold was closer now. Built of logs and mud, it resembled a great hornet’s nest fallen to the ground. The fetid, telltale reptilian odor wafted strongly from open holes in its sides. The smell was strong enough to reach the emperor, overcoming the odor of horses, sweating men, and spilled blood.
“Lordjanar falters,” said one of the emperor’s aides, pointing. “The enemy has him stopped!”
Janar had found himself facing a solid wall of green, scaly skin and bronze armor. Bakali continued to spill from the mound in great numbers, filling in the ranks ahead of him until his way was blocked completely. Many were only half-equipped, gripping a sword or axe and wearing the usual ring-mail coat, but lacking shield or helmet. Although strangely uniform in height, the lizard-men varied in appearance. Some had yellow horn ridges on brow and upper lip, and large, domed heads covered by small green scales. Others, lacking brow ridges, had smaller craniums sheathed in iridescent, pale green skin. They stood shoulder to shoulder, horned beaks gnashing, hacking away.
Janar was wounded but still fighting when a message arrived from Ackal V: Press the enemy harder. Voice cracking from the strain, the warlord urged his men to even greater efforts. He knew the consequences of failure.
A shrill screeching sound filled the air. It came from the summit of the bakali fortress and echoed eerily from the dark tunnel mouths. Hearing it, the lizard-men engaged with the Ergothian center ceased fighting and drew back. Before the surprised Ergothians could pursue, a new terror appeared.
Holes opened up in the ground amidst the ranks of Ackal’s hordes. Lids of packed earth, mud, and twigs exploded upward, revealing the entrances to several large tunnels. Armed bakali poured out of these holes. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of fresh enemy soldiers appeared in the midst of the Ergothian center.
Horses reared, throwing Riders to the ground. Ackal V, his son, and his personal retinue were inundated by furious bakali.
The emperor drew his saber and cleaved the skull of an axe-waving foe. As he fended off billhooks and poleaxes, his war-horse lashed out fore and aft with massive iron-shod hooves. Dalar could not hold on and shrieked in terror. Ackal V hacked off the clawed hands grabbing for his son, grasped the neck of the boy’s hacketon and lifted him onto Sirrion’s back.
A bakali thrust a long spear at Dalar, now seated in front of his father. Ackal V lopped off the spearhead, but the wooden shaft caught the emperor in the throat. Choking and furious, he put the point of his saber through the lizard-man’s eye. Blood sprayed over the ashen-faced prince. His father cursed and shoved the dead bakali off his blade with the toe of his boot. Warlords in his retinue finally cut their way through the throng of lizard-men, surrounded their liege, and fended off further attacks.