All organization was lost as more bakali poured out of the hidden tunnels. Ackal’s well-planned attack degenerated into a vicious melee.

“Your Majesty!” cried his cousin, Hyduran Dermount. “Summon the reserve! Send for Lord Hellman now!”

In answer Ackal V struck the gray-bearded warlord on the jaw with the hilt of his saber. Hyduran fell backward off his horse.

“No man gives me orders!” Ackal V roared. “We came here to kill bakali. So kill them!”

Several warlords suggested he and the crown prince should remove to safety, but Ackal V refused. “Better to die in battle than yield to these lizards!” he told them.

Six hundred paces away, Lord Janar likewise was battling for his life.

The blond warlord, who’d been a shilder with Tol at Juramona twenty-five years before, weighed sixteen stone and was known for his robust constitution. Four times wounded, including a deep stab in the thigh, he still sat tall in the saddle and bellowed encouragement to his men. When he noticed that the outpouring of bakali from the stronghold had thinned, Janar called for the rearmost horde in his formation, the Thorngoth Sabers, to ride wide around the bakali line. Under cover of the heavy dust clouds hanging in the air, the Sabers pulled out of line.

That order was Janar’s last. An thrown axe connected solidly with his forehead. He swayed in the saddle, and fell. Unconscious by the time he hit the blood-soaked ground, he was hacked to pieces by five bakali who muscled through the press of horsemen to reach him. They in turn were slain by vengeful Riders.

The Thorngoth Sabers found the edge of the bakali phalanx and rode wide around it. Hooting and screeching, the lizard-men turned to meet the new threat. The lead Riders steered around their slower, clumsier foe. Agitated, the creatures thinned their line further in an attempt to contain the Ergothians. Their line was four ranks deep, then three. When it thinned to only two bakali deep, the Sabers wheeled in unison and charged.

For one brief, gory moment the bakali line held. Then it shattered. Bakali, minus limbs or heads, flew aside as the Sabers burst through into the open. Leading the charge was young Estan Tremond, son of the governor of Thorngoth. Estan wore his golden hair long, like his father, and it flew behind him as rode hard for the ramp leading into the fortress.

The pressure on Janar’s hordes slackened. A shout went up. The Ergothians had flanked the bakali line. They were nearly to the mound. For the first time the lizard-men wavered.

Moments later, the same hesitation struck the bakali fighting among the Ergothian center. Their usual cold-blooded prowess faltered. Anxious looks were cast back at their threatened fortress.

The emperor thrust a clenched fist into the air. “Now is the time!” he declared. “Send word to Lord Vanz to bring his men forward. He will strike the enemy on our left, as we contain them here!”

Six couriers carried the message, to ensure it would reach its intended recipient. Only two made it through the confusion and carnage. The first courier found Lord Vanz sitting on horseback in the shade of an alder tree.

Only twenty, Vanz Hellman was already an imposing figure. A descendant of northern seafarers, he was dark-skinned and very tall. When his hair had begun to thin two years earlier, he shaved his head and kept it so. He wore no mail beneath his cuirass, so his bare arms, impressively muscled, showed clearly under his turned-back mantle.

The courier galloped up to him, gasping out his message: “My lord! His Majesty commands you to advance!”

“Thank you,” Hellman replied. His voice was low and very deep. He remained motionless on his white horse, giving no orders.

As the puzzled courier prepared to repeat his message, the second messenger arrived, face bloody, right arm hanging limply at his side. He relayed the emperor’s order and received the same calm acknowledgment.

Lord Vanz called for a draft of wine.

More than a league away, the Thorngoth Sabers gained the foot of the enemy’s ramp. The thick walls of the bakali mound were heavily plastered with mud and leaves. The ramp spiraled upward, growing narrower as it rose. Scores of round openings dotted the walls next to the ramp. None were defended.

The Sabers sensed a trap, but urged their horses onto the ramp anyway. When they tried to turn the animals toward the first of the yawning holes, the horses balked. Ergothian war mounts did not shy from the clash of iron or the smell of human blood, but none could be made to push through the vile, throat-clogging odor emanating from the entrance to the bakali stronghold. Their riders were forced to dismount and proceed on foot, sabers drawn.

Within was a winding gallery fitfully lit by the streams of sunlight coming through the entry holes in the walls. As more Riders arrived, they followed their comrades inside, leaving the lowest-ranking among them outside to guard the horses.

There were only two choices, head up or down. As the stronghold was broader at the base than the summit, it made sense to seek the enemy below. Armor jangling, Captain Tremond and his men descended the curved gallery. The interior ramp was wide enough for them to walk five abreast.

A single guard appeared, wielding an axe in each clawed fist. He held them off for some time, skillfully dodging saber thrusts and whirling his twin blades with such force that a single hit severed heads or limbs. They finally overwhelmed him by sheer weight of numbers. After severing his hissing, spitting head from his torso, they continued downward.

The evil stench grew stronger as they descended. So did the enervating heat and humidity. Some warriors, veterans of many battles, became so nauseated they collapsed. Comrades with stronger stomachs kept going.

The curving gallery ended in an open chamber. Pine and cedar knots burned fitfully in the gloom, casting just enough smoky light to reveal the room’s vastness. It was forty or fifty paces across, its domed ceiling supported by trees ripped from the ground and installed with their branches and bark still on. The chamber was lined from wall to wall with thousands of oblong yellow-gray objects, each about the size of a small wine cask.

Tremond poked the nearest of the objects with his sword. The leathery skin yielded. Instantly he realized what they had found.

“Corij preserve us!” he breathed. “It’s a hatchery!”

The bakali eggs were layered four or five deep. There were easily a hundred thousand of them in this single room. They accounted for the terrible smell, as well as the heat and drenching humidity.

An Ergothian slashed the nearest egg. Its pliant shell split and thick green fluid gushed out, as did an amorphous-looking dark mass-an immature bakali. Several soldiers gagged at the sight, but most, following their comrade’s example, began slashing at the eggs. Soon the soldiers were ankle-deep in yellow-green slime.

Tremond halted his men’s frenzied retribution. At this rate they would drown before a thousand eggs were destroyed. Something stronger was needed.

Torches burned in the curving gallery behind them, but the eggs were soft and moist, and the air heavy with damp. It would be impossible to get a blaze going without copious amounts of oil or some other fuel.

“The trees!”

The cry had come from a warrior who carried one of the axes taken from the bakali guard. He stepped out onto the uneven surface of the egg trove and picked his way toward the center of the chamber. There, he drew back the iron axe and began to hack at a tree trunk. Wood chips flew.

Chest working to take in the humid, harsh air, Captain Tremond thought briefly of home, of the fresh breezes that blew off the bay in the mornings. Then he shouted, “Everyone! Cut down those posts! All of them! Right now!”

A soldier with gray in his beard caught his young captain’s arm. “You know what will happen when we cut through those supports, don’t you?”