Rulers of the Darkness

Even though Rathar couldn't see much to the southeast, he knew to the minute when the behemoth reserve began to draw near. Half, maybe more than half, of the Algarvian dragons broke off their fight with their Unkerlanter counterparts and flew off to the southeast as fast as they could go. He might not have seen Gurmun coming, but they had.

Rathar ran back to the table where Vatran still stat. As he ran, he shouted for the crystallomancer again. "The commanders of the dragon wings," he ordered when the minor mage hurried up to him. Then he spoke urgently into the crystal: "The redheads kept you from savaging their behemoths too badly. By the powers above, you've got to keep them from punishing ours before they reach the field. If you fail there, we're liable to be ruined."

One after another, the wing commander promised to obey. Rathar hurried back to the edge of the orchard. This time, Vatran came with him. Fewer Unkerlanter dragons were attacking the Algarvian behemoths. He supposed that meant- he hoped it meant- the Unkerlanters were holding the Algarvian dragons away from their behemoths. "Curse the redheads," he growled. "They're altogether too good at what they do."

Vatran set a hand on his arm. "Lord Marshal, you've done everything you could do here," he said. "Now it's time to let the men do what they can do."

"I want to grab a stick and fight alongside them," Rathar said. "I want to be everywhere at once, and fighting in all those different places."

"You are," Vatran told him. "Everybody out there" -he waved- "is doing what he's doing because your orders told him to do it."

"Not everybody," Rathar said. Vatran raised a shaggy white eyebrow. The marshal explained: "The Algarvians, powers below eat 'em, don't want to listen to me at all."

Vatran laughed, though Rathar hadn't meant it as a joke. Then, at the same time, he and Vatran both cocked their heads to one side, listening hard to a low but building rumble to the southeast. Or was it listening? Vatran said, "I'm not sure I hear that with my ears or feel it through the soles of my feet, you know what I mean?" Rathar nodded; that said it better than he could have.

He stepped out from the cover of the plum trees and looked in the direction of the rumble again. A couple of Algarvian behemoths had drawn close enough for their crews to spy him. Eggs flew toward him, but burst a couple of hundred yards short.

And then he whooped like a schoolboy unexpectedly dismissed early. "Here they come!" he shouted. "Gurmun's on time after all."

Now that their crewmen had seen the Algarvian enemy, the behemoths from Gurmun's reserve- several hundred of them, a whole army's worth- broke into a furious gallop, to get into the fight quick as they could. They cut in behind the leading Algarvian behemoths, moving so fast that the redheads didn't have time to deploy against them.

"Look at that!" Hardly aware he was doing it, Rathar pounded Vatran on the back. "Will you look at that? There hasn't been a charge like that this whole bloody war. Some of them are even using their horns to fight with."

If the field had seemed too small with only the Algarvian behemoths moving forward on it, it suddenly got more than twice as crowded. Rathar knew a moment's pity for the footsoldiers on that field. Neither side's behemoths were likely to. Their crews tossed eggs and blazed at one another from ridiculously short ranges. As Rathar had said, some gored others right through their armor, as if they were unicorns back in the days before mages learned how to make sticks.

Grass fires sprang up in a dozen places at once, making it harder for Rathar to tell what was going on even with his spyglass. But he could see that the Algarvians, as was their way, didn't stay surprised long. They fought back furiously against Gurmun's behemoths. Wedges of Algarvian beasts would pop out from behind orchards and copses, toss eggs and blaze at the foe, and then take cover again. Gurmun didn't need long to adopt the same tactics.

Overhead, both sides' dragons battled to something close to a draw. The Algarvians sacrificed Kaunians. Addanz and the other Unkerlanter mages sacrificed their own luckless people to answer. The sorcerous duel, the duel of horrors, was also as near even as made no difference.

That left it up to the behemoths. They surged back and forth over the plain as the sun crawled across the sky. If the redheads had enough beasts left after shattering Gurmun's reserve, their own attack might go on. But Rathar knew that part of their force of behemoths remained some miles to the southwest. It wouldn't get here while today's fight lasted. Gurmun had the advantage of numbers, the Algarvians, in spite of everything, the advantage of skill. With two heavy weights flung into the pans of the scale, they jounced up and down, now one higher, now the other.