Part 32 (2/2)

They never seem to learn that the solemn word of a Firvulag holds only when given to another Firvulag or a Tanu-not to a Lowlife. I mean, how can you make a pact of honour with a nonperson?”

”But they keep falling for it,” Ayfa observed, shaking her sable-helmed head in wonderment. ”Even the biggest Lowlife of them all!”

The King leaned forward in his seat, scowling. ”Pingol's bunch is getting too d.a.m.n close to the cage. Why doesn't he call up the defensive screen? Any minute now those prisonersTe's tus.h.i.+e!”

At the monarch's exclamation of dismay a hail of iron-tipped missiles exploded from the cage and rained upon the frontal a.s.sault force. There were scattered screeches and wails and a tardy telepathic command. A sparkling barrier of mental energy sprang raggedly into existence, flickering here and there as some dwarf belatedly linked into the defensive metaconcert. The Lowlives bellowed in derision and sent off salvo after salvo of arrows. Most of Pingol's company held their ground and concentrated on shoring up the mind-s.h.i.+eld, which steadied into a translucent bubble-section three or four metres high that hovered just ahead of the forward ranks. Even at a distance, Sharn and Ayfa could hear the sinister tinkle of iron points striking this barrier and falling away.

Well done! the King broadcast, by way of encouragement. He rose up and a.s.sumed his guise of a monstrous scorpion. A handful of gnomes raised a pro forma cheer, but most of them had all they could do to keep the great protective umbrella erected. For others, motionless on the rocks in tumbled and broken att.i.tudes, the mental shelter had come too late.

”They didn't act together, and the screen's too widespread,”

Ayfa noted, glowering her disapproval. ”And that t.u.r.d-head Pingol waited much too long before giving the command-”

”Here come the big girls!” Sharn exclaimed.

Fouletot's ogresses were swarming up the defile to the left of the cage, a businesslike little screen protecting them in the steep terrain. A dozen or so of the giant exotics, perhaps one-fifth of the total force, fell back from the others and gathered into a close formation. An instant later a gout of blue flame soared up from their midst like a shot from a Roman candle. It arced high above the ridge and fell onto the cage roof, where it sank slowly through the heavy gridwork to the accompaniment of hideous Lowlife screams. Coils of greasy smoke seeped out around the rocks. After a brief pause, a furious shower of arrows descended upon the ogresses. One fell, howling, and the survivors hastened to expand their screen.

Downslope in front of the cage, the gnomish force was redeploying. A desultory discharge of arrows fell on them, to be mostly deflected by their mental screen. This was now much more compact and efficient, generated by a semicircle of creative stalwarts who slowly advanced up the hill. Only the occasional missile penetrated, but these were sufficient to bring death with the slightest wound. The humans inside the cage jeered and screamed at the top of their lungs every time an exotic fell.

Now Pingol's fighters left off waving their halberds and skulldraped standards and formed three bodies in close array behind the moving s.h.i.+eld. Suddenly three glowing b.a.l.l.s of energy, almost white beneath the harsh sun, flew up in cometlike trajectories and converged upon the cage. The structure burst actively into flame and the prisoners inside shrieked and leaped about, batting at the blazing timbers with their garments and dousing the more stubborn flames with their scant supply of drinking water. The storm of arrows abated only slightly, and within minutes was thicker than ever.

The smaller force of ogresses had attained a rocky platform, a stratum of denser rock that capped the top of the ravine about fifty metres below the end of the cage. The ledge was very narrow, little more than a sharp lip strewn with slippery scree from the precipitous slope above. Rather than attempting this, they strung out in a cordon, maintaining the mind-screen umbrella. At a farspoken signal, each warrior extended her black gla.s.s-sword and opened a slit in the screen. From the points of the weapons flowed individual corruscating rays that united, just before striking the cage, into a thick, twisted flash of lightning. It hit the cage squarely, and at the same time a blast of thunder reached the ears of Sharn and Ayfa and caused them to blink, so that they missed the beginning of Pingol's charge-then shouted in delight at the sight of the gnomes, still in their disciplined trifid formation preceded by the s.h.i.+elders, racing up the hill and bombarding the cage with a fusillade of small psychocreative bursts.

”Beautiful!” shouted Sharn, las.h.i.+ng about with his scorpion tail. He knocked over the refreshment table, but neither he nor the Queen seemed to notice that they were jumping up and down in a mess of spilled beer, hooby mushrooms, Danish cuc.u.mbers, slices of black melon, eel a la Flamande, and candied malmignattes.

Ayfa cried: Smite the Lowlife b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Arms united, minds united!

And the Firvulag soldiery responded: Yllahayl the Foe!

The thunderbolt generated by Fouletot Blackbreast and her platoon had knocked that end of the cage to flinders at the same time that it killed numbers of human defenders outright. The survivors now began to scramble out onto the rocks, brandis.h.i.+ng their bows and arrows, long knives, and small tomahawks, ready to engage the advancing Firvulag hand to hand. More fireb.a.l.l.s popped up from the dwarf attackers. The ogresses got off one last streak of lightning, completing the demolition of the cage.

Then humans and exotics mingled in combat, the Lowlives diving under shaky mental screens or shooting arrows in high parabolas so that the missiles might strike the rear ranks of the enemy. Discipline among the exotics wavered, then collapsed.

Both officers and troops forgot about working in metaconcert and reverted to the traditional fighting form. They bawled out the old battle cries, shape-s.h.i.+fted into monstrous apparitions, and fell upon the outnumbered Lowlives. Dwarfs hacked and flailed with serrated obsidian blades. Ogres thrust about, impaling bodies with barbed lances-or even s.n.a.t.c.hed up disarmed humans to rend them limb from limb. The tumult reverberated throughout the fastness of Grand Ballon mountain. Plumes of smoke and steam rose as the odd stalwart remembered orders and used mental energy to annihilate the foe.

Sharn and Ayfa, wearing their normal shapes and saying nothing, watched. The blinding disk of the sun descended behind the towers of High Vrazel and a cool wind swept away some of the carnage stench. Carrion birds circled and began to descend.

Finally there settled over the rocky battleground a great stillness, and in the minds of the King and Queen rang the simultaneous farspoken voices of Pingol and Fouletot: High King and High Queen-we proclaim a victory in Te's name!

All the dwarfs and ogres and middling monsters came together on the foreslope beneath the devastated cage, and with weapons and standards raised on high, shouted: ”Praise and glory to Te, G.o.ddess of Battles! And to Sharn and Ayfa, High King and High Queen! And to the Great Captains Pingol and Fouletot-and to all of us!

Arms united! Minds united!

Slitsal!

Slitsal! Slitsal!

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