Silence had almost returned when Blade saw Mirdon riding toward him on a borrowed cavalry horse. The Commander carried nothing but a bare sword and a bloodstained cloth bag, and in his eyes was a look Blade didn't like very much. He remembered the night he and Mirdon had first met, when the Commander had spurred his horse up an impossibly steep slope to get at Blade. That night Mirdon had had the face of a man determined to do the impossible or die trying. Now the same look was there, even stronger.
«Ho, Champion!» shouted Mirdon. «Will you ride with me?»
«Where to?»
«I ride to throw Dahrad's head-«he held up the sack «-in the faces of the whole of the Raufi. We have already accomplished tonight most of the miracle we needed. But our work will not be finished until we have made the Raufi storm the walls in the face of our guns and our courage.»
«Won't what we've done already be enough?» said Blade.
«Perhaps it could be,» said Mirdon. «But the hope of Kano must not rely on a 'perhaps.' It must rely on what is certain. Not unless I hurl Dahrad Bin Saffar's head into the very camp of the Raufi will it be certain they will come against our walls. Then they will come; and we will have our victory and our vengeance.»
Blade found he did not care as much as he perhaps ought to for the vengeance of the Kanoans. But he knew one thing for certain. If Mirdon was going to ride out on this mad mission, it was his place as the Champion of the Gods to ride along with the Commander. He certainly had no hope of persuading Mirdon not to ride.
«Very well, Mirdon,» he said. «Find me a horse. Let us ride out.»
It took a few minutes to find a horse able to carry Blade's two hundred and some pounds without strain. Then Blade and Mirdon rode out of the Eighth Gate at a canter. The soldiers lined the wall and the tops of the towers to watch them go. Doubtless they thought both men were riding to certain death. But mortals do not question a Champion of the Gods, and the soldiers of Kano had long since given up trying to argue with Mirdon when he had his mind made up.
They cantered past a few stray Raufi wandering about on foot, too stunned by their defeat to pay any attention to the riders or even find their way back to their own lines. They cantered past more bodies of men and camels. Then they were out into the open and the city was receding into the darkness behind them.
Here there had been miles of trees, bushes, and gardens before the Raufi came. Now everything living had been trampled out of existence, shot to splinters, or chopped up to feed the Raufi campfires. The ground was bare and hard, and it stretched for two open, level miles to the Raufi lines. Mirdon dug in his spurs, and his horse bounded forward at a gallop. Blade followed.
A full moon was up by now. It gave the ground underfoot and the dust the horses kicked up a luminous quality. It seemed to Blade that they weren't riding so much as flying effortlessly over a great expanse of pure, glowing light. He began to have the feeling that there were no Raufi ahead, that this flight would go on forever, to the end of the world and whatever might lie beyond it. The pounding of the horses' hooves on the hard ground faded out of Blade's senses, the ruined and splintered trees faded, Mirdon himself faded.
A volley of bullets whistling past snapped Blade abruptly back to reality. Three hundred yards off to the right, more than a hundred mounted Raufi were angling in toward the two riders. Blade looked ahead and saw a line of campfires stretching clear across their path in a wide arc. Mirdon did not pull rein or show any sign he'd seen anything. The two riders plunged on toward the campfires. More bullets whistled past, closer this time.
Blade was just about to shout to Mirdon when the Commander himself seemed to wake from his daze. His sword flashed in the moonlight as he whirled it high over his head. He swung his horse around toward the mounted Raufi.
Blade also pulled his horse around, considerably relieved. He would have followed Mirdon wherever the Commander had led him taking any risks involved. As Champion of the Gods, he had no choice. But he could hardly regret not having to commit suicide!
Somehow, Mirdon was managing to get still more speed out of his horse as they charged toward the Raufi. Blade found it hard not to fall behind. The thunder of hooves and the rank sweat of the laboring horses rose to fill the night and shut out the rest of the world. Now it seemed that they weren't just flying across the ground. It seemed to Blade that they might fly up and away into the sky.
They came up to the Raufi with bullets whistling about their ears, kicking up dust all around their horses, but not hitting them. The darkness and the battle and the strangeness of everything seemed to be unnerving the enemy and throwing off their aim.
The two rode straight in until Blade felt that he could practically reach out and touch the leading Rauf. He saw Mirdon drop the reins and reach down for the canvas bag that swung from his saddle. He saw Mirdon's arm whip out and over, hurling the bag out at the Raufi. He saw the Raufi scatter, spurring their camels frantically in all directions, some of them falling out of their saddles. Mirdon gave a great whooping roar of laughter at the spectacle the Raufi were making of themselves. Then a musket crashed out, and he reeled in the saddle as the bullet took him under his raised sword arm.
Mirdon's horse felt the rider's hand slacken on the reins, and it began to slow. Blade knew that in another moment it might panic and bolt, or hurl Mirdon helplessly to the ground. He frantically urged his own horse forward until he was riding alongside Mirdon. The Commander's face had gone as white as flour. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and pumped steadily from his wound.
Mirdon's arm drooped and his sword fell to the ground. Blade dropped his reins and guided his horse with his knees as he reached out for Mirdon. The Commander lurched and practically fell into Blade's outstretched arms. Blade gave one tremendous heave and Mirdon seemed to fly out of his saddle. He nearly flew right over Blade's horse and pulled Blade to the ground with him, but somehow Blade caught him. With the last of his strength Mirdon twisted himself into a sitting position in front of Blade. Then his head lolled back against Blade's shoulder, and his mouth opened in a gush of blood. Blade hauled his horse's head around toward the walls of Kano and dug in his spurs again.
The horse had less than half its strength left, and it was carrying nearly twice as much weight as before. Somehow Blade's spurs and curses pushed the horse along at a lumbering trot until they were out of range of the enemy. Then the horse slowed to a walk, and nothing Blade could do would push it along any faster. It didn't matter now, though. A squadron of cavalry and a couple of light guns came out from the Eighth Gate and escorted them in.
As they rode in through the gate, Blade heard the First Consecrated's trumpeters sound a long blast. So he was not surprised to see Tyan himself waiting just inside the gate. His sedan chair with its slave bearers stood behind him. Beside it stood two blue-draped litters. Blue, Blade recalled, was the color of mourning in Kano.
There were plenty of hands to lift Mirdon's body down off the horse. That was all anybody could do for him now. Without any orders, half a dozen soldiers carried the body over to one of the litters. Tyan himself bent over it, closed Mirdon's eyes, and drew one end of the draperies over his face.
The tension was draining out of Blade now. He saw a white-robed form stretched out on the other litter-Katerina. Slowly he walked over to stand beside Tyan. Their eyes met for a moment, in a wordless understanding that somehow said a great deal without saying anything Blade could grasp clearly. Blade noticed that there were tears in Tyan's eyes. Then, side by side, they followed the litters as the soldiers bore them off.