Degar turned to Blade. He also was covered with blood, some of it his own, although none of his wounds were serious. He heaved a sigh of relief, but his face was grim.
«This was a night of mysteries as well as one of battle, Blade. But it is no mystery what we must do. Our march into the lands of the Karani cannot go on, now that they are alerted and present in strength. We must march back to Scador.»
Blade had to agree. The rising sun shone down on at least six or seven hundred bodies lying along the edge of the camp. More than half were Scadori. Many more of Scador's warriors lay wounded or dying in the tents behind. Blade could hear their moans as he stood. The surprise attack, their superior armor, and their discipline had given the Karani the edge they usually had in a stand-up fight.
Degar went on. «I do not know how the infantry was so far away last night that our scouts could not find them, yet close enough to attack in the night. If they had not been forced to attack through the forest, they would have overrun the camp while we still struggled up from sleep. Then the sun would be shining down on your body and mine and Tera's as well.» Hardened warrior as he was, Degar could not keep from shuddering at the thought. Blade had a moment's vision of Tera screaming and writhing under the pounding bodies of a succession of Karani soldiers, and almost shuddered himself.
«Another mystery is where the horsemen are,» said Degar. «The Riders of Death do not often come out. But an army of Karan always has horsemen somewhere nearby. If they had struck us on one side or the other while we fought off the infantry…» This time he found the idea too disturbing to even finish the sentence.
«Yes,» said Blade. «We've been lucky to escape as lightly as we have. But let us get ready to march, or the Watchers may take good fortune away from us and give it to the Karani. This talk of mysteries is to ask questions that we shall not be answering here and now.»
Degar nodded slowly. «You speak truly, Blade. It is time to admit that this night the Karani have won, and see that they do not win again.» He turned away and began shouting orders.
Chapter 7
The raiders of Scador were on the march back toward the pass before the sun was much higher in the sky. The High Chiefs sent off two hundred archers as soon as the battle was over, to march straight to the pass and hold it to the death. The Karani had never attempted to seize the pass before. But then, they had never made a night attack before. Fear of the unknown now filled the warriors of Scador. What new surprise was the enemy going to spring on them? Blade saw veterans of a dozen raids into Karan looking about them as though they expected the Riders of Death to sprout from the ground like grass or fly down from the sky like eagles.
Blade and the fifty-odd survivors of his band formed part of the rear guard, four hundred strong. All of them were warriors, except Tera. Blade would have sent her up to the main body where she would be under her father's protection. But she refused to leave Blade's side just as stubbornly as he had refused to eat her share of the food on the march.
«I will live in shame if I am not as strong and brave in a woman's way as you are in a warrior's way,» she said. «Would you have me live that way?» There was no good answer to that. So Tera tramped along in her usual place behind Blade's horse as the army of Scador wound its way up out of the lowlands toward the pass.
Blade was not marching with the rear guard in any hope of fleeing to the Karani. He knew that would have to wait until another time and another raid. That might be quite awhile. But in the meantime he would be honored among the Scadori. Besides, there was Tera.
But he did want to observe Karani fighting methods more closely. That was just common sense, and also an unbreakable habit. The rear guard was most likely to see more fighting today, and therefore the best place for Blade.
As the sun rose higher, Blade found sweat pouring down his body, itching horribly under his armor and leather and mixing itself with the caked blood that he hadn't found the time or water to wash off. Gradually the army climbed upward, the landscape around them showed more rocks and less grass and trees, and the air turned cooler. The mountains flanking the pass began to loom higher and higher against the blue sky.
The bare land stretched farther and farther on either side. They were not yet above the tree line, but the nearest stand of forest that could give cover to any sizable force was now a good two miles away. No force of heavily equipped Karani infantry could cross those miles without being seen, or strike before the Scadori were formed and ready to fight. In fact, they might never even reach the Scadori. On a long uphill run, a warrior of Scador could easily leave the best and toughest Karani soldier panting far behind.
But what was that glint of sunlight on metal, on the fringes of that distant stand of woods? Blade shaded his eyes with his hands and looked. The sunlight was unmistakably glinting from the armor of-horsemen-swarming out of the forest. Some of the leaders were already beginning to sweep out across the open slopes, toward the Scadori. Blade opened his mouth to shout a warning.
Before he could take a single deep breath a dozen others shouted the warning for him. «Ho! Ha! Ha! Stand, stand and pray to the Watchers! The Riders of Death come! The Riders of Death are upon us!»
For once, four hundred warriors of Scador seemed ready to panic. Some took to their heels, dashing away up the slope, hoping to reach whatever protection they might find in the main body and in the rough ground closer to the pass. Others, even more panic-stricken, ran wildly off in directions that offered no hope at all of safety. A few threw their weapons down on the ground and knelt, crossing their arms and bowing their heads in prayer.
Blade leaped out of the saddle, drawing his broadsword with one hand and grabbing Tera around the waist with the other. He practically heaved her into the saddle. She clutched the reins by instinct, tottered, but stayed on the horse.
«Ride! Ride, woman! Ride for the pass and for Degar! Pray for yourself until you get there, and for the rest of us when you are safe!» He slapped the horse on the rump. It whinnied and started off up-slope. Tera screamed back at him, eyes wide.
«Blade, I will not-!»
«Yes, you will!» he roared. «You will not disobey me this time, I swear by the Watchers!»
Tera threw a frantic, pleading look at him, her face twisted more in fear for him than for herself. But the horse was gathering speed, and her desperate pulls on the reins had no effect. Blade could only hope that she could stop the beast at the pass or that someone could stop it for her. Then he put her out of his mind and turned back to rally the rear guard. Once again he was thinking only as a fighter, a fighter determined to go out on his feet. The Karani were the enemy, and that was all they were.
His voice roared out above the prayers, the shouts, and the mounting thunder of the approaching Riders. «Stand and fight, you crawling black bugs, or you won't live for the Karani to kill you!» He brandished both of his swords so that dazzling light glinted from them and he seemed to be waving fire above his head. «Stand and give those high-riding swine a fight they'll remember if they live through it! Stand and give them a fight until our comrades are safe in the pass! We'll have our comrades' prayers and the prayers of their sons and their women when we go to the Watchers! Stand, and be warriors of Scador and not pigs or mongrel dogs or things that crawl in the dust!»
Every man in the rear guard heard him. The Riders of Death more than a mile away could have heard him! The Scadori who were starting to flee froze in their tracks.