The seven thousand Guardians were on the move well before daylight the next morning. By dawn they were in the foothills of the mountains. By the time they stopped for a quick breakfast of bread and salt meat they were several thousand feet above the plateau. Blade could see it spreading out below them to the south and west. Far away toward the horizon was the faint smudge on the land marking the base camp.
The Emperor's purple banner still flapped in the morning breeze at the head of the column. Blade had to admit that Jores VII was showing unexpected courage. The Guardians were moving into unknown and possibly hostile territory, with only the refugees from the mountain tribes to guide them. Yet the Emperor was holding his place at the head of his troops.
The air started to become thinner as they moved higher, and the horses began to labor. Zogades was getting edgy. «We're going to be getting up there too damned close to dark for my liking,» he growled. «We won't be in too good shape to make a safe camp, and that's not smart with the enemy sure to be close. Even a couple hundred Scadori could make a mess if we're not ready for them.»
«Everybody's too busy thinking of killing a couple of thousand Scadori,» said Blade sourly. «Nobody's thinking of being attacked by a couple of hundred.»
By early afternoon the column was winding around the base of a mountain. On the other side of the mountain lay a narrow pass. Beyond that pass lay the besieged tribesmen and their enemies.
By the time Blade's regiment swung around the flank of the mountain, the Emperor's banner was already well up into the pass. Blade looked at the steep, heavily forested sides of the pass. It would slow the whole column down to put out scouts on the flanks, for they would have to go on foot. Speed was certainly important. But was it as important as finding out what lay in those miles of thick pine forest stretching up toward the sky on either side of the marching Guardians? Blade didn't think so.
The pass was about five miles long. As Blade's regiment entered it, he realized this was just long enough to hold the whole column of Guardians. Looking ahead, he could see the purple banner still in the lead.
In another half hour the last regiment was into the pass. Looking ahead now, Blade saw a smudge of yellow smoke rising from the forest to the left. The color didn't look quite natural, but he was looking into the sun and couldn't be sure. When he looked again the smoke was gone.
Then he looked toward the rear of the column. The last troop of the last regiment was now a good half-mile up into the pass. Beyond it, at the very mouth of the pass, two thick columns of blue smoke coiled up from the trees.
Blade knew suddenly that the Scadori were watching the Guardians climb the pass. That was not too much of a surprise. It would be only common sense on their part. What bothered Blade was something else. Was watching all the Scadori were doing?
Blade's question was answered almost before he finished asking it. The familiar sounds of the marching column vanished in a sudden, terrible uproar. Scadori trumpets blared, Scadori drums thundered, Scadori warcries rose shrill and harsh all up and down the pass. Bushes and branches crashed and crackled as the warriors of Scador swarmed down from the forest to the attack.
Blade knew that he would never see a better ambush carried out on any battlefield in any Dimension.
In a few moments Blade realized that he might not ever be seeing much of anything more. A quick glance up and down the column told him the whole grim story. He could see several thousand Scadori already in action. Hundreds more were swarming out of the trees at every moment, slashing, stabbing, and yelling like fiends. Where the warriors hadn't yet closed in, they were sending volleys of arrows and spears into the ranks of the Guardians.
The noise doubled as the Guardians recovered from their shock and started defending themselves. Their warcries and the frantic screams and whinnyings of maimed and dying horses made a hideous uproar. Their arrows whistled into the bushes and into the oncoming Scadori, their swords flashed down and came up dripping blood, their darts flew through the air and drove through warriors' shields and the warriors carrying them.
But Blade knew that the battle was lost the moment the jaws of the ambush closed on the column. There were too many Scadori. Too many of them were getting in too close. Time after time a Scadori warrior ran in under a Guardian's sword and thrust a spear or a knife upward into his enemy's horse. Time after time the horse went down, a scream bubbling in the blood from its gaping throat or its intestines tangled around its hooves. Some Guardians went down with their horses and never rose again. Some by luck or skill stayed on their feet. But the Scadori swarmed around them, so the best they could usually do was to take an enemy with them. Guardian and Scadori would go down together, stabbing and clawing and even biting at each other in a last murderous death-grapple.
Once more Blade found himself obeying his reflexes as a fighting man. Never mind what he thought of the Karani, the Guardians, or the idiotic generalship that had led to this disaster! The Scadori coming at him out of the woods were going to kill him if he didn't kill them first. He didn't have it in him to die without a fight.
So as the first of the Scadori ran at him, Blade made his horse rear. Iron-shod hooves lashed out, smashing the warrior's head to a pulp and bowling him head over heels. A second warrior hesitated for a moment. That moment was long enough for Blade to sink a dart into the man's skull exactly between the eyes. Then the ground seemed to sprout Scadori warriors. Blade downed another with a second dart, then unslung his shield, drew the long cavalry broadsword, and went to work.
He had the advantage in height, he had the advantage in reach, he had the advantage in striking power. He slashed through necks and hacked off arms that reached out toward him. Blood splashed unwounded Scadori and the flanks and neck of Blade's horse. The horse squealed and whinnied in fear and rage, but Blade kept it under control. It went on rearing, smashing down with its hooves, snapping with bared teeth, kicking backward and sideways. It impartially knocked down the living and trampled the dead and dying underfoot. It threw almost as much terror into the attacking warriors as Blade's whirling sword did.
Blade was a magnificent archery target. But the Scadori archers were afraid to shoot when their comrades were so thickly clustered around Blade. Their arrows found other targets up and down the Guardians' crumbling column.
Eventually the Scadori pulled back from around Blade. Fifteen or twenty of them lay still or writhed and moaned on ground now soaked and slippery with blood and mangled human flesh. Blade knew that would be the moment when the archers opened fire. He sprang down from his horse, snatched up his own bow and quiver, and began searching for targets for his own arrows.
Blade's tremendous fight had cleared away the Scadori from immediately around him. Those who weren't dead had fled into the woods. Under cover of the pines they were slipping up and down the pass in search of easier prey elsewhere along the column.
Even in the fading light Blade could see that half the Guardians were already dead or at least no longer fighting back. He knew they would all be dead before long. The Scadori seldom took male prisoners, and never from the hated Riders of Death.
The Scadori archers seemed to have stopped shooting. But they had brought down practically all the Guardians' horses. Now the surviving Guardians were holding barricades of their dead horses and their dead comrades. They were holding them with desperate courage, and they were killing a good many Scadori. But it was a doomed last stand. Any Guardian who was not clear of the pass before darkness would be dead before sunrise. Darkness was less than an hour away, so there were not going to be many survivors from the Guardians of the Coral Throne.