The Fifth Army marched eastwards, through jungles of stone. The invaders melted away before it. Most skirmishes were confined to dimday—neither side would fight either during darkness or when both suns were high. But the Fifth Army, under KolobEktofer, was forced to travel during full day.
It travelled through earthquake country, where ravines ran obliquely across its path. Habitation was scanty. The ravines were a tangle of vegetation, but there, if anywhere, water was to be found—as well as snakes, lions, and other creatures. The rest of the land was pocked with umbrella cactus and scrub. Progress across it was slow.
Living off the land was hard. Two kinds of creature dominated the plain, numberless ants and the ground-sloths which lived off the ants. The Fifth caught the sloths and roasted them, but the flesh was bitter in flavour.
Still the cunning Darvlish withdrew his forces, luring the king away from his base. Sometimes he left behind smouldering campfires or dummy forts on elevated sites. Then a day would be wasted as the army investigated them.
Colour-Major KolobEktofer had been a great explorer in his youth and knew the wilds of Thribriat, and the mountains above Thribriat, where the air finished.
“They will stand, they will stand soon,” he told the king one evening when a frustrated Eagle was cursing their difficulties. “The Skull must soon fight, or the tribes will turn against him. He understands that well. Once he knows we’re far enough from Matrassyl to be without our supply trains, he’ll make his stand. And we must be ready for his tricks.”
“What kind of tricks?”
KolobEktofer shook his head. “The Skull is cunning, but not clever. He’ll try one of his father’s old tricks, and much good they did him. We’ll be ready.”
The next day, Darvlish struck.
As the Fifth Army approached a deep ravine, forward scouts sighted the Driat host drawn up in battle lines on the far bank. The ravine ran from northeast to southwest, and was choked with jungle. It was more than four times a javelin’s throw across from one bank to the other.
Using hand signals, the king mustered his army to face the enemy across the ravine. The Phagorian guards were stationed in front because the ranks of motionless beasts would bring anxiety into the dim minds of the tribesmen.
The tribesmen were of spectral aspect. It was just after dawn: twenty minutes past six. Freyr had risen behind cloud. When the sun broke free of the cloud, it became apparent that the enemy and part of the ravine would be in shadow for the next two or more hours; the Fifth Army would be exposed to Freyr’s heat.
Crumbling cliff slopes backed the Driat array, with higher country above. On the royal left flank was a spur of high ground, its angles jutting towards the ravine. A rounded mesa stood between the spur and the cliffs, as if it had been set there by geological forces to guard the Skull’s flank. On top of the mesa, the walls of a crude fort could be seen; its walls were of mud, and behind the ramparts an occasional pennant was visible.
The Eagle of Borlien and the colour-major studied the situation together. Behind the colour-major stood his faithful sergeant-at-arms, a taciturn man known as Bull.
“We must find out how many men are in that fort,” JandolAnganol said.
“It’s one of the tricks he learnt from his father. He hopes we’ll waste our time attacking that position. I’ll wager no Driats are up there. The pennants we see moving are tied to goats or asokins.” They stood in silence. From the enemy’s side of the ravine, under the cliffs, smoke rose in the shadowed air, and an aroma of cooking drifted across to remind them of their own hungry state.
Bull took his officer to one side and muttered in his ear.
“Let’s hear what you have to say, sergeant,” the king said.
“It’s nothing, sire.”
The king looked angry. “Let’s hear this nothing, then.”
The sergeant regarded him with one eyelid drooping. “All I was saying, sire, is that our men will be disappointed. It’s the only way a common man—by which I mean myself—can advance himself, sire, to join the army and hope to grab what is going. But these Driats aren’t worth looting. What’s more they don’t appear to have females—by which I mean women, sire—so that the incentive to attack is… well, sire, on the low side.”
The king stood confronting him face to face, until Bull backed away a step.
“We’ll worry about women when we have routed Darvlish, Bull. He may have hidden his women in a neighbouring valley.”
KolobEktofer cleared his throat. “Unless you have a plan, sire, I’d say we have a nigh-on impossible task here. They outnumber us two to one, and although our mounts are faster than theirs, in close combat our hoxneys will be flimsy compared with their yelk and biyelk.”
There can be no question of retreat now that we have caught up with them at last.”
“We could disengage, sire, and seek for a more advantageous position from which to attack. If we were on the cliffs above them, for instance—”
“Or could capture them in an ambush, sire, by which I mean…”
JandolAnganol flew into a rage. “Are you officers, or she-goats? Here we are, there stands our country’s enemy. What more do you want? Why falter now, when by Freyr-set we can all be heroes?”
KolobEktofer drew himself up. “It is my duty to point out to you the weakness of our position, sire. The smell of some women as booty would have encouraged the men’s fighting spirits.”
In a passion, JandolAnganol said, “They must not fear a subhuman rabble—with our cross-bowmen we shall rout them in an hour.”
“Very good, sire. Perhaps if you would address Darvlish as filth it would increase our men’s fighting spirit.”
“I shall address him.”
A dark look was exchanged between KolobEktofer and Bull, but no more was said, and the former gave orders for the disposition of the army.
The main body of men was dispersed along the ragged lip of the ravine. The left flank was strengthened by the Second Phagorian Guard. The hoxneys, numbering fifty in all, were in poor condition after their journey. They had been used mainly as pack animals. Now they were unloaded so as to serve as cavalry animals, to impress Darvlish’s men. Their loads were piled inside a shallow cave in the spur, and guards put on them, human and phagor. If the day was not carried, those supplies would provide booty for the Driats.
While these dispositions went forward, the wing of shadow suspended from the shoulders of the opposite cliffs was retracting, like a giant sundial set to remind every man of his mortality. The Skull’s forces were revealed as no less imposing than they had seemed when shrouded in blue shade. The ur-human tribes wore a tatterdemalion collection of hides and blankets thrown on their bodies with the same negligence as they threw themselves on their yelks. Some wore bright-striped blankets rolled about their shoulders, to give themselves extra bulk. Some wore knee-high boots, many were barefoot. Their headgear inclined to massive biyelk-fur headpieces—often horned or antlered to denote rank. A feature common to many was the penis, painted or embroidered on their breeches in furious erection to denote their rapacious intent.
The Skull was readily visible. His leather and fur headpiece was dyed orange. Antlers thrust forward from it about his moustachioed face. A sword wound sustained in his earlier battles with JandolAnganol had slashed away his left cheek and the flesh of his lower jaw, leaving him with a permanent death-grin, in which bone and teeth played a part. He managed to look fully as ferocious as his allies, whose fur-fringed eyes and prognathous jaws gave them a naturally savage aspect. A mighty biyelk was his steed.