Horses were crushed by the tremendous pressure of surging infantry; surrounded by the hard-packed mob, Prince Ricardo howled in frenzy as he hacked downward with a flaming sword. Here was the battle joy he had never known! The thrill of bloodshed and victory. The prince chopped down through the helm of a helpless, fleeing man; he whipped high his sword, screamed out his city's name, and thanked Tchazzar for his horse, his blade, and his beaten, shrieking enemy.
The attack had slammed home on the Sumbrian left, where Cappa Mannicci's most loyal Blade Captains had been given the vital flank command. Swept back by the storm, Orlando Toporello urged his gigantic black-bronze horse forward through the flood of his own retreating men, roaring like a maddened troll as the crush bore him relentlessly away. Finally he struggled through into the fight, smashed a Colletran noble from his saddle with a single hammer blow, and tried to fling his units back into the melee.
High above, the hippogriffs dipped and whirled as though disdainful of the muck and mess so far below. The air cavalry fought in loose, wheeling formations, exchanging arrow fire and ever ready to plunge down upon careless combatants below. From time to time a body fell- sometimes buoyed by a feather fall spell, and sometimes simply tumbling to bloody destruction through the churning fog of war.
One formation broke away from the wild airborne melee. Toporello-desperately rallying a stand of pikes to fend off another death blow from the Colletran cavalry-heard a bellowed warning and tugged his horse aside. The enemy hippogriffs slashed mere inches overhead, jerking banners with the numbing speed of their passage, then whirred low across the Colletran cavalry.
The hippogriff riders opened fire, wheeling one after another to shower arrows at a single golden figure riding amongst a press of infantry. The rider reeled as arrows scored sparks across his breast, cursed as one shaft pierced his shoulder plates to wound him, then ignored the injury and spurred his charger deep into the fray.
"My lord! My lord, the Colletran infantry advances!" One of Toporello's officers, his armor torn, blood staining his jaw, gripped his commander's reins. "They will strike us from behind!"
Prince Mannicci had ridden hard to reach the site of the disaster; he paused to let his fellow Blade Captains plunge into the midst of their own men, trying to beat fugitives back into the battle lines with the flats of their swords. Swirled and surrounded by terrified, fleeing soldiers, he ripped open his visor and somehow spied Toporello's standard. The prince raked back his spurs, sent his golden horse ramming a path through the retreating troops, and somehow shouldered the beast through to Toporello's side. Old Toporello, sheathed in blood from head to foot and brandishing a dripping hammer, never once paused in his labors as he spoke to his lord.
"We're outflanked, and the infantry are done for! They'll break within another minute, then run straight for the pass."
"Damn! How did it happen?" Cappa Mannicci's face shone white with rage under his visor's brim. "Ilego's scouts should have seen them before they even crossed the valley floor!"
"Then they used some sort of spell to attack us with surprise!" Toporello saw his center unit break, and readied his tiny stand of rescued infantry to plug the gap. "Do we fight it out, or withdraw?"
"Withdraw!" Prince Mannicci stood in his stirrups, careless of the crossbow bolts and spellfire still blurring through the smoke and dust. "My own ground troops will make a stand before the mouth of the pass. Flee back behind us-we'll cover the retreat!"
"Yes, my lord!"
Toporello had already turned to go on about the business of saving his men as his prince rode away to gather up Sumbria's cavalry. The old general spared a glance at the central melee, frowned as he saw no sign of the Colletran rider clad in gold, then set his heralds trumpeting the signal for retreat.
"Message for the prince! I bear a message for the prince!"
The Colletran herald rode in agitation back and forth through returning swarms of cavalry. The armored knights, their lances broken, horses blown, and still soaring with elation from the slaughterfest of a cavalryman's dreams, rode past toward the rear. They had broken the enemy's left wing. The loss of their own light cavalry was scarcely even remembered; now other troops could pursue Sumbria's fleeing rabble back into the pass. They had done all that Svarezi could desire, knowing that approving eyes watched them from above.
Mounted on a nervous horse-a beast of pixie breed with feathery antennae jutting up from its brow-the herald searched returning faces for a sign of his prince. His mount pranced and skittered back from the overwhelming stench of blood, shying from the brutal laughter on the air.
"A message for the prince! A message for Prince Ricardo!"
A thick, choking mist of fireball smoke and spell-fog rolled across the ground. Silent within the gloom, a knot of riders materialized: three men leading a team of pages who carried a litter made of broken spears. Lolling lifeless on the stretcher was a figure armored all in gold with a helm topped off with purple plumes.
"My lord!"
The herald surged forward in alarm; he dismounted all in a rush and flung himself at his dead prince's feet.
"My liege!"
Above him, the leading cavalryman made a face of scorn.
"You'll have to speak louder than that. He's shot his bolt and gone."
"But how?" The herald laid an astonished hand upon his prince's lifeless breast. "Who could possibly have bested such a man in battle?"
Many possibilities sprang to mind. The Sumbrian boys chorus? The guild of circus clowns? The armored horseman almost made a contemptuous reply, then thought better of it and helped himself to some of the herald's stock of wine.
"One minute he was fighting, and the next… he was down. He must have taken a concussion on the helm." The rider sounded too tired to make much of his prince's death. "He slowed down, missed a parry or three, and got torn to pieces like a lamb thrown to the wolves." The cavalryman nudged at the herald with a broken, filthy sword. "You'll have to go and find a real man's employment for yourself from this day on."
"You will regret this!" The herald shot to his feet, puffing up his breast in wounded pride. "His spirit can be welded back into his body! It will cost a kingdom's ransom, but it can be done! You have delivered us his body whole-so I advise you to repent your hasty words!"
The cavalryman gazed with one cocked eyebrow at the herald's face. He then slid heavily down from his horse, leaned across the golden armor, and wrenched open the helm.
Inside the armored suit, there lay nothing but empty air.
"Like a lamb thrown to the wolves. We brought this back for his widow; the rest is out there in the mess. Perhaps you're better at identifying anatomy than I." The horseman shoved the herald so that the boy fell backward into the mud. "We'll have a new prince by tomorrow dawn. One who knows what to do with his army."
The soldiers spared a glance at the sky above, where a jet-black hippogriff could be seen wheeling through the wild melee. Hoisting up the empty golden armor, the stretcher bearers trudged on into a field littered black with nameless carrion.
"Victory, my lords! Victory!" A Colletran Blade Captain, his voice hoarse from screaming in triumph with his men, rode a limping horse toward his colleagues as they stood their mounts under a sheltering tree. All across the battlefield, the crackle of spellfire and the ring of steel still filled the air, magnified by the close-pressing mountains into a deafening, blurring roar.