Ahead, dressed in a dirty white robe and a brown kaffiyeh, indistinguishable from his followers, his golden collar hidden under the loose robes, the Prophet King shouted and beckoned.
Past judgment and past wisdom, they lifted their shields and followed.
The first wave of arrows rained down upon the rebels.
The archers perched in the distance, perhaps two hundred yards away, and their efforts, spent and inaccurate, clattered against the rebels' uplifted shields and fell harmlessly on the hard ground.
Good. The Istarians were nervous. Too quick to shoot.
The pikemen in the forward ranks lowered their weapons. Men of the Fourth Legion-old foes with a score to settle-quickened their pace, breaking into a run, a shouting, shrieking charge across the level fields where the rebels, woefully outnumbered, braced to face the first assault.
"Now!" Fordus shouted as the lines collided. Rebel weaponry flashed amid the lunging pikes, and Istarian after Istarian fell to the more mobile rebels. The Fourth Legion's attack billowed and eddied around Fordus, Northstar, and Rann, then the Istarian lines broke, the pikemen withdrew, and the distant archers showered arrows once more.
Fordus looked around him. Forty Istarians dead, but twelve of his own, as well. Even more rebels wounded, though these were rising to their feet, preparing for yet another assault.
It did not matter. Reinforcements were coming soon.
From the Kingpriest's Tower, Tamex looked out across the city, past the walls and onto the plains, where the skirmish unfolded. There, banners tilted and nodded as Istarian troops attacked and regrouped, then attacked again, each time suffering grievous losses, it seemed, but each time whittling away at the rebel numbers.
He could not believe the easy foolishness of this War Prophet, this Prophet King. Assaulting the Istar-ians with less than a hundred men.
He scanned the ranks of the entrenching rebels. Plainsman and bandit had gathered the shields and armor of the fallen Istarian pikemen. The desert robes were lost in a swirl of leather cuirasses, of bur shy;nished bronze shields so bright that the glare made the rebels hard to number, their leaders hard to identify.
Surely not Fordus, Tamex thought. Surely this is a scouting party only, and the War Prophet waited behind the lines, safe in an encampment from which he could direct the battle.
With the sight of a god couched in his crystalline eyes, Tamex scanned the horizons, his gaze reaching as far as a small rebel camp, twenty more miles of plains, and then the beginning of the forests.
Nothing.
No concealed forces. No rebel reinforcements, except for that huddled handful in the mountain pass, led by the jilted bard.
Still, the dark general refused to commit his troops. Perhaps Fordus had surprises planned, was waiting for the full assault to unleash a veiled and dangerous tactic.
The woods themselves could be bristling with rebels.
Tamex would wait. He would hurl attack after attack at the entrenching company of Plainsmen, losing ten men, twenty, even a hundred for each fallen Que-Nara.
What difference would it make? The rebels were gravely outnumbered. Eventually, the numbers would win out.
From his balcony, Tamex signaled the herald. The mounted messenger guided his horse to the foot of the tower. Scrawling a hasty message on a scroll, Tamex dropped the missive to the young man, who took it and galloped to the gates of the city, bearing orders for Celeres, the commander of the celebrated Sixth Legion, whose soldiers waited impatiently, hidden from rebel eyes inside the city gates.
Hold ranks, the message said. Wait until further orders.
They would hold until he found Fordus Firesoul.
Weary and battle-shocked, the Fourth Legion withdrew and regrouped in the milling Istarian ranks. Again the archers drew and fired, and then for a moment the battlefield stilled, as if neither side were willing to engage again.
Then slowly, not as if they had not been ordered, but prodded or pushed or cajoled, the spearmen of the Second Legion surged over the beaten plain, two com shy;panies of the finest Istarian swordsmen following.
In a ragged semicircle, their numbers reduced to about fifty, the rebels braced for the attack. In the center of the line, Aeleth nocked his bow, and a dozen Que-Nara readied their slings. On each flank the officers waited-Rann on the left and Fordus on the right.
It was the old tactic, straight out of the Battle of the Plains. First the rebels salted the legion with arrows and stones, then Aeleth's troops turned and withdrew, the angry Istarians charging after. At the right moment, when the Second Legion was spread out and overextended, Fordus and Rann attacked, and the rebels converged on the hapless Istarians, who turned, broke ranks, and ran under a withering assault.
Fordus, eyes alight and head high, whirled across the battlefield like a deadly wind. An arrow passed inches from his head, ripping away his kaffiyeh, and bare-headed, his auburn hair blowing back and tan shy;gling, he urged his men to pursue the fleeing Second Legion.
The enlivened rebels surged around and past him, and the War Prophet whooped ecstatically. He had turned the Istarian army, and behind his charging forces, he thought he saw wavering shapes rising out of the bloodied ground.
The dead. The army of the dead had arrived.
Hear the word of the Prophet.
From his vantage in the Tower, Tamex saw the kaf shy;fiyeh fall from the auburn-haired warrior, saw as well the gold collar at the man's neck.
It was all he needed to see.
"Fordus!" he whispered. Then, aloud, "Messenger!"
The next courier galloped to the city gates, where a thousand men stood ready.
Celeres and the Sixth Legion got their order:
March. Attack. Take no prisoners.
The gates of Istar opened, issuing forth the Sixth Legion, their strides quickening with the loose, con shy;fident movement of veterans. The other Istarian sol shy;diers parted ranks as the crack troops moved into the open field. Spears raised, shields glittering, in a matter of minutes they closed with the remaining rebels.
Twenty of Fordus's troops fell before they could return a single blow. The rebels reeled back, turned, and routed, their destination the camp, the forest- anywhere.
High in her marble perch, masked by the face of Tamex, Takhisis laughed softly. She leaned against the wall, her masculine, faceted body as hard as the stone against which it rested.
And so it would have been over, were it not for the storm that lifted out of the sandy fields and bore down upon the armies.
For Sargonnas had not waited and brooded and plotted to let this moment pass.
When the Sixth Legion surged through the rebel lines, the landscape burst with a hundred geysers of fire. Borne on the rising wind, the glowing ash rained havoc on the Istarian rear guard. The red ban shy;ners smoldered and caught fire, and the vaunted troops scattered, screaming and burning, unable to fight what they could not understand.
In the front of the little battle the Sixth Legion slowed, uncertain. The firestorm rushed at them, passing over them in a deadly wave of fire. The stark hexagonal standards erupted in flame, and Celeres himself fell in the inferno.
On the far flank of the rebel forces, Fordus and Northstar scrambled clear of the storm. Behind them, Istarian and rebel burned on the blasted battlefield-Rann and Aeleth, the vaunted Sixth Legion fell quickly, engulfed in smoke and fire.
"The Prophet King. ." Northstar began. He blindly searched for Fordus in the rolling murk of the smoke-filled sky.
"This way," Fordus shouted, and began to run.
"But, Fordus!" Northstar coughed. "I can't see you…"
The Prophet vanished in a curtain of smoke.
Spiraling to the ground, the great young guide of the Que-Nara crawled the tight circle he had already passed over, then circled it again. Cries burst from the smoke, and at the edges of his awareness, North-star could catch the dance of flames, shadows flit shy;ting back and forth through the smothering, twilight country.