He saw the bird dive toward a distant cropping of high grass, an Istarian archer level his bow at the creature . . . And then, with a blinding magic that still bedazzled the rebel leader, no matter how many times he had seen it happen, Lucas vanished into a fireball, into a nova of red and amber as though the sun itself had opened and swallowed the bird.
The hawk would return later, from the high air. It would bear stories to Larken of how the Istarians had fled from the desert rout.
In the wake of the golden flame, a rider in Solam-nic armor burst free of the chaos, galloping north toward the foothills, toward safety.
Toward Istar and reinforcement, the bard's fingers snapped out inches in front of Fordus's face. There is only one man who can outrun horses, outrun wind and light and thought…
Stirred by Larken, Fordus gathered himself again and loped down the rise, gaining speed as he reached the plain. He struck an angle to the path of the rider, then broke into an all-out run, blazing through the dry grass at astounding speed.
From the high ground, Larken watched and marveled and chanted, her song weaving through the drum's swift cadence until word and rhythm were indistinguishable, seeming to drive the heart shy;beat of the racing man as he closed with the rider.
When the Solamnic horse refused to hurdle the banks of a dry creek bed, its rider had to rein the ani shy;mal down the hard, sloping incline, losing valuable time in the process.
Fordus raced to the bank and stopped. Standing only fifty feet from the Solamnic, he drew his axe and sent it whistling through the air at the strug shy;gling rider.
The axe drove home between helmet and breast shy;plate. Without another breath, the man slumped for shy;ward in the saddle, and the heavy Solamnic helmet toppled from his head.
This was no knight. All of fifteen, he was, if that old.
Larken, on the high ground a thousand yards away, saw the boy drop from the saddle, a shiny streak of red spreading from his throat onto the sand.
The drum head felt cold and alien beneath her fin shy;gers, and her hands trailed off into soft, mournful sounds.
* * * * *
The flanking attack of the rebels demolished the hapless Istarian infantry. By early evening, when the air had cleared and the sand resettled, General Josef Monoculus, his right eye heavily bandaged, stood propped between wounded Istarian regulars as he handed his sword to Fordus Firesoul. No more than two hundred of the Istarians survived; the prisoners would be taken to the desert's edge and set free, forced to travel the thirty miles to Istar unarmed and on foot. The sand from the storm had already cov shy;ered the dead.
Stormlight thought of the harsh trek across the grasslands and looked toward the defeated soldiers. Some of the Istarians would not survive; hunger and thirst and exhaustion would dispatch a small num shy;ber, and wild animals and bandits would seize a few more. But even a safe return to Istar did not mean that their ordeal was over. Many would fall prey to the grashaunts, the strange insanity that came from too long a stay in level and wide places. These wretches suffered from the delusion that the world around them was expanding, that if they strayed too long out of sight of home or friends, the distances would increase, and they might never find their way back. Such madmen would return to Istar, never again leaving the close confinements of barrack or cubicle or cell. They would waste away by their win shy;dows as they stared fearfully out into an uncertain world that was always receding.
It was true: Fordus treated his prisoners sternly. The road ahead of the defeated legionnaires was the most perilous one.
But not unfair. Indeed, the plains might treat them better than would the comrades and leaders who awaited their return to the city.
Istar brooked no failure, no weakness, and what was defeat but failure and weakness?
Rubbing his arm, bruised in dispatching a rather large and thickly armored Solamnic, a concerned Stormlight watched his commander.
Fordus stared beyond the sullen Solamnic, beyond the assembled, defeated Istarians … to a point on the horizon no man could see.
Stormlight shivered. Fordus had gone again to that place where none of them-not even the bard Larken with her voice and drum-could reach him. When the sea-blue eyes fixed pale in the distance, sometimes all life would seem to flee from them. They glittered, then, like ice, like cut glass, like the salt crystals rising from the desert flats, and there was no warmth in their light, no heart behind the eyes' brilliance. What Fordus wanted, what he looked toward, Stormlight did not know.
"I accept the surrender of General Josef Monocu-lus," Fordus intoned by habit, the eyes of all resting rapt upon his windburnt, impassive face. "And I accept the surrender of his legions."
He waved his hand dramatically over the atten shy;dant rebels.
"And let those who lost dear friends," he pro shy;nounced, "console themselves that the losses were few and in my just and glorious cause."
For a moment his voice faded away, caught on a high northerly wind and carried into the mountains to lose itself in thin air and desolation.
Stormlight looked at his commander sharply. Con shy;sole themselves with few losses?
His just and glorious cause?
Now Fordus rose to his full height above the wounded Josef Monoculus and his trembling Istar-ian supporters.
"And at this hour tomorrow," Fordus continued, "I shall grant these men unconditional freedom." The sea-blue eyes descended to the general, regarded him softly, warmly.
There! Stormlight thought with a strange and sud shy;den relief. Fordus is back among us.
"Your arms will be … confiscated, sir," Fordus explained, quietly and kindly. "You will be allowed to keep your armor and your provisions. Steer by Chislev and the sunrise."
"I know how to find my way across this damned wasteland!" the Solamnic growled.
"Then find it with my blessing," Fordus replied. He smiled absently, and Larken's drum began a slow, somber march. The Istarian troopers guided their commander back into the circle of his men, and mournfully, the defeated legion stacked its arms before the inconsolable general.
It would be the Games for him back in Istar. The doomed gladiatorial struggle against barbarian, dwarf, and Irda. The fortunes of Josef Monoculus had risen, had fallen.
There was some moral here, some fable for the devout, the scholarly. But being neither bard nor cleric, Stormlight climbed to the top of the rise and merely watched the sun set, his thoughts lulled by the warm light on his face and by the steady report of Larken's drum.
Fordus sat in the shadows as the sun descended.
A barbarian youth, schooled for a year as the com-mander's orderly, untied his boots, and Fordus reclined broodingly, his big hands interlaced behind his head.
A song to cheer you? Larken signed. There was a verse she had saved for this day, this victory, and she wanted the last of the sun for its singing.
"No cheerful songs this evening, Larken," Fordus murmured.
The melancholy had come upon him after the armored rider had fallen. He had watched the dead boy for a moment, the blood-matted blond hair wav shy;ing forlornly in the whistling, hot wind, the horse wandering lazily off down the dry creek bed.
As Lunitari rose over the grasslands, purpling the waving grain with a slanted, bizarre light, Fordus brought himself back to the present. "I am tired of too easy," he said aloud, and the bard cocked her head alertly, reaching for the drum.
"No songs about Fordus Firesoul tonight," he said.