“Is it marble?” he asked Kizac, pointing to the rock formation.
“I don’t know, Your Greatness; I’ve never seen something like that before.”
“What do you mean you’ve never seen—” He stopped the acid remark on his lips, realizing that the AIs had no way of remembering the details from one game to another—otherwise, they would influence the results of future battles. “Could it be ice?”
“You finally got your tail in the saddle?” Sandara shouted, but the inflections of her voice didn’t smell of chaffing. On the contrary, the female seemed to appreciate his clumsy efforts to show himself with all the dignity of a baitar.
“Sandara,” he yelled back, pointing at the muddy fangs, “what’s with the—”
He didn’t get to finish the question because the “stone” blocks started to tremble in their mud shells, waking to life. It took him only a fraction of a second to realize that the things dug in the hillside were dogans—Dedris’s ice monsters, melting under the unforgiving starlight.
They had fallen into a trap!
“Watch out!” he shouted, grasping both reins in the left hand—the tail attack coiled around the first two fingers and the ear ring around the other two—while he drew the sarpan from the armor’s tube.
His companions saw the danger and jumped to his defense. An ice brute reached him first, though, stretching its long paws ending in daggerlike ice claws to drag him down from the moulan. With great impetuosity, Gill managed to cut both its arms in one blow, and then, in an elegant wrist move, he chopped its head off.
The speedy maneuver confused the monster. It fell on its back, shaking its trimmed stubs and abundantly bleeding clear water. He wasn’t so lucky with another dogan that rose in front of his moulan. While Gill was busy getting rid of the first one without losing his balance, the huge fists of the second one savagely hit the moulan’s snout. The blow took him by surprise, throwing him off the net. It’s over, he thought, his kyi drained of hope like a hollow seed gnawed from inside by the hunger of an unforgiving disease…
He waited for the finishing blow… but it didn’t come. Instead, another moulan appeared nearby. Looking up, he saw Kizac riding it. Gill quickly climbed onto the net, squeezing his sarpan handle to make sure he wouldn’t lose it. Holding the net with his left hand, Gill turned just in time to slice another monster that jumped on them while Kizac carved the head of another one.
It appeared that the high temperatures had softened the ice “muscles” of the dogans. The small band was doing well, raising a metal wall between him and the enemies. He started to hope he could reach Sandara to give her the Brocats, but then he heard an intense rustle—something heavy rubbing against the grass…
In a loud creaking of ice joints came the horror of the monsters’ attack. Some dogans behind the front line sprang forward, and using the shoulders of the first row like trampolines, they jumped into the air, landing on the orzacs in the ravine. Gill found himself next to a white colossus that had fallen right beside him. At the last moment, he managed to avoid a disaster by cutting it open before the acrobat had time to pull itself together. Others were not that fortunate. He could hear the groans of the soldiers hit by the mountains of ice, which buried them alive.
“Fall back! Retreat to the camp!” he screamed to Kizac.
In great haste, Kizac turned his moulan and broke into a desperate run up the hill toward the orzacs’ camp. Looking back, Gill saw only three of his ten companions following them. And his moulan. The bastard wasn’t hurt.
From up high, he realized that Ugo-Voran’s plan had still worked: Sandara had fallen into the trap! They overwhelmed her easily because she had rushed toward him with the recklessness specific to the grahs, far from her escort.
Ugo’s perfidy didn’t escape his nostrils: he made sure she wasn’t disconnected from the game. Dedris’s monsters absorbed her arms in their bodies to block her from doing it herself, while the female screamed, “Run! Wait for—”
An ice claw strangled the rest of her words.
The ice creatures fused their melting feet in a compact block to slide quickly, leaving behind a trail of dirty water. Hundreds of dogans followed the group that held Sandara. On the left wing, Nibala’s grahs appeared in the meadow, in a futile attempt to stop their retreat. Unfortunately, they had no way of reaching them. All they could do was crush a few monsters that had strayed too far behind.
The dogans had almost reached the valley, but Gill knew that the speed of his moulans was greater. Most likely, he couldn’t stop the small vanguard that held Sandara before it reached Ugo’s position. One thing was sure, though: if he led a charge against the monsters’ rear guard, he would shatter them like a swarm of helpless licants.
He overcame the inhibition of straddling the moulan; each of his cells was consumed by the pure essence of revolt boiling in his veins, burning him from the inside like acid. It wasn’t a simple impulse to fight, to punish Ugo for his infamy: he felt the burning desire to rebel against the madness of the last days, against the miasma that drew the whole Antyran population on his tail.
Therefore, he decided to ignore Sandara’s order to run like a coward and hope that Forbat would read her message. To wait to be rescued by the parhonte would mean relying on a stranger, on a situation beyond his control, to move the weight of Ugo’s defeat to someone else’s tail. That would be stupid beyond words. Gill knew all too well that the only Antyran he could trust was himself. He was a soldier and had to fight. He had to reach the jure to make him pay for his rudeness, to make him a brand-new hole with his sarpan, to disconnect him with his own hands. Once, not long ago, he regretted that he had answered Tadeo’s call and ended up wearing the bracelet on his arm. Now, he regretted nothing.
His right hand was burning with eagerness, squeezing the sarpan’s handle. The weapon was singing into his ears to get it out and use it. “Have a little patience, my beauty, just a little bit,” he whispered to the gorgeous purple blade.
“Kizac, gather the troops,” he ordered, jumping on his own moulan, which didn’t dare to show any sign of disobedience this time. “I want to save Sandara.”
“Sandara, Your Greatness?”
“Nibala. If you’re ready, follow me!” he yelled, raising the sarpan to the sky.
A loud shout came from the soldiers, its echoes resounding through the hills. About two hundred orzacs in shiny armor jumped on their moulans; the others hurried frantically to dress in their battle gear and join them.
At once, the cavalry trudged downhill, leaving behind a trail of moist earth plowed by the thick claws of the moulans.
He descended the ravine that bordered the gravel road through a less steep area on the right. Only the river now lay between him and the ice creatures. With little concern for how closely he was followed by the escort, in a superb gesture of recklessness typical for the mentality of the cavalry in those times, he charged his moulan toward the enemies. He knew, however, that his soldiers were riding hastily in his wake, ready to cover him with their chests, to die if necessary, to save his life.
Once he crossed the river, he saw the problem. The slaughter was going to take place, all right, but Gill wasn’t sure anymore who the victims would be. The ice monsters had taken shelter behind the thorny bushes at the base of the hill, and the bushes were studded with sharp stakes hardened by fire, all pointed at the valley. A grotesque pack of soldiers swarmed behind them.