“Soldiers of Gondarra!” he thundered over their heads. “The fangs of coldness strangle our world!”
He started to gallop faster and faster in front of them, rising up in the moulan’s net.
“You want to live the day when our bloodline wastes away?”
Their stern looks told him that they knew all too well the stakes of the battle, that no matter how afraid they felt, nobody was going to back away, that they understood they had nowhere to back away. If they lost the battle, their world’s current cycle would come to an end…
“You want to see Voran winning?”
Shouts of anger exploded from their chests.
“Only we stand against the night! Only we still fight to the death! We live, we die—it doesn’t matter. Our feats will live forever in legends!”
He stretched his fist toward the hill that teemed with enemies.
“Let’s show Voran that this day doesn’t belong to him, that in our veins still flows the blood of the Gondarran assassins, that our sarpans can’t be broken! For Antyra!” he roared, jerking his sarpan overhead.
“Antyra!” thundered the answer of the excited orzacs.
Gill galloped fast in front of the troops, encouraging them, while they kept shouting “Antyra.” He felt determined to the tip of his tail to bring them to victory, to stomp Ugo under his moulan’s feet. He was about to give the battle orders when the cheers abruptly ended.
“Your Greatness!” Kizac shouted, pointing at the opposite hill.
He turned in time to see hundreds of rikanes climbing up in the sky—and the target was… his tail! A split second before impact, he jumped off the moulan, putting its massive body between him and the silver spears. Then came a terrible hit, and he lost consciousness.
Dozens of hands rushed to open a path through the forest of rikanes stuck in the ground, to undress his armor and help him pull the crushed helmet off his head. Still dazzled by the smell of death, he looked around and realized that he wasn’t disconnected. He had a gash on his head and another one on the left arm from a rikane passing right under his armpit, but other than that, he was unharmed. The same wasn’t true of the poor moulan, speared by at least a dozen rikanes, living its last breath.
He would have never imagined that the rikanes could reach such a distance. It was true that they had little accuracy when fired at great distances, but in this case, they fully compensated by sheer number. He was immensely lucky to have survived.
Yet another one of the jure’s traps… but this time Ugo had passed all the limits of decency. No one, not even the greatest enemies, would conceive such cowardice. The jure’s attempt on his life did more to mobilize the orzacs than any of his words; they were now boiling with anger to revenge him. Seeing him on his feet, unharmed, they started to howl until their shouts merged in a common battle cry, carried by the wind along the valley.
“Death to Voran! Death to Voran! Death to Voran!”
He promptly received another set of armor and a large moulan. To his surprise, his new ride didn’t try to smack him to the ground. The beast shivered in anger, snuffling its disapproval, and then it followed his orders quietly, as if nothing had happened. Gill steered it toward the orzacs’ ratrap.
“Kizac, send two utrils to follow Nibala.”
“Your Greatness, the utrils can’t fly over the rikanes,” he said, looking at the hill across the valley. “We send them to their death!”
“Tell them to go behind our hill, one to the left and one to the right. Fly around Voran’s army, far from their lines. Make sure they’re not spotted!”
Kizac turned around to carry his orders.
“Wait a moment,” Gill ordered.
It was about time to surprise the enemy, to cast the stench of uncertainty into Ugo’s nostrils. He had already made some stupid mistakes, and it might be a good idea to keep making them—or, at least, to give the impression that he had no idea how to run an army. That’d make Ugo underestimate him… Of course, another suicide attack was out of the question, but he could surprise the jure with an asymmetrical disposition.83 The only problem was the damned catapults…
“Kizac, send the utrils to fly behind our hill. I want them to go far to the right to avoid detection. If needed, cross the river on foot, reach behind the position of the kerats, and attack them in three flying columns, to break the catapults. None shall escape—do you hear me?”
With a bit of luck, the kerats will be absorbed with butchering my riders, he thought, They will be too hypnotized by the river of blood to smell their own death.
“Your Greatness, they can’t fly so long with boulders!”
“Then fly without them. There’s a rocky ridge behind Voran’s hill—tell them to take the stones from there. And don’t forget Nibala. Two utrils to chase her!”
“They’ll fly away to follow your orders,” said Kizac, bowing his head in submission.
He returned soon, accompanied by the discreet fluttering of the utrils taking off on their perilous mission. But they weren’t the only ones moving—Voran’s hill was swarming with activity. The monsters had started the attack!
“Kizac, take a thousand orzacs and move near the grahs,” Gill said, pointing at a spot on the left side of the meadow. “Form your ranks facing the glade to protect their flanks from the assault of the slobberings.”
The terrain near the grahs was steep and wooded. It would provide some protection against the rikanes and the slobberings, he thought. They’d have a chance to hold the line until the utrils arrived.
“In the center, I want five hundred orzacs. Spread them out to avoid the rikanes,” he continued.
“Five hundred?” exclaimed Kizac, astounded. “That’s too few, Your Greatness, the slobberings will punch through them in a pinch of a tail!”
“Tell them to use the tails of the moulans. They may retreat slowly to the hilltop. But no matter what happens to them, you cover the flank of the grahs!”
“Your wish is my command, Your Greatness,” exclaimed Kizac, dumbfounded. Gill could read his distrust; however, Kizac departed without arguing over the order.
“The rest of you, follow me on the right wing,” he shouted.
He was about to do something unprecedented in the history of ancient warfare—he would allow Ugo to break his army in two through the center. Gill was hopeful that the jure would order his slobberings to attack the flank of the grahs, to ease the pressure on the llandros. Everything depended on Kizac now—would he be able to withstand the onslaught, separated from the rest of the army?
On the right side of the hill, he spotted patches of tall shrubs growing near the outskirts of the thick tekal forest, which reached down to the river. The outline of the terrain was ideal for an ambush.
“What’s your name?’ he asked the ratrap of the chameleons, the dwarf who gave him the loyalty brocat.
“Ralamil, Your Greatness.”
“Ralamil, take your chameleons to the outskirts, close to the river,” he said, pointing to the place. “You’ll attack the enemies from behind once they pass your position.”
“It will be done, Your Greatness.”
“You there,” he called a prodac84, “take a thousand orzacs and hide in the bushes above the dwarves. Charge when the enemy gets near you!”
As soon as the orzacs went to their position, he turned to the other riders.
“The rest of you, follow me!” he yelled. “We charge from above!”
We’re going to hit them from three sides and finish them in one blow. He grinned, pleased by how he had devised the trap.
A shrieking sound told them that the llandros had reached the battlefield. They made the horrifying noise when they raised their thorns to launch them at the enemies.
Although he couldn’t see the battle, Gill was sure that his grahs were fighting valiantly. He could hear the whistle of the trilates and the thuds of the heavy rocks thrown from the edge of the ravine, followed by the rattles of the slain monsters. Something was telling him that the llandros wouldn’t pass Nibala’s fighters.