He looked at the battlefield and noticed that his left wing wasn’t doing well. Despite the heroism of the grahs, the llandro had pushed their way into the valley and climbed the steep ravine, spitting poison at them. The orzacs who were supposed to protect their side had given way under the unrelenting assaults of the slobberings, exposing the flank of the grahs to a legion of monsters. Nibala’s troops were now attacked from two sides and wouldn’t hold for long…
The slobberings had attacked his army’s center, too, and the center ceased to exist, save for two small groups of orzacs surrounded by a sea of azziles falling rhythmically on their helmets. It would be a matter of minutes before the monsters reached the former orzacs’ camp on the hilltop.
He raised his hand, stopping his riders’ impetus to charge chaotically downhill to join their comrades.
“Chameleons on the right,” he ordered, “hit the slobberings when they come this way.” He turned to the orzacs: “Pile up the boulders of the utrils. Release them downhill on my mark.”
Gill bridled his moulan to turn toward the slobberings. He raised his purple sarpan over his head and pranced his animal to attack the enemy line. He charged alone, yelling of death, with all the pride of a legendary hero, as if his strength was enough to shatter the whole flood of monsters.
At first, the slobberings didn’t notice the lone rider running at them, but soon they realized it was the enemy baitar.
“Huxile,” babbled a pilteat. “Kill him!” he ordered to those around him, sputtering them abundantly with saliva.
Grunting and brandishing their azziles, the slobberings turned and rushed his way, screaming, drool oozing out of their gaping mouths. Despite a crazy temptation to hit them, Gill had no desire to kill himself. He turned the moulan from under their goiters and ran up the hill to lure them into the trap.
“Now!” he yelled at his orzacs as soon as he moved away from the path of the boulders.
An avalanche of dusty stones began to roll down the steep slope, smashing the pursuers. At the same time, the loud clatter of the tarcanes announced that the chameleons’ skull-breaking weapons had entered the fray…
On the opposite hill, another view filled him with joy. The first wave of utrils dived on their targets. The catapults, completely taken by surprise, had no chance to fight back; the huge boulders falling from the sky broke all of them and decimated the kerats. In less than a minute, the artillery that terrorized his army, the key of Ugo-Voran’s guaranteed success, was reduced to a pile of splinters and mangled bodies scattered on the hilltop.
After the attack, the utrils turned back toward the ridge to load another pile of boulders in their hakles.
“Signal the utrils to attack the llandro,” he ordered the nearby prodac.
“I’ll do that, Your Greatness,” he exclaimed, turning his moulan to fulfill Gill’s wish.
“Charge!” shouted Gill, raising his sarpan to start the attack.
The orzacs followed him at once, charging downhill through the breach made by the avalanche. The blow was tremendous; his riders broke deep into the enemy line, punching the rattled slobberings with the moulan tails.
For a while, the fight appeared balanced, but time was flowing on his side. Over Gill’s head, volley after volley ripped a path through the air, hissing of destruction and death. The slobberings began to lose ground, decimated by the tarcaneers.
Elsewhere, too, the fate of the battle was turning in his favor. The llandro were squashed by a new attack of the utrils, while the grahs and the orzacs, seeing that the slobberings were attacked from several directions, increased the pressure to recover the lost space. It wouldn’t be long before the llandro would become history. In that moment, nothing would defend the flank of the slobberings and save them from encirclement.
The battle was drawing to an end. Soon, he would be able to breathe again, to remove the armor smeared by the thick blood of the enemies and wash in the swirls of the river. But all the water in the world wouldn’t wash the wounds of his kyi… He once dreamed of legendary battles, he imagined the orzac armies charging, he saw the ancient history’s campaigns through the eyes of imagination. He believed an archivist knew everything about such things, and yet, today’s battle revealed something new, something that no legend, no scroll eaten by rukkus had told him: it showed him how war really looked. A hill so beautiful a few hours ago, the green valley, became the scene of terrible carnage.
The simulation was far too realistic; something like that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. It broke all the patterns of a simple game, it melted away the smack of civilization gained in the last hundred years of technological progress. Laixan the aromary didn’t say in vain that “if you play with death again and again in a thousand perverse ways, if you face your own condition as a mortal, you will feed the desire to be frivolous with the water of life, to sneak under the spikes of the Gondarran assassins.” And he also added: “do not live to enjoy the death of your enemies.” All the cruelty of the ancient world, which the modern Antyrans wanted buried deeply in the history’s dusty pages, resurfaced here like the hideous specter of Arghail rising from the cave of kyis. The Ropolitans had indeed become another species, closer to the savage Antyrans of old. Perhaps that was why they defeated the prophet so easily; perhaps that was why Ugo and Sandara forgot about the palm ritual. Ropolis is not Antyra. Ropolis is the new Zagrada.
Is this who I’m going to turn into? A savage? he thought pensively. The last days had started the metamorphosis… He had watched, through the eyes of a Sigian, the beautiful Sigia burning, and that marked him forever with the seal of cruelty. From a coward archivist, he became a lethal tool of the so-called Arghail; with every violent encounter his kyi calcified, becoming more and more deprived of empathy, more placid in the face of death.
Well, maybe he hadn’t found the best moment to think about it. He would see later if he could save some of the former Gillabrian. His kyi’s integrity—a pretty serious concern in normal times—became downright irrelevant in his situation, with Ugo still alive and roaming on the island. So he wrinkled his spikes and totally forgot about it.
He couldn’t understand why the game wasn’t over yet. The jure’s army was reduced to a pack of slobberings and dogans, the last of which were unable to show even token resistance to his riders’ sarpans. They couldn’t jump uphill, and the heat weakened them for good. By now, someone should have reached Voran and disconnected him.
The grahs descended the steep ravine covered with dead llandros, surrounding the remaining monsters. It would be a matter of minutes before the last one bit the dirt. Did Ugo run from the battlefield to delay the end? What good would it serve?
“The utrils have returned!” exclaimed Kizac, who had arrived near him to watch the end of the fight.
“What utrils?” Then he realized, seeing the two fliers. “Sandara! They found her!”
“The prisoner is carried to Ricopa by about twenty dogans. They saw them on the trail to the mountain.”
“Kizac, I’m going after them.”
“And the battle?”
“Finish it! If you see Voran… make sure he tastes the blade of your sarpan!”
“It will be done, Your Greatness.”
“Gather the utrils. Mount three orzacs on each of them—no, I’d rather have ninety grahs. Make sure there are thirty full triangles. On the rest, bring orzacs.”
He patiently waited for the required troops to assemble on the hilltop, hoping until the last minute to catch a glimpse of Ugo in the middle of his slobberings. But he waited in vain.
As soon as the troops climbed on the hakles, they took off hastily to the imposing mountains on the left, the two utrils leading the way.