"Fool!" he said; then he toppled forward onto his face. The sharp impact with the threshold drove the blade backward through his chest and out his back; as he twitched one final time it came free and fell forward across one shoulder, its hilt pointed directly at Garth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There was a frozen moment of near-silence; the only sound was the crackling of the flames. For long seconds, no one moved.
Garth thought he heard soft, mocking laughter; he turned, but could not locate its source. The fury still boiled within him, but when he had thrown the sword its hold had loosened, and he was able to think again.
As he looked around, he saw shock and astonishment on every face; humans and overmen alike were staring at the burning corpse. No one was laughing; no one smiled; no one spoke. Then one of the guardsmen broke the silence, speaking in a harsh whisper that carried to every corner of the square. "Black magic!"
Another voice, this one from one of the crowded streets, shouted, "Kill them! Kill the overmen!" Garth spun about and thought he saw the shouter, an old man wearing dark red who stood in the forefront of the crowd in the street that led to the West Gate. He had no chance to reply or to make certain of his identification before he heard the snap of a bowstring. Instinctively, he ducked.
For the second time that day, an arrow whistled over his head; it continued on, to scrape against Galt's breastplate before falling to the clear ground between the soldiers of Skelleth and the first row of warbeasts.
"Down! Get down!" Garth called; following his own advice, he slid from the saddle. As he reached the ground, a ragged volley of arrows followed, coming from all directions.
Immediately, he understood the entire situation and berated himself for not anticipating it. He had seen the twenty-five guardsmen in front of the mansion and considered them to be the entire force, even though he knew there were more than thirty men in the Baron's service. The others had been stationed in windows and on rooftops all around the square. The Baron had been a clever man, even in his madness. It was possible there were other dangers hidden in the crowds-and the crowds were themselves a problem, blocking every avenue of retreat save one, keeping the overmen bottled up in the market where they were easy targets.
More arrows flew, whistling and buzzing; the thumping of bowstrings was now coming in a steady, uneven rhythm. Around him, the overmen were shouting; he heard a cry of pain and the growling of a warbeast.
It was far too late now to prevent bloodshed; despite his good intentions, the sword had overcome him, and this peaceful mission had become a battle. That being so, Garth told himself, it was a battle he intended to win. The anger still seethed in him; it had been far too long since the, overmen of the Northern Waste had won a battle, and this seemed a good place to start.
He looked around; the situation was bad. His troops, completely untrained, were milling about in confusion as arrows rained down on them from every side; half the mounted overmen had followed his example and dismounted, but the others were still on their warbeasts, looking about in dazed confusion. The villagers, soldiers and civilians alike, were staying well back, letting their archers deal with the invaders. None of the overmen had yet taken any action to remedy their vulnerable position.
"Ho, overmen of Ordunin!" Garth bellowed at the top of his lungs. "The battle is begun, whether we want it or no! Advance, then, and kill the guardsmen!" He gave this order, not because he considered the soldiers a threat, but because the archers would be reluctant to shoot into a melee involving their own comrades. It was the simplest order he could think of that would serve a useful purpose at this point. Once he had his overmen acting together again and responding to his commands, he could worry about better tactics.
Confused and angry, the overmen were glad to obey; now that they had a direction, they charged forward around the warbeasts that blocked their way. The mounted warriors did not seem to hear Garth's order; they continued to look about in confusion. As Garth watched, an arrow caught one young overman in the throat; soundlessly, he slid sideways out of the saddle, blood welling in his mouth, his red eyes wide with shock.
The overmen who had dismounted joined their companions in the charge, leaving their beasts behind. Garth suddenly realized that none of them really knew how to control the great animals.
The best thing for morale, Garth knew, would be to join the charge himself; there were tactical considerations, however, that were more important. As he had hoped, the archers were slackening their fire for fear of hitting their townsmen; but when the overmen had wiped out the humans-as they inevitably would do-the archers would again have a clear field of fire. The bowmen remained, therefore, the biggest threat, and Garth knew his best weapon was the warbeasts. It was time to pit the two against each other. When the first overmen reached the human soldiers, Garth spotted the location of one archer as the man leaned out from behind a chimney to release another arrow. With a wordless growl, Garth pointed this out to Koros, then ordered the warbeast, "Kill!"
The monstrous animal roared in response, a sound that drowned out the growing clamor of the battle for a moment, then turned and leaped onto the back of its neighboring kin. From there it sprang upward in a magnificent jump that landed it on the roof where the bowman lurked. Shards of splintered slate flew in every direction at the impact of the warbeast's weight; the man had time for one short scream before Koros smashed the chimney out of the way and ripped him apart.
Garth did not wait to watch the archer's death; he was already pointing out another to Kyrith's warbeast. When that animal had leaped for its target, he turned back to Galt's, and then started on the first row of five.
Not all the warbeasts were as successful as Koros; one missed the roof it was aiming for and tried to scramble up the wall, its claws tearing out chunks of wood and plaster. Another made its leap perfectly, but landed on a thatched roof that was unable to support its weight; the beast and the archer it pursued both vanished into the building's upper floor, amid growls and screams.
Not all the bowmen were on rooftops; some were behind upper-floor windows too small for the huge animals to fit through. The warbeasts, direct and simple creatures, dealt with this by ripping out the wall around each window.
When he had sent warbeasts after every archer he could locate, leaving four of the animals in the middle of the square, Garth turned his attention back to the fighting in front of the mansion. His troops appeared to have the situation in hand. Outnumbering the humans two to one, even after the casualties inflicted by the archers, the overmen seemed to have their main problem in avoiding their own fellows. The twenty-five guards had been reduced to a knot of half a dozen, clustered in front of the open doors around the burning body of their lord.
The civilian population of the town had done nothing yet except to produce a great deal of noise; no one had ventured into the square. The crowds seemed smaller; probably, Garth thought, many had fled and taken shelter wherever they could. Those who remained merely watched, yelling.
Garth dismissed them from consideration for the moment and strode forward to aid his warriors in dealing with the surviving guardsmen.
"Hold!" he called. "Stand back!"
Reluctantly, the overmen obeyed. The remaining humans stood, swords bristling, and waited.
"There is no need to continue the fight! Surrender and we will allow you to live."
Herrenmer was one of the survivors. It was he who answered, "Never, monster! We saw how well we could trust you when you slew the Baron!"