That might be enough to fend off the wildings and the blood-drinkers, until the enemy's captains restored discipline. If they did not wish to do so, then the gods help those who stayed behind, because Gerik could not.
"How is it on the wall?" Wylum asked.
"No one in sight to the east, everyone out of sight to the west."
"Good. I hope the kender were telling the truth, about knowing the whereabouts of all the bandits between here and the border."
"They would know," Gerik said. "But they might not have remembered to tell us everything they know."
Zeskuk took the lead of the main column when the minotaur advance divided on the slopes of the Green Mountain. It would encourage anyone shaken inwardly (no minotaur would show it outwardly) by the sea snake attack.
Minotaur hides were thick, and more than a few of the waders had worn leggings to fend off attacking thorns and branches on land. Two thicknesses of bull hide could defeat the fangs of anything short of a dragon, and those minotaurs splashed ashore angry but unharmed.
Others came ashore over an improvised pier of boats laid bow to stern. Very few of the Destined Race were bitten, and not all of those took a lethal dose of venom. One who had seemed to was Thenvor, but Zeskuk's rival had rallied amazingly with nothing but a home brewed potion his son gave him. He would not lead or fight today, but he would live.
The sea snakes were still darting about in the shallows, and Zeskuk only hoped that the sea otter friends of the Dimernesti would stay away. Fur was nothing like leather at keeping out fangs, and sea otters could die from a drop of something needed in cupfuls to kill a minotaur.
"Signal from Juiksum, lord," the apprentice wizard attached to Zeskuk said. "He is in sight of the outpost. They have lost only two fighters. The vegetation has regrown, but seems to lack its old vitality."
No surprises there. Wilthur was a mage, and a human one at that, not a minotaur, let alone a god. He would have more demands on his magic today than it could very well meet.
Juiksum would advance to the outpost and then down the north side of the Green Mountain. Zeskuk would lead his column along the south side. Meanwhile, the humans would be carving their own path up between the two mountains to meet the minotaurs in the valley.
So far the minotaurs had advanced farther, which was as it should be. The humans had not only suffered more delay from the sea snakes, but had a longer route with less of it already cleared. Zeskuk drew his clabbard. He doubted he would need it for at least a hundred paces or so, but it felt good to have it in his hand, and looked more fitting for a chief.
Bellows from half a dozen throats made him raise the clabbard and take a fighting stance by sheer instinct. He almost made a fool of himself, looking around, before he saw someone pointing. Then his first instinct was to shout for the archers.
In wedges of five or seven, more than a hundred great birds were flying in from the sea to the north. They flew over the outpost and Juiksum's column too high for the archers, then began slanting down as they crossed the island. Each bird shone with blue feathers so fine and so glossy that they seemed almost like scales, and had a long white crest and bright yellow bill and claws. They called to one another as they flew, and as they passed overhead Zeskuk saw they had sharp teeth in their beaks.
The whole hundred and more passed over the minotaur column as if they were no more than rocks on the slope. Zeskuk realized that they were flying for the human beach, and ordered the archers to make ready on the right. It it would not look well if the minotaurs ignored the birds and gave them a free attack on the humans.
The birds flew on over the humans with the same sublime self-absorption as they had shown the minotaurs. Only when they reached the sea did they halt. Now they formed a vast semicircle, nearly blocking the human beach from seaward. Then, almost as if a single mind controlled a hundred bodies and a hundred pairs of ten-foot wings, the birds dived. They plunged into the water, then leaped sky-ward again in showers of spray.
"They're catching the snakes!" someone shouted.
In moments, Zeskuk could make out the birds dipping and rising, and each time one rose, it held a snake in its beak Sometimes they gripped and crushed the head straightaway. Other times, they flew side by side in pairs, one bird holding the snake while the other crushed the thing's head.
Only two birds fell from the sky, bitten by their prey. The rest went on with their deadly dance from sky to sea and back again, and the shallows began to foam with snakes desperate to find safety.
"Forward!" Zeskuk shouted. With their rear freed of the snakes, the humans would be advancing faster than ever. It would never do to let them outpace minotaurs, even if the humans had Fulvura and six picked minotaurs at their spearhead.
A bush some fifty paces uphill seemed to quiver in a way Zeskuk did not trust. He had nothing to throw, but a fist-sized rock lay at just the right distance. His clabbard whirled, then sang through the air. The toothed blade hooked the rock and flung it up the hill, into the heart of the bush.
Branches writhed, showing white where the stone had broken them or stripped off bark. The bush tried to pull itself out of the ground, roots and all, but fell over like a kender drunk on dwarf spirits. It rolled down to within reach of more clabbards than Zeskuk's. When they were done, only splinters remained.
The birds were not circling over the human beach, as the human rear guard slaughtered the snakes. Zeskuk saw one human leap back, holding a spear on which wriggled no less than three snakes. Before they could wriggle up the shaft to bite him, he thrust the spear into a tar barrel someone had set afire. The smoke turned from black to the color of putrid wine, and the stench reached Zeskuk even far uphill.
He was still sneezing when a bolt of fire lanced from the Smoker. It held all colors and none. It struck one of the birds, and consumed it in a moment as the tar barrel had consumed the snakes. Zeskuk could not even be sure he saw ashes floating downward on the breeze.
"Do I have to repeat myself?" he roared. "I said, 'Forward!' "
Wilthur did not know from whence the birds had come, and would not have withheld his fire if he had. He did know that the birds' coming had doomed the snakes, but perhaps that could be the end of the injury they wrought against him. So the fire went out, and the birds drifted downwind as fine ash.
All his magic and all his wits aimed at the birds, Wilthur spared not a thought for his Creation. Nor did anything else on Suivinari Island now have more magic than he had already put into it.
Chapter 20
From the head of the human advance, Pirvan saw very little of the battle of the birds against the snakes, and not much more of the war of firebolts against the birds. He smelled a good deal-both the lightning-reek the firebolts left behind, and the charnel house smell of the birds' drifting ashes.
He even had to draw his sword once, to kill a snake that a bird dropped just before it died. A single clean slash clove the snake's head in two, upper and lower jaws flying in separate directions, and the body swiftly twitched itself into stillness. Haimya touched his arm, with a flash of teeth in a face darkened by dirt, sweat, and sun.
"Another ten years, and you will be a better swordsman than I ever was," she said.
"Another ten years, and the gods willing, we will neither of us have to wield swords, except to teach our grandchildren," Pirvan replied, returning her playful smile.