Chapter-3-4

⁠—⁠—⁠— IV ⁠—⁠—⁠—

“Rinda!”

Remus was screaming breathlessly as he ran, his feet tangling in the hunched roots of the desert grass. Again and again he nearly fell headlong.

“Rinda—Rinda! Ah!”

“Remus!”

Rinda’s cheeks had grown red and her chest was heaving; she clutched at her side, which was cramped with a painful stitch. But there was no way they could stop. Everywhere they turned, reaching hands extended to grab them, and the air was filled with rough shouts, cries of “seize them, catch them!” and the frightening echo of horses’ pounding hooves. The twins were powerless, fleeing like rabbits before a ravening pack of red wolves. Rinda’s proud heart was burning; as a legitimate royal successor to Parros' throne, running away filled her with shame. Pride, however, would not be enough to bring about a miracle and call down the wrath of the heavens upon her coarse pursuers.

“Ohh… Rinda, I can’t run anymore!”

“No, Remus! Run!”

“It’s hopeless! We’ll never get away!”

“Remus! What are you saying? You are to be king of Parros! We cannot give up now!”

The two screamed at each other at breathless intervals. As they ran, traumatic scenes replayed from the tragedy of the Crystal Palace: their parents and chief vassals slain by the same nemesis that hunted them now, the king and queen’s blood shed in the royal hall that had so long known peace and nobility. I won’t die. I won’t die. I won’t be killed by Mongaul. I will restore Parros—Parros!

At some point the twins had lost hold of each other’s hands. Remus had hurt his ankle in a fall, and little by little he was dropping behind his sister, his voice calling out to Rinda with increasing difficulty. But Rinda did not dare to turn and look behind her as she raced madly onward. She had passed through the grassy ground surrounding the oasis, and now was in soft sand where it was difficult to maintain her pace.

“Ahh, Guin! Guin, help me! Guin!”

Without realizing it, Rinda was calling out the leopard-man’s name as she ran. She had begun to stagger.

“Gome to us! Help me, Guin! Oh, Guin…” She had placed her last hope on the leopard-headed warrior—if help were to come, surely it would be from Guin, and no other.

Suddenly the girl heard her younger brother cry out sharply behind her. A moment later Remus shouted at the top of his voice. “Run, Rinda! Get away!” The young prince, who had been steadily losing ground, had finally lost his footing and been captured by the Mongauli.

“Remus!” Rinda screamed frantically, but still she couldn’t bring herself to turn around, and she kept staggering onward. Somewhere deep in her mind she knew that her best chance was to keep on running, that perhaps somehow she could still escape and come back later to rescue her brother with the aid of Guin. Guin. She focused on the image of the leopard-man. Guin would be able to help her. Under his aegis, she could expect any miracle to happen. Hadn’t he saved them from the burning ruin of Stafolos Keep? She had not realized just how much she needed that strangely shaped, mysterious figure. If Guin were here, he would swing his big sword with his big strong arm and lead a unified Sem army to shield her and her brother.

If only…

Rinda’s eyes grew hot with tears. But this was no time to succumb to emotion. If she could make it into the stony hills she felt she might escape. She must not think of the Sem or contemplate her younger brother’s fate—not now, when sorrow could destroy her. A rabbit pursued by the hounds of the god of death, she must flee at any cost. The voice of doubt that told her, You cannot run anymore, was suppressed now by the memory of the devastation behind her and her own burning will to live. But her body’s strength was failing; she tottered pitifully as she kept on, moving ever more slowly.

And then suddenly she realized that she could barely hear the shouts of pursuit behind her anymore. The smoke and flying sand of the battle, the screams and spraying blood of the Sem no longer surrounded her. It seemed that the red knights of Mongaul were no longer chasing after her. Strangely, the change didn’t ease her fears—to the contrary, it gave her a numbing sense of terror and confusion.

Then her feet slowed, and she staggered and finally stopped. Unconsciously she slowly lifted both hands and covered her mouth—and screamed. Or rather, she thought she did, but no sound came. Her sight grew dark with a vision of fear, and her last strength left her. She could only gaze with a hollow expression at the forbidding knights, clad in black, that appeared to rise up from the desert to block her way. Her knees bent slowly, and she toppled over on the sandy ground, both hands still covering her mouth.

Irrim’s contingent of black knights didn’t approach to pick up the exhausted girl who had collapsed before them. They held their positions, waiting unharmed in a great crescent for the main force of the Sem to arrive. Rinda felt as though a giant black wall blocked her way with ruthless intent. Then as she lay she glanced behind her and saw a single horseman approaching quietly, his charger’s hooves raising no dust from the sand. He was a red knight who had removed his helm to reveal his intent young face. For a moment she felt an insane hope grow in her heart.

“Istavan!” Rinda exclaimed without thinking—but even as she found her voice she realized that she was mistaken.

With his black hair, black eyes, long face, and dark complexion, it was easy to imagine that this man was the resourceful mercenary from Valachia and that he had slipped past the Mongauli pickets to come rescue her. There was a difference about this knight, however, and it was a difference that appealed to her: both dignity and youthful innocence showed on his elegant face. Especially in contrast with the wall of black knights in their shadowy armor, the lone red knight shone with a brightness that was almost magnificent.

“Of course…” Rinda muttered absently, her voice trailing away to nothing as her mind reeled on. Of course he would not come. Istavan could never save us now. She had worried about Istavan after the battle started, wondering whether he had joined in the fight or if he might have been captured while scouting. When she had realized that he would not return to rescue her and her brother, she had grown desperate; as the Gohrans closed in she had clutched at the hope that Guin would reappear. That hope too had apparently failed her.

The red knight slowly drew closer, riding his horse carefully through the soft sand, and halted in front of the princess. He reached his hand down to her. Rinda flinched away reflexively and gave him a glare full of withering animosity.

Astrias was perplexed. “You know that you cannot evade us any longer,” he said hesitantly, unsure of how to treat one who had both the dazzling dignity of a queen and the pitiful vulnerability of an unprotected orphan. “Come over here.”

“Do not touch me, Mongauli!” Rinda exploded. “I would rather bite off my tongue and die choking on my own blood than be taken by my foe!”

Astrias shook his head in puzzlement. His mind was working quickly, trying to decide what to do if she continued to defy him.

“Your brother was caught, and taken,” he told her, almost apologetically, and reached out again to take the girl by the arm.

Rinda shook off his hand.

“I will walk by myself.”

“That is better.”

Astrias felt a touch of relief as he watched Rinda stand up and brush the sand from her clothes and hands, but a moment later his unease returned.

“Ouch!”

Rinda winced as she took a step. In the frantic effort of her flight, she hadn’t noticed that she had sprained her ankle slightly with a misstep in the soft sand. Now she found that it was uncomfortable to put weight on it.

When Astrias realized her injury, he reached out timidly, as if to coax a stray mountain cat. “Come, ride on my horse,” he said.

“No. I have no wish to throw myself on my enemy’s mercy.”

“It is not mercy. The battle continues, and I must return to the battlefield. This is an order.”

After a moment’s hesitation Rinda submitted resentfully to the knight’s request, and Astrias put his prisoner, still bristling with hostility, in front of him on his horse and headed back toward the oasis. Rinda clenched her teeth, not wishing for her enemy to hear her softly crying, and held tightly to the horse’s mane. Astrias fought to maintain his composure; any who saw his face would have guessed he had taken on more than he could handle. He did not venture to speak again. Carefully the red knight made a wide detour around the Sem encampment, where the battle was still raging, and headed for Amnelis' guard.

Suddenly a tiny figure sped toward them from the outskirts of the oasis.

“Rinda!”

With a shrill, eager shout the furry shape leaped up towards the horse. Astrias' sword whipped out reflexively, but it was Rinda, not the tumbling Sem, who shrieked out in agony.

“Suni!”

Rinda tried desperately to jump from the horse, but Astrias' iron grip held her tight. Still she struggled wildly for several moments; then, when she realized she could not get loose, her horror subsided into a chill stillness. Slowly Rinda turned her head and stared very intently at Astrias' face, as though committing his features to memory.

“You killed Suni.” Tears were running freely from her eyes, but the princess spoke with perfect calm. “Mongauli are murderers. Mongauli killed my father and mother, and now Suni, my friend. And Mongauli will kill me and Remus. I wonder how long you can hide your crimes from Janos?

“I will never forget your face.”

Astrias met her stare sullenly, offering no reply. There was nothing he could do now even if he did give her an answer.

Instead he maintained his silence, and with no more resistance from Rinda he rode on with her until they reached the white knights.

Astrias had hoped to receive some word of praise from Amnelis when he returned with his prize, but the headquarters was still busy issuing orders and nursing the wounded, and the lady-general had no time for him. With a bleak disappointment welling up inside him the captain of the red turned his horse quickly to gallop back to the field of battle.

Rinda was taken by a group of guards and brought to where her brother was being held; there her ankles were tied together like his. The twins called out each other’s names as they were reunited, and then simply hugged each other close without speaking. Remus was sobbing, but Rinda steeled herself against her sorrow. Her tears for Suni’s passing had already dried, and now, as she held tight to her brother, the slender, high-spirited girl kept her lips pressed shut, swallowing the lump that kept rising in her throat, forcing herself not to yield to emotion.

Rinda could not remember how many times she had been captured lately. Until now, she had always trusted in Guin’s ability to rescue her. But this time, the towering, indomitable leopard-man had not arrived to save the day. Even wily Istavan was gone. This time, the twins were all alone. Out on the desert the Mongauli were shouting heartlessly and running down the little Sem with their horses as if they were enjoying some cruel game. Rinda bit her lip until it almost bled. Guin, where are you? The Sem are lost, Guin… You are the only one. Guin.

The pitched battle around the oasis was drawing to a close. From the beginning of the war for Nospherus it had been clear which side would have the advantage if the two armies ever clashed directly in an all-out fight. Although the Sem had great quickness and agility and knew every acre of the desert terrain, there was a big disadvantage to fighting with stone axes and poisoned darts against the steel longswords and heavy armor of trained human knights. Moreover, the Mongauli soldiers had begun to grow familiar with the simians’ style of combat and had learned to counter their tricks. They had discovered that wearing their helmets with the correct tilt would deflect most poison darts, and that if they parried the stone axes with their swords they could reduce the force of their blows in half. In this battle they had a further advantage, for the fight around the oasis took place largely on ground that was grassy and relatively hard, much better terrain for cavalry than the loose sand of the open desert where the horses’ hooves often trod false. As the morning wore on, the elite Mongauli warriors were cutting down the brave Sem one after another. The wildlings fought with tremendous gusto, and the Karoi and Guro in particular had inflicted many casualties on their foes, but it was not enough to outweigh the Mongauli’s inherent advantages and the momentum of their surprise attack.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

Finally the chieftains of the Sem shrieked out the order to retreat, and their drums sounded out the message to withdraw. The chieftains gathered their warriors about them and began to slip back into the embattled encampment. But by now it was too late to make a stand inside the oasis.

“They’re going to surround us!” Illateli screamed in his high-pitched voice. “They want us to gather into one group! Scatter and run in different directions—deceive them and hide yourselves!”

“Aiieee!” the Sem answered him with a wild cry, and scattered to escape, scurrying like the progeny of a spider caught in a storm wind.

“Don’t let them get away! We must not make that mistake again. Exterminate the monkeys without mercy!”

The message was spread through the Mongauli ranks, and the troops spread out to surround the oasis, trapping the Sem within. Irrim’s footmen were waiting for the few wildlings who managed to evade the main army and flee towards the stony hills, and they descended upon them in the passes.

Meanwhile, old Loto was hemmed in at the oasis with the surviving members of his bodyguard. His trusted protector, the brave young warrior Siba, was searching for a means of escape.

“Loto, I have an idea.”

Siba’s eyes were bloodshot as he hurriedly went through his possessions. In a moment he found what he was searching for.

“I was thinking about what Riyaad would do if he were here.”

Loto kept his silence and gazed at Siba as the younger Sem took a fruit of smoke plant out of a bag and handed it to his Raku subordinates. He kept a bottle of vasya oil for himself.

“Let’s go!”

“Ayeeya!”

The group of Sem let out a wild scream and charged towards the edge of the oasis where the Mongauli soldiers seemed fewest. As they neared the enemy lines Siba’s warriors hurled a smoke plant fruit ahead of them, and the desiccated fruit burst open with a loud noise and released a cloud of dense, black smoke. The Mongauli drew back as the inky cloud roiled toward them. Swiftly Siba turned the oil bottle upside down and sprinkled its contents all round, then drew out a flint and struck a spark to the scattered drops. As soon as the oil caught fire, he poured more oil onto the blaze and screamed, “Quickly—this way!”

He urged the old chief onward as the oil-fed fire rapidly spread. Soon the members of the small band were slithering forward on their bellies like snakes, with Siba out in front throwing smoke plant fruits one after another to create a screen.

“Don’t let them go!” Mongauli knights shouted as they rushed into the noxious cloud, coughing and stabbing blindly with their swords.

“Be careful! Don’t let them escape!”

Using the rolling smoke as a precarious shield, Siba and about ten other Raku warriors were escorting Loto through the Gohran lines.

“Gather at Devil Rock!”

“Karoi, Guro, Rasa! If you escape, gather at Devil Rock!” the Sem screamed to each other in a language unintelligible to the Mongauli. Indistinct answers came back from here and there amidst the chaos, but no wilding dared pause to form further plans. They ran in different directions to escape from this oasis of death.

Irrim’s blocking force, bearing down from the north, and Vlon’s troop of white knights, hurrying in from the west, were drawing closer to each other like two heavy doors swinging shut. When they met, the circle of the besieging forces would be complete, and the Sem’s retreat would be cut off. But if the Sem could manage to escape once more into the desert, they might yet evade their adversaries’ heavy mounted troops and regain the initiative.

“Run, run, run!”

Siba screamed until his voice became hoarse as he sped through the underbrush at the outer edge of the oasis.

“Run, Sem, run! Run, Raku, Tubai, Rasa! Run in zigzags until you reach Devil Rock! Throw them off the trail!”

Suddenly Loto, following close on the young warrior’s heels, screamed and halted abruptly.

“Suni! Dear little one!”

In an instant Siba turned and scooped up Suni’s body without waiting to determine if she was wounded or dead, or had simply fainted; without missing a step he kept on running. Now the wildlings faced their ultimate race for survival, a final, furious effort to escape from the red iron god of the under-world to the goal of living free and preserving the Sem race. Siba was not the only one who led a desperate band trying to avoid the Mongauli encirclement and pursuit. Running battles had flared up all over the oasis; brave warriors had rallied to aid the leaders of each tribe, gathering in close-knit groups to protect their chieftains—or in the case of Ilateli, following their chief as he led the way, driving a fierce skirmishing wedge into the midst of the Gohran cavalry. The sun had passed its zenith and begun its slow descent, and still the battle commenced before sunrise had not reached its conclusion. As swiftly as the flowing blood dried under the intense rays of the sky’s golden orb, it was replenished by fresh gouts pouring onto the hot sands of the oasis.

And then, finally, the encirclement was complete; the Mongauli had the Sem completely at their mercy.

“Finish them!”

The relentless supreme commander waved her hand as if it were a blade.

“Don’t let a single barbarian escape alive!”

All at once the conflict ceased to be a battle and became a massacre, a heartless one-sided slaughter. The Sem who had not managed to slip through the Mongauli lines, and the brave ones who had foregone any chance of escape to remain alongside their chiefs, now felt the full might of the Mongauli army. Fierce-faced men with flashing swords rode down the wildlings one after another. The wounded were trampled by the horses’ hooves. Those who resisted were cut down piecemeal, and their blood seeped into the waters of the oasis.

Soon the pool had turned a sickening red, and the plants that grew around them were stained with dripping crimson. The groans, screams, and cries of anguish seemed endless.