Chapter-4-4

⁠—⁠—⁠— IV ⁠—⁠—⁠—

“Soldiers of Mongaul!”

Urgent commands were streaming from the throats of the Mongauli orderlies; the situation had changed completely from the careless slaughter of a few moments before.

“Stand firm! These are dangerous enemies. Trust in your training! Use your skill, and fight with caution!”

“Don’t be afraid! The enemy is greatly outnumbered.”

“Reorganize the ranks! All troops, form battle lines immediately! We must not face the enemy in disorder. When they draw near, let three of our soldiers attack each one of them.”

Only a few twists remained before the sun would rise completely. Amnelis was nearly in a frenzy, sending out messenger after messenger with orders intended to renew the fighting spirit of Mongaul. Vlon and Lindrot were dashing around in desperation, trying to reorganize the troops for battle. Once an army lost order, it became fragile; the more overwhelming the army’s might and advantage and the greater its confidence, the more severe its fall when that confidence was sapped. The courage that the Mongauli forcibly mustered by telling themselves that these were merely large barbarians crumbled the moment the roaring giants came loping down to the boulders.

The Lagon were magnificent warriors, a tribe born for battle and trained to a life of war. Each was an expert in the use of the swords and the heavy cudgels they favored, and even unarmed they were extremely formidable; their massively built bodies were not only large but agile and supple as well.

The Mongauli fought hard, but just as the Sem were no match for them, so were the humans easily overwhelmed by the Lagon. The rocky slopes of the mountains were the Lagon’s home. Their hard feet stepped lightly over the stones like the hooves of antelope. When their enormously strong arms lifted high and swung their weapons, Mongauli heads flew right and left, and decapitated bodies fell and vomited forth blood until the ground was dyed crimson.

“This is more like it!”

Istavan had hurriedly removed his stolen armor and helmet and resumed his light attire to avoid being confused with the Mongauli, and he had rejoined the fray, fighting adroitly. His voice had taken on a jovial tone as he bantered between swordthrusts, admiring the imposing Lagon and talking more to himself than to anyone else.

“What a great fighting style they have! They certainly know how to use a sword. Especially the biggest one—he is fighting like Ruah! I’d give a lot to see a match between him and Guin! These are the allies we needed all along. I wonder where—and how—Guin found ’em? Good old Guin… Oh, I swear on the nymph who mothered Cirenos, this is the greatest display of fighting skill I have ever seen! I’m sure glad these giants are on our side. I doubt I’d survive for very long against them!”

While Istavan rambled on, he was demonstrating his own fighting prowess, airily sidestepping enemy attacks and jumping high as he slashed and parried. Feldrik, meanwhile, was rushing to escape from this sudden reversal of fortunes.

“Wait, you coward!” Istavan shouted merrily, darting after the white knight and extending his blade in a wicked thrust. Feldrik screamed and toppled forward as he ran. A band of Mongauli rushed to protect their captain, some closing ranks to block Istavan’s attack, others pulling Feldrik to his feet and helping him away.

“Oh! I almost forgot…” Istavan abruptly stopped short, his joviality gone. I shouldn’t show my face. Warily he watched as Feldrik was taken away. His first impulse was to try to catch up and finish him, but the Valachian soon talked himself out of it. “Ah, why risk it? He’s old—with that wound he won’t last long.”

Making this assumption he began to work his way toward Guin and his force of Lagon, all the while taking care not to reveal his distinctive face.

The Sem, too, wasted no time now that they had such powerful allies.

“Riyaad’s reinforcements are here! Rise up and fight, Sem!”

“Riyaad, Riyaad!”

“Don’t get separated! Gather together, and fight against the oh-mu as one troop!”

Although they had suffered terrible losses in the merciless night battle with the Mongauli, the diminutive desert warriors didn’t retreat to nurse their injuries while their powerful new allies took the lead. Instead, all the Sem who had survived now gathered around their chiefs, encouraging one another with fierce, piercing screams. As soon as the battle was joined again, they rushed forward, brave and heedless as ever, treading over their fallen fellows’ carcasses as they charged. With the tables turned, the Sem’s naturally brutal character was now given full scope to be displayed; gone were the helpless victims who had been chased, tortured to death, and subjected to countless atrocities just moments before.

“Let us take revenge for our comrades!”

“Don’t stay back behind the Lagon!”

“Aiieee, yeeee!”

The Sem flung themselves against the Mongauli lines and attacked like ants savaging a butterfly while the Lagon swung their massive cudgels with terrifying strength. Where the Sem’s poison-tipped darts flew between the longswords, Mongauli warriors clutched at their eyes and fell to the ground, screaming in blind agony. Where the Lagon’s heavy weapons struck home, metal helmets and armor crushed as though made of flimsy paper, and Mongauli soldiers were literally knocked into pieces, reduced in one blow to ragged masses of muddy blood, shattered organs, and fragments of red bone.

Even in the headlong confusion of the melee, the superb fighting prowess of Dodok the Brave and the leopard-headed Guin stood out and drew attention. Wherever these two headed the Mongauli quickly cleared away. Dodok’s rock hard arms could snatch up running soldiers as though they were ambling puppies, and in his grasp their bodies broke like straw in the grip of a storm. With his heavy cudgel he brushed aside the longswords of the brave knights who summoned the courage to stand and fight him, and in the next moment, he smashed their heads as they stood frozen in fear with eyes white and staring. It was not for nothing that Dodok the Brave was called the strongest among all the mighty warriors of the Lagon.

And Guin…

“You! You, Guin!” Astrias snarled through clenched teeth. “Fight with me! Stand and face me! I have been looking for you!”

He was striving to reach Guin even as he fended off the attacks of several Lagon warriors. Pollak, following close behind him, was frantically trying to persuade his captain to stop.

“This is madness, sir! That creature is not human! He must be a god or a demon, with that horrible leopard’s head! Do you want to die? Captain!”

“I don’t care if he is a god, or a demon, or Doal himself…”

“Look at how he fights!” Pollak panted.

“I want to challenge him!”

“Don’t die in a place like this!”

Astrias turned away from his lieutenant to shout again into the midst of the battle. “Guin, fight with me! With me, Guin!”

A sudden thought occurred to Pollak. “Captain! We have a duty to protect our lady. We must fall back to protect our Lady of Mongaul’s banner.”

“Our Lady of Mongaul…”

Astrias' eyes opened wide. With a shake of his head he came to his senses and gazed back towards the place where his cherished lady had established her command post. He cursed silently at what he saw. The raging Lagon were approaching the post and Amnelis' personal guard. Their immaculate figure’s dyed with blood, the white knights, who until then had rarely entered into the fray of battle themselves, strove desperately to drive back the incoming giants.

“Lady Amnelis is in danger!” Astrias shouted. He spun around to address the red knights in formation behind him. “Troops, change direction! Reinforce the Lady General’s guard!”

“It’s about time,” muttered Pollak, whose true obsession was to protect his young captain.

“Pull back, pull back! Protect Lady Amnelis!” Astrias bellowed his orders. He could not fail to notice Guin, who was trampling over Irrim Corps as though berserk; yet he resolutely turned from the hated foe and headed for the lady-general. It was no easy task to reach her, however. The bulk of the Lagon force was now between them. Astrias clenched his teeth and charged forward, swinging his sword like a madman, but against that formidable barrier he made little progress—it was like swimming against a flood tide. In the meantime, the troops of white knights, with little time to reform their ranks, faced a difficult fight.

“My lady!” Vlon came running from amidst the fray. “My lady, we are at a disadvantage here. Let us withdraw for the time being. Please, give the order to retreat!”

“What are you saying, Vlon?!” Amnelis twisted her slender hands together. Her voice was vehement. “We have come this far at last, and you suggest retreat? This is just an action against savages—and we are the army of Mongaul! Our superb soldiers cannot show their backs to mere barbarians!”

“Those giants…” Vlon was at a loss for words.

Gajus stood up slowly. “My lady, please order the drums to sound a withdrawal.”

“Gajus! You, too?” Amnelis pushed back her blond hair irritably. “Or are you merely saying that we need only withdraw from this place for the time being, due to unfavorable terrain— that we shall trounce these creatures later at a battlefield of our choosing? That I could understand, Gajus.”

“I am suggesting that the whole invasion force return to the banks of the River Kes and beyond to our defensive walls,” Gajus replied brusquely.

Amnelis held her breath, growing pale with vexation, and stared at both Gajus and Vlon. She drew herself up to her full height. But before she could speak again, a voice cried out wildly from nearby—

“Lady! Beware!”

A Lagon warrior had burst through the double and treble lines of protection and was closing in on them with his enormous cudgel held high. At the sight of him Amnelis froze and screamed with fear. With a shout of dismay Vlon sprang forward and pushed her aside. The next instant, the heavy cudgel hit Vlon across the side; he staggered sideways with a gasp and spun half way around before he struck the ground, where he convulsed, vomited globs of blood, and lay still. An instant later the Lagon who had killed him was cut in half from behind by a mighty stroke of Lindrot’s sword. He, too, had returned to suggest a retreat.

“Lady, it is very dangerous here! Let us return to the River Kes to regroup and join with Ricard’s forces.”

Amnelis stood as though in shock, looking as pale and fragile as a piece of paper. She nodded without speaking. Gajus and Lindrot took up protective positions on either side of her and hurriedly withdrew from the field of battle. Soon, a Mongauli drum could be heard sounding the retreat, echoing into the clear dawn sky.

“General withdrawal! The army will retreat to the banks of the River Kes!”

“Withdraw! Withdraw!”

Lindrot helped Amnelis astride her horse, wishing he could comfort her. When he looked into her face, words failed him. Her cheeks were drawn and her visage ghostly, and she bit her lip as she surveyed the battle unraveling around her. She had lost the notorious proud bearing of the Lady of Mongaul— even her famed blond hair seemed to have faded and lost its brightness. Suddenly Amnelis looked her age, as if she were indeed an ordinary, powerless and frail eighteen-year-old maiden. Around her the renowned fighting men of her archduchy leaped onto their horses without waiting to reform their ranks, rushing to escape to the west and the distant sanctuary of the Kes. The magnificence of their bearing when they had last crossed the river was nowhere in sight.

The Mongauli expeditionary force of fifteen thousand strong had been reduced to a pitiful remnant one third that number. The beat of the drum sounding the retreat rose like a cry of despair, a final proof of the broken aspirations of the Mongauli to seize control of Nospherus and to learn its secrets.

“The rear guard…?”

Amnelis finally regained sufficient composure to pose the question only after the army had withdrawn from the rocky slopes below Dog’s Head Mountain and ridden pell-mell all the way back through the war-torn oasis. She had just been informed that the mixed force of Lagon and Sem that had assailed them no longer posed an imminent threat.

“Astrias Corps is on duty,” Lindrot answered heavily.

“Astrias… is safe?” Amnelis looked like she wanted to say more, but she stopped. “How about Gajus?”

“Gajus, too, was accounted for, but—”

“We cannot find Cal Moru,” Lindrot informed her sullenly.

“What do you mean?” Amnelis demanded anxiously. The loss of the spellcaster would be a great blow to the Mongauli cause. Without Cal Moru of Kitai, the Mongauli could never hope to find the great secret hidden at the heart of Nospherus. “He has fallen into their hands?”

“Somebody saw him get cut down. He cannot be alive.”

“I see…”

Amnelis' perfect features took on a look of bleak resignation. She whispered to herself:

A thorough disaster... What to tell my father?

This was the first time Amnelis had ever been defeated, the first time she had been forced to withdraw her forces from the field of battle. She swallowed a hot lump rising in her throat. In the passionate determination of her eighteen years she found the loss almost too much to accept as fact. And Guin—that leopard-headed monstrosity who had turned her around so easily and robbed her of all but certain victory—him she didn’t even have the energy to curse and hate right now.

Yet she knew very well that she would never forget his name or his freakish figure. Though her defeated troops, straggling home through the sands, would see and hear, Amnelis buried her face in her horse’s mane and gave herself up to weak, drawn-out sobs.

The Kes River was still hundreds of tads away. The desert, filled with a feeling of brooding hostility, hungrily spread its white expanse before the crushed army.

The battle for Nospherus was over.

“Riyaad!”

Siba ran up to Guin and, throwing himself at the leopard-man’s feet, wept.

A moment later Dodok arrived. “Riyaad, shouldn’t we chase after them and kill them all?” asked the giant.

“We have done enough,” Guin stayed him. “Mongaul’s plans for Nospherus have been ripped to shreds. They should now turn their eyes once again to the Middle Country, but were they to plan another invasion, with the Lagon as its protectors Nospherus is safe from the trampling feet of Mongaul. Dodok, the Lagon are certainly a tribe made for fighting.”

Guin’s laugh was a roar.

With long strides Guin stalked down the middle of the battlefield, tiny Siba and giant Dodok keeping pace on either side. All around them the Sem were busy finishing off wounded Mongauli, cutting their throats with blades of stone. Bodies from both forces were piled on top of one another everywhere, and the air was filled with the smell of blood and death, a scene of nightmare illuminated by the bright light of the desert sun.

Suddenly Guin stopped short. His eyes took on a look of strange surprise, and he stared down at a shape before his feet.

“Riyaad?”

Siba and Dodok looked down dubiously, and Dodok frowned.

“What is this monster? It has yet to be eaten by sand leeches but already has the form of a death’s head!”

The three were gazing upon a carcass garbed in a black, deeply hooded mantle. The hood had fallen aside, revealing a terrible, otherworldly face that had melted down shapelessly to expose deep eye sockets and a skeletal jaw.

The figure’s chest had been skewered brutally from behind by a Lagon spear which remained there. Cal Moru, who had survived walking across the desert of Nospherus, who had returned from the Valley of Death, could not elude the peril brought to him by the Lagon. His crippled form had no longer commanded any magic. His thin, bony wrists, ending in handless stumps, were stretched out as though he were pleading for help. A single eyeball remained in one of his black eye sockets, staring emptily up at the sky.

The three companions left the spot without saying anything more. They did not and could not know that the secret of Gur Nuu—the Valley of Death that made Nospherus into a land of death and a home of monsters—had surfaced for a while like some vessel just to plunge deeper into the netherworld with the passing of Cal Moru. Many years were to elapse before the resurgence of the secret and still more before its elucidation.

The three warriors were unmoved by the carnage as they walked on through the field of battle. Often their feet almost slipped on the bloody guts spilled upon the ground; all around them carcasses were drying out and stiffening under the sun. Severed heads, arms, and trunks of bodies were everywhere. Some of the Sem were satisfying their hunger by eating dead men. Shortly after the three passed by a spot where the bodies lay thickest, they heard voices calling.

“Guin!”

“Oh, Guin!”

Two children were running towards them, almost falling down in their haste.

“Rinda! Remus!”

Guin let the two crying children cling to him on either side. Their bodies heaved with sobs of relief.

“Oh, Guin, Guin, Guin! I always believed in you. I believed that you would come back to save us. I knew that you would take care of everything! I believed in you, always…”

Rinda’s voice trailed off into more sobs; the tears were running in streams down her grimy face. Guin’s big, trustworthy hands gripped the shoulders of the royal twins who had lost their country.

“I would have come back earlier, if I could.”

His voice was warm and soothing.

“It’s a good thing you two came here with the Sem when you did. The Lagon know of a limestone cavern called the Wind Hole that passes through Dog’s Head, leading from one side of the mountain to the other. We took that path. I was growing a little desperate thinking about the distance to the battlefield. I did not know how close to me the battlefield had moved! When I saw the end of the Wind Hole and heard the sound of fighting, I thought it must be a dream. At the same time, I became convinced that the heavens are on our side.”

“Oh, Guin!” was all Rinda could say.

The leopard warrior continued his inspection of the battlefield with the twins clinging to him as though he might disappear again. They had not gone much farther when they heard a loud yell from between some boulders. Siba rushed forward to investigate and was surprised to discover Istavan, the Crimson Mercenary, with his back pressed up against a rock. Unmoved by the Valachian’s protests, a Lagon was about to swing his heavy cudgel down at the head of the human survivor.

Guin halted the Lagon just in time and told him who Istavan was. The Valachian roared with anger.

“What a farce! I fought so hard in this cursed battle, and after all my efforts, I nearly get killed by my own ally! What kind of an ally is that? Doal’s dung, Guin! Do you always have to bring with you monsters, nincompoops, and bloodthirsty sandworm kin?”

Rinda and Remus looked at each other. Rinda felt a spark of anger at the mercenary’s words and was about to upbraid him for his ungratefulness, but after a moment, realizing the absurdity of the situation, she burst out laughing instead. The sight of Istavan’s angry face and wide open eyes suddenly seemed downright comical. They were still alive. After all they had been through, that was enough to fill the twins with a happiness warm and sweet as sunshine.

The party continued onward with the addition of Istavan. They soon arrived at the bottom of the rocky slope, where Loto and most of the other Sem warriors who had survived the terrible battle were awaiting them.

“Hey!” Istavan called out merrily, forgetting that the wildlings did not understand his language. He gave them an exaggerated wink. “Lovely weather, eh?”

“Riyaad…” Loto lifted both his arms as if he were a legendary hermit in miniature, a giver of blessings. “And Lagon… the Sem’s friends…”

“Siba!” Guin turned to the wildling warrior who walked beside him.

“Yes, Riyaad?”

“Ask the surviving Sem to gather by tribe, and survey them to find out how much damage each tribe has suffered.”

“Yes, Riyaad.”

“Dodok.”

“Yes?”

“It is time that our little friends the Sem meet the warriors of the Lagon. Can you gather your folk here?”

“I will do that.”

Guin watched as the two hurried away, and then he went to stand beside Loto and laid his big hand softly on the old Sem’s shoulder and nodded to himself several times. Loto looked up at him in silence. A few paces away, Rinda and Remus were crying quietly with joy at their reunion. Little Suni was snuggled between the two of them, chirping away despite her painful head wound. Although the twins still struggled with her language, it was clear what she was saying.

“Aira ye em Alphetto.”

“That is right, Suni.” Rinda held the little Sem girl, who kept talking excitedly. “You are still alive—that is good. That is really good. Everything is fine now—everything is safe. The killing is over. Nospherus is protected; Guin protected it. And the Sem and the Lagon did, too.”

Remus gazed out over the desert pensively, wondering if the Mongauli had really given up. Would they not build up their strength again and bare their fangs? Not today, perhaps, but tomorrow? The young prince was careful not to mouth his thoughts—not now.

“Riyaad!”

“Guin, I have gathered them.”

Siba and Dodok had returned. Guin nodded, and with Rinda, Remus, Suni, and Istavan following close behind, went to them.

“What are the Sem’s losses?” the leopard-man inquired.

Siba’s face clouded.

“They are very great. The Tubai are almost annihilated— but I think they will be able to pull through.” A fierce light flashed in his eyes, and all at once his energy returned. “The Sem have survived through much harder years. The Sem are a very strong race. We are small, but we have big, strong hearts. The Sem will be all right.”

“Yes, I know that to be true.” Guin nodded. “The Sem are warriors. The Sem protected Nospherus.”

“And Riyaad protected the Sem.” Loto spoke very slowly as he made his way to stand at the front of the Sem throng.

Then, as the royal heirs of Parros looked on, Guin oversaw the formal meeting of the surviving Sem, led by Loto, and the giant Lagon, led by Kah the Wise; and the two wildling races of Nospherus swore friendship to each other. When Loto and Kah exchanged their oaths, the shouts of joy from the throats of the gathered wildlings echoed up to shake the very crags of Dog’s Head Mountain.

The unlikely alliance presented a fantastic spectacle: on one side, Dodok the Brave and Kah the Wise, with his paralyzed legs, at the head of a mighty battalion of giants who stood two taal in height and weighed one hundred and fifty skones; on the other, the hairy Sem with their stone axes, no taller than children, assembled behind high chieftain Loto of the Raku tribe and brave young Siba. Between these two forces loomed the enigmatic warrior Guin, his arms crossed upon his chest, looking like a figure of legend with his powerful dark body and strange feline countenance. The clear blue of the desert sky and the bright sandy waves of the dunes surrounded them; the platinum blond heads of Rinda and Remus shone in the sun.

“Riyaad,” Siba asked hesitantly, “what if the oh-mu come to attack us again?”

“With the Sem and the Lagon united together, the humans cannot win. Nospherus belongs to the tribes of Nospherus.”

Guin laughed. Then he mumbled as if he’d just remembered:

“Only, I have to bring my fight with Dodok to an end.”

“And if you beat me, you will be the next Dodok the Brave,” Dodok noted with apparent enthusiasm.

Guin shook his head.

“Riyaad, what are you going to do now?” Loto asked, speaking slowly.

“I have not decided.”

“If you would become King of Nospherus and govern both the Lagon and the Sem…”

Guin looked down at him in surprise, and then gazed around at the Sem and the Lagon. Every face was smiling and nodding. Guin started to laugh.

“That might be good. I—love this desert.”

The blue sky and the desert dunes heard the great shout of joy that greeted these words. Rinda brought her hands softly together.

Guin, the leopard-headed warrior. When he appeared in the Roodwood he was but a wanderer, utterly alone. Now he had friends, the Lagon and the Sem.