Dark Crusade (12 page)

Now members of Kane's personal guard sifted through the chaos of steel and straining flesh, regrouped around their general for new orders. The battle was beyond the stage of strategy--a seething maelstrom of individual duels and hand-to-hand fighting. Kane dispatched several aides to order the foot soldiers to attend and help remount any of the Sandotneri troopers who might still fight--then plunged back into the melee.

Ax and shield. Hammer and mace. No lance now--the struggle was too close to wield them. Some of the armored warriors were driving into the beleaguered Sandotneri light horse--ripping through them in the dense fray like grotesque metallic sharks. Enclosed within the Sataki crescent, the Sandotneri cavalry could not maneuver. Horses screamed and reared, smashing into their comrades as riders could not manage their panicked mounts. In the press, there was no room to fight back against the garroting Sataki encirclement.

While the Sandotneri army had not been seriously outnumbered at the start of the battle, Jarvo in his confidence had committed two deadly blunders. He had allowed his flanks to be engulfed, and he had failed to withhold an adequate reserve.

Kane ranged through the chaotic battle, trying to seek out Jarvo. The pall of dust thickened with each passing minute, enveloping the entire field in a smothering blanket. He could see no further than a score of yards in the yellow haze. The battle surged over a square mile of torn earth and broken flesh, and his enemy eluded him in the swirling vortex that left the field strewn with an ever growing litter of death.

There was no scarcity of work for him closer at hand. Looming through the yellow murk in his black armor--now dusty and splashed with gore--Kane looked like the god of war stalking through the revels of his worshippers. If his presence in the thick of the fighting inspired his men, it also drew the desperate attacks of the trapped enemy. With Kane down, there was yet a hope of victory.

Kane wielded his battle-ax like a wand of death, cleaving shield and brassart with its wide blade, smashing through breastplate and armet with the thick spike on its opposite side. The haft was steel-strapped, turning the edges of slashing swords and axes. His shield was bashed and notched from the blows of maces and flails, of questing blades. His armor was scored and dented from desperate blows that slammed past his guard. When they could not bring down the raging demon in gore-spattered armor, they struck at his black stallion--their blows glancing off chanfron and crinet.

Kane smashed them down as a lion scatters jackals--killing until they dared not close with him, fled before his lethal rush. He was in his element--tireless and implacable as he cut through the milling Sandotneri warriors, strewing the torn earth with broken bodies and smashed steel. Kane's attack was that of a berserker--headlong and unstoppable. Yet a careful observer would note that this was no suicidal frenzy--rather that each movement, each blow and parry was finely calculated by a keen and highly skilled intellect. And that awareness made Kane all the more terrifying to them.

The battle carried southward, toward Meritavano, where the Sandotneri army had camped the night before. Across the wake of dead and wounded, the Sataki foot soldiers followed with gore-clotted poniards and axes. The Sandotneri army, struggling to break out of the Sataki vise, was not merely being decimated; it was being eliminated.

Still in the thick of the fighting, Kane heard the sudden blare of trumpets from the dust beyond. Jarvo was trying to rally his men. Kane smashed down a last mailed foeman--his blunted ax could not penetrate the mail, but the force behind it caved in the man's chest--paused to let his personal guard gather about him. Suddenly the field seemed barren of Sandotneri horsemen.

After a moment reports came back to Kane that Jarvo, leading the last desperate remnants of his heavy cavalry, had managed to disengage Kane's armored troops and cut a retreat through the ring of light horse to the south. Those of the Sandotneri who could follow, turned and fled through the break.

Kane snarled commands, called for his trumpeters to sound pursuit. Kane might have spared his breath. Sensing the kill, his cavalry were already slashing at the heels of the fleeing Sandotneri. It was a day's ride to the safety of the city walls, and it was manifest that Jarvo was without any reserve troops to reinforce his retreat.

Gathering his personal guard to him, Kane plunged after the fugitives--striving to throw out flankers to cut off the exhausted enemy. He galloped past the deserted Sandotneri camp at Meritavano, sourly noting that already his men were more interested in pillage than pursuit. Just to the south of the village, Kane drew rein amidst a milling body of his men.

Pushing through them, Kane rode as close as he dared. A low curse escaped his lips. Men near him heard it, shivered.

The land to the south of Meritavano was an expanse of reedy bog and water-meadow, fed by one of the savannah's buried rivers. Caught between the village and the flanking Sataki cavalry, Jarvo had tried to lead his men across the water-meadow--looking deceptively solid in this the dry season. Now horses and riders thrashed helplessly in the deep mud--the weight of their mail and armor dragging them beneath the surface of the marsh, leaving them floundering about in the muck, unable to rise and win free to the dry land beyond. On the far side, a dismal few mounts and riders dragged themselves free staggered off through the tall grass.

"Send the foot soldiers in there," Kane ordered. "Have them strip to the skin, so they won't sink in over their butts. They can use their poniards well enough, I've seen. And bring rope--as much as there is. Salvage what they can of horses and armor, before it all sinks into the morass. And bring me Jarvo--dead or alive."

The Satakis leapt to their muddy slaughter with all the unrestrained zeal of children frolicking in the rain.

They slithered through the marsh until darkness claimed the day and the field. Toward twilight one mucksmeared searcher proudly handed Kane a battered helmet with vizor worked into a snarling demon's mask--pulled out of the scum of a deep pool.

Kane stared out across the darkening morass.

King Owrinos of Sandotneri gave a last spasmodic shudder, uttered a great liquid sigh, smiled and lay still. It might have been a delicious stretch and yawn before settling into contented sleep, but his smile was fixed for the ages, and the blood that bubbled from his lips clotted and dried. The king would never again awaken, not even at the shuddering impacts of the massive stones that were pounding his palace into rubble.

His daughter, summoned by the court physicians when the hemorrhage erupted, gazed at the emaciated corpse and shrugged. Owrinos had taken too long in his dying. After so many months of anticipation, his death was only an anticlimax to the impending doom of his besieged city.

"Sandotneri looks to you now, Ridaze," Esketra murmured. "General Ridaze."

From close at hand--a jarring concussion, the tearing rumble of a collapsing wall. Esketra could smell the musty tang of pulverized plaster and brick, hear the distant moans and shouts.

"What's left of it," she amended.

Ridaze's handsome face was grim with concern. "Kane's trebuchets are smashing the outer walls to powder. Esketra, we must take you to a place of safety."

"Lead on," Esketra said dully. "We both know there is no place of safety in Sandotneri."

The city had been stunned when the first panic-stricken riders brought word of their army's defeat at the hands of the Satakis. For the first hours there was disbelief, loud denials as the rumors gobbled about the city streets. Then came the pitiful knots of fugitives--the scattered survivors of the rout, battered and filthy and half-dead from their flight. And the next day brought the victorious Sataki army.

The Satakis sacked the outlying settlements and villas, as Kane took up a position before the city walls. Kane sent emissaries to speak eloquently of the advantages of peaceful surrender. Their arguments failed to persuade--in part because the people of Sandotneri trusted to their walls and to some last minute deliverance from their neighboring kingdoms; in part because, with Owrinos in a coma and Jarvo presumed dead, there was no single personage with authority to surrender the city.

Kane set to work constructing siege engines from the tackle and timber carried in the baggage train. By the next morning his massive trebuchets were bombarding the city with boulders and chunks of masonry, while his sappers mined beneath the walls. Meanwhile, several of his cavalry regiments were detached to escort the unwieldy mass of the Prophet's assault force from Shapeli. Its heavy cavalry destroyed, the beleaguered remnants of Sandotneri's army dared not risk a sortie against Kane's armor.

Kane waited for the city to know it was doomed. He could afford to be patient for a while. He had ample provisions and water for his horses and men, and he was confident that no new army would come to raise the siege. Of those of the southern kingdoms whose holdings bordered on Sandotneri's demesne, certainly no help would be forthcoming. Ripestnari, whose lands bordered Sandotneri along the Inland Sea, was a traditional enemy; Desdrineli, to the south, was at war on its own western marches and could spare no troops; Vegliari, further to the south, had been laid waste by a long and bloody civil strife and was on the brink of schism: Bavosni, on the Eastern Sea and sharing part of the marches of Shapeli, had only years before lost a bitter territorial war with Sandotneri--and was at present Kane's major outside source of men and equipment.

They would stand by while the Satakis gobbled up Sandotneri. That they were next in the path of the Dark Crusade was a threat too distant to consider. After all, Shapeli was leagues away across the savannah, and certainly Orted Ak-Ceddi would be satisfied when the conquest of Sandotneri secured his borders and restored his military prestige.

And so Kane waited for the mass of assault troops to join him from Shapeli--amusing himself in the interim by bombarding the city. Initially there was answering fire from the city's own defensive engines, but Kane's trebuchets quickly found their range and annihilated them. His design was primarily psychological warfare for the moment, inasmuch as Kane saw no point in breaching the walls before he had the reinforcements to throw into the defenders' fire. His own men were too valuable. Instead Kane was content to demoralize the besieged city with the evidence that his trebuchets could pound their walls and their palace at will. These siege engines were of massive construction, capable of hurting immense weights with deadly accuracy--range being adjusted through the movable weight on the short arm of the pivoted beam, or by shortening the sling on the longer throwing arm.

Nor were all the missiles of stone. In this region surface rock was scarce, but other ammunition was in ready supply' Heavily laden wagons returned from the plundered battlefield. Dead horses were better eating than the Sataki rabble was accustomed to, thus had value. The stripped bodies of the Sandotneri officers could be loaded into a trebuchet sling. They made little impression on the city's walls, but their effect on the defenders' morale was devastating.

Kane grew bored with the sport. It served to remind him that Jarvo's body had never been found. Spies and deserters from the city reported that the Sandotneri general had not been among the fugitives who limped back to their capital after the disaster at Meritavano.

The defeated general would have found a cold welcome there. Kane's crushing victory had plunged Jarvo's name into disgrace. Jarvo had left the city garrison under the command of his rivals, so that they would not share in the glory of his victory. His artifice had spared their lives, and now they repaid his memory by loudly proclaiming the defeat was entirely due to Jarvo's incompetent leadership.

Owrinos' death left Sandotneri without even a titular monarch. General Ridaze, at the last minute ordered to remain with the city garrison, had been elevated to Jarvo's former position. With Esketra's favor, Ridaze was the uncrowned commander of Sandotneri. It may have been that Ridaze found the sudden realization of his ambitions not so magnificent as he had dreamed.

Kane remembered Ridaze as a capable officer, popular with his men and rather more so with the ladies. Dark, dashing, daring, the romantic ideal of a cavalry officer--but of no particular genius or ability. Ridaze would present no problem; he was out of his depth.

Kane rather wished he knew for certain that Jarvo was safely buried beneath the morass at Meritavano. Kane despised Jarvo as a man, considered him unimaginative as a general--but the man had a certain plodding tenacity that, given the smiles of fortune, made him a dangerous opponent. His swordplay was characteristic: good enough to hold his own against a better man, unaware that he was outclassed, and let his opponent falter but once... Kane had seen any number of masters of the blade cut down by stolid journeymen who got lucky when it counted.

The siege wore on tiresomely--Kane unwilling to storm the walls, Ridaze not daring to attempt a sortie. Kane kept to his pavilion--letting his officers keep his army in order, moodily sipping brandy and considering his next move. In the distance, gouts of dust and splintered masonry exploded intermittently from the ruined palace. Kane brooded upon the destruction. It seemed only a short while ago that he had schemed to discover the secret passageways of that same palace; now he was smashing it to rubble, He always seemed to be smashing at things he could not have.

Kane swore and looked for another bottle of brandy. The familiar depression was getting worse after each battle now. He wondered how much longer the game would continue to amuse him, to stave off the awful weight of centuries from his spirit. The inaction and resultant letdown always made the boredom more intense than before. Kane found himself musing once again upon the Tower of Yslsl. For too many centuries had festered that haunting, deadly temptation...

The twilight brought with it two events to rouse him from his sombre mood.

A delegation ventured forth from Sandotneri under flag of truce. General Ridaze wished to discuss terms of honorable surrender.