He kept going anyway.
Prince Kragen and King Joyse kept going as well.
In fact, they kept going so well that the Prince felt a rush of joy at the way their swords rose and fell, the way their blows struck; the surge of their horses through the attack. The red-furred creatures had eyes in the wrong places, with whiskers sprouting all around them; they had too many arms, too many scimitars. And their hate was palpable in the fray, a consuming lust. Nevertheless they were flesh-and-blood: they could be killed. And they weren’t especially skillful with their blades; they relied more on fury than on expertise.
The Prince and King Joyse cut into the heart of the attack and kept going, kept fighting shoulder to shoulder, as if between them they had discovered something indomitable.
It was amazing, really, how many cuts they ducked or parried or slipped aside; how far into the furred bodies they delivered their swords; how their crazy charge made the mounts of the creatures falter and shy. And it was amazing, too, how well the King fought. Prince Kragen himself was much younger – presumably much stronger. Yet King Joyse matched the Alend Contender blow for blow, swung and thrust his longsword as if the weight of steel transformed him, restored him to his prime. Now his beard was splashed with blood; cuts laced his mail; grue stained his arms. And yet he kept all harm away from his companion on that side.
For a few precious moments, they succeeded against unbeatable odds.
And while they succeeded, Prince Kragen found that King Joyse made sense to him at last. If everything else was lost, still no one would ever be able to change the fact that the King of Mordant and the Alend Contender had died side by side instead of at each other’s throats.
Their success had to end. Two men simply couldn’t survive against so much mounted and murderous savagery. And yet they did survive. The momentum of the battle changed suddenly, and Prince Kragen felt another singing rush of joy at the realization that he and King Joyse were no longer alone.
The Termigan had appeared in the midst of the fray.
He had all his men with him.
The look on his face was as keen as a cleaver; he had the hands of a butcher. The way he slaughtered his enemies justified every story the Prince had ever heard of him. And his men were beyond panic. They had seen Sternwall eaten alive by Imagery, and nothing could frighten them. During the first attack of the slug-beast, they had waited with their grim lord down near the foot of the valley, readied themselves to strike. They may have intended to strike at the monster itself. The red-furred creatures were a more possible enemy, however, and the last force of Termigan had hurled itself into the fighting without hesitation.
The lord and his men kept Prince Kragen and King Joyse alive until Norge’s reinforcements arrived.
There were nearly a thousand of the creatures. Castellan Norge had sent less than half that many men to the rescue. The thought that King Joyse and Prince Kragen were already lost had filled the valley with alarm again, paralyzing a large portion of the army. And the men who sprang to Norge’s call had to contend with horses that were wild with fear, terrified by the slug-beast and the alien creatures. In one sense, the Castellan was lucky to send as much help as he did to his King. In another, he was unlucky that he couldn’t muster enough strength to turn the battle.
Nevertheless he achieved a goal which had never crossed his mind: he thinned out the combat directly in front of the monster; thinned it sufficiently to let Darsint through.
In the middle of the fray, Darsint shambled, hardly able to force one foot ahead of the next. He must have been in better condition than he looked, however. Every creature which attacked him, he shot with one of his handguns, aiming and firing almost negligently, as if he could do this kind of fighting in his sleep. When he missed, scimitars rang off his armor without hindering him; he appeared unconscious that he was struck. He wasn’t interested in mere blades and horses.
His target was the slug-beast.
Guns ready, he paused before the monster’s gaping maw. But he wasn’t hesitating: he may have been afraid to hesitate. Instead, he was making some kind of adjustment inside his suit.
Before anyone except Myste realized what he meant to do, his suit produced a burst of power that enabled him to leap past the dire fangs straight down the beast’s throat.
FIFTY-ONE: THE THINGS MEN DO WITH MIRRORS
Facing Gart’s sword in the stone-walled corridor, Artagel felt that he was looking down the throat of death.
The High King’s Monomach had recovered from the fire of the lamp, and from the first extremity of Artagel’s attack; now he had his balance again, his command of steel and weight. Moment by moment, he seemed to grow stronger.
The lanterns which lit the passage made his eyes yellow; they gleamed like a beast’s. His hatchet-nose faced his opponent, keen for blood. The scars on his cheeks, the initiation-marks of his craft, were pale streaks against the bronze hue of his skin. Though he was assailed by the best swordsman in Mordant, he wasn’t even sweating. His blade moved like a live thing: as protective as a lover, it caught and countered every blow for him, as if to spare him the effort of defending himself.
His teeth showed, white and malign, between his lips; loathing stretched all the mercy out of his features. Yet Artagel felt sure that Gart’s abhorrence had nothing personal to do with him. It involved no resentment of Artagel’s reputation, no envy of his position, no particular desire to see him dead. In Gart, the lust for killing was a professional characteristic untainted by individual emotions.
Artagel had heard rumors about the training undergone by Apts of the High King’s Monomach, the privations and hurts and dangers imposed on small boys to make them sure of what they were doing, sure of themselves; to harden their loathing. That was what gave Gart strength: his detachment; the impersonality of his passion. His heart held nothing which might confuse him.
Artagel, on the other hand, was sweating.
His hands were slick with moisture; under his mail, his jerkin clung to his skin. His sword had gone dead in his grasp, and his chest heaved with the exertion of swinging the blade. The tightness in his side had become a band of hot iron, fired to agony, and that pain seemed to sap the resilience from his legs, the quick tension from his wrists, the life from his weapon.
A flurry of blows, as loud as forgework, bright with sparks. A measuring pause. Another flurry.
There was no question about it: Gart was going to kill him.
Artagel didn’t face this prospect with quite the same approval Lebbick had felt.
He couldn’t afford to be beaten, absolutely could not afford to fail. If he went down, Gart would go after Terisa and Geraden. He would go after Nyle. They would all die, and King Joyse himself wouldn’t stand a chance—
But when he thought about Nyle, remembered what had been done to his brother, his heart filled up with darkness, and he flung himself at Gart wildly, inexpertly. Only the sheer fury of his attack saved him from immediate death. Fury was all that kept him going; nothing but fury gave strength to his limbs, air to his lungs, life to his steel.
A quick, slicing pain brought him back to himself – a cut along the bunched muscle of his left shoulder. He recoiled from suicide as blood welled out of the wound. A minor injury: he knew that instinctively. Nevertheless it hurt—It hurt enough to restore his reason.
Not this way. He was never going to beat Gart this way. The truth was obvious in the effortless action of Gart’s blade, the feral smirk on his face; it was unmistakable in the glint of his yellow eyes.
In fact, Artagel was barely able to keep Gart’s sword point out of his chest as he retreated down the corridor, gasping for breath, battling to recover his balance. The Monomach’s blade wove gleams and flashes of lantern-light as if his steel were somehow miraculous, like a mirror.