He would not have come at all, but it is difficult to say no to a minotaur who towers over you head, shoulders, and horns and who is insistent upon your coming.
Mina wore her helm with the visor raised. A wise move, Galdar thought. The helm shadowed her youthful, girl’s face, kept it hidden.
“What are you orders, Talon Leader?” Mina asked. Her voice resonated from within the visor, cold and hard as the metal.
The commander looked up at the Knight with a certain amount of scorn, not the least intimidated.
“I’m no blasted ‘talon leader,’ Sir Knight,” he said and he laid a nasty, sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘sir.’ “I hold my rank as captain of my own command, and we don’t take orders from your kind. Just money. We do whatever we damn well please.”
“Speak politely to the talon leader,” Galdar growled and gave the officer a shove that staggered him.
The man wheeled, glowered, reached for his short sword.
Galdar grasped his own sword. His fellow soldiers drew their blades with a ringing sound. Mina did not move.
“What are your orders, Captain?” she asked again.
Seeing he was outnumbered, the officer slid his sword back into its sheath, his movement slow and deliberate, to show that he was still defiant, just not stupid.
“To wait until the assault is launched and then to fire at the guards on the walls. Sir,” he said sulkily, adding in sullen tones,
“We’ll be the last ones into the city, which means all the choice pickings will already be gone.”
Mina regarded him speculatively. “You have little respect for the Knights of Neraka or our cause.”
“What cause?” The office gave a brief, barking laugh. “To fill your own coffers? That’s all you care about. You and your foolish visions.” He spat on the ground.
“Yet you were once one of us, Captain Samuval. You were once a Knight of Takhisis,” Mina said. “You quit because the cause for which you joined was gone. You quit because you no longer believed.”
The captain’s eyes widened, his face muscles went slack.
“How did—” He snapped his mouth shut. “What if I was?” he growled. “I didn’t desert if that’s what you’re thinking. I bought my way out. I have my papers—”
“If you do not believe in our cause, why do you continue to fight for us, Captain?” Mina asked.
Samuval snorted. “Oh, I believe in your cause now, all right,” he said with a leer. “I believe in money, same as the rest of you.”
Mina sat her horse, who was still and calm beneath her hand, and gazed through Beckard’s Cut gazed at the city of Sanction.
Galdar had a sudden, strange impression that she could see through the walls of the city, see through the armor of those defending the city, see through their flesh and their bones to their very hearts and minds, just as she had seen through him. Just as she had seen through the captain.
“No one will enter Sanction this day, Captain Samuval,” said Mina softly. “The carrion birds will be the ones who find choice pickings. The ships that you see sailing away are not filled with Solamnic Knights. The troops that line their decks are in reality straw dummies wearing the armor of Solamnics Knights. It is a trap.”
Galdar stared, aghast. He believed her. Believed as surely as if he had seen inside the ships, seen inside the walls to the enemy army hiding there, ready to spring.
“How do you know this?” the captain demanded.
“What if I gave you something to believe in, Captain Samuval?” she asked instead of answering. “What if I make you the hero of this battle? Would you pledge your loyalty to me?” She smiled slightly. “I have no money to offer you. I have only this sure knowledge that I freely share with you—fight for me and on this day you will come to know the one true god.”
Captain Samuval gazed up at her in wordless astonishment.
He looked dazed, lightning-struck.
Mina held out her raw and bleeding hands, palms open. “You are offered a choice, Captain Samuval. I hold death in one hand. Glory in the other. Which will it be?”
Samuval scratched his beard. “You’re a strange one, Talon Leader. Not like any of your kind I’ve ever met before.”
He looked back through Beckard’s Cut.
“Rumor has spread among the men that the city is abandoned,”
Mina said. “They have heard it will open its gates in surrender. They have become a mob. They run to their own destruction.”
She spoke truly. Ignoring the shouts of the officers, who were vainly endeavoring to maintain some semblance of order, the foot soldiers had broken ranks. Galdar watched the army disintegrate, become in an instant an undisciplined horde rampaging through the cut. Eager for the kill, eager for spoils. Captain Samuval spat again in disgust. His expression dark, he looked back at Mina.
“What would you have me do, Talon Leader?”
“Take your company of archers and post them on that ridge there. Do you see it?” Mina pointed to a foothill overlooking Beckard’s Cut.
“I see it,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “And what do we do once we’re there?”
“My Knights and I will take up our positions there. Once arrived, you will await my orders,” Mina replied. “When I give those orders, you will obey my commands without question.”
She held out her hand, her blood-smeared hand. Was it the hand that held death or the hand that held life? Galdar wondered.
Perhaps Captain Samuval wondered as well, for he hesitated before he finally took her hand into his own. His hand was large, callused from the bowstring, brown and grimy. Her hand was small, its touch light. Her palm was blistered, rimed with dried blood. Yet it was the captain who winced slightly.
He looked down at his hand when she released him, rubbed it on his leather corselet, as if rubbing away the pain of sting or bum.
“Make haste, Captain. We don’t have much time,” Mina ordered.
“ And just who are you, Sir Knight?” Captain Samuval asked.
He was still rubbing his hand.
“I am Mina,” she said.
Grasping the reins, she pulled sharply. Foxfire wheeled. Mina dug in her spurs, galloped straight for the ridge above Beckard’s Cut. Her Knights rode alongside her. Galdar ran at her stirrup, legs pumping to keep up.
“How do you know that Captain Samuval will obey you, Mina ?” the minotaur roared over the pounding of horses’ hooves.
She looked down on him and smiled. Her amber eyes were bright in the shadow of the helm.
“He will obey,” she said, “if for no other reason now than to demonstrate his disdain for his superiors and their foolish commands. But the captain is a man who hungers, Galdar. He yearns for food. They have given him clay to fill his belly. I will give him meat. Meat to nourish his soul.”
Mina leaned over her horse’s head and urged the animal to gallop even faster.
Captain Samuval’s Archer Company took up position on the ridgeline overlooking Beckard’s Cut. They were several hundred strong, well-trained professional bowmen who had fought in many of Neraka’s wars before now. They used the elven long bow, so highly prized among arfhers. Taking up their places, they stood foot to foot, packed tightly together, with not much room to maneuver, for the ridgeline was not long. The archers were in a foul mood. Watching the army of the Knights of Neraka sweep down on Sanction, the men muttered that there would be nothing left for them—the finest women carried off, the richest houses plundered. They might as well go home.
Above them clouds thickened; roiling gray clouds that bubbled up over the Zhakar Mountains and began to slide down the mountain’s side.
The army camp was empty, now, except for the tents and supply wagons and a few wounded who had been unable to go with their brethren and were cursing their ill luck. The clamor of the battle moved away from them. The surrounding mountains and the lowering clouds deflected the sounds of the attacking army. The valley was eerily silent.