“Prepare lances,” Lorn says quietly to Olisenn.
“First squad, lances at the ready. Lances at the ready!”
Two blackish gray shapes seem to elongate from the trunk,then separate. Lorn blinks, to realize that two huge cats sprint toward Lorn, their long bounding strides narrowing the distance, far faster than a galloping horse or a racing firewagon.
“Lances ready. Prepare to discharge!” Olisenn’s orders are flat. “Discharge at will.”
Forcing himself to be calm, Lorn lifts his firelance, and focuses it on the leading giant cat.
Hssstt! A single narrow beam of chaos flies, seemingly curving to strike the cat. The half-charred body tumbles into a heap.
Hhsstt! The second cat begins a spring before Lorn’s followup bolt takes it in the chest.
Lorn pulls the gelding toward the wall, and turns in the saddle, checking to see where Olisenn’s lance might be pointed, but the squad leader’s eyes remain on the trunk that lies less than two hundred cubits away.
“Company halt!” Lorn orders.
“Company halt!” Olisenn echoes.
“We can do five abreast for now,” Lorn suggests.
“Five abreast! Stay on the road.”
Lorn glances to the northeast, but can see little except the formation of the second squad-and a series of flares that are firelances discharging. He turns to study the trunk wall ahead.
A pack of smaller cats-the night leopards? — each perhaps ten stone, charges toward the first squad.
“Discharge at will!” Lorn orders, wheeling his gelding so that he can bring his lance to bear while continuing to watch Olisenn.
“Discharge at will. Short bursts! Short bursts!” Olisenn orders.
Hssst! Hssst!
Three of the cats fall. A fourth comes up under one of the men’s lances, and the lance falls, and before the lancers-or Lorn-can react, the man is down.
Three quick firelance bursts sear across the smaller cat’s back and upper shoulders. The cat spasms, then falls still. The fallen lancer does not move.
“Stop discharges. Save your lances!” snaps Olisenn.
Two of the cats flash back toward the gray-brown trunk, scramble lithely up it, and then sprint northward along the tops of the trunk away from the ward-wall and toward the crushed vegetation that is the crown.
“Gythet’s dead, ser,” one of the lancers announces to Olisenn.
“Strap him over his mount, quickly,” responds the squad leader.
Lorn turns his mount to the northwest, paralleling the massive trunk, but at a good hundred and fifty cubits. He glances back at Olisenn. “We need to ride around the crown. That’s to make sure we can send a messenger safely to Eastend.”
“Ah … yes, ser. There are many creatures in the tops of the fallen trees. They wait until it falls, and then they hurry down and hide there, lying in wait.”
“I’m sure they do. We’ll try to give it a wide berth.”
“Reform! Lances at the ready. Follow the captain.”
At Olisenn’s orders, Lorn lets the gelding slow, until he is riding to the left and slightly behind Olisenn. The hint of a frown appears on the squad leader’s face, then vanishes, replaced with an expression of professional competence.
Neither Lorn nor Olisenn speak as the column rides out along the trunk to where the smashed limbs of the tree’s crown form a small hill.
The captain wants to shake his head, but refrains. In the scurry and the attacks by the cats, he had forgotten that Olisenn presents as great a danger as do the creatures of the Accursed Forest. Lorn has his own firelance ready, if but with a fraction of its original chaos charge, and from where he rides he can cover both the squad leader and survey the fallen forest monarch.
Kusyl rides to meet them. His left sleeve bears a rent, but shows no blood. “Ser.”
“How many casualties?” Lorn looks from the squad with at least one empty-saddled mount to Kusyl.
“Two dead, ser. Two wounded.”
“One dead, ser. One wounded,” Olisenn adds. “Thus far.”
At the sound of crackling and rustling branches, all three men turn in their saddles toward the middle of the mound of branches and leaves. A single branch, more than two cubits thick, falls outside the crown, snapped by whatever stirs within the vegetation.
The light wind out of the south carries a musky bitter scent to Lorn, that and an acrid odor of crushed leaves.
“Prepare to discharge lances!” Lorn snaps. Anything that moves branches a cubit thick and whose power and mass move the entire fallen crown is something that will require more than a single firelance.
“Prepare to discharge-”
The last words of Olisenn’s orders are lost under the crashing of displaced limbs and vegetation.
MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnn …. A soundless, yet paralyzing mental scream slams into Lorn, and his mount. The gelding seems to stagger and steps sideways. Lorn wants to hold his temples, so intense is the pain, and for a moment he cannot see, for what feel like knives ripping at his eyes.
He blinks through the involuntary tears at the monster that emerges from the crushed crown, strewing aside vegetation like wet paper.
A huge gray lizard slithers from the crown, except that it is so large that it appears at first as if the gray trunk were turning and growing-or extending itself toward Kusyl and the second squad. Fully five cubits at the shoulders, and more than twenty cubits in length, the lizard pounds toward the second squad. A black tongue whips out, looking like a lash.
Before the mental order attack, three of the second squad’s mounts have actually gone down, one to its knees. A lancer scrambles for his lance, not realizing the lizard’s speed. The webbed and clawed left foot flashes, and the lancer vanishes under it.
Lorn winces. “Discharge lances! Now! Discharge lances!”
Hssst! A single line of fire flare from one of the second company lancers, but the chaos flame rolls off the gray hide of the monster stun lizard.
Hssst! Hsst!
In response to the lines of chaos fire, the lizard swings its head from side to side, then pauses, as if calculating which lancer will be its next victim.
Almost without thinking, Lorn sheathes the firelance, and pulls out the lancer sabre, willing the chaos that surrounds him and the lizard into the blade. He nudges the gelding. The mount shivers. His heels dig into the gelding’s flanks, and the white starts forward, slowly, then moving into a quick trot.
Lorn rides toward the lizard, angling from behind its head on the left side. He hopes the lizard will hold for just an instant.
Abruptly, the giant snout turns, impossibly quickly, toward the lancer captain.
Lorn hurls the sabre with all the force he can muster. The chaos-infused cupridium sabre spins lazily end-over-end as Lorn wills the point to strike the lizard’s head or eye point first. Even as he wills the impact, he is leaning in the saddle, turning the gelding away from the stun lizard’s gaping mouth and hot breath, and angling toward the second squad, pulling his own nearly depleted firelance from its holder.
MMnnnnnnnnnnnn …. The stunning soundless metal scream is followed by an enormous grunt. Then the lizard convulses, thrashing, and a webbed forefoot claws at the sabre that protrudes from the platter-sized eye:
Lorn can sense the raging flames within the lizard’s skull-as order and chaos war.
He reins up the shivering gelding.