“It’s all right now. In the moments between horncall and sunrise, you may speak.” It was the voice of the Windeye. He struggled out of the blanket she had laid over him and glared at her. “Was this your revenge, Lady, for the time I drugged your wine?”
“You needed the rest,” Aurian told him unrepentantly, and was glad that he had no chance to reply.
The companions gathered around Schiannath, who was stamping his feet and swinging his arms to move the sluggish blood in his cold limbs. The Xandim warrior looked deathly pale in the crepuscular light, but his haggard face was set with determination. Chiamh handed him the water flask, and he took a quick drink before dousing his face and head with the remainder. There was no time for more: a faint golden aura was already appearing above the eastern slopes, and he must be in position before the first rays of sunlight hit the plateau, or forfeit the Challenge.
Quickly, Iscalda embraced her beloved brother. “May the Goddess be with you,” she whispered, and tore herself away from him before her brittle mask of courage could shatter.
“And with you, my sister.” Schiannath swallowed hard and started forward—then paused to lay a hand on the Mage’s arm. His eyes held a desperate plea. “If—if anything should happen to me,” he whispered quickly, “I beg you, protect her from Phalihas.”
“I will, I promise,” Aurian assured him. Then he was gone.
The world was utterly silent in that moment before sunrise, as the two opponents stepped out upon the plateau. Then, where two men stood locked eye to eye in the tension that preceded combat, two mighty stallions—one midnight-black, one a darkly dappled gray—faced each other across the stretch of shadowed turf: tails streaming, manes flying in the wind as the great arched necks flexed and the finely sculpted heads lifted proudly. Muscles moved with fluid power in deep chests and strong haunches, as lethal hooves tore up the turf.
The third call of the horn was the triumphant cry of the rising sun. As its light blazed up on the horizon, the gray turf turned to dazzling green—save where the long shadow of Phalihas stretched out to engulf his opponent in a swath of darkness. Schiannath shrilled a strident challenge and reared, pawing at the air, lifting himself high into the sunlight above the black stain of his enemy’s shade. The glittering dew cast sprays of fire beneath pounding hooves as the stallions screamed, and charged.
As the two great horses hurtled toward one another, Schiannath lost all vestiges of human consciousness to the white-hot ecstasy of pure animal rage. He thundered toward Phalihas, intending to dodge and smash into him from the side—but the other had the same idea. Both beasts veered in the same direction—but Phalihas was older, and reacted more quickly to the new development. Wrenching himself around on his powerful haunches, he bore down on the gray stallion, teeth snapping, and drove his head into Schiannath’s belly, winding him and knocking him off his feet.
With unexpected agility, Schiannath rolled over and scrambled upright, trembling from that instant of panic when his feet had left the ground. Phalihas’s hooves pounded down on the place where his opponent had been—but they had missed their target. Schiannath’s head snaked out. The black stallion screamed in pain and outrage as a line of white fire ripped across his flank where the other’s teeth had slashed him. He whirled away, jolted back to cold sanity by the shock—for he had clearly not expected Schiannath to take first blood.
Schiannath came back at him and reared, his sharp hooves lashing close to Phalihas’s skull. Phalihas ducked beneath the flailing bludgeons, went for his enemy’s throat, but missed his hold. Schiannath’s hoof struck bruisingly against his shoulder as his teeth met in the deeply muscled chest and tore out a lump of flesh. Now it was Schiannath’s turn to scream and stagger back, bleeding. His rolling eye held a new respect for his opponent—and the steely glint of a grim determination to succeed at all costs against his foe.
Again and again the stallions charged each other, plunging and biting, kicking and slashing. Blood stained the trampled turf and the air rang with screams of rage and pain as first one and then the other penetrated his opponent’s guard. The two were evenly matched: Phalihas a little heavier, Schiannath slightly taller. The older stallion’s cunning and experience was offset by the greater endurance of the younger beast. Both were maimed and bleeding; both were streaked with a froth of white sweat and staggering with exhaustion, yet neither would give ground, and neither would give in.
To the companions, standing in an anxious huddle by the massive stones, the fight was an unbearable agony. Iscalda had never felt so helpless. She could scarcely bear to watch her brother being slowly torn apart before her eyes, yet watch she must, though her vision blurred again and again with tears that she angrily dashed away. In her mind she was out there on that bloody field with Schiannath—she felt the pain of every wound inflicted, and her heart bled as did his ravaged flesh. As the stallions’ battle took them farther and farther away from where she stood, she strained to follow them, squinting her eyes in an attempt to penetrate the intervening distance. If watching them had been a torture, not being able to see was infinitely worse. She felt a hand grip her own and hold on tightly, and was grateful for the support it offered—yet could not spare a glance to see who was trying to help her.
It must end soon—it must! Schiannath dodged a lunge from Phalihas—but not completely. The other’s teeth met with a click in his ear, and pain lanced through his head. He shook himself free with a squeal, blood running down his ragged forelock into his eyes, and staggered aside, his reactions and movements slower now, his thinking dulled and blurred by pain. His sides were heaving with exertion, and blood-streaked foam dripped from his open jaws. Catching a glimpse of his foe, Schiannath whirled stiffly and kicked out, his hind feet smacking into the other’s ribs with a thud that almost drowned the crack of bone. Phalihas tottered and almost fell, the breath going out of him in an agonized whistle as Schiannath stumbled, unbalanced by the kick. A wrenching pain stabbed up his left foreleg. He recovered himself with all his weight on the other, for the hoof of the injured limb could barely touch the ground.
The fight broke off as the two stallions stood, heads drooping, each of them desperately trying to summon the energy to finish his opponent. None of the Xandim would interfere from the sidelines—this battle must be fought out now, to settle the succession. The last Challenger left standing would become the Herdlord—and the other would die.
Schiannath knew he had reached the end of his endurance. With his foreleg crippled he had lost mobility—and worse, he could not kick. The injury had robbed him of a major weapon. It could only be a matter of time now, before Phalihas outmaneuvered him. Schiannath’s heart sank beneath a weight of black despair. He had tried, but he had lost…
Then, through the gray haze of blood loss and fatigue that fogged his brain, Schiannath’s sensitive equine hearing registered the sound of muffled weeping. Iscaldal With a jolt he remembered his sister, and the Lady Aurian and her companions, who had saved him from his dreadful exile. Their lives rested on his success. And Iscalda: he was fighting this battle not for himself, but for her! What right had he to give in? A thought came to him with this renewed determination: if he was in this woeful state, then his older opponent must be in a far worse case. That faint spark of hope buoyed his flagging spirits, and he felt one last reserve of strength trickle into his weary limbs. Shaking his head to clear his vision, he took a good look at his foe for the first time in what seemed to have Been an endless age. Phalihas stood trembling in all his limbs, wheezing and choking with the effort to draw air into his lungs. Blood was streaming from his mouth and nostrils, and his eyes were dull and glazed.