Suddenly the air was rent by a ragged, shrill chorus pumped out by many brass throats. The blasts reverberated beneath the heavens. Again the fanfare sounded, so harsh it seemed as if it might pare flesh from bones. Their commander, in the front rank, jabbed his lance as if he sought to spear the clouds. The men behind him answered him with a roar that seemed mild in comparison with the trumpets. Carnelian and Fern could feel the excitement around them heating. The battlecries rushed away along the line, turning distantly to a hiss that set the lances vibrating like a wind through ferns. Fern bared his teeth and nodded.
Then Carnelian became aware the front ranks of their squadron were sliding forward in a packed mass of flesh and hide, of bronze and wood. He did not even need to signal his aquar. Her head dropped and she sprang forward. He was thrown from side to side. Faster and faster until the rocking smoothed and she was leaning into her run as her feet reached forward, clutched the ground with their claws, then whipped back. Carnelian adjusted his position, wound his wrist into the reins and clutched his lance in both hands. Its grip was greasy, but firm. Around him other riders were hazy jiggling shadows. Only glimpses of Fern’s pale leathers allowed him to know his friend was close.
Peering ahead Carnelian could see little through the dust their aquar were scratching up from the ground. He lowered his head against the pelting sand, deafened by the furious drum and rush of their charge. From up ahead came muffled, crashing sounds. His aquar rocked him as she slowed, her head rising a little with her plumes. Then the ground became rough, uneven. He was jerked this way and that as her footfalls landed on things that collapsed suddenly like eggs beneath her weight. One of her legs snagging threw him forward. As she yanked her foot free he was punched back into his saddle-chair. Her head was high now, crowned with startled plumes, and she had slowed to a jerky stride. A shudder. Another as her footing slipped and she fought for balance. Carnelian clung to the saddle-chair, his lance lying flat across his knees, and he peered down to see the field of rocks or whatever it was they were fighting through. At any moment she might lose her footing and he would be thrown.
The ground seemed for a moment to be meshed in the roots and stems of dark ferns. Then he saw a thick hand, limbs contorted into loops and hooks. Boulders resolved into heads furred with hair. Some staved in, crushed and leaking moist pulp. Bestial faces torn and bloating, lips drawn back revealing black peg-encrusted maws. A stench rose up of shit and blood as his aquar stumbled forward through that quagmire of mangled flesh.
Seeing the dust thinning, he pulled her up. Around him other riders were struggling through the carnage, fanning out. Less than ten ranks ahead they met the edge of a sea. He gaped at that milling ocean of heads. Cries and screams were coming from where the auxiliaries met the sartlar in a frothing boundary. Arms rose and fell wielding blades of gleaming, dripping bronze. He felt a horror greater even than his disgust of the slaughter. Clearly, the beastmen were unarmed. Then there was a small but sudden change in the scene. A man and rider toppled, and disappeared. At a different point along the boundary, another vanished. An aquar that had been screeching fell abruptly silent. His scalp began to crawl. He glanced round and saw Fern’s pallid shape hunched in a saddle-chair some distance away.
‘Fern,’ he cried, but his voice was lost in the tumult. He wanted to work a path to his side, but there were too many auxiliaries in the way. He became aware of how desperately they were eyeing the fighting up ahead. He and Fern were being fed into that front with everyone else. He glanced back, contemplating retreat, some attempt at regrouping. Carnage carpeted the land to their rear, but this mess was slowly being overrun by an eddying tide of sartlar creeping around their flank. Ahead, he saw how much the line of auxiliaries had thinned. A surf of hands grasped at man and beast, which the auxiliaries hewed at with their blades, but as a hand was cut away, more replaced it. He saw one aquar struggling to stand as a skirt of sartlar clung to it. The creature flailed its neck as it toppled, spilling its rider into the waiting grasp of dozens.
His sympathy for the sartlar had all dried up. His fingers fumbled the toggle that closed a scabbard. Slipping his fingers around the handle of a sword gave him a thrill of relief. He pulled its fanblade free and glanced round. Their way back was now closed. He focused his gaze on Fern and urged his aquar towards him. In pushing past another rider, their saddle-chairs scraped against each other. Carnelian had no time for the man’s gaping panic. Fern glanced round and their eyes met. The next moment he looked away and Carnelian saw the man before him being pulled down, adding his cries to the pandemonium.
Then, suddenly, at the edge of his vision, an auxiliary disappeared. He spun round and they were upon him. He saw first their filthy mouths. Then their monstrously branded faces. Then the animal gleam of their eyes. He swung the fanblade, pruning off a couple of hands. Twisting, he swung it back, feeling it snag as it bit into bone. It caught, the blade turned transverse and the central ball cracked a skull. Even as his wrist got control of it, he felt the tethers of their fingers hooking his saddle-chair. He dashed the flat along a knobbled run of knuckles and was jerked back by their release, but other hands came and a face slavering for his arm. He sliced the blade into that mouth, clinking against rotten teeth, widening the grin, then the blade struck bone and stuck. Grinning impossibly wide, the corpse fell back, yanking the sword from his grip. He laid about him with his fists as hands and arms hooked over his aquar’s neck. She screeched as they gouged her with their claws, then worked their fingers into her wounds to widen them. More hands were reaching ever higher up her neck as they bent her head down towards them. Her plumes snapped like twigs when a sartlar grabbed her skull and swung up to tear at her throat with its teeth. She convulsed. Her legs buckled. Carnelian was tumbled out. His head cracked against another, even as his elbow dug into flesh. Stunned, he watched the world whip past as he plunged in among their legs.
Then he was lying on the earth, gazing up at an angry sky. A livid crack opened it for a moment. A booming, slow, stuttering voice sounded. He turned into the earth, gouging dust as he sought to stand. His feet under him, pushing up, unbending his spine. He was startled by his whiteness. He was puzzled to be naked under the cloak. Corpses seemed stones scattered over the earth. An aquar, one clawed foot twitching, her belly torn and spilling entrails. Carnelian became aware of the circle round him. At first he could make no sense of it, then he saw they were sartlar kneeling, their heads bowed into the dust. A movement of his head was enough to make them shudder. He regarded them, feeling eerily calm. Then he became aware of a pale figure being pulled down. As he remembered Osidian and the slavers, anger rose. Sartlar were bending to their victim like raveners. Then he knew what it was he was seeing and roared, ‘Fern!’
He ran towards his friend, ready to rend any who opposed him, but the sartlar sprang from his path. Fern was now invisible beneath their frenzy. Carnelian grabbed hair and the dark, coarse stuff of their clothing and pulled two off. Faces came up, snarling, but their maws snapped closed as they ducked away, whimpering, abandoning their victim prostrate upon the earth. Carnelian fell to his knees at Fern’s side, and had eyes for nothing but the blood smearing him. The sartlar assault had been so violent they had torn him almost wholly free of his commander’s leathers. Carnelian felt Fern’s body for wounds. Though his skin was striped with gashes, none seemed deep. Fern groaned. Carnelian was transfixed by the overwhelming relief he was alive. The bloody face opened an eye that stared in wonder.