Jewel of Tharn

Chapter Fifteen

Org made a cunning feint with his frontal attack. The Pethcines, their battle cries swelling into a sullen roar, charged forward fifty paces and then halted. They turned and ran back. Blade's catapults, depressed now, poured a hail of battle arrows and bags of teksin shrapnel into the area just vacated. Blade cursed. Wasted ammunition, and it was short. He shouted to the bowmen to hold their fire. He wanted the Pethcines to waste their arrows, not his own.

Org now sent his, or Honcho's, ceboids in a double flanking attack. Blade recognized the maneuver. Org was willing to sacrifice ceboids just as Blade was.

Blade sent half the Lordsmen to back up the ceboid officers who in turn were backing the whipping neuters. He saw Isma protesting the order, but the Lordsmen formed, wheeled and marched off. Blade was grim.

The ceboid skirmish was short and fierce. Honcho's beasts came on with animal grunts and howls, waving their swords. Blade held the fire of the catapults, though a flanking fire could have been deadly, because he did not have arrows and teksin bombs to waste on ceboids.

He kept an eye on the war chariots. They were still in ranks far to the rear. Zulekia was still spreadeagled between the nervous horses. Honcho stood nearby, his arms folded, staring at the developing fray. For a moment Org and Totha were out of sight Then, just before he turned his attention back to the ceboids, Blade saw Totha running back toward the chariots.

Blade's ceboids held because of his foresight in planting the ceboid officers behind the neuters. Several of the neuters panicked and tried to run, but the officers cut them down with snarls of joy. Blade knew that a lot of old scores were being settled.

Honcho's neuters, on the other hand, had no stiffening behind them. They whipped their ceboids forward, but when Blade's line held, and the melee broke down into dozens of individual fights - when their weapons did not serve the ceboids went for each other with teeth and claws - Honcho's neuters despaired and began to retreat. Blade gave a signal then and the catapults went into action once more. They hurled shrapnel and six-foot war arrows that skewered four or five neuters at a time. The rest threw down their whips in terror and ran. Without the whippers behind them the ceboids of Honcho broke and fled also. It was soon over and Blade's ceboids had the field. They began tearing the throats out of the wounded ceboids and neuters.

There was a new flare of trumpets as the flank attack subsided and washed back. This time the Pethcine ranks came on in earnest, stepping smartly to the thumping of a crude skin drum.

Blade sent his bowmen to the ramparts of the forts. They began to drop a deadly hail into the advancing Pethcines. Still they came on. Org was leading them and Blade gave instructions for one of the catapults, and a squad of bowmen, to concentrate solely on the King of the Pethcines. Org waded on through the cloud of arrows, untouched.

The bowmen, Blade was using a mixture of high-level neuters and Maiduke maidens, did better than he had expected. They were accurate enough and the barbarian ranks were already thinned by the time they reached the glacis and began to toil up it. The first rank became tangled on the stakes and the teksin wire and wavered to a halt, trying frantically to disentangle themselves. The rear ranks came on, foolishly and bravely, piling up like the surf on an unfriendly shore.

Blade shouted at Xeno and made a prearranged signal. The Maiduke girls with the few air guns trotted into position and began to hurl darts into the milling savages. The arrow fire kept on. The catapults, depressed now to the limit, worked with a steady chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk as they flung arrows and hundred-pound chunks of teksin and bags of jagged shrapnel into the mass of struggling and dying Pethcines. Still they came on, wave after wave of them, to die.

Blade rubbed his big hands together in glee. His battle plan was working. He cast a glance toward the lines of chariots far to the rear. Still no action there.

Org, in the midst of the chaos, was hacking a way through the stakes and wire with his sword. The fat King was bleeding and sweating and baying defiance like a wounded wolf, shouting and beating at his men with the flat of his sword and trying to urge them up the glacis.

Blade was tempted. If he could get to Org and kill him it would be all but over. He glanced at the chariots and changed his mind. They were moving now. Not yet attacking, but moving and forming back on the flat plain. Blade put temptation behind him. Stick to the battle plan.

A runner arrived from Isma. Could she sally out and down the glacis? Cut down the trapped and moiling Pethcines?

Blade looked beyond the gray below him. There were still four ranks of Pethcine warriors not committed. He sent back his answer. No.

As an afterthought he said: "Tell Isma to send the Lordsmen if she likes." It was a chance to get rid of some of her bodyguard. The Pethcines would eat them alive.

Isma obeyed only in part. Blade watched as she formed her Lordsmen and sent them screaming down the glacis with herself at their head. Her 926 remained as ordered, sullen and impatient in their square.

By now Org and fifty or so of his men had cut their way through the stakes and wire and were starting up the glacis toward the walls. They met the charging Isma and her Lordsmen head on, with fierce cries of exaltation. Here at last was real red meat for their swords.

It was pitiful. A massacre. Org's sword was a gleaming wheel of light as he ravaged the Lordsmen, hacking through their thin ornamental armor, sending heads spraying like bowling balls. His men did as well, leaping in with howls of bloodthirsty delight.

The Lordsmen were dying fast. Isma, defending herself with more skill than Blade had known she possessed, began to retreat back up the glacis. Org, hewing off a head, then skewering a belly with a thrust, waved his reeking sword and plunged up after her. Blade was off the pyramid in two great leaps and running, sword in hand. He did not want Isma to die this way. Not by his calculated treachery. The Lordsmen, yes, for they were worthless. Isma, no. He did not know how well the women would fight without her.

Isma and two Lordsmen made it as far as the sally port. There they had to turn and defend themselves again. Org and half a dozen of his men closed in for the death. There was uneasy movement among the women, but they held their square and waited.

Org chose Isma for his special prey. He leaped at her, screaming death, his helmet askew and his face shining with sweat and blood\\'85Isma shouted back and lunged at him. Org countered, their sword hilts locked, and Org disarmed her with a twist of his powerful wrist. He showed his black stumps of teeth in an evil grimace and drew his sword back, meaning to transfix Isma squarely between the breasts. Blade was still twenty feet away, running hard.

A dying Pethcine, studded with arrows like a pincushion, stumbled between them with blood pouring from his mouth. He fell, clutching wildly at Org, and Org's sword drove into his vitals instead of Isma's. Org cursed, pushed the man aside, and leaped at Isma again just as Blade arrived.

The huge Pethcinian sword was an extension of Blade now, as much a part of him as his own arm. He parried Org's blow, shoved Isma back out of danger, and backhanded a blow at Org that slashed his helmet in half. Org grunted and retreated two paces, bringing up his shield to ward Blade's next stroke. The shield split down the middle. Org let out a bellow of rage and leaped at Blade, in bad position and wide open for Blade's thrust. Blade would have killed him then but another Pethcine, seeing his King's peril, leaped between them. Blade could not hold back his stroke and put his sword all the way through the man. It stuck there, the dying man screaming and clutching at the steel in him, falling and nearly dragging the sword from Blade's hand. The jeweled hilt was slippery with blood. Blade put a foot against the dead man's chest and pulled, cursing, trying to extricate the sword. Org, seeing the chance, let out a bellow of command and he and four warriors rushed in for the kill.

The sword came unstuck just in time. It glinted and whirled like a live thing as Blade slowly gave ground. One of the Pethcines tried to get behind him. Blade leaped back, feinted for the belly, and laid the man's throat open. He sank to his knees, spewing blood.

Blade kicked him in front of two of the charging barbarians. They fell over him, slashing wildly at Blade as they went down. He beheaded one with a stroke, then rammed a killing thrust through the breast armor of the other. Again the sword was stuck, entangled in flesh and metal and leather. Org was swinging a cruel mace now, a spiked ball at the end of a chain. He whirled it at Blade and the heavy ball mashed the big man's helmet. Sparks flew. Blade reeled in shock and near blindness for a breath, but managed to duck the follow-up blow. He caught the iron ball on his shield and hacked Org in the shoulder, a deep cut. Org shouted defiance and came on.

A Pethcine leaped in on Blade's flank. He backed another two steps and turned from Org long enough to put his sword into the man's groin. He recovered the steel quickly this time, leaving the Pethcine staring down at his ruined manhood, and faced Org once more. Org was not attacking. Org had turned, screaming commands at his men, and was running with them down the glacis. For a moment Blade could not fathom it. Then he was hit and engulfed from behind, by the massed phalanx of the women. Isma's 926, pouring past him in hot pursuit of the enemy. Isma had disobeyed orders and committed her women. There was very little Blade could do about it.

He was knocked aside by the charge of singing, shouting, screaming women. Had he gone down he might have been trampled to death. Blade shouted a hoarse command, trying to stop them and knowing it was useless. The women were caught up in a blood frenzy.

Blade was nearly winded. He was bleeding from minor wounds, sweating, his body armor slashed and torn. There was a great dent in his helmet where Org had so nearly brained him. He would gladly have rested for a few minutes but there was no time. Isma's disobedience had placed his whole battle plan in the direst jeopardy.

Org and the survivors of the charge had fought clear of the glacis now and were reforming on the plain. The women, the phalanx tattering and coming to pieces now, were pursuing. Blade cupped his hands and shouted, cursing like a madman. Isma was playing directly into Org's merciless hands, leaving the sheltering advantage of the forts to fight on the open plain. Blade groaned aloud and started forward. If he could get to Isma in time, take command from her, he might yet avert the disaster that was building. Beyond the moil he saw Org's four ranks of reserves moving into position to attack, and behind them, moving slowly in a wide horned crescent, were the war chariots. Totha was leading them, standing beside her driver and brandishing a spear.

Xeno appeared at Blade's side. Blade was about to give him orders when new disaster struck. The catapults were now back into action, all of them, hurling arrows, balls and chunks, fire and shrapnel into the battle that was beginning to shape on the plain. Isma had managed to get her women into a square, and for the moment was beating back the barbarians, but now the deadly hail from the catapults was falling short and wreaking havoc in the square.

Blade sent Xeno on the run to silence the catapults. He went to join Isma in the square. There was still a chance, if he could get the women back up the glacis and into the fort again. Blade was grim as he made his way through the crowded ranks of the square. It would not be easy to withdraw in the face of constant fierce attack.

Another barrage of arrows from the catapults slammed into the packed square. One arrow gutted three women just beside Blade. They fell, screaming and bleeding and thrashing about, strangely linked together in death. A huge block of teksin slammed four more women into bloody mush. Blade pushed on, becoming more and more alarmed. Isma had formed her square badly. It was too tight.

Then he was beside her. She was attended by what was left of the Lordsmen. They were few now, and badly frightened, the fight gone out of them.

Not so Isma. She rested in the center of the square, leaning on a lance, a bloody sword at her side. Her helmet was missing and her hair was down around her shoulders, streaked with dirt and blood. Her corselet had been slashed away, and one of her breasts was exposed and bleeding from a long scratch. As Blade approached her dark eyes were enigmatic and her smile was chill. She greeted him.

"You see, my Lord Blade, how my people can fight! Soon we will destroy these barbarian scum."

He regarded her grimly and shook his head. "Not this way, Isma. We must get back into the fort. Quickly! While we can. This way we are fighting Org's battle!"

Another salvo of shrapnel from the catapults sprayed through the square. A Lordsman screamed and fell with half his face gone.

Isma did not flinch. She stared at Blade in defiance. With her hair wild around her she looked like a beautiful bloody witch.

"I will not, Blade. I stand here. Here we fight. Here we win, or perish!"

Org's main reserve had not yet come into the attack. His bowmen, what few were left, poured a desultory fire into the square that was not nearly so damaging as the catapults. The war chariots had wheeled out far to the left and halted, still in crescent formation.

Blade ran it all through his mind in a split instant and made his plans. There was still a chance.

Now he pointed to where some half-dozen of the women, wounded or dead, had been dragged into the Pethcine ranks and were being raped. There was no system about it, no order, and Org, if he even noticed, did not seem to mind this contravention of discipline. The women had been stripped of their armor and lay naked on the plain. Some moved, writhed, showing signs of life. Some were obviously dead. It made no difference to the Pethcine warriors who were so inclined: they dropped their weapons, raped the dead or badly wounded women for a minute or so, then recovered their weapons and got back into the ranks. The moans of the still living women could be heard at times above the battle din.

Blade pointed with his sword. "That will happen to you, Isma, and all your people unless you obey me!"

She glowered at him. "It will not. Nothing can defeat me - I am Isma, High Priestess of Tharn!"

It was useless to argue. Blade knew it. She would not be cajoled. He would have to make the best of it.

He stepped close and seized her arm. She tried to pull away and he was brutal, tightening his grip until she would have cried out in pain but for her fierce pride. One of the Lordsmen, bolder than the rest, stepped forward. Blade glared at him. The man shrank back.

"Very well," Blade said. "We will fight your way, Isma. And the Gods have pity on us. Look. See that?"

He released her arm. She followed his pointing finger. Org had sent a column of Pethcines to get behind them, cutting the square off from the fort and the glacis.

Blade shrugged. "It is decided now. We fight here.

But listen to me, listen well, and there may still be a chance."

Isma, with the fickleness of women, did listen. She had had her way, and she knew that Blade planned well.

Blade loosened the square. He formed six ranks, detaching the Lordsmen and sending them into the front rank, and remained with Isma in the center of the square. The catapults had ceased firing now, for which Blade was thankful, but there was no sign of Xeno. The ceboids on the flanks had reformed and were waiting for orders. The glacis and the plain around the square were choked thick with the dead and dying. Org's column, once it had moved in to cut them off from the fort, had halted and was waiting. Blade noted that many of the savages in that column were wounded or battle weary. He did not think they would attack. Org was running short of manpower and was using his wounded as a cork, to plug up Blade's escape.

The wind had fallen off now and the rain stopped. Rays of faint sunlight fought through the massy clouds and set the Pethcine banners to shimmering. Still the main attack did not come.

Isma sank white teeth into a scarlet nether lip and stared at Blade. "Why do they wait? They are cowards, then? Afraid!"

"Not Org," said Blade with a grim smile. "Be patient. They will come when they are ready."

He gave orders and had a platform of corpses built so that he could see above the battle. He must know how it was with Zulekia and Honcho.

Four bodies this way, four bodies that, then another cross-hatching of dead women and Lordsmen and another, and he had a platform. He leaped up and peered in the direction of the Pethcine tents. What he saw gave some slight encouragement. He was gambling that Honcho, to save himself in the bitter end, would try to save the Maiduke girl if Org was defeated. Then he would try to bargain.

So far the gamble was a good one. The horses and drivers were gone now, no doubt pressed into the battle, and Zulekia was staked out on the plain near the tents. The neuter Honcho, peering beneath his hand at the square, was pacing anxiously to and fro. Blade's smile was cold. Honcho was a worried neuter! He could not know when, or if, Blade and Sutha would again summon the Power. Until they did Honcho was himself shorn of all technical tricks. If Blade never did have recourse to the Power - and by now Honcho must suspect that such was the case, a thing he would not understand at all - then the Pethcines had to win the day or the neuter was in the deepest trouble.

Blade, peering across the death strewn plain, could almost read Honcho's thoughts.

Blade watched Org step from the ranks and raise a small horn to his bearded lips. Org had found new armor and helmet, and was carrying a new and larger shield. He looked as fat and fierce as ever, and appeared not in the least bit battle weary. Blade extended a reluctant admiration to his foe. Barbarian, savage, yet he was all warrior. He watched as Org began to sound the little horn, wondering at the significance. Why the horn instead of the braying trumpets?

A moment later he understood. Org was playing a little tune on the horn, a reedy, high pitched, simple little strain with four notes. Immediately the massed Pethcines separated and reformed, marching and counter-marching into a new formation. Blade cursed fervently. They were going to attack three sides of the square at once. Blade shot a look at the glacis. There Org's column, set to interdict any escape, was unmoving. It had formed into two ranks, one kneeling with long spears, the other back three paces with swords and a small contingent of bowmen. They would, Blade knew, wait until the square began to break and then cut down those who tried to flee up the glacis and into the fort Org meant to make a thorough job of it this time.

Org was playing a different note on the horn now. Totha brought her crescent of chariots a little closer up behind Org's center. Blade leaped from the platform of corpses and shouted at Isma. She nodded understanding, and in turn gave orders to several of her women officers.

Xeno tugged at Blade's sword belt and made slaveface. Blade growled at him. "You were long enough!"

Xeno clutched at the necklace Blade had given him, as though his Lord meant to take it away then and there. "It was very bad among the catapults, Lord Blade. They would not obey at first, would not stop firing. I had to take harsh steps, summon whippers, before the Maidens would listen to me. Their senses had left them and they did not care where they fired or whom they killed."

Blade nodded and patted Xeno's shoulder. Battle frenzy took strange forms. "You did well enough. Now stand by. I want you always close to me. Understood?"

"Understood, Lord Blade."

And now the time had run out. The trumpets blared their harsh summons and the Pethcine hordes came on for a last attack. Blade watched it with some trepidation and not a little sense of triumph. He had bled them! He had bled them terribly, a fast reckoning made them no more than two thousand odd. Now, if only Isma and her women would obey orders for once, and execute them properly, and if Totha's chariots could be handled.

Org sounded his little horn again and the barbarians broke into a run, shouting bloodthirsty threats. They came in from three sides, the trumpets clamoring brazenly and incessantly. Terror tactics.

Blade swung his great sword in a glittering arc and called down to his troops: "Stand steady. Hold fast and remember your orders. Above all - obey, orders when they are given!" He could only hope they would.

Xeno handed Blade a standard with a long pennon attached. He waved it over his head. The catapult crews saw it and went into action again. This time they were on target and the machines fell into a regular chonk-chonk-chonk-chonk rhythm as their missiles began to chew up Org's lines. As the front ranks went down Org pushed new men in to nil the gaps.

Blade gave another signal and arrow and airgun fire began to come from the flanks and the smaller forts. It was wavering and inaccurate, but now every dart and arrow counted.

He had arranged the front rank of the square with spearwomen kneeling. Behind them the second rank wielded swords and a few bows and airguns. The third rank stood ready to step into the gaps. The next three ranks, back to Blade and Isma, stood ready in reserve.

Org had timed it well. The attack washed against the embattled square on three sides, simultaneously. The din was outlandish, deafening, a garbled symphony of hate and fear, a howling of demons unfettered. The 926 screeching their battle songs. The Pethcines snarled like wolves as they began to hew a lane into the square.

Org led the first threat, as Blade had known he would. He meant to be there. If he could kill Org before the chariots, under Totha, could be brought into action it might well carry the day. But Org was too cunning to send his war chariots against a square - he knew the horses would die and pile up and form a barrier. Org knew the chariots were his last resort and he would not use them until the square had been broken and thinned. Then he would send in the chariots, with their cruelly scythed wheels, to finish the job.

Org, at the point of a spear of barbarians, savaged his way into the square. His was the only breakthrough. Otherwise the square held fast as the Pethcines, dying on spears and swords, piled up and blocked the passage of the warriors behind them. But Org had pushed a mortal enclave into the Tharnians, mortal unless it was healed at once. Blade went in to heal it.

Their swords glinted and chimed together, hack and slash, counter and parry. Org, his beard soaked with blood, his piggy eyes gleaming red through a mask of fury, let out a hoarse shout as their swords crossed.

"You again, Lord Mazda! Ha - Ho...Blade, the traitor who calls himself Mazda...I, I, Org, will show you who is a God!" For a moment he drove Blade back with the sheer ferocity of his attack.

Blade taunted him. "Where is Totha? Where is your slut of a daughter, Org? I would bed her once more, before I give her to my ceboids for their sport." He began to press Org furiously, the big sword licking in and out like a steel tongue, wounding Org in the shoulder, the thigh, slashing his sword arm above the elbow. Org began to drop back. Most of his men had fallen now as the Tharnian women closed in to heal the gap in the square.

Blade slashed off part of Org's beard. "You should not have listened to Honcho," he taunted anew. "You see where it has led you. You are being defeated by women!"

That was too much for Org to bear. He might have slipped back and disengaged, fought his way out of the square, but instead he let out a dreadful yell and rushed at Blade. All his men were down now and the square close in behind him.

Blade parried a blow, then slashed at Org's hand. The hand, with the sword still in it, flew high into the air. Org screamed and stood staring down at his arm. Before Blade could strike again Org reached and wrested a sword from one of the last Lordsmen. He charged at Blade again, using his left hand now, waving his bloody arm like a battle flag.

Blade took a backward step and held the long sword straight before him. Org, in a raging and baffled fury, ran straight onto the sword. It cut through his armor just below the breastbone and, as he still pushed on, stood out two feet behind the broad back. Org, defiant and hating until the last, ran right up on the jeweled hilt, face to face with Blade. Then, with his eyes dying, he tried to spit.

Blade lowered the sword and let the Pethcine King's body slide off to the blood drenched earth. Isma watched him, and Xeno, and all of the inner ranks. On the perimeter of the square the battle still raged loud and feral. The Pethcines did not yet know their King was dead.

Blade hacked off Org's head and impaled it on the sword. He leaped high on the corpse platform and brandished the bloody head at the Pethcines. He cleared his powerful lungs and bellowed so that he was heard above the wailing trumpets.

"Pethcines. Here is your King!"

For a moment there was no effect, then as more and more of the barbarians saw the lifeless eyes of Org staring from the sword point, his blood still dribbling down the steel, the battle clamor began to still. The Pethcines in the rear, those not yet committed, began to wail. The front ranks, so fierce only a minute before, began to disengage and fall back.

Blade spoke sharply to Xeno. "Signal the catapults. They must fire everything now - everything they have! Fire until the last arrow is gone."

Blade raised on his toes and waved the head at Totha, still waiting out on the plain with her chariots. Totha was impulsive, a murderous little savage to the core. But would she take the bait?

Totha did. The watching Blade saw her scream in fury at the chariot driver beside her. She raised a shell horn to her lips and sounded a blast. The crescent of war chariots began to move forward, slowly gaining momentum. Blade grinned like a tiger over meat and shouted his commands at Isma.

"Break your square. Wheel out, wheel out! Double ranks, close order. You all know the trick, but wait, wait until you hear me give the order!"

The Tharnian women broke the square and began to wheel into a thin double line. There were less than 500 of them left. Blade was everywhere, praising, cajoling, threatening, cursing, trimming and dressing the line. He was close to victory now. He could smell it. If only Totha, mad for revenge, brought her war chariots into the trap...

But there was now new chaos on the plain before the Tharnian front. Blade groaned. To lose total victory now, when he was so close, would be a cruel blow. To lose it because of the panic inspired by Org's death, for which he was himself responsible, would be ironic. Blade stared out at the deadly confusion and scowled. Totha was being given time for second thoughts - she could still disengage and order a planned retreat, and the Pethcines would live to fight another day, the last thing Blade wanted.

The fleeing Pethdne warriors, as the rout gained momentum, ran straight into the advancing chariots. Totha sounded the charge and the war chariots picked up speed. There was no turning back now. Running men met speeding chariots in one great shock wave. Instantly the plain was a wilderness of awesome disorder, or screaming legless men, flashing wheel scythes, cursing and frantic drivers and warriors, rearing and plunging horses. The chariots slowed, the charge blunted, and some of the Pethcine warriors, in their confusion and fear, began to attack their own people in an effort to get clear.

Totha, in a frenzy of screaming rage, set about putting matters straight. Blade watched admiringly as she wheeled around and around in her chariot, shouting orders and spearing anyone who got in her way. Gradually she got her chariots free of the crush of retreating men, and back into battle line. She sounded her shell horn again and the chariots came on. Blade nodded and waited. It had worked out well for him. Totha was coming into the trap, thinking the Tharnian line an easy prey for the chariots. But now there would be no time for the chariots to pick up speed again, and Totha could not guess at Blade's guile.

Totha was well in the van as the scythed chariots crunched down on the line of women. Each chariot carried a warrior and a driver. As the chariots drew near the warriors began to send a hail of arrows into the Tharnian line and a few women fell. Blade, with Xeno, at his side, stood a little back of his right flank. Isma and her by now pitifully small bodyguard had the same position on the left.

Fifty yards. The drivers were whipping up the horses. They came on with eyes wild and flashing, manes tossing, hooves drumming out a sullen beat on the packed bloody earth. The drivers and warriors were screaming in a thin threatening crescendo. The Tharnian line waited in silence, as Blade had ordered. They must hear his command when it came.

Twenty-five yards. Blade took a step nearer the line and tucked his sword under his left arm. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

Ten yards. Five yards. Blade drew air deep into his lungs. A wheel came off a chariot and bounded high in the air, skipping toward him. Horses, chariot, and occupants went down in a bloody screaming heap.

"Now," Blade yelled. "Now!"

The Tharnian line parted nimbly to left and right in segments, to let the chariots race through. Those who could not get out of the way threw themselves beneath the gleaming scythes, and some rose unharmed. Still there were casualties aplenty. Some of the women did not move fast enough and lost both legs above the knees. Others fell on the scythes and were cut in half or disemboweled. But in large part the maneuver worked.

Blade gave the order, trumpeting through his cupped hands. "Wheel about! Charge and destroy!"

He might have saved his breath. The women knew what to do and they set about it with screams of triumph and rage. They, as did Blade, scented victory.

Even then Totha could have recovered had she kept her head and given the right order, set the right example. She could have whipped up her horses and kept going, slashing through the ceboids now closing in on the flanks, and come around for another try. Or retreated. She did neither. She ordered her driver to hold up sharply, wheel, and charge back directly at the Tharnian line. The other war chariots, obeying her, did the same. It was fatal, as Blade had hoped it would be. Before the chariots could wheel about and pick up new speed they were inundated by the Tharnian women, some of whom had been given special orders to hamstring the horses. The orders were carried out furiously and efficiently. The poor beasts began to go down, taking the chariots with them, in a kicking, screaming melee. Drivers were speared and hacked to pieces with swords and the warriors, fighting back valiantly, fared little better. They were not accustomed to fighting on foot and they were outnumbered now by the women who swarmed over them like vengeful Furies.

Blade kept a watchful eye on Totha. She was still fighting magnificently. As soon as she realized the trap, she had pushed her driver from the chariot and taken the reins herself. She cut a scarlet swathe through the ceboids coming up in the flanks, then whirled and whipped her horses back into the midst of the fray. Blade, watching, knew that Totha meant to die here, near where her father had died. His smile was grim. It was fitting enough.

The Tharnian women, mindful of what had been done to their sisters, were taking revenge. As the Pethcines died, or fell badly wounded, they began to cut up the remains. One towering war maiden ran past Blade, smiling and screaming at him, and holding up a pair of bloody genitals.

Blade turned to Xeno. The battle was won, all but the mopping up, and he had not much stomach for this. He tried to see beyond the melee, over the plain to the Pethcine tents, but swirling dust obscured his vision.

Blade nodded toward a chariot and team that stood nearby, the horses unharmed and calmly grazing on some errant mani that had somehow seeded here. The chariot was intact, the driver slumped in it with a spear through him.

"Fetch me that," said Blade. It was time to go after Zulekia and Honcho now. More than time. It might even be too late.

Xeno, wondering, tumbled the dead driver out of the chariot and brought it to Blade. Blade leaped into the chariot, sheathing his sword. He picked up the reins.

"I have something to do," he told Xeno. "You will 'tell Isma that I will return as soon as possible. I..." Xeno, who had been watching the diminishing battle, and the growing carnage as the women sated their bloodlust, let out a shout of warning.

"Careful, my Lord Blade! The barbarian Princess!

Totha, by some miracle - and tenacity of desire for revenge - had broken through and was whipping her horses straight at Blade. Her helmet was gone and she was bleeding from a score of wounds. Her hair streamed about her bloody face, and her screaming mouth was just another gaping wound. She came at Blade full tilt, a last spear poised in her hand. She rode down two women who leaped to check the horses, and a third was decapitated as she slipped and fell before the scythes. Blade had only time to wheel his chariot broadside before Totha was upon him.

Totha hurled the spear at him. "Die, Blade! Die with me! Die with Totha, daughter of Org!"

Blade ducked away. He had no shield. The spear point caught him in the side and ripped a long seam in the flesh, a bloody but minor wound. He tried to draw his sword. Totha's horses crashed into Blade's chariot, rearing and pawing at it, and it was smashed sideways. Xeno leaped at Totha, only to be beaten back by her flashing sword. She brought her chariot close alongside Blade's, controlling her team with one hand, and slashed at Blade. He was partially stunned trying to keep his footing, and had not yet had a chance to draw his sword. Totha screamed in triumph and was on the point of leaping into his chariot to finish him when she choked, stood stiffly upright, her eyes glaring, and then clutched at the basketwork of the chariot.

Blood cascaded from her open mouth, a spear point protruded from her left breast.

Totha, still standing, holding to the chariot side, stared at Blade. She tried to speak but choked on blood and fell over the side, between the chariots.

Isma walked to the body and tugged out her spear. She looked up at Blade. "It is over," she said. "The Pethcines are all but destroyed. Forever. We can hunt the others down as we choose. And I, Blade, have saved your life. I, Isma, High Priestess of Tharn."

Blade nodded gravely. "That is true. My thanks, Isma." He was tense now, alert. She had never been so dangerous.

Isma smiled at him and made a sign. A cup bearer came forward, a neuter whom Blade did not remember seeing before. The neuter handed Isma a tall chalice of teksin. Blade caught the odor of soka.

Isma handed the cup to Blade. "A victory cup, my Lord Blade. I will drink after you."

Blade was thirsty, so much so that his tongue was cleaving to the roof of his mouth. He smiled at Isma. She thought him a child, a low-level neuter, a witless ceboid? To fall prey to such a trick?

He was preparing to fumble and drop the cup when Xeno sprang forward with a cry. "No, my Lord! No! Do not drink! I saw the cup prepared. It is poi..."

Isma drove her sword into Xeno's heart. Blade grieved inwardly. Poor Xeno. Had he only kept his mouth shut...

Isma left her bloody sword in Xeno and stared defiantly at Blade. He stared back. Behind her the Second Neuter moved uneasily and would not meet Blade's eye. The women, battle weary and stained with bloody sweat, crowding around with their grisly trophies, muttered and exchanged puzzled glances. They had no clear idea of what was going on.

Blade tilted the cup and poured the contents slowly to the ground between himself and Isma. The soka puddled there, mixing with the blood of Totha who lay close by.

Blade pointed to the puddle. "That will always be between us, Isma. Remember it!"

He flung the cup at her and seized the reins of the chariot horses, shouting to them. As he wheeled the chariot around the women leaped to escape the scythes. Isma and the Second Neuter stepped back to safety and watched him go, whipping the horses furiously across the plain.

Blade lashed the horses on. They had rested and were fresh enough. He made his way through a nightmare plain, littered with dead and still dying, toward the Pethcine tents. There were a few looters, dazed and maddened, and the walking wounded, but no one paid him any attention or tried to harm him. One Pethcine warrior, badly hurt, had dragged a Tharnian corpse back toward the tents and was methodically cutting it into small pieces. He stared without interest as Blade thundered past.

Zulekia and Honcho were gone. Blade was not surprised. He had been too long coming, and the neuter would have known the battle lost when he saw Org's head. He would not have tarried for the grim finale with Totha's chariots.

The stakes to which Zulekia had been bound were still in place. Blade contemplated them briefly, then whipped his horses around and headed north. There was only one place Honcho could go.