“Chase them! Chase them!”
“Beat them into the sand!”
“Leave none alive!”
“Mongaul! Mongaul!”
The wildlings ran so fast that they became furry streaks across the sand, fleeing from the Mongauli army, racing away from the surging multicolored mass of the Gohran cavalry like prey taking flight before a swarm of yidoh. The horses spat foam through bared teeth, their manes and tails flying in the wind. The knights, eager to prove themselves in battle, set in with their whips to urge their steeds to even greater speed, quickly pulling ahead of the charging footmen.
The horses’ hooves dug into the sand, kicking up a spray of dust hard on the heels of the fleeing Sem. Seeing their foes in full retreat, both the knights and their mounts were consumed with the wild fervor of the victorious. Their bloodshot eyes flickered with eagerness and they shouted and howled sounds that were not words. One thought drove the ten thousand-strong Mongauli army after their enemies: that today, here on the desert sands, all accounts would be settled. Their burning bloodlust drove away all fatigue and all fear of the cursed desert and the monsters that lay hidden beneath its surface.
“Aii! Aiiie!”
“Alphetto!”
The Sem ran as fast as their legs would carry them, their haphazard ranks dissolving even further in their mad rush to escape the unexpected Mongauli onslaught. Whether or not they had noticed the lift in the Mongauli’s morale after their attack began, it would have been too late then for them to change their strategy, and now they could do nothing but run for their lives. But their feet were swift—they were said to be among the quickest runners of all the desert’s creatures—and they soon put distance between themselves and the heavily armored pursuers, whose horses’ hooves sank deep into the sand.
Seeing their quarry pull away, the Mongauli became desperate.
“Orders! Orders!”
Their white shoulder tassels flowing, Amnelis’ messengers sped until their mounts were nearly spent, catching up to the hindmost riders of the blue knights at the front of the formation . “From the General of the Right to Captain Marus, orders! Orders! Marus Corps is to pursue the Sem!”
“Surely she did not expect us to do otherwise?” Garanth shouted, his voice hoarse with desert grit. “Blue knights, onward! To victory and glory!”
Like a gleaming blue wave the knights of Marus Corps rose high in their saddles, their courage a visible swell, their whips and swords held firmly in their hands. Count Marus glanced quickly backwards. Trailing off behind his formation were the two thousand black knights of Tangard; they were already a considerable distance behind his own riders. And yet the Sem were pulling away from Marus’ men.
Charging over the crest of a dune, the pursuers were surprised to see that not far ahead, the flatness of Nospherus was marred by a series of low rocky hills. The dark crags thrust up through the sand so abruptly that they seemed like an after-thought added out of mischief by some creator-god. Here and there between the dunes over which they now rode and the hills that lay ahead, the knights could see rocks half-buried in the desert, some round like boulders and others flat and dark like sheets of frozen sand.
The gentle yet deceivingly high roll of the dunes had hidden the rocks and the jagged hills until now. It was clear that the hills were the destination for which the Sem were making.
Marus drew back on his reins and shouted out loudly above the drumming hooves.“Men! They intend to run for those crags. We must not allow them to reach them, or they will be able to ambush us at will. Don’t let the Sem get into the hills!”
The knights under Marus’ command gave a shout and once more lay on with their whips and dug in with their spurs, urging on their exhausted mounts. They rode so hard they nearly flew out of their saddles, leaning so far forward that they were close to falling over the necks of their horses. They gripped their swords so tightly with their mail gauntlets that it seemed their fingers would cut through the very leather of the hilts.
Neither Marus nor his followers paused to wonder why they had not seen the leopard-headed Guin today—he who had ridden with the Sem on every raid until now. They had little time to consider anything in the midst of their pursuit, as they moved with the force of a tidal wave across the desert; and, unlike the unfortunate Astrias, none of Marus Corps had ever crossed swords with Guin personally, nor had they exchanged words with the warrior or felt his incredible presence make their skin crawl and the hairs at the backs of their necks stand on end; and so, they lacked the young captain’s obsession with their mightiest enemy. Moreover, had they taken note of Guin’s absence, it would soon have slipped from their minds again, its oddness disregarded, so preoccupied were they with the fury of the chase.
The obvious danger posed by the leopard-man’s absence was that he might be leading another strike force around to attack the Gohrans from the rear. But that could be left to the rearguard Astrias, or to Irrim should the young Lion of Gohra fail. The main concern of the blue knights now was to keep the Sem from reaching the hills that lay ahead. With hardly a glance to either side, they charged on after their foes.
The front of the Sem line disappeared around another, lower dune, heading straight for the rocky hills that seemed somehow much closer now. The hills were the kind of rocky wasteland crags that could only be found in Nospherus, gray and bare, without a single tree or blade of grass to color their slopes. Although they were not tall, they were divided into many layered strata, with numerous canyons running into their depths. If the Sem took refuge there, it would surely take the Mongauli a long time to root them out.