“The village of the Sem!”
It was closer than the invaders had thought.
Surprised by the ease with which they had discovered their goal, the Mongauli soldiers erupted with shouts of glee.
The village that lay before them was a simple affair, a collection of huts looking like upturned bowls made of white, hardened mud. The structures stood clustered along a dry stream bed that ran through the center of the valley. In the middle of the space they sheltered was a small clear area, perhaps a gathering place. Thin wisps of purple smoke rose from some of the huts as though the Sem who lived there had just kindled their cook fires to prepare a meal. Several stakes had been driven into the dry streambed, upon which were hung the skins of some animal—and round dangling objects that the Mongauli soon realized were the heads of men hung out to dry in the hot Nospherus sun.
Not a single wildling was in sight.
Perhaps the quickest of the Sem who had fled before the blue knights’ charge had run into the village and raised the alarm, warning their wives and children of the coming danger, and the tiny barbarians had abandoned their belongings and rushed from the village in haste. Or perhaps the furry primitives had simply panicked and run inside their huts, where even now they sat clinging to each other in abject fear, mother holding child, elder holding grandchild, sister holding sister, silently invoking the name of their monkey god, fearing the coming of the devils in their gleaming iron skins atop their giant four-legged beasts.
Or…
Marus slowly raised his faceplate. His alert eyes scanned the village, looking for clues, hints that might indicate what had become of the Sem that lived here. Instinct told him that they were not in those huts.
“Garanth.”
“My lord?”
“This is a large village,” Marus spoke softly. The rustling of the sand in the soft wind had all but stopped. This could be a valley of death—a ghost village—it was so quiet. The wildling shelters sat still and sullen between the valley walls, and not a single hairy body strewing the path that the Mongauli had come could offer any information.
The oppressive silence was soft as cotton, but as stifling as a yidoh’s insidious clutch, enveloping the knights in its gigantic veil. Tension spread through the mounted riders. They stilled their breath. Someone toward the back of the line let his hand drop slightly, inadvertently striking his sword against his armor and giving off a loud metallic clang. Several knights gasped and held their breath.
But nothing happened, and the silence stole back in like Nospherus sand that sifts to fill a hole in the desert and obscures all that has gone before. Nothing stirred within the quiet huts; there was no movement in the streambed. The riders stared at the severed heads hanging in the sun, as though their swollen lips might part to tell them where the villagers had gone, but the heads, too, were silent.
“Captain…” Garanth uttered, his voice heavy, as though he had just stepped into the hallowed Temple of Janos and feared to break some edict of silence. He brought his horse up alongside Marus’ steed but paused hesitantly, unsure of how to continue. Marus turned and looked at him, reflecting on the busy decades during which this man had ridden by his side—his old subject, his confidant, his friend. Their age was the same, and ever since they first stepped onto the field of war at the age of fifteen, they had witnessed every battle together. Neither man had ever been seriously wounded; through all the grueling campaigns they had managed to avoid sword, mace, and arrow, and the crippling falls from horseback that had claimed so many former companions. In Parros, Cylon, Terelle-Alam, and finally stationed at Tauride Castle…
As Garanth rode up alongside the count, a sense of security filled Marus, and the old friendship that had matured over long years of reliance and loyalty welled up in his warrior’s heart. They had known each other when their hair was blond and their beards were first growing; now their hair was as white as snow. He did not want to see that friendship ever die.
How far we have come…
“Captain?”
Marus awoke from his reverie with a start. This was no time for reminiscing. He had just opened his mouth to give Garanth his orders when a sudden yell cut through the silence of the valley.
“Hraaah!”
The entire corps started, as jarred as if they had missed a step while walking down a staircase; some almost lost their balance and fell from their horses. One of their number had inexplicably broken ranks and was now riding straight down into the village at a furious speed.
Marus was aghast. “What is this? No one moves without my orders!”
Garanth gaped, dumbstruck for a moment before he recovered enough to yell for the rider to stop. But the knight rode on, leaning so hard over his horse that he nearly toppled from his saddle. He was galloping down into the valley as though his life depended on it.
“Garanth!” Marus looked around at him and nodded.
Garanth gave the signal to attack, his arm tracing a swift arc through the air, and a moment later the cavalry was in motion. With a sound like rolling thunder, the blue knights of Mongaul charged down into the Sem village.
Marus’ eyes opened wide and he shouted out to Garanth as they galloped. “Was that Eru who raced ahead?”
It was, the aged count thought. It was Eru of Argon. Trying to prove himself, that youthful fool. Even if only women and children are left, this is a Sem village and we’ve fallen prey to their traps before. Who knows what they might have planned?
Yet even as he cursed Eru’s foolhardiness, he saw that the young knight had made it through the middle of the village without mishap and was now riding up the slope at the other side of the valley.
“What is he doing?” Marus demanded, pulling on his reins. The rest of the blue knights had reached the first of the huts and they were slowing down, moving more cautiously now.
As Marus watched, Eru rode still farther away from the corps, up onto the rise that overlooked the far side of the village.
Then he lifted his hand and lowered it sharply.
At his signal, the valley began to growl and shudder around the Mongauli riders. The very ground beneath them shook as the sound rose to an incredible roar. For a moment, they had no idea what was happening. When they did realize, it was already too late. From the tops of the high hill-walls on every side, an avalanche of boulders came rolling down into the valley.
The soldiers screamed.
With inescapable speed, the boulders spun down the valley’s sides, as though spit from the mouth of a volcano, bouncing off the rocky slopes and crashing down on top of the knights. The Mongauli’s iron helms and armor could do little in the face of such destructive force, and the men were crushed as though they were made of paper, flattened beneath the rampaging rocks. In a matter of seconds, the valley that had been so silent was filled with screams of pain and shrill cries for help.
When the dancing dust that had been thrown up by the boulders as they careened off one another began to settle down, those who remained of the proud blue knights of Mongaul could see that their mighty corps had been transformed into a sorry band of cursing and crying wounded men. They lifted their dimming eyes and peered through the turmoil, and they saw them, hundreds of little devil faces gazing down from among the rocks atop the valley walls.
They were the faces of the Karoi—the first that had been seen by the Mongauli since they crossed the Kes—but to the knights below, they were indistinguishable from those of any of the other wildlings. They were evil and monkey-like, to be hated and feared.
The huts in the valley where the blue knights now found themselves were Karoi homes; this was their village. When word of the invaders first reached them, they alone of the Sem had been unwilling to march to war. But when the news arrived from the Sem gathered at the oasis that the Mongauli army was searching for their villages, that indeed they were drawing closer to their rocky hills, they had sent out scouts. The few that returned had confirmed what the other Sem had told them, and they had realized that they had no choice but to join the fight.
Gaulo, the leader of the Karoi, had put aside his past differences with Loto, Tubai, and Ilateli, and in an impassioned meeting at the oasis the night before Guin left to find the Lagon, he had agreed to join them in the struggle against the oh-mu. Guin had needed a force of Sem to prepare an ambush, and Gaulo had volunteered the Karoi. It was his Karoi warriors who now looked down from atop the cliffs, awaiting the signal to attack. Gaulo, perched at the head of the valley, made a swift pushing motion with his arm. With a roar, a second wave of boulders came rolling down mercilessly upon the heads of the Mongauli.
“Watch out! Lord Captain, get down!”
Garanth sprang from the saddle and grabbed his captain by the leg, dragging him off his horse and pushing him behind a heavy boulder that had lodged against the ruins of one of the Sem huts. He hoped that the stone and the horses standing in front of it would be enough to shield them from this new onslaught.
They had been lucky to escape the first avalanche, but it seemed unlikely that their luck would hold. The sound of huge rocks rumbling and cracking against each other drowned out the screams and laments of the knights. All around them the simple hardened mud huts of the Karoi were crushed to pieces as the stones thudded and rolled across the valley floor.
“Lower your head! Get down!” screamed Garanth. Marus was in a daze, seeming not to understand what was happening to them.