“Eru, what have you done?” muttered Marus. He tried to stand and search for the errant knight as though he was back at camp surveying his ranks, as though no giant boulders were rushing down upon his force to reduce his men to bloody gore.
“Lord Captain, it’s a trap! We’ve fallen into—”
Garanth’s voice was suddenly cut off.
Marus turned just in time to see a boulder slam into his loyal lieutenant’s face. The count gasped and came to his senses.
“Garanth! Garanth!” he shouted, running toward his friend. Garanth lay sprawled on the ground, his feet facing away from Marus. Where his head should have been, a giant white boulder had come to rest, giving the perversely comic illusion that his white hair had suddenly ballooned to an enormous size.
“Garanth!” Marus shouted as though his words could shatter the stone, then threw himself against the great rock, pushing it aside. But as it rolled away he staggered back, aghast. Where Garanth’s head had been, there now remained no more than a sticky gelatinous paste of stony white, gray, and red.
“Garanth!” Marus screamed so hard he could taste blood in his mouth. He looked up and down the valley, his face wild. It seemed that the Sem had prepared in a hurry, for they were already out of rocks—at least, no more were falling. The valley floor was strewn chaotically with those that they had already pushed down. More than half of the once proud blue knights of Tauride Castle were dead. They lay scattered, crushed and broken, some now nothing more than pitiful lumps of blood and flesh.
Of those who had not been killed outright, many were pinned or trapped by the larger stones, and their moaning and the pained whinnying of their horses filled Marus’ ears. It was a few moments before he realized that the loudest and most piercing of the screams was his own.
He fell quiet then, gazing up to the top of the nearest valley wall and the countless furry faces of the Sem. The wildlings were colored with warrior’s paint, and they now held up their bows above their heads and cried their piercing war cries.
Then Marus saw him: a tall man in the armor of Mongaul, below the Sem, halfway down the valley wall.
“E-ruuuu!”
A cry, barely human, came from Marus’ grimacing mouth. He could clearly see the lone knight’s long blue cloak, his blue armor—knight’s armor, bearing the crest of Mongaul—the longsword at his waist, and his long blue leather boots. Eru lifted a mailed hand and slowly took off his helm, topped with the crest of Tauride Castle; he threw it down among the rocks with casual disdain.
The face that was now revealed was fine-featured, dusky, and burned by the sun. He is so young, the count thought, and he did not see that the young knight’s features were taut and trembling. The obsidian eyes, usually filled with humor and a cold cynicism, were open wide, and they seemed about to overflow with barely contained emotion. His mouth trembled—he was biting his lower lip hard—and his hand clutched at the edge of his cloak. He could not spot Marus down below until the old count slowly took off his own helm, revealing his white hair.
Istavan of Valachia lifted a trembling hand and brought it swiftly down.
“Kiiiiyaa!”
“Iiiie Iiiie!”
Almost dancing with excitement, the Karoi scampered down the valley side, passing Istavan where he stood watching. They came in threes, each group carrying a large urn between them. When they drew near the bottom of the slope, they upturned the urns and poured their contents down onto the valley floor.
“Wh-What is this?”
The survivors of Marus Corps, wedged between boulders, or holding onto the wounded and the dead, peered warily at the liquid being poured down on them. They all feared the black poison of the Sem, but this was clear and odorous.
A horrified shout rose up from the knights.
“Oil!”
“Cactus oil!”
“Those Sem mean to burn us alive!”
“Janos protect us!”
“They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t…”
Yet already a unit of Sem that had been lying in wait had appeared at the top of the cliff, bearing arrows with flaming tips in their hands. They blazed like a row of torches at a funeral procession.
For a moment Marus’ face, white as paper, was drawn tight. In the next moment, his features twisted and crumbled with the weariness of utter defeat. A hoarse voice spilled out from his loose lips.
“You… you schemed? You wore the armor of Mongaul… of Mongaul… and chanted its name, and yet… and yet, this?”
Count Marus summoned the last of his strength and rose to his feet, leaning on his sword as if it were a cane.
“You traitor—you rat! Eru of Argon!”
The count reeled. His vision narrowed suddenly, as if he were staring into a burning spyglass. No longer could he see his men dying around him, or the Sem at the top of the cliff, or the flaming arrows that the wildlings held ready to fire, or the immanent disaster that awaited him. Only one thing filled his gaze, and it was the young knight Eru—Istavan of Valachia— standing above him on the valley side.
“You will pay dearly for this. You… Even if my body is crushed, I will avenge Garanth!”
Suddenly, with amazing speed, the count drew back his hand and flung his sword like a spear toward Istavan. It was an incredible throw, higher and farther than even a champion could have hoped to hurl such a weapon. Istavan yelped and dodged aside, but he could not avoid the streaking blade entirely. It cut into his right ear, sending out a spray of fresh blood.
“Yaaah!” the mercenary howled, clapping his hand to the wound. He raised his other hand in anger and shouted, “Now! Do it!”
“Iiiiaaah!” screamed the Sem archers, and they loosed their blazing volley into the sky. Within moments the valley of the Karoi was engulfed in flames.
The fire ignited the flowing cactus oil and swept wildly toward the Mongauli troops and their horses at the bottom of the valley, charring them like meat in a frying pan as it rushed over them. Quickly the flame spread, burning hotter off the fat of man and horse. Those who were not caught immediately by the conflagration ran madly looking for a way out, but the Sem had filled in every path out of the valley with their boulders, and several wildlings now stood at each blocked exit waiting for the men to try to climb out. Shouting victoriously, they rolled down more rocks now from on high and shot at the panicked knights with their poison arrows. When the fire showed signs of weakening, the Sem women hurried up with more urns and added more cactus oil to the blaze to ensure that its fury did not diminish.
The valley became a roaring sea of fire, a rock-filled crematorium where the Mongauli burned alive. Blackened like the shades of the damned, the knights jumped and jerked in a dance of death, stumbling blindly back and forth while the cruel flaming tongue of Migel Firegod licked them until they were dead.
Yet in the middle of that blazing hell, Marus still lived. Oil stained his body, and the fire had reached his feet; it had swallowed the blackened corpses of his men all around him, and now it licked hungrily at the noble captain. Already, the edge of his cloak was smoldering, but still he stood tall on that killing ground.
His white hair flew upwards in the heat, and his face was painted red by the light of the blaze, as though he were Migel himself, come to pass judgment in the court of Hell. His blood-shot eyes never wavered, following Istavan as he retreated from the fearsome pyre toward the top of the cliff.
Stricken by a sudden power he did not understand, Istavan froze. He was exhausted, and the heat was unbearable. He knew that he had to get to the top of the valley wall; yet, he turned around. He was cursed. He could not take his eyes off of Marus.
Then, with a swift noise like that of a rushing wind, the flame consumed the body of the count. It was as if the old warrior had been gently bestowed a kiss of fire by the air maiden Aeno, or lifted away to a higher plane by the swooping fire-chariot of Ruah Sungod. Surrendering his body to the flames, Marus stood until his white hair burned. His blue armor turned red hot as he was transformed into a giant human torch.
Just as he was about to disappear into the flame forever, the count’s eyes opened wide.
“Eru of Argon!”
The eerie voice reached Istavan at the top of the cliff. It seemed to echo throughout the valley, louder than even the maelstrom of fire below.
“Eru of Argon! Mongaul will never forget your name, you rat! Eru of Argon! Eru of Argon… Eru…”
Just when Istavan was about to cover his ears and scream “I’m not Eru!” the count’s body collapsed backward into the deadly flames without another sound. Hardly a thing moved in the valley, then. Only the fire continued its feasting without pause.
Istavan’s face was pale.
“Please,” he spluttered. “Please forgive me. It wasn’t my idea, the oil… Guin thought of this! By the head of Cirenos he wears, if you’re going to curse someone, make it him, not me!”
Then, as though trying to shed his assumed identity before the curse could find him, he frantically yanked off the blue armor of Tauride Castle that he wore and threw it into the fire. His eyes were filled with tears.
It was some time later when the remainder of the Mongauli army, having finally dealt with the ambush at the pit-trap, made it to the valley where Marus Corps had met its fate. They had seen the smoke rising and had hurried as swiftly as they could. When they arrived at last, it was only to realize that they were far too late. The Sem had vanished, and their warriors and village-folk were nowhere to be seen. All that the invaders found in the valley, lying among the boulders and broken mud huts, were the sad remains of Tauride’s corps of blue knights, charred as dark as despair, caught forever in twisted shapes of pain.
Guin’s plan had worked beautifully.