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They blew longer and louder than Blade thought human lungs could manage. By the time the last blast died away the line was practically formed. As Blade had expected, the formation was ragged, with volunteers and Guardians and Nessiri all shoving and jostling each other. But he had never felt such a spirit in any army as he felt in the three thousand horsemen behind him.
He waited a moment longer, to give the trumpeters a chance to catch their breath. He drew his sword and raised it high over his head. Then he slashed it down through the snow flakes. The trumpets sounded again, blowing the charge, and the three thousand horsemen surged forward.
At first Blade had the impression of watching a silent film run in slow motion. The horses had trouble working up to a gallop, and until they did the snow muffled the thunder of hooves to a faint murmur.
Then the battle lines of the two armies loomed out of the grayness, half a mile ahead. The trumpeters blew again, without orders, for sheer delight in making noise. The noise seemed to lift the whole charge forward like a physical force. The horses moved up smoothly from a trot to a canter to a gallop, swords came out, lance points dipped, and now the thunder of three thousand sets of hooves pounded at Blade's ears. He waved his own sword and roared out:
«For the Emperor! For Karan! For your homes and your lands and your dead! Onward, and strike them! Onward!» The cheers that rose behind Blade drowned out the sound of the hooves and the swelling roar of the battle ahead. He went on shouting, though he could no longer hear himself. He went on shouting, because it somehow seemed that if he stopped shouting the whole charge would fall apart and he himself would fall down into the snow. That was a mad thing to believe, but Blade knew that in this moment he was just a bit mad.
He went on shouting and the men behind him went on cheering as they swept past the Scadori baggage train. A few spears and arrows shot out from the wagons and tents as they passed-Scadori women and old men doing what little they could. Blade was still shouting and the men behind him were still cheering when the charge struck the Scadori at a full gallop.
Blade had organized and delivered the kind of charge that can win a battle in a matter of minutes. This one did just that. The entire battle turned against the Scadori in the three minutes after Blade's charge struck home, as their battle line folded up on itself like an accordion. The charge trampled or slashed or speared down four thousand warriors in those few minutes, without losing more than a handful of cavalrymen. Of the other hand, Scadori half lost their formation and piled up in a tangled mob. Most of the rest lost not only their formation but their nerve. They started to drift, then to run, toward the rear.
Then Pardes and the Emperor together led the Karani battle line forward at a run, Imperial regiments and recruits all mixed together. Nobody was bothering about formation, nobody was afraid any more, nobody was thinking of anything except closing with the Scadori and killing and killing until there weren't any more to kill.
In half an hour the battle was over. Blade could never remember a single detail of what he did from the moment the charge struck home. The first thing that stuck in his mind was sitting on his horse as Pardes and the Emperor rode up to him, gri
There would be a good many more before long, he was afraid. Through the snow he could hear the screams of women as the Karani swarmed through the baggage wagons. The details were mercifully blotted out by distance and the swirling snow. Blade thought of saying something to Pardes and the Emperor about this, then realized it was pointless. This wasn't just the end of a battle. It was the end of a war more than two centuries long. Hadn't he himself said that defeat today would be the end of the Scadori as a people?
But he still felt very little joy in the victory as he listened to the screams. He was about to turn his horse away, when Zogades rode up. The captain's own horse was lathered white and his armor was hacked and scarred. In one bloody hand he held a sword by the tip.
«My lord Blade, I had to beat some greedy-guts infantry off to get this for you. But you're the one who deserves it, by the gods. It's the Scadori general's sword. A prisoner told me what it was, before I killed him.»
«Before you-«Blade began, then a thought suddenly struck him. «Did he say who the general was?»
«Named Degar, I think he was. Least that's what it sounded like. You know these Scadori names sound fu
Blade nodded. So Degar was gone too, and perhaps mercifully. He would hardly have wanted to survive seeing his people destroyed and learning what had happened to his daughter. But-Blade put further thoughts along those lines firmly out of his mind. He could wish that the Karani had a great many good qualities they didn't. Perhaps Jores could do something about that, if he became the Emperor he might be and could control Pardes and others like him. But even as they were, the Karani held more hope for this Dimension than the Scadori. In helping them to their victory, he had made the best of a bad lot, but what else could he have done? He reached out his hand to take the sword.
Then it seemed as though someone was pounding the earth under him like a gigantic drum. Blade felt the trembling and vibration reach him through the body of his horse and work up through his own body. As it reached his head, pain exploded in his skull.
It was a pain so agonizing that Blade gasped out loud. His fingers clutched at Degar's sword, but couldn't close tightly enough. The sword slipped from his grasp and fell point down to the ground. The snow was deep enough now to catch it and hold it upright.
But the pain was also a familiar pain. From far away in Home Dimension Lord Leighton's computer was gripping at his brain, ready to twist his awareness and bring him back to England.
The computer's grip tightened, the twisting began, the pain soared higher. Blade saw the world of Karani and Scadori and the snowy battlefield fading away around him.
The last thing he saw before blackness came down was Degar's sword standing upright in the snow. To Blade's fading vision it looked like a cross on a grave-the grave of the Scadori people.
Chapter 25
J cleared his throat and began to read aloud.
To: Dr. L. Ferguson, Principal Psychiatric Officer, Project Dimension X
From: J
Concerning: Psychiatric assessment of R. Blade (Subject 1) in Report 97, 25 August.
Dear Dr. Ferguson: I am obliged to express a strongly dissenting opinion concerning certain of your assessments of subject's condition after completion of his recent mission.
You feel that subject's indications of ambiguous feelings at various points in his mission suggests an impairment of his decision-making powers. It is obvious to me that at most of those points the situation was indeed ambiguous. Subject's ability to recognize situations that are ambiguous and require caution in making decisions has been a major part of his extraordinary talent for special missions during the entire period I have been associated with him. It is not, repeat not, indicative of any conceivable psychiatric disorder.
You feel that subject's expressed distaste for involvement in the affairs of the various peoples encountered upon this mission may in the future lead to some dysfunctional withdrawal at a crucial moment, possibly leading to the death of the subject or the failure of a mission. Subject has encountered a great many highly distasteful phenomena during my period of association with him and reacted to them without failing to complete a mission. Failure to so react to some of these phenomena would in my opinion indicate a degree of gross insensitivity far more dangerous and «dysfunctional» than any possible distaste for political plots or the murder of a woman he came to care for.