Champions Of The Gods

Blade ran up the winding stairs of the tower even faster than he'd run across the level ground. His chest was heaving as he burst out into the open air on top of the tower. He laid Katerina gently on the stones, then turned to the nearest soldier.

«Do you have-«

A volley of shots sounded from outside the walls, rising above the swelling sound of the approaching riders. Bullets whistled overhead and spattered on the stones. Soldiers all around Blade threw themselves flat on their stomachs. Only Blade continued to stand, looking out over the desert as the Raufi charged in toward the wall.

They fired more shots as they came in, without shooting at anyone or anything in particular. They seemed to be shooting for the fun of it, out of high spirits, as they rode in toward the open gate that marked the way into Kano and certain victory.

Well outside the walls the Raufi slowed down. Drums roared again and trumpets called out as the two thousand riders sorted themselves into a column narrow enough to pass through the gate. Then they were on the move again, at a trot, a canter, a gallop. They pounded up to the wall, vanished into the gate, and emerged on the other side in the Gardens of Stam. Blade rushed to the i

Then came a sound that drowned out soldiers, Raufi, and everything else. The trap closed. Twelve heavy ca

The soldiers around Blade stopped cheering long enough to lean over the wall and fire their muskets and crossbows. Then they drew back to reload. The twelve ca

The Raufi were still coming. Some of them were simply pushed on through the gate by the pressure of their comrades behind them. Others seemed to have hopes of riding down the guns and seeping out into the Gardens of Stam. They were waving their swords and firing off pistols as they rode in through the gate.

A dozen more guns roared out on the right flank, lighter guns firing loads of musket balls. The new line of Raufi did not die as spectacularly as the first, but they died just as fast. Riderless camels charged about wildly, swerving as they trod on writhing bodies, screaming with the pain of wounds.

Both batteries of guns fired again. Then Kanoan trumpets sounded for the first time that night, and five hundred horsemen swept in from the left. They wasted no time firing, but charged home with sword and lance. A good many of them couldn't stay in their saddles and fell, to be trampled to death under the hooves of their comrades' horses. A good many more missed their blows. A solid mass remained to crash into the Raufi at a full gallop, taking them in the rear, cutting their column in two.

As the surviving Raufi tried to rally and fight their way back through to the gate and out of Kano, musketeers came ru

Nobody could hope to sort out who was doing what to whom in that shambles. Even the soldiers around Blade stopped firing, afraid of hitting friend instead of enemy. Nobody could hope to know how long it went on, either.

Eventually it all came to an end, and that was enough for Blade. The battle was over. Jormin, Dahrad Bin Saffar, and most of the two thousand Raufi would never trouble Kano or the Kanoans again. He spread a cloth over Katerina's face, then left her lying where he'd put her and went down the tower stairs to the ground.

A wide area around the Eighth Gate was a ploughed-up, hoof-marked shambles. Dying men and animals, bodies, parts of bodies, pools of blood, and smashed or discarded weapons were everywhere. A continuous low moaning rose from the maimed and dying, and the equally inescapable reek of death rose from the rest. In the Gardens all around the battlefield, large trees stood stripped of leaves, smaller trees lay chopped completely through, bushes and flowerbeds lay where they had been violently uprooted or trampled flat.

Silence had almost returned when Blade saw Mirdon riding toward him on a borrowed cavalry horse. The Commander carried nothing but a bare sword and a bloodstained cloth bag, and in his eyes was a look Blade didn't like very much. He remembered the night he and Mirdon had first met, when the Commander had spurred his horse up an impossibly steep slope to get at Blade. That night Mirdon had had the face of a man determined to do the impossible or die trying. Now the same look was there, even stronger.

«Ho, Champion!» shouted Mirdon. «Will you ride with me?»

«Where to?»

«I ride to throw Dahrad's head-«he held up the sack «-in the faces of the whole of the Raufi. We have already accomplished tonight most of the miracle we needed. But our work will not be finished until we have made the Raufi storm the walls in the face of our guns and our courage.»

«Won't what we've done already be enough?» said Blade.

«Perhaps it could be,» said Mirdon. «But the hope of Kano must not rely on a 'perhaps.' It must rely on what is certain. Not unless I hurl Dahrad Bin Saffar's head into the very camp of the Raufi will it be certain they will come against our walls. Then they will come; and we will have our victory and our vengeance.»

Blade found he did not care as much as he perhaps ought to for the vengeance of the Kanoans. But he knew one thing for certain. If Mirdon was going to ride out on this mad mission, it was his place as the Champion of the Gods to ride along with the Commander. He certainly had no hope of persuading Mirdon not to ride.

«Very well, Mirdon,» he said. «Find me a horse. Let us ride out.»

It took a few minutes to find a horse able to carry Blade's two hundred and some pounds without strain. Then Blade and Mirdon rode out of the Eighth Gate at a canter. The soldiers lined the wall and the tops of the towers to watch them go. Doubtless they thought both men were riding to certain death. But mortals do not question a Champion of the Gods, and the soldiers of Kano had long since given up trying to argue with Mirdon when he had his mind made up.

They cantered past a few stray Raufi wandering about on foot, too stu

Here there had been miles of trees, bushes, and gardens before the Raufi came. Now everything living had been trampled out of existence, shot to splinters, or chopped up to feed the Raufi campfires. The ground was bare and hard, and it stretched for two open, level miles to the Raufi lines. Mirdon dug in his spurs, and his horse bounded forward at a gallop. Blade followed.

A full moon was up by now. It gave the ground underfoot and the dust the horses kicked up a luminous quality. It seemed to Blade that they weren't riding so much as flying effortlessly over a great expanse of pure, glowing light. He began to have the feeling that there were no Raufi ahead, that this flight would go on forever, to the end of the world and whatever might lie beyond it. The pounding of the horses' hooves on the hard ground faded out of Blade's senses, the ruined and splintered trees faded, Mirdon himself faded.