JANISSARIES

There were shouts from Sarakos's troops, but it was obvious to even the most stupid that there was no halting the charge. Safety lay ahead, through the screen of knights, out of the growing fire and away from the archers. The leading horsemen spurred harder.

Another pause. Then a shout from the hillside. "Let the gray gulls fly!"

The arrows flew with a deadly sound. In a moment the air was thick with them. Even as the first flight struck, another was on its way. Shafts the length of a tall man's arm and tipped with steel sped from bows drawn by men who'd used them since childhood. The second flight struck, and another arched out.

The slaughter was terrifying. The arrows pierced horses, saddles, even armor itself. Horses reared and bolted, crashed into each other, tripped and fell and stumbled over fallen horses. The centaurs screamed in rage and pain, their stubby arms flailing wildly, their half-hands frantically plucking at the arrows, their heads twisted to lick wounds. They seized their riders and tried to throw them off, or fell into the brush and rolled on their backs. Some plunged uphill off the road, to be shot down before they could climb far.

Still the arrows flew. The charge was broken into scattered groups, driblets of twos and threes and fours; not a solid wave of armored men with lances, but a disorganized horde fleeing past the archers, away from the growing fires, out into the broad area beyond- To be struck by the countercharge of Tylara's knights. With a hundred paces to build momentum they struck the leading elements of Sarakos's force, driving their enemy back toward the flames and the falling arrows, then wheeling away as yet another wave charged through to strike and turn. They too wheeled and joined their fellows; halted and dismounted.

Dismounted. One-eyed Vothan had smiled on her, had not maddened her knights as he so easily might have done. They had obeyed orders. Most western knights wouldn't fight dismounted; the Eqetas of Chelm had trained these well.

They stood with leveled lances, poised just beyond the 'burning brushwood, an impenetrable wall on which Sarakos's men could break themselves again and again, but never get through. They could not have withstood a mounted charge by an organized group, but there was no danger of that. Sarakos's force milled about in the smoke and flame, galled by the ceaseless shower of arrows, held by the fire and the bodies of their own comrades. The dismounted line was more than able to kill the few who rode out of the smoke.

A brisk wind came up to whip the flames. They grew and flamed higher, until for five hundred paces the pass looked like the very Pit-a tangle of smoke and fire, shouting men, men unhorsed, dying horses, riderless centaurs maddened by fire and plunging into everyone. And through it all the Tamaerthon gulls flew with their deadly bite, flight after flight of the grey shafts.

The Sarakos trumpets sounded a frantic retreat, but for far too many there was no retreat possible.

The arrows did not come in flights now. The archers picked single targets, concentrating on men still mounted, bringing down their mounts to leave the armored men helpless in the burning brushwood. The pass filled with sounds of pain and terror.

Tylara sat her horse grimly, her mouth set in a hard line. I thought I would enjoy it, she thought. These are the men who killed my husband. I should enjoy their agony.

But she felt no joy at all, only sickness and horror which she must hide from her shouting escort, and the numbing realization that this was only the begi

I hadn't known the horses would scream so, she thought. I expected to see men die, but I had not thought of the horses.

She continued to watch in sick fascination until she suddenly realized what she was doing. She had almost made a fatal mistake.

Sarakos was bringing up his own archers. Most were crossbowmen, or mounted archers with short bows they drew only to the chest; none were a match for her Tamaerthon clansmen, but two hundred ca

Her trumpets sounded in the pass. Cadaric waved acknowledgment and began sending his archers out; the forward ones first, then others, leapfrogging so that they kept a continuous fire onto the Sarakos troops piled up at the edge of the brushfire.

Another trumpet call. Nothing happened. Her knights stood at the pass. A few left the line, but they went only for their mounts, and when they were mounted they came back.

"Fools!" Tylara shouted. She spurred her horse down the knoll to where the knights and bheromen of Chelm stood. More mounted as she came, but they showed no signs of leaving.

"Ride!" she shouted. "Before the fires burn down and their whole army comes through! Ride, my lords. You've done well. One-eyed Vothan smiles on you. Sarakos will not soon forget this day. Now, in the name of the Dayfather, ride!"

Bheroman Trakon sat motionless. "The fire protects them no less than us. There was nothing behind their vanguard but foot. We have more work to do this day."

"Not true," Tylara shouted. "They were bringing up their horse archers even as I watched, and they have their crossbowmen. You will ride into their volleys, and the remnant will be charged by their cavalry."

Trakon didn't move.

"My lord," Tylara said. She tried to control the panic in her voice. "If you mean to die here today, I will stand with you. It will be no victory no matter how many we destroy, for we will have given Dravan to Sarakos. If we are caught here, anywhere but within the walls, we are finished.

"I would rather be killed with my husband's knights than ride to Dravan and live to see it fall to Sarakos. Is that your will?"

Trakon sat motionless for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear it of the morning fog. "You speak well, Lady. We have won no victory if we stay to be killed." He rose in his stirrups to shout orders. "Carry the dead and wounded away. Leave nothing for Sarakos. Let him believe that he has lost the quarter of his vanguard to ghosts, to achieve nothing." He turned and rode down the pass. After a moment, Tylara followed.

I follow, she thought. It was my victory, but I follow. She sighed, knowing what would be thought by everyone who saw.

A week later, Sarakos reached Castle Dravan. The first attempt to storm the castle was repulsed; attack and defense might have been the opening steps in a ritual dance. The next move was also set; Sarakos dug in and erected pavilions and defenses around the castle.

There was no entry or exit from Dravan. Sarakos and his army waited for their siege train.

3

The siege towers rolled forward slowly. The armored heads of picks thrust out of them as if eager to attack the 'walls and gates of Dravan. Hundreds of men strained to push the monsters forward. Overseers shouted cadence. Boys poured melted fat on the axles. They would reach the walls by afternoon.

"It is time, Tylara," Trakon said. "Time and past time."

She looked helplessly at him, then at the others:

Cadaric, his son Caradoc, and Yanulf. "Have I no other advice?" she asked.

"You know mine, Lady," Cadaric said. He clutched his bow. "There are no more shafts. As for me, as well to die; but it would be waste to no purpose."

Cadaric's son Caradoc opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by his father's look. The young man looked down at the towers in hatred.

Yanuif nodded sagely. "What choice is there? In a day they will be inside, and it always fares ill with the populace when a place is taken by storm." He paused. "You need not stay, Lady. My place is with the acolytes in the caves of the Preserver, and we could find you a place there as well."