All pretense of scholastic detachment was gone. At first, the magi had to strain to see the ferali. It entered the battle virtually unnoticed.
Within a minute, one of the mages said, “McHalkin was right. I thought he made it up.”
“We all thought he made it up. What does this mean about all those other creatures in his writings?”
“Gods, it’s just like he said. It’s being ridden, possessed.”
On the battlefield, the beast’s presence was becoming known. It had become a great bull, plowing through the lines of Cenarians. Whatever gashes the soldiers managed to inflict were quickly filled, and the creature grew.
The clamor of battle, the shouts of rage and pain and ringing steel had been drifting up to the promontory since the battle began. Now, new sounds rose: screams of terror.
The enormous bull lumbered out the side of the Khalidoran line. Half a dozen men, some still alive, were stuck to the beast. It paused as it digested them and began rearranging itself. The ferali curled into a ball and sheets of plate metal bobbed to the surface of its skin. It unfolded itself and stood.
The ferali now wore the shape of a troll. It was three times the height of a man, its skin was armor and mail and gawping little mouths. It had even taken into itself the swords and spears of its dead opponents, which now bristled from its back and sides.
The Cenarians’ first reaction was surprisingly heroic. They charged the beast.
It was futile. It beat its way through the lines, never moving so fast that the Khalidoran line couldn’t close behind it, and everywhere it went, killing, it was careful to lift every man it had killed or maimed in one of its four arms and stick him to its skin, or impale him on the spears on its back. One would be devoured, and then the next, and the next, and the next.
If the soldiers even wounded the beast, the magi couldn’t tell. Never slowing, it tore apart line after line.
In the face of that inexorable death, General Agon charged part of the Khalidoran line with everything he had, trying to escape. By luck or leadership, hundreds of his men joined him, all attacking one place, desperate. The Khalidoran line bowed and nearly broke, but the Khalidoran prince Moburu’s cavalry reinforced the line until the ferali waded through the ranks to get there. Abruptly, the charge broke off, and the Cenarian generals tried to get their men to charge another way. But the din of battle, the confusion of being ringed by the Khalidorans, and the terror at the ever-enlarging beast was too much.
The Cenarians were fighting in a desperate frenzy. They were moments away from panic.
“We have to go help them,” Jaedan said.
The magi looked at him like he was insane.
“What? We’re some of the most powerful magi in the world! If we don’t help them, they’ll die. If we don’t oppose Khalidor now, it’ll be too late.”
“Jaedan,” Wervel said quietly. “The ferali is almost impervious to magic—and that was to the ancients. It’s already too late.”
Lord Lucius was in no mood to placate the youth. He said, “We were sent to find, or find word of, the great sword. If Curoch is here, believe me, Jaedan, we will know of it presently. If the Cenarians have it, they will use it now. The council—”
“The council isn’t here!” Jaedan said. “I think—”
“What you think is irrelevant! We will not fight. That’s final. Understood?”
Jaedan’s jaw clenched with the effort of holding back words he would be made to regret. He turned his eyes back to the men dying because of Lord Lucius’s apathy. “Understood, sir.”
One thing the stories never mentioned about battles—the stories Logan had loved so much as a boy—was the smell. He thought that after the Hole, nothing could ever shock him again, but he was wrong. He’d lost count of the men he’d seen die in the Hole, but whatever the number was—twelve? fifteen?—it was nothing compared with the number dead here in the first charge alone. The smell had been excitement and fear and rain and mud, insignificant smells next to the sights of flashing steel and proud horses, the fierce faces of the women who rode with him.
The Khalidorans had hemmed them in. Without flags or hand signals to communicate with distant commanders, the Cenarians couldn’t escape. If too few joined a charge, it went nowhere. If too many, they’d be massacred from the rear. The Cenarian army was paralyzed, and more and more Khalidorans emerged—from where? Why the hell hadn’t they known they were there? Had Luc Graesin blown his assignment or had he betrayed them? It didn’t matter now, only avoiding slaughter mattered, and the stench filled his nostrils.
It was the men packed tightly together, their heat and their sweat and their fear commingling with the terror of the panicky horses. It was a sewer, as the dead and the fearful lost control of their bowels. It was gastric juices from stomachs cut open, intestines slashed, dying beasts kicking at the earth and bawling. It was blood so thick it gathered in pools with the rain. It was the sweeter smell of women’s sweat, their numbers dwindling but still fearless so long as Logan was fearless.
Wherever he went, the Cenarian lines rallied. It wasn’t only his presence. It was these magnificent women, streaked with blood and cursing like sailors. The very sight of them bewildered the Khalidorans.
If it weren’t for the Order, Logan would have died in the first charge. They fought with nearly suicidal frenzy to be at his side, and they’d paid the price for it. Of the thirty women who’d ridden with him, only ten remained. With such a small bodyguard, Logan surely would have been overwhelmed had not more than a hundred men joined them in the minutes after the first charge—Agon’s Dogs. He’d given them words, and now they gave him their lives.
Logan couldn’t have said how long it was into the battle when a new smell cut through the ranks. It was something rancid, which made no sense. Tonight, the armies would leave plenty of meat on the field to rot, but nothing should be rotten yet. He heard and felt the Cenarians reacting long before he saw the source of their newest fear. Then, from the back of his horse, he saw what looked like a bull, a bull the height of a destrier, blasting through the lines and out of the battle, dragging men with it.
A different creature returned. It was a troll with four arms, four eyes, lumpy grayish skin, and blades sticking out of its back. Logan knew that he should have been afraid, and part of him marveled that he wasn’t. Fear simply wasn’t there.
Battle became simple, one understanding that led to one fact: that creature was killing his people. He had to stop it.
General Agon led another charge. His men smashed into the cavalry like a balsa hammer on an anvil. It was all Agon could do to break away from that damned cavalry officer with Ladeshian skin and Alitaeran clothes and horses.
Logan charged at the beast. It seemed to be even bigger now. One entire arm now was a scythe blade and the troll swept it across the field about three feet above the ground, reaping a full harvest. There was no way to dodge. Some men jumped, and others dove to the ground, but most were cut in half. The troll moved forward, arms lifting the dead and impaling them on the lances and swords that studded its body.
Logan rode into the space created as the Cenarians pushed back as far back from the troll as they could. His white charger danced nervously.
The troll stopped and regarded Logan. It made an indistinct roar that nearly took Logan’s horse out of his control, then shook itself. A human head pushed out of the troll’s belly.
“Logan,” the head said in a perfectly human voice with only a touch of Khalidoran accent. The head pushed further out of the troll’s stomach toward Logan.
“Ursuul,” Logan snarled.
“There’s something you should know about Jenine.”
Logan hadn’t been strong when the battle began. Months of privation had left him emaciated and weak. He’d survived today on luck and the ferocity of the Order of the Garter and Agon’s Dogs, not his own strength or skill, but at the passage of Jenine’s name across this beast’s foul tongue, Logan felt the power of righteous rage.
“Your lovely, lovely wife is ali—”
Logan’s sword flashed and he struck the head off. It burst apart the ground into clumps of rotting flesh.
For a moment, the beast froze. It didn’t move a muscle, and as the moment stretched, the Cenarians suddenly cheered, thinking that Logan had somehow killed it.
Then the troll raised its arms to the skies and bellowed a roar that shook that very ground. Two of its eyes fixed on Logan, and the enormous bone scythe drew back.