The Manslayers hardly screamed as they died; they grunted and gurgled and sucked in their last breaths like any dying man must, but they never screamed. Tyro pondered this in the calm chamber at the back of his mind, while his sword set blood and brains free of their fleshy prisons. The red fury fell upon him as it always did in battle. He turned the crooked blades of Zyung or stayed them with his shield, searching and finding the small places where his blade could slide home. When he failed to find such openings, he hacked through metal with repeated blows until soft flesh was exposed, and his final strike stole another life.
The formations of horsemen had broken rapidly into chaos. The valley was full of screeching, thundering death. Across a sea of swords and spears Giants smashed Manslayers by twos and threes, pinning them on longspears like insects, sweeping torn bodies into the air with flailing maces and hammers, slicing men in half with greatswords and axes. Beyond the marauding Giants the silver masses of Manslayers continued pouring onto the shore of the bay. Vireon towered above the battle, a bronze colossus snatching Zyung’s wizards from the air like fluttering moths. The Feathered Serpent seethed with flame and light, hurtling among those same sorcerers and drawing their wrath to himself.
Yet so many of the silver-robes flew above the valley now, the majority of them escaped Vireon and the Serpent. A ray of light brighter than a sunbeam shot from a floating sorcerer’s globe, igniting a company of Uurzians and the Udvorg fighting alongside them. The warriors turned to ash in a moment of unearthly heat; even their bones and armor were consumed in the blaze. Men ran now from the path of sky-borne wizards, breaking their formations and spreading panic. Giants hurled spears and chunks of stone at the silver-robes, but these assaults failed to break their glassy orbs. They only defense against the legion of sorcerers was the intervention of Khama or Vireon. And neither Giant-King nor Feathered Serpent could be everywhere at once.
A blazing column of light fell next to Tyro, its heat washing over him like a furnace. He watched those caught directly in the glow, men and horses alike, wither and burn away. Before their bones hit the ground, they too were blackened dust.
There are too many of these lightbringers!
Tyro wanted to shout this in his terror, but he drowned the compulsion and fear by lunging at the nearest Manslayer. A lance ripped through the guts of his horse, pulling him down into the filth and pulped bodies. A silver-mailed brute stood over him, raining blows against his backplate. Tyro rolled over and blocked the curved longblade with his shield. His broadsword was caught beneath the dead mount, and there was no time to pry it free. Another blow clanged off his helm as he pulled a dagger free of its sheath. He rolled inside the man’s next blow and drove his short blade into the exposed sliver of belly between belt and breastplate. It sank deep. Tyro swept the dagger sideways, eviscerating his opponent. Gore and entrails spilled across his shoulder.
Another Manslayer rushed forward as Tyro grabbed the broadsword and pulled it free of the twitching horse’s bulk. He parried a downswing and sent his boot into the assailant’s crotch, tipping him off-balance. He drove the blade upward, into the flesh below the chin, where the straps of his enemy’s helmet were the only protection. Tyro grabbed the man’s belt and used the corpse’s backward fall to pull himself upward. On his feet now, he freed his blade from the dead man’s skull and spun to meet a new attacker.
The baroque blades of the invaders were marvels of design. While contending with a Manslayer, foiling any major blows, a man could be cut a dozen times by the curling lesser blades or the barbed fringes of their hilts. The Zyungians wore scalloped metal gauntlets and arm guards not only to protect them from enemy blows, but also to avoid injury from their own spinning weapons. Tyro endured more small cuts than he could count as the battle raged, but he also learned how to avoid those lesser cuts with certain lunges and feints. The Men of Zyung were teaching him a new dance.
Still the annihilating bolts of light fell across the legions, killing entire squads of men at once. Only those who were deeply mingled with the ranks of the Manslayers were safe from the sorcerers’ killing lights. Tyro guessed that their power could not discriminate between ally and enemy when it fell, and the silver-robes must be under orders not to send their own Manslayers to ash. Tyro shouted this knowledge to all those about him, and drove deeper into the ranks of bloodied silver. Better to die at the end of a man’s blade than be reduced to nothingness by a sorcerer’s deathlight.
Once again he caught sight of Undutu, who somehow had remained upon his horse. The Pearl King could fight. Tyro was impressed. He drove through the scarlet fray toward the Mumbazan, but found himself stayed by a forest of blade and shield. Up ahead the blond locks of D’zan were visible, slinging blood like rainwater. The black blade rose and fell, rose and fell. Then he saw no more of the Yaskathan, as the Manslayers closed on him from left, right, and behind.