44
WE did not get the two days to prepare, because somehow Nzame infused his stone-men with more speed, and they attacked at dusk of the next day.
We had an hour’s warning, for Nzame could not conceal their approach completely. There was an instant’s awkward hesitation after the scouts had delivered their dreadful news, while Zabrze and Iraldur stared at each other, wondering which should take command. Zabrze, whose fight it truly was? Or Iraldur, who commanded the vast majority of men?
It was Iraldur who settled the matter. “Tell me how to use my men, but hurry up about it!” he snapped, and Zabrze commanded.
Isphet, Boaz and I were relegated to Iraldur’s gaudy tent, with a unit of men to guard us. Boaz fumed, but Zabrze would let him nowhere near the action.
“You are too important to waste under a tumbling body of stone,” he said. “Already we’ve lost Yaqob when we could well use him. You will stay here. Kiamet! Make sure that they do!”
I felt sick with apprehension as I stood at the tent flap, watching him mount and ride away. Ten thousand stone-men. Ten thousand!
I let the flap fall and set myself to wrapping, then rewrapping the goblet and book, trying to keep myself calm.
“Lady,” Holdat said softly by my side. “You shall break them with your fiddling. Here, I will take them.”
“Be careful!” But he had already gone.
Fetizza no-one worried about. At the first shout she had wedged herself into an impossibly small crack in the ground – even if a stone-man should tumble directly over her she would be protected.
The dog was more trouble. Whining and anxious, feeling the tension about her, she wound between people’s legs and was eventually banished from the tent when she tripped Isphet over.
Boaz paced back and forth. “Damn!” he muttered as we heard a unit of mounted men clatter by, and he was out the tent flap before I could say or do anything.
“Tirzah!” Isphet shouted after me, but she was also too late, and I rushed outside into chaos.
Iraldur and his men already had a good idea of what it would take to defeat the stone-men, but they had been caught before their final preparations were completed. Now they rushed about, feverishly finding anything that might be used to trip thick, shuffling stone legs. Rope, leather reins, even girths from saddles. Many of the thousands of horses in camp were loose; others had been appropriated, but most men preferred to fight this battle on foot. No horse was going to remain calm in the face of a stone-man, and a mounted soldier would be too vulnerable to those flailing arms.
Twenty thousand flailing arms.
I had lost Boaz in the confusion, and I realised I’d wandered far from the tent myself. What was I doing? I was a fool.
Suddenly I realised that the stone ground was shaking beneath my feet.
The movement of all those about me, I tried to tell myself. But no human army or equine stampede could make the earth shudder as it did now.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
So close? So close? I trembled, then tried to reassure myself that twenty thousand stone legs could make a thump that might be felt a league away.
“My Lady!” Kiamet screamed behind me, then he seized me in strong arms and hauled me away.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“What…?” I began, struggling to find my breath as I recovered from the shock of Kiamet’s assault. “What’s…?”
“Stone-men!” he gasped, and dragged me further into the darkness. “Everywhere!”
And, oh gods, yes, they were! I screamed as a stone figure lurched out of the gloom, its arms windmilling, its face twisted in desperate moaning. It struck Kiamet on the shoulder and we both fell, rolling away as a stone foot crashed not a hand’s breadth away from my face.
Despite his injury Kiamet hauled me to my feet and we ran, ducking and weaving through bodies, flesh and stone, two-legged and four.
There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to shelter. Nothing but flatness to aid the stone-men. Boaz! Isphet!
Kiamet’s remaining good arm tightened around me again, and he pulled me to the left, and then we twisted to the right. A shape loomed before me, and we ducked and rolled, then rose and fled.
I was sobbing with terror, sure I was going to die. Stone-men were everywhere! Soldiers were among them, and many a stone-man tumbled to the ground…but there were thousands of them. So many…so many.
“They broke ranks before Zabrze could attack,” Kiamet explained, his eyes searching through the darkness for the next threat. “They ran amok…in every direction.”
“Oh gods, Kiamet! What can we do?”
“Nothing, save survive,” and we were off again, twisting, avoiding one stone arm only by a deep breath, another only through luck as my leg twisted and I dragged Kiamet down with me.
“What about Boaz? Isphet? There’s no-one…”
Thud, and we rolled away again and scrambled to our feet.
“Nothing I can do. I can save one of you and one only. And even that one…”
My leg was screaming, and I wondered if I’d broken it. I could hardly bear any weight on it, and I think Kiamet was virtually carrying me now.
We stopped, searching for escape, but there seemed to be none. There were more stone-men than soldiers, more traps than avenues of escape.
Then absolute horror reared before us.
Chad-Nezzar. Blackened and peeling skin ran from his face and body, but I knew who it was instantly. He had a scimitar, and he heaved it aloft with both hands. He opened his mouth and…and from it issued forth Nzame’s voice.
Which would you prefer, Tirzah? Death? Or Infinity in my embrace?
I screamed until I thought I would rupture my throat.
Kiamet hit me. Not strongly, but enough to stop my cries.
Which would you prefer, Tirzah? Death? Or Infinity in my embrace? Chad-Nezzar can deal whichever you choose. His body is mine now. Do you like it? Would you prefer that –
A blade whistled through the air behind the grotesque puppet and sliced its head from its shoulders.
Iraldur, blood seeping from a wound to his head and more from an injury to his shoulder. “Get her out of here, you fool!” he yelled to Kiamet. “Or I shall take your head as well!”
Kiamet took him at his word and dragged me away…but it was away into more confusion.
I was so terrified now I could neither cry nor scream, just cling to Kiamet. I was sure I was going to die, sure we were all going to die. There was nothing but flailing arms, nothing but to curl up and wait for –
Tirzah! Tirzah!
Now I did find the breath to sob. Oh, no! Not him! Not him again!
Tirzah! Tirzah!
“Tirzah!” Kiamet panted in my ear. “Look, curse you, look!”
I raised my head. Then blinked, sure I was hallucinating in my terror.
Avaldamon stood some thirty paces away, beckoning urgently. I blinked again. Yes, Avaldamon. Wraith-like to be sure, but undoubtedly Avaldamon.
Kiamet hauled me towards the spectre, and neither of us thought to duck or weave as we raced through the berserk arms of the stone-men.
Luck – perhaps something else – saved us, and we reached the spot where Avaldamon had been.
Had been. Now he was gone.
“Avaldamon!” I sobbed, then looked down. Fetizza sat huddled in a small cleft in the rock. She looked very, very angry.
Water was welling up about her.
I sank to my knees, then to my hands. What advantage would water give –
“Good girl,” Kiamet said softly, and sank down beside me, reaching out to stroke Fetizza on the head. “Good girl.”
I was soaking. I had never seen the water rise this fast before. It spread in a great pool about us, and Fetizza’s huge black eyes had lost none of their anger.
A stone-man lurched in our direction.
I cringed, knowing we were dead.
He slipped in the water. For an instant a look of almost comical surprise spread across the stone face, replacing the despair, then he was down, crashing with such a thud that it shook the stone about us.
The water was now cascading from the cleft.
There was another thud, then another, then several at once.
Fetizza burped.
Water pumped out of every crack about us. I had to hook my fingers into a fissure in the rock to prevent myself from being carried away.
The sound of stone bodies hitting stone ground was now almost deafening, yet still I could hear shouts of triumph rise above the crashing.
Fetizza croaked contentedly, and wriggled about in her rocky fissure.
Kiamet and I wandered for hours, searching for Boaz. Isphet we’d found fairly quickly. She had stayed with the tent, relatively safe from the stone-men. Only three had come her way, and they’d got so tangled in the tent ropes they’d fallen over and protected her from further incursions.
She’d not touched them until the danger was past.
Now we searched through a landscape littered with moans and impotently waving arms. Every one of the stone-men left on his feet when Fetizza had set the waters free had been felled by the slippery water. They had accidentally killed or maimed several dozen of our men in the process.
And scores of other men had been killed in the confused terror beforehand. The ten thousand running amok had created the havoc Nzame wished. Gods knew what would have happened if Fetizza hadn’t acted.
“Boaz?” I called softly into the night. “Boaz?”
Kiamet limped beside me. He was badly injured, and should have gone to the tents for treatment, but he insisted on staying with me.
“Boaz? Boaz?”
A figure loomed before me and I cried out, reaching out my arms.
But it was Zabrze, not Boaz, and while I was happy to see him alive, he was not my Boaz.
“Isphet?” he asked. “Isphet?”
“She’s at the tent where you left her. Zabrze –”
But he was gone, running through the night.
I turned, and stared into the face of Iraldur.
“Still alive, I see,” he grunted. “And we’ve won through, but at a cost I’d not expected.”
Then he was gone, and I was crying, for I was sure I would not see Boaz again.
“Come on, my Lady,” Kiamet muttered, “there’s no good to be done wandering about here during the night. There’s plenty you can fix in the morning. But for now –”
“For now I’ll take her, Kiamet. Get yourself over to Iraldur’s physicians’ tents, for you need fixing yourself.”
“Boaz!”
His arms wrapped about me, as tight as ever I could have wanted them, and we were crying and rocking together in the night, alone save for ten thousand stone-men lying on their backs and waving sadly to the uncaring moon above.