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saddle, saw the arrow in her shoulder.
Let her through! I bellowed.
Jilian hauled her lathered zorca up before me. Her pale face was so white I fancied she had no blood left
at all, and knew that was not so, as the blood stained around the ugly shaft in her shoulder. She tried to
smile and the pain gripped her.
I am sorry to see you in such case, Jilian. I spoke with anger. I had thought you in the reserve
where
Where you ordered my girls, aye, Jak, I know. But I have had another zhantil to saddle. My regiment is
in the reserve and will go forward with the victory. She swayed and I leaned down from the nikvove and
got a hand under her armpit. But there is no time. You must fly Her gaze flicked to the reserve troop
of flutduins who waited beside Karidge s Brigade, in the reserve, under my hand. Her girls were there,
brilliant and chattering, and every eye fixed on that titanic fight going on along the face of the ridge. I
looked there, alert for any change; but the slogging match continued and the Phalanx had not moved and
the clansmen had not retired. Men were dying down there, dying by the hundred.
The empress . . . Jilian swayed and I was off the nikvove and hauled her off her zorca, and held her,
looking down, and my face must have appeared like a chunk of granite.
What of the empress?
Jilian caught her breath. And I saw she bore an axe wound in her side, gashing and horrible, exposing
pink and white ribs.
That is nothing, Jak. The empress needs assistance the Sakkora Stones
I know it. I placed her down, gently, for she was a great spirit, and bellowed at my company of
brilliant aides. Send to Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, commanding the vaward. My compliments.
He is now commanding the army. I was running toward the flutduins as I shouted, and each one of the
great birds ruffled his feathers, as though asking me to pick him. Tell the Kov to send in the reserve the
moment the line wavers. Not before, not afterwards. He will know.
Then I was hauling the flutduin Jiktar off his bird and mounting up, disdaining the straps of the clerketer.
Everyone was yelling. Shouts of consternation broke from the Emperor s Sword Watch. The flutduin
troop gaped. I cracked the bird and he rose at once, his wings wide and gorgeous and of immense
power. Together we rose into the air.
Below us a tremendous battle raged. Thousands of men were locked in hand-to-hand combat. I barely
saw the red horror of it, barely heard the screeching din.
Over the clangor, over the blood, over the agony and death below I flew. I left the battle in the
culminating moments of victory and defeat. Headlong, caring for one person and one person only in all of
Kregen, I flew like a maniac across the gory battlefield of Kochwold.
Delia...
Chapter Twenty-one
A Life for Vallia
Desertion. Infamous conduct. Lack of moral fiber in the face of the enemy. Lack of judgment of issues.
Nothing of that mattered. Vallia did not matter, nor Kregen itself.
Only Delia mattered.
I knew the Sakkora Stones.
Like the Kharoi Stones of my island of Hyr Khor in distant Djanduin, it had been raised by the Sunset
People who had lived on Kregen before the Star Lords had brought diffs to that beautiful planet to make
it the wild and terrible world it is today. Ruined, tumbled into moldering stones, mysterious, unforgettable,
the buildings of the Sunset People yet lived in legend and song.
Over the battlefield I flew and mirvols attacked me and I shot and slew them and their riders, and with
the long whippy aerial sword strapped to the saddle fought off those who would have stopped me. In a
straight line across the front I flew. The Sakkora Stones had been figured into our calculations in picking
this site for the battle, and had been reckoned as not having any influence, one way or the other. They
stood some ulm or so in rear of the position taken up by Zankov and we expected them to be used as a
field hospital or supply dump. They lifted from the moorland, quite plainly, fallen columns, walls and roofs
marking a once-vast star-shaped structure whose function remained obscure. As on Earth today, when
an archaeologist is faced with an artifact whose manner of use he does not know will say it is a cult
object or a ritual object, so we said the Sakkora Stones were a cult object.
Over the rear echelons of Zankov s army I flew and alighted in the grove of drooping trees gaining
nourishment from some underground stream in this desolate moorland country. The flutduin immediately
lifted off with a massive beat of his pinions and a wicked toss of his head. Magnificent saddle birds,
flutduins. He was off back to his master.
I looked about, sternly and yet filled with terror. What in blue blazes Delia had been up to, how Jilian
was involved, I did not know. But, by Vox, I would find out!
All the detritus, human, animal and material, in rear of a great army in conflict, lay scattered about. The
trees afforded a slight amount of cover and men and animals moved to and fro, with a steady stream of
wounded coming back. A party of spearmen, second-line troops no doubt assigned to guard the
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