The noise of the horses across the plain is a roar like men cheering. Hooves throwing up bloody dust. The riders behind Him shout His name over and over: “Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!” The shadows laugh beside them, dripping spittle, hungry. So hungry. The crash as they meet the Ithish lines like blindness. His coming is like night. His sword lashes out gloriously: Joy! Joy! Joy! Bright blood flies up at the stroke, spattering on His face, He licks His lips at the taste, blood and sweat and dust, the stink of the battlefield, sweet. He kills one man and then another. But you’re all dying anyway. Don’t you see? He kills another, and another, and another. The sword sings in his hand. Joy! Joy! Joy! His hands and face already filthy with blood.
The shadows come shrieking. Killing and tearing things.
A man is up in front of Him, heavy armour, sword thick and grotty with blood. No, not a man, green flashing eyes and fine cheek bones, a young woman. Blue and silver on her helmet plumes: royal kin. He kicks the horse forward at her, meets her head on, the two horses colliding, swinging out His sword with a shout. The Ithish princess hits back, the two swords colliding like the horses. Sparks. This beautiful moment, when everything is lost but the killing, hitting and striking each other, nothing else matters, nothing else just the two of them and the death in between. Killing. Killing. Kill and be killed. The shadows eat up the dying. They’re all dying. All of them. Frightened wide eyes looking at Him a moment. Wounded. Blood on the pretty face that has traces of His own. For a moment it’s Ti again, dying in pieces, cut up and slowly falling away into nothing, dissolving under slow long strokes of the sword. The wide eyes understood, looking at Him. No chance of winning. No chance of anything.
On the right flank the press of spears is breaking up, the enemy’s soldiers beginning to run. Osen’s swordsmen picking them off as they pull back from the spear heads. The horsemen swirling, birds in flight, eddies of water over rocks, swirling around the men on foot, cutting them, riding them down, Ithish cavalry engaging them but the shadows leap and tear and the horses screaming run mad.
The Ithish are dying. Oh, they’re dying! Kill them! Kill them all! Death! Death! Death! The blade of His sword shines with light that is clear like morning sunshine. The ruby in the hilt shines red. The mage comes at Him. Blazing with fire. The heat of her power strikes Him like fists. He raises His sword, brings it down on her. Silver light flashing. The sword strikes her like striking stone. A crash that must break mountains. Open a crack in the world. The mage falls dead.
His shadows tear at the Ithish. Devour them. He cannot remember, after, quite what they looked they. Like great cats, sleek with hunting. Like a wolf pack. Like men with long clawed fingers and no face. They devour without mouths, ripping bodies, tearing the life away, gutting through armour, sinking talons into beating hearts. The ground is running with torn bodies. The depth and innermost soul of a man, spilled out there shimmering in the mud. Screams loud enough to tear the sky. A few of the Ithish are trying to fight them. Stabbing. Jabbing spears. The spears snap. The swords buckle. The metal corrodes into rust. The shadows laugh and the earth shakes.
The Ithish lines are retreating. Running. His men push on in pursuit across the plain. Filled with lust for blood. They have held and held and felt the Ithish vice close on them, holding on their spears perhaps five times their own weight. They have thought themselves dying. Now they know they are victorious. They will have no mercy. They will wipe the Ithish army from the face of the earth.