Father’s contribution to the affair was a bit childish, but he seemed to enjoy it. Giving an enemy an abbreviated version of the seven-year itch doesn’t really accomplish very much, but father was quite proud of it, for some reason.
And so we’d survived the second day of the battle. I knew just how significant that was, but I hadn’t bothered to share the information – largely at mother’s insistence. ‘It would only confuse them, Pol,’ she assured me. ‘Men confuse easily anyway, so let’s just keep the importance of the third day to ourselves. Let’s not give your father an opportunity to wallow in excessive cleverness. He might upset the balance of things that are supposed to happen.’
I’m sorry to have let that out, mother, but father’s been just a little too smug lately. Maybe it’s time for him to find out what really happened at Vo Mimbre.
The Arendish poet, Davoul the Lame, a weedy-looking fellow with a bad limp and an exaggerated opinion of his own rather mediocre talent, perpetrated a literary monstrosity he called ‘The Latter Days of the House of Mimbre,’ during which he made much of Torak’s refusal to emerge from his rusty resting place. Davoul didn’t explain the Dragon-God’s reluctance, but I think that those of you who’ve been paying attention have already guessed exactly what was behind it. To put it quite bluntly, Torak was afraid of that third day, since the Ashabine Oracles told him that if his duel with the Child of Light were to take place on that third day, he’d lose. Evidently, he’d been forbidden to come out on the second day, so he’d been forced to rely on Zedar to take the city. Zedar had failed, and now Torak faced that day he so feared. When you get right down to it, though, all he really had to do was stay home. If he’d done that, he’d have won.
Don’t rush me. I’ll get to why he came out in my own time.
The key to our entire campaign was the Tolnedran legions, of course, so just before dawn, I flew down the River Arend to make sure that Eldrig’s war-boats were coming upstream with those vital reinforcements. I’ll admit that I was enormously relieved to see that they were approximately where they were supposed to be. Then Beltira left the city to join the forces we had deployed to the east, Belkira went north to join the Sendars, Rivans and Asturians, and father and I simply flew out and settled in a tree to watch and to call out our commands. Father, of course, was totally unaware of the fact that I wasn’t alone in that now-familiar owl. Fooling my father wasn’t very difficult – or very important. What really mattered was the fact that Torak didn’t know that mother was there either. Mother was the Master’s hidden disciple, and Torak didn’t even know that she existed. I’m absolutely convinced that it was her presence at Vo Mimbre that ultimately defeated the One-eyed God.
The business with all that horn-blowing had been father’s idea. It didn’t actually serve any purpose – except to satisfy father’s need for high drama. Members of our family were spread around among our forces, and we had much more subtle ways to communicate than tootling at each other, but father stubbornly insisted upon those periodic horn-concertos. I’ll admit that the Arends absolutely loved the idea of mysterious horn-blasts echoing from the nearby hills and also that those calls and responses made the Angaraks very nervous. The Nadraks in particular were edgy about the horn calls, and so Yar lek Thun sent scouts out into the woods to see what was happening. The Asturian archers with Brand’s force were waiting for them, and Yar lek Thun didn’t get the reports he yearned for.
Then Ad Rak Cthoros of the Murgos sent out scouts to the east, and the Algar cavalry disposed of them as well.
At the next call of the horns, we got the answer we’d been waiting for. Uncle Beldin and General Cerran responded with a chorus of Tolnedran trumpets. The Chereks and the Tolnedran legions had arrived on the battlefield.
That’s when father, our resident field-marshal, soared up to his post high above to direct his forces. When everything on the ground was to his satisfaction, he ordered Brand to give the signal for our opening ploy. Brand sounded two horn blasts, and they were echoed by Cho-Ram. Mandor’s answer was immediately followed by the banging open of the gates of Vo Mimbre and the thundering charge of the Mimbrate knights.
Zedar – who should have known better – took the form of a raven and flew out of the iron pavilion to see what we were doing.
Mother surprised me at that point. Without any warning at all, she launched our shared form from our perch and lifted us high above that flapping black raven. Since we were so totally merged, I shared her thoughts and feelings, and I was more than a little surprised to discover that mother’s enmity for Zedar predated his apostasy. Mother, it appeared, had disliked Zedar the first time she’d laid eyes on him. I got the distinct impression that he’d said something to father about her that’d earned him a special place in her heart. Father’s always believed that the owl that came plummeting out of the sky that morning was simply trying to frighten Zedar, but he was wrong. Mother was trying her very best to kill Zedar.
I wonder how things might have turned out if she’d succeeded.
The charge of the Mimbrate knights at the Battle of Vo Mimbre has spawned whole libraries of mediocre poetry, but from a strategic point of view, its only purpose was to pin the Malloreans in place, and it did exactly that. It was dramatic, noisy, noble, and very stirring, but it was really rather secondary. Torak’s understanding of battle tactics was really quite limited, since he’d never really engaged in a battle between equally matched forces before. During the War of the Gods, he’d been outnumbered. During this war, it’d been the other way around. He’d assumed that the attacks on his armies would come from his flanks and his rear, and he’d placed his hordes of Malloreans in the center to reinforce the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls when necessary. The suicidal charge of the Mimbrates prevented the Malloreans from meeting other dangers, and it forced Torak, surrounded and outmaneuvered, to accept Brand’s challenge, the one thing he really didn’t want to do.
Then Zedar tried again, as a deer this time. I’ve always had some suspicions about that. Given Zedar’s nature, isn’t it possible that he was simply trying to run away? The form of a deer was a serious blunder, however, as I’m sure Zedar realized when father started biting chunks out of his haunches.
Our combined forces inexorably tightened around the Angaraks. Torak’s army began to suffer dreadful casualties. Individual Angarak soldiers began to look longingly at the far banks of the River Arend. I now saw why Kal Torak had so feared this third day of battle.