The Third Prince, Part One
The ground shuddered under a long, rolling thunder of hooves as cavalry smashed into the center army.
"Kill them!"
"Sweep them away!"
"Hold! Don't scatter!"
"Spare me!"
"Run!"
Lances couched, the charging horse-troop slammed home with a bone-jarring crash. The Drail center, its rear and flank split open by the assault, came apart in a heartbeat. Bellies were run through and pinned on spearpoints. Blades still freighted with the speed of the charge sheared necks free and sent them spinning. Beneath lances and swords steeped in the knights' aura, common infantry were hurled aside or carved apart like bundled straw, torsos tumbling across the dirt.
Once the formation collapsed, the commanders could no longer hold soldiers lost in the chaos.
"Don't scatter!"
"Don't give an inch!"
"Protect the prince!"
"Hold the command post!"
Shouts, curses, and screams tangled into one deafening roar. Men trying to flee tripped over one another and went down, only to be skewered from behind like meat on a spit.
"Ghk!"
"Save me!"
Straight into the shattered front of Drail's center, Zahed's own center came charging. To the left and right the Zahed host opened its wings and began to curl around the Drail army like a crescent moon.
If they were encircled, it was the end.
While Drail's soldiers flailed in terror, Viscount Malic—who had been watching the battle turn—looked at the frightened Third Prince and spoke.
"Your Highness! This won't do. You must withdraw at once!"
"N-no. The battle is still going. What about the men?!"
"Your safety comes before the soldiers. Men can be gathered again. Slave-troops and mercenaries can simply be bought anew."
Even terrified, the Third Prince could not bring himself to abandon the field so easily. Malic barely swallowed the frustration boiling in his chest.
This stupid brat. Dawdle now, and then what?
"If Your Highness withdraws, the soldiers can retreat without worrying over you. We have to go now. Hurry!"
Pressed by Malic's hard insistence, the Third Prince nodded against his will.
"Lead the way."
"This way! Escort the prince! Open a path!!"
The moment the Third Prince and Malic turned their horses, the knights guarding them and the mages dispatched with the force closed in and formed up around them. The knight captain shouted.
"We break through!"
Drawn into a wedge, the prince's party drove for the gap the enemy had not yet sealed, and the column broke into a run.
"After them! The enemy commander is fleeing!"
"Don't leave a single one alive!"
Word that the commander had run dropped morale that was already scraping bottom straight through the floor. Lost in confusion, the Drail army teetered on the edge of being swallowed whole by Zahed's encirclement.
"What do we do!"
"We have to run too!"
"Which way!"
"Stay back! Don't come near me!!"
Soldiers and slave-troops, tangled in panic, died on the enemy's blades.
Up on the watchtower.
The enemy flooding the field was pouring toward the tower as well. One look at them said there wasn't much time left.
Time to go.
I set the automatic rifle aside and spoke to Maximus.
"Maximus. We're getting out."
"Yes, Master."
Coming down off the tower, I found Number One waiting in the Humvee with the engine already running. The moment we climbed in, the vehicle lurched off hard. Wheels tore dirt and sand aside as it ran.
"That way! Drive!"
"What?! Toward where the infantry are packed?"
"Yeah. Quit talking and drive."
I planted a boot on the passenger seat and stood, threw the roof hatch open, and shoved my upper body out. Infantry were massed ahead, pressing in.
"That side's got fewer of our own, so I can bulldoze them without worrying. Maximus. The magic wand!"
"Yes, Master."
From the back seat, Maximus passed a long weapon up.
"Hold me steady!"
Maximus locked his hands around my waist and braced me. Still on my feet, I shouldered what he had handed me. A magic wand is a magic wand—Allah's magic wand. I pulled the trigger on the RPG.
The rocket drew a level tail of smoke across the sky and dropped into the middle of the packed infantry. The blast hurled sand and men in every direction. Number One floored the accelerator at just the right moment.
"Mercy!"
"Hold them!"
"Reform the line!"
"They're running!"
While the Zahed troops reeled, the Humvee shot through the hole.
"N-no!"
"Get clear!"
"No!"
Screams and the sick crack of flesh and bone rang out together. Men who couldn't dodge in time were rammed by the Humvee; those already down on the ground were driven over where they lay.
At the rear of the Drail army, through a gap that had been about to close, the steel carriage burst out, slamming straight through horse and man alike. Two and a half tons of Humvee kicked sand and gravel off the ground and ran down the soldiers trying to bar its path. Those who failed to leap clear struck the steel bumper and were flung aside, then crushed under the tires where they fell.
The Humvee's charge—striking men, grinding over them—tore a great hole in one side of the encirclement. Soldiers and slave-troops broke into a run along that path.
"A mage opened the way!"
"That way! Run that way!!"
"Follow the mage!"
"Yeah!!"
Through the ruptured ring, soldiers and slaves poured out at a dead run.
Clear of the battlefield, the Third Prince's party drove their horses for all they were worth. Once they left the Albredo Plains, they reached a valley walled in by rock. The running horses gasped, foam flecking their mouths. Viscount Malic checked their condition and spoke.
"This won't do. The horses are spent. We'll have to slow down."
The knight captain answered.
"We're still inside the enemy's pursuit range. The horses should have something left in them. Better to rest once we're out of the valley..."
"What nonsense is that? If they collapse from exhaustion, are you proposing we walk all the way to Drail? His Highness the Third Prince is with us!"
With the Third Prince invoked, the knight captain had no room left to argue. In the end the party eased the horses down to a trot.
The Humvee ran across the grassland. A rock valley—the stony ground we had crossed on the way to the Albredo Plains—came into view. Pass that, and Drail wasn't far. My hands tightened on the wheel.
Ahead, along the road cut between the rocks, a band of cavalry was riding hard. The kit looked familiar.
Those bastards.
The mercenary company that had turned traitor and hit the right-wing horse from behind. Were they running too? Betray your own side, and by now you ought to be collecting congratulations, shouldn't you?
Puzzled, I watched them disappear into the only road that passed through the valley. It was the only path I knew. I hesitated a moment, then pressed the accelerator.
If something goes wrong, I can always grab Maximus and run. Whatever.
I drove the Humvee toward the road into the valley.
The fleeing prince's party, speed dropped, was passing through a narrow corridor. The Third Prince spoke, worry in his voice.
"Will our soldiers be all right?"
At that tone of concern for the men, Viscount Malic sneered inwardly.
Fool. Green as this, how does he mean to play politics? Then again, that's precisely why he's being removed.
"Do not worry. The soldiers will have fled well enough on their own."
"I hope so."
"Your Highness has no need to worry at all."
"How could I not? Even if you took command in my stead, I was supreme commander of this battle. It would have been better if one of my brothers had come instead of me."
Viscount Malic was faintly thrown.
The Third Prince has no interest in power at all. Why does His Highness want him dead? He doesn't seem the least bit of a threat.
Then the knight captain's eyes went cold.
"All hands—prepare for battle!"
With his shout, arrows fell from the heights of the valley. The shafts punched through a knight's thick plate and buried themselves in his chest. The knight captain's mind snapped sharp at the sight. An ordinary arrow had no business piercing armor.
"Iron arrows! Dodge them or knock them aside! Don't trust your armor!"
Arrows of iron. Not common shafts—iron arrows, so heavy their range was brutally short. Fired from above, down into the valley, that hardly mattered. If anything, iron arrows backed by gravity hit with seven times the force of a normal arrow.
Veteran knights raised their swords overhead and battered the incoming shafts aside. The ordinary light cavalry had no such skill. Men and horses screamed, shrieked, and went down. And then—
"Charge!!!"
"Kill them!"
"Take the Third Prince's head, and the bounty is a hundred gold coins!"
Mercenaries came pounding in along the roads at both ends of the valley. The knight captain read the situation at once.
"How did they—!"
The enemy had been lying in wait above, as if they had known the party would come this way. Had they not slowed the horses—had they kept running—they might have punched through even with an ambush waiting. Instead they had eased their pace inside the valley and taken the iron arrows full on. And now they were being hit from front and rear at once.
"It can't be—!"
But that was a matter for after they broke the position in front of them.
"All hands, battle formation—we punch through the—"
The shout died as the knight captain's eyes caught the sword Viscount Malic had drawn from his belt. The point rested against the Third Prince's throat.
The royal palace of the Drail Kingdom. The Chancellor's carriage was just leaving the grounds. Inside, nobles of the First Prince's faction rode with the Chancellor, talking easily.
"The matter will be handled properly, I trust?"
"Viscount Malic is as thorough in his work as he is in his greed. There won't be a problem. We've attached a mercenary company, and just in case, assassins from the assassins' guild as well. How could it go wrong?"
"Then that's a relief."
"Still, honestly, I wonder if we needed to go this far to deal with the Third Prince."
"What are you saying? At this stage?"
"The Third Prince has always been quiet, and he's never cared much for politics, has he? Leave him be, and later we could simply hand him some small domain on the frontier and send him off."
"You don't know, do you."
"Pardon?"
"Well. You haven't been in the royal capital long. That would explain it. Come to think of it, you and Viscount Malic came up around the same time, didn't you."
"Ah—yes. That's right, my lord Count."
In truth, the reason he had raised the point at all was that he disliked Viscount Malic earning merit ahead of him over this affair.
"If you don't know, it can look that way."
"Pardon? You mean the Third Prince has some other scheme?"
"Even if the Third Prince himself doesn't, the people around him might."
"The people around him...?"
"Anyone might think it, wouldn't they? If a prince were the very image of His Late Majesty Jakal Drail, the founding king."
"The late founding king? You mean he resembles the Lion King? I never thought..."
"I'm not speaking of character. If it were only that, there would be no problem. But if the talent he was born with resembles the Lion King's—that's another matter entirely."
The noble's mouth fell open.
"Talent? The Lion King's talent..."
Seeing the sword leveled at his throat, the Third Prince let out a long sigh.
"So the viscount's betrayal was real after all?"
"Betrayal? Perish the thought, Your Highness. I am merely doing what must be done for the Kingdom of Drail."
"For the kingdom."
"Yes, Your Highness. For the kingdom's future, I would be grateful if you vanished here."
"Vanished. You mean I need only leave?"
"Heh. Can you really not take my meaning? As if that were possible."
"Then you mean I should die."
"It is for the kingdom."
"May I ask who ordered this?"
"That, I cannot say. Now then—please disappear quietly."
"I suppose there's no helping it."
"Quite so. I, too, have no choice in the—"
Viscount Malic's words cut off midway.
And then a flash of light. The arm that had held a blade to the prince's throat flew into the air, the severed limb still gripping the sword. In the Third Prince's hand, likewise, a sword had appeared. But not one person present had clearly seen the prince draw it.
A scream burst late from the viscount's mouth.
"Aaagh!!!"