It was Mirtai, however, who stunned them all with a shocking display of sheer ferocity. Her sword was lighter than the broadswords of the Church Knights, and she wielded it with almost the delicacy of Stragen’s rapier. She seldom thrust at an opponent’s body, but concentrated instead on his face and throat, and when necessary, his legs. Her thrusts were short and tightly controlled, and her slashes were aimed not at muscles, but rather at tendons. She crippled more than she killed, and the shrieks and groans of her victims raised a fearful din on that bloody field.

The standard tactic of armoured knights when deployed against foot-troops was to charge with their lances first and then to use the weight of their horses to crush their unmounted opponents together so tightly that they became tangled with their comrades. Once they had been rendered more or less helpless, slaughtering them was easy work.

‘Ulath!’ Sparhawk shouted. ‘Tell them to throw down their weapons!’

‘I’ll try,’ Ulath shouted back. Then he roared something incomprehensible at the milling foot-troops.

A mounted man wearing a grotesquely decorated helmet bellowed something in reply.

‘That one with the wings on his helmet is the leader, Sparhawk,’ Ulath said, pointing with his bloody axe.

‘What did he say?’ Kalten demanded.

‘He made some uncomplimentary remarks about my mother. Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen. I really ought to do something about that.’ He wheeled his horse and approached the man with the winged helmet, who was also armed with a war axe.

Sparhawk had never seen an axe-fight before, and he was somewhat surprised to note that there was far more finesse involved than he had imagined. Sheer strength accounted for much, of course, but sudden changes of the direction of swings implied a level of sophistication Sparhawk had not expected. Both men wore heavy round shields, and the defences they raised with them were more braced than might have been the case had they been attacking each other with swords.

Ulath stood up in his stirrups and raised his axe high over his head. The warrior in the winged helmet raised his shield to protect his head, but the huge Thalesian swung his arm back, rolled his shoulder and delivered an underhand blow instead, catching his opponent just under the ribs. The man who seemed to be the leader of the attackers doubled over sharply, clutching at his stomach, and then he fell from his saddle.

A vast groan rolled through the ranks of the attackers still on their feet, and then, like a mist caught by a sudden breeze, they wavered and vanished.

‘Where did they go?’ Berit shouted, looking around with alarm.

But no one could answer. Where there had been two score foot-troops before, there was now nothing, and a sudden silence fell over the field as the shrieking wounded also vanished. Only the dead remained, and even they were strangely altered. The bodies were peculiarly desiccated – dry, shrunken and withered. The blood which had covered their limbs was no longer bright red, but black, dry and crusty.

‘What kind of spell could do that Sparhawk?’ Tynian demanded.

‘I have no idea,’ Sparhawk replied in some bafflement. ‘Someone’s playing, and I don’t think I like the game.’

‘Bronze!’ Bevier exclaimed from nearby. The young Cyrinic Knight had dismounted and was examining the armour of one of the shrivelled dead. ‘They’re wearing bronze armour, Sparhawk. Their weapons and helmets are steel, but this mail shirt’s made out of bronze.’

‘What’s going on here?’ Kalten demanded.

‘Berit,’ Sparhawk said, ‘ride back to the mother house at Demos. Gather up every brother who can still wear armour. I want them here before noon.’

‘Right,’ Berit replied crisply. He wheeled his horse and galloped back the way they had come.

Sparhawk looked around quickly. ‘Up there,’ he said, pointing at a steep hill on the other side of the road. ‘Let’s gather up this crowd and get them to the top of that hill. Put the courtiers and grooms and footmen to work. I want ditches up there, and I want to see a forest of sharpened stakes sprouting on the sides of that hill. I don’t know where those men in bronze armour went, but I want to be ready in case they come back.’

‘You can’t order me around like that!’ an overdressed courtier exclaimed to Khalad in an outraged tone of voice. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

‘Of course I do,’ Sparhawk’s young squire replied in an ominous tone of voice. ‘You’re the man who’s going to pick up that shovel and start digging. Or if you prefer, you can be the man who’s crawling around on his hands and knees picking up his teeth.’ Khalad showed the courtier his fist. The courtier could hardly miss seeing it, since it was about an inch in front of his nose.

‘It’s almost like old times, isn’t it?’ Kalten laughed. ‘Khalad sounds exactly like Kurik.’

Sparhawk sighed. ‘Yes,’ he agreed soberly, ‘I think he’s going to work out just fine. Get the others, Kalten. We need to talk.’

They gathered beside Ehlana’s carriage. The queen was a bit pale, and she was holding her daughter in her arms.

‘All right,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Who were they?’

‘Lamorks, evidently,’ Ulath said. ‘I doubt that anybody else would be able to speak Old Lamork.’

‘But why would they be speaking in that language?’ Tynian asked. ‘Nobody’s spoken in Old Lamork for a thousand years.’

‘And nobody’s worn bronze armour for even longer,’ Bevier added.

‘Somebody’s using a spell I’ve never even heard of before,’ Sparhawk said. ‘What are we dealing with here?’

‘Isn’t that obvious?’ Stragen said. ‘Somebody’s reaching back into the past – the same way the Troll-Gods did in Pelosia. We’ve got a powerful magician of some kind out there who’s playing games.’

‘It fits,’ Ulath grunted. ‘They were speaking an antique language; they had antique weapons and equipment; they weren’t familiar with modern tactics; and somebody obviously used magic to send them back to wherever they came from – except for the dead ones.’

‘There’s something else too,’ Bevier added thoughtfully. ‘They were Lamorks, and part of the upheaval in Lamorkand right now revolves around the stories that Drychtnath’s returned. This attack makes it appear that those stories aren’t just rumours and wild concoctions dreamed up late at night in some ale-house. Could Count Gerrich be getting some help from a Styric magician? If Drychtnath himself has actually been brought into the present, nothing’s going to pacify the Lamorks. They go up in flames at just the mention of his name.’