Free Dark Crusade by Karl Edward Wagner Page A

intense flame. Orted's movements seemed spasmodic, unreal in the stroboscopic luminance. His thick neck straining, mouth a ghastly rictus--Orted Ak-Ceddi screamed his wrath and his defiance against the howling storm, screamed into the lightning-blasted night, where no living soul dared venture.
    "There shall be no defeat!" he roared against the storm. "I shall conquer! I must conquer!"
    A titanic bolt of lightning shattered the night, blinding him in its elemental flame--even as its tumultuous thunderclap deafened his hearing.
    For a moment Orted Ak-Ceddi saw utter blackness, heard naught but the throbbing of his heart. Then from behind him in his chamber:
    "To conquer you must have heavy cavalry."
    Orted whirled at the low voice. The door of his private chambers stood open. Limned at the threshold by the flickering lightning--a silhouetted figure, massive, all but filling the doorway. A pair of eyes blazed a hellish blue beneath the storm-tossed mane of red hair.
    "I am Kane. You need me."
IX: The Forging
    The shrill laughter of the children chittered through the roiling dust of the parade ground. Drawn by the expanse of open ground beyond Ingoldi's walls, they gathered in shouting packs to watch the bright glitter of the cavalry drill, and to play their endless games of kick-ball. Within the Prophet's capital, the faces of their elders might be haunted and strained, but here beneath the city wall, heedless of the danger from hooves and steel, the children romped about with all the unaffected gusto of their youthful innocence.
    Kane had demanded a parade ground on which to train the Prophet's cavalry. Kane demanded; Orted Ak-Ceddi commanded. A hundred thousand pairs of hands obeyed. A square mile of tropical hardwood forest was torn out of the earth. Roots were painstakingly grubbed forth, rocks and boulders hauled away, the denuded plain meticulously levelled and filled in, the sod packed to stony firmness. Where there had been jungle, there was now a square mile of packed earth, flat and barren as a table top.
    Kane was impressed. He remembered the deadly piranha that infested the rivers of the southwestern portion of the Great Northern Continent, and the voracious march of the army ants that swarmed through the jungles there.
    The parade ground stood ready and waiting when the first regiments of cavalry began to sift through the forest barrier to converge on Ingoldi.
    "The Dark Crusade is a colossus--a giant," Kane told Orted. "But it is a helpless giant for all its hugeness and its strength--for it is a giant without weapons or armor. I can forge the weapons and armor your giant must have if it is to conquer.
    "Give to me the gold and the power that I require," said Kane. "And I shall forge the Sword of Sataki."
    "Who are you?" the Prophet whispered, and in his secret thoughts he wondered: What are you?
    Gold and power. Orted Ak-Ceddi had both in abundance. To win yet more, he gave Kane whatever the stranger demanded.
    Kane cast the gold to the four winds, and from lands beyond Shapeli men answered his call.
    "From what I've seen of your army," Kane said, "I'll have to rely heavily on mercenary troops for cavalry. There's only so much one can do in terms of time and training. I rather hope some of them might make effective pikemen."
    "They are the Children of Sataki!" stormed Orted dangerously.
    "They are rabble," Kane replied. "I cannot forge a sword from mud and dung."
    "Your mercenaries will not be true believers!" the Prophet thundered.
    "They will be soldiers; that is sufficient," Kane told him. "As to their religion, they'll believe whatever you pay them to believe. A sword has no soul."
    It was a critical point. Kane misread its implication.
    Gold. Orted Ak-Ceddi had the plunder of all Shapeli to fill his coffers. He had made a fool's gamble and lost an army. Kane took his gold and bought him a second army--brighter and deadlier than the first, for Kane spent the gold wisely.
    It was a game Kane knew well.
    To the