Jogo’s arrival changed everything in an instant.
The enemy line began to waver and crack.
Rahallo stood soaked in blood, his blade already dulled and notched.
He dragged in a breath, gathered what strength he had left, and lifted Ascala high.
At that moment Jogo and his kos swept past him like a brown tidal wave, crashing into the enemy and swallowing them whole.
The rush of air from their charge nearly knocked Rahallo off his feet.
He staggered, caught himself on Ascala like a crutch, and watched fresh blood run down the steel into the dirt.
Jogo rode at the front, his Atak blade a blur of death.
Every swing painted the air red.
His warriors followed with savage shouts, driving into the broken enemy and turning the fight into a one-sided slaughter.
The enemy were already exhausted and low on spirit.
Hit by fresh troops they reeled backward, bones snapping under the impact, bodies crushed beneath iron hooves until they were nothing but red pulp.
Jogo saw the battle was won.
He wheeled his horse, rode to Rahallo, dismounted, dropped to one knee, and offered up his own Atak blade with both hands.
“My blood is your blood.
Take a fresh blade.” The battlefield stank of blood and opened guts.
Fogo’s horse-head banner had already fallen and been trampled into rags.
Survivors ran in every direction, some dropping to beg for mercy, others still fighting out of stubborn pride.
None of it mattered.
The defeat was total and final.
The clash of steel slowly faded until only the heavy breathing of horses and the low moans of the wounded remained.
Rahallo sat his horse and looked down over the field of slaughter.
His gaze settled on the prisoners kneeling in the bloody grass.
“Khal Fogo is dead,” he said, voice carrying clearly across the silence.
“You have two choices.
Die here, or submit to me.” The prisoners glanced at one another.
This was Drolo’s son — the true son of iron and blood.
They had watched him fight.
They had seen the strength of his khalasar.
He was a man worth following.
A big warrior with bells woven into his hair and wounds across his chest and face pushed himself to his feet.
He bowed low despite the pain.
“We submit to you, Khal Rahallo.” Once the first man spoke, the rest followed like dry grass catching fire.
One by one they lowered their heads until their foreheads touched the ground, palms turned upward in offering.
“Good,” Rahallo said.
There was approval in his voice.
“From this day on you are no longer losers.
You are no longer the broken remnants of Fogo’s khalasar.
You are my warriors.
Serve me with loyalty and I will give you honor and plenty.
Betray me and I will nail you to the grass sea myself so the vultures can pick your bones clean.” The prisoners answered with a hoarse, unified shout.
Rahallo turned to his bloodriders.
“Jogo,” he ordered, “pick the three thousand strongest from these prisoners and add them to my personal kos.
Distribute the rest among the other kos.
Treat the wounded.
I won’t lose a single man who can still lift a blade.” Fogo had earned his reputation as the second strongest khal on the grass sea.
His warriors had survived a night attack with green fire, organized a counterattack under pressure, and nearly trapped Rahallo in a grinding fight.
They were real fighters.
After the reorganization, three thousand carefully chosen prisoners plus Rahallo’s own remaining elite gave him a fresh, powerful force.
… At the same time, the fighting along the Sayhru River was reaching its climax.
Lazal’s and Moro’s forces had kept Fogo and the traitor Jhaqo’s thirty thousand pinned down with constant harassment and hit-and-run attacks.
Jhaqo had been nervous ever since his betrayal.
That was why he had joined with Fogo in the first place — to kill Rahallo before Rahallo could kill him.
Now that he knew Fogo was dead, he was desperate to escape.
But Lazal’s riders refused to let go.
The enemy army was exhausted, frightened, and losing heart by the hour.
Moro’s guerrilla tactics wore them down even further.
As Rahallo had instructed: when the enemy advanced, retreat; when they retreated, advance; when they camped, harass; when they tired, strike.
Under that pressure Jhaqo and Ogo were completely pinned in the lower reaches of the Sayhru River.
Then Rahallo and Jogo arrived from upstream with their combined forces, riding hard through the night.
The four groups linked up.
Lazal’s and Moro’s riders pressed in from both sides while Rahallo and Jogo blocked the exits.
The enemy was trapped inside a long, narrow valley with sheer cliffs on both sides — a perfect pocket with only one way out.
The trapped army had no supplies left.
They had already started slaughtering their own horses for food.
Morale had collapsed.
Rahallo stood on the cliff above the valley and looked down at the packed mass of men below.
This was the chance to destroy them completely.
Jogo’s horse-archers took the high ground on both sides of the valley.
Rahallo positioned his remaining cavalry at the mouth.
Below, the enemy milled in panic, knowing they were finished.
Rahallo raised his blade high, then swept it downward in a single, decisive motion.
“Jhaqo and every man who followed him — none are to be left alive.” At his signal Jogo’s archers loosed the first volley.
Arrows fell like black rain, blotting out the sky.
Screams, the wet thud of shafts punching into flesh, and the smell of fresh blood filled the valley.
Thirty volleys emptied every quiver.
Only then did Rahallo lead the cavalry charge down into the killing ground.
At the same moment Moro’s riders attacked from the far end.
Caught between two waves of iron and steel, the enemy broke completely.
Men trampled one another in their panic.
Resistance ended in minutes.
In the middle of the chaos Rahallo spotted Jhaqo trying to flee.
He spurred after him with a roar.
Jhaqo saw death coming and rode like a man possessed, but there was nowhere left to run.
Rahallo caught him, rose in the stirrups, and brought Ascala down in one clean stroke.
Jhaqo’s head flew into the air trailing a bright ribbon of blood.
Fogo’s body had already been turned into a pincushion by the arrow storm and then crushed to red pulp beneath the hooves of charging horses.
When Jhaqo fell, the last of the enemy’s will broke.
Weapons clattered to the ground.
The survivors dropped to their knees and surrendered.