by Dave Duncan
“Then you need to eat and rest. But you have to choose first. Either you give me your word that you will obey my orders from now on and not try any more mad escapades without my permission, or I’m going to put you on a refugee boat right now and send you back to the sea.”
He shrugged. “I’ll obey. I was stupid to run off like that and I’m sorry.”
Wonder of the ages, a Podakan apology!
“Thank you. You are forgiven and I’m very proud of you, stupid or not. It’s against the law for a child to bear arms, but I made a mockery of that law when I let you row. So I’m going to give you a sword and a job.” Swords were useless against the Gren, but there could not possibly be enough hammers to go around. “As soon as you’re rested, pick out three nimble youngsters and a veteran who knows some sword fighting to train you all. I’ll be leading this army from the front, and I’ll need a personal bodyguard. You’ll be in charge. Now go and do it!”
That was better. He actually smiled!
And hugged her! Then he limped out the door and was gone.
“Am I crazy?” she asked Dilivost. “A dottily doting dam?”
He thought for a moment, rubbing the place where his chin should be, then said tactfully, “No one can call you crazy for putting your next of kin in charge of your bodyguard, 700. Don’t suppose they’ll do much good if the lizard men come for you, though.”
“No,” she said. “But then nothing will.” And until then she could keep her eye on Podakan.
The wide, gentle valley of the Visoke carried on eastward past Didicas, but the Achelone trail turned north, over gentle hills. On the upward slopes it wound through olive groves, but farther up, the trees gave way to pasture. This was where Irona wanted to fight, and nobody spoke up against her plan. They could hide their thousands in the trees flanking the road, and also along the uphill edge, in case some lizards tried to outflank the ambush.
Sergeant Jailolo Jingbo, once he had recovered from the worst of his trauma, turned out to be an unpleasantly cocksure chatterbox, not nearly as convincing as he had been when he first arrived, two-thirds dead. He clearly regarded himself as the Empire’s expert on the Gren, which he might be, but Irona did not enjoy being pelted with banalities. The choice of time would be vital, he said. The Gren could see in the dark much better than people, he insisted, and the moon was in the last quarter now, available only after midnight. Their lizards did not like daylight, so at dawn they holed up in dark places: forests or buildings. So he said, but Irona, remembering Hayklopevi in an all-enveloping gray cloak, suspected it might be the Gren themselves who shunned daylight, like the Shapeless of the Dread Lands.
She had no choice of time or date. The army would fight when the enemy arrived. That was likely to be about dawn, when the Gren were finishing a night’s trek. Admittedly at dawn the quarter moon would be high and the lizards likely tired. Although that was a very bad time to ask men to fight, after a night on the bare ground with no fires or hot food, Irona had no choice.
Or so she thought. But a solution came from Sazen Hostin, with his batwing ears and devious Geographical mind. It happened when Irona was eating a drab dinner of beans and squash in her headquarters with her personal staff and, in one case, family. Podakan was in an especially grumpy mood. Apparently there was a lot more to sword fighting than he had expected.
“Citizen …” Sazen began.
“I am not a citizen.”
“Boy, then. What lies north of the proposed battlefield, boy?”
“Grass and goat shit.”
“And beyond that? Advise us. You have been there, and the rest of us have not.”
Slightly mollified, Podakan said, “Land slopes down to a stream. There’s a village.”
“Ah! How many buildings, and what are they made of?”
Podakan screwed up his face in a scowl. He lacked Veer’s visual memory. “Ten or so. Lath and plaster. Roofs made of thatched reeds.”
Sazen flashed his heron’s nest teeth in a smile.
Irona thought she could see what he was thinking. “So the Gren will camp there the day before they come here?” They could be attacked there, maybe?
“The Gren might like to camp there. Tell us more, boy. What other choices will they have?”
The “boy”—who stood head, shoulders, and some chest taller than Sazen—caught on also. His eyes gleamed. “None. A few trees along the river, but not enough to give much shade. So we burn it before they get there?”
Irona had not seen that, but Sazen had even more ideas.
“We burn it just before they get there. The smoke tells us they’re coming and the ashes will still be too hot to sleep on.”
“Can’t see the smoke from here,” Podakan objected.
“But you can from the outpost at the top of the hill, and we have built a signal beacon there, which will be visible from down here, in Didicas. We may need a third fire somewhere. … We should know when the Gren are approaching the village—around dawn I hope—only to find it burning. They either sleep outdoors in bright sunlight, or they keep coming, looking for somewhere better.”
Would the Gren be alerted by that so-inconvenient fire? Would they notice the signal fire and guess what it was? Or would they just be tired and hungry? There were very few refugees coming down the trail now. Irona decided that she had nothing to lose by putting Sazen’s suggestion to her council.
Pray the goddess not to send fog or heavy rain.
Podakan’s estimate of eight or nine days turned out to be optimistic. Possibly the Gren ran out of food and increased their speed. But the signal fires were set in time, and they flared up very early one morning. If Irona waited too long to set up her ambush, the Gren might be into Didicas before she knew it. If she put her men in place too soon … It didn’t take long for a stationary army to start stinking, and she credited the enemy with enough sense to wonder why olive trees smelled like that.
She ordered the army to battle stations.
Benign provided every marine with a bronze helmet, a sword, and a throwing spear. After that they were on their own. Some owned armor, others had only wooden shields, and a few lacked even those.
Every contingent had been assigned a place and had already marked it. Irona had put her most reliable troops, her own Benesh, at the south end of the sack, because that was where the trap must close once the Gren were inside it, and they would try to break through in that direction. Allied contingents lined the road back to the mouth of the trap, and along the northern limits of the orchards. After that there was nothing to do but sit down and wait through the longest hours of their lives.
There were farmhouses among the groves, and Irona had chosen a cabin at the south end for her headquarters. It was small and dark, smelling of mildew, with wicker walls and a floor of packed dirt. The door swung loosely on a pivot, and a wicker shutter could be tied over the window. The furniture comprised a slightly raised earth platform covered with rushes for sleeping, a rickety table, and two stools; the one she chose was extremely uncomfortable, threatening to give her splinters. It almost made her homesick for Brackish, and the days when the juvenile Irona would have accepted all this as normal.
She waited there with her bodyguard, meaning Podakan and three citizens from the Benesh contingent, whom he might have chosen because they all looked younger than he did. Biam and Silay wore armor, Dofen had only a shield, while Podakan had neither. Every unit wore some identifying badge, so Podakan had equipped Irona’s bodyguard with purple neckbands. They were all pretending to be in a furious sulk at being kept out of the battle, of course. No doubt each of them was hugely relieved and absolutely determined not to show it. She couldn’t resist telling them about her meetings with the Beru, Hayklopevi.
Mentioning the Grenish poison claws, of course.
And their habit of eating people alive.
Silay, Dofen, and Biam just g
ot madder. Then she took pity on them.
“Listen, heroes. We have twelve thousand troops against five hundred lizards and maybe a thousand Gren. Even if everything goes as planned—and I admit that in warfare it never does—then very few of your buddies are going to have the satisfaction of sticking a lance or a sword into anyone or anything. And I chose this hovel because I expect the heaviest fighting to happen right about here.”
They pretended to be happy at that news and Silay said, “Why?”
“Because, if the plan does work, the enemy will come charging down the road until their rearguard is into the trees. Then the Purace marines up there will sound the charge and close the trap. Spears start flying. The Gren guess what’s happening and try to ram their way through. But the Benesh marines are lined up across their path, right here. Crunch!”
“Hot turds!” Dofen said.
After that they had nothing to do but wait.
Evidently Podakan’s solitary scouting mission had proved his manhood to his own satisfaction, because he strutted over to the bed, unbuckled his sword, and threw it down. Then he took a second look at the bed and decided that the better part of valor was not to put himself in that zoo. Instead he settled on the floor in an empty corner behind the door, leaned his head back against the wall, and pretended to go to sleep. Perhaps he did sleep, because he looked much too uncomfortable to be faking.
Irona kept thinking of all the things that could go wrong. The lizard men might guess that they were being set up for an ambush. Would they not wonder who had fired the shepherds’ village? Did they really believe that the Empire would never retaliate? They could turn aside and go somewhere else. Or they could detour a thousand paces east or west, for there were many lesser trails through the orchards; then they could wheel around and attack the army from the rear. Or they might wait until nightfall, when her army was worn out with waiting and couldn’t see in the darkness—it was gloomy enough under the olive trees even at noon.
A bugle call in the distance was to be the signal that the Grenish column was fully into the trap. When it came, faint on the wind, she needed a moment to realize what it was. Then the signal was relayed three times, each call closer.
Irona and Dofen collided at the tiny window, trying to see. Biam and Silay dashed to the door.
Irona yelled, “No!” and they stopped. “You stay here or I’ll have your balls for earrings.”
Surly faces glowered back at her. Podakan muttered angrily in his sleep and twisted into another position.
“You may open the door if you stay right outside,” Irona conceded, because the doorway itself did not give a clear view of the road. The boys opened the door. She turned back to the window.
Her view was chopped into strips by olive trees, but she could see men sprinting in from both sides. It seemed there must have been a whole century hiding right behind the cottage. More were hurrying past, going uphill. There was some shouting, some screaming, most of it far off, although the dense foliage would muffle sound. If this was a defining moment in the history of the Empire, it was a very quiet one.
The storm broke as a lizard came roaring down the road, a monstrous thing, far larger than Irona had expected, with a nightmare, bloodstained muzzle. Its gait made the ground tremble, its hide was the same gray shade as the Grenish robes, its legs spread out sideways, and a double frill ran along its back to the tip of its tail. At least two Gren were riding it, prostrate between the two frills, so that little could be seen of them except their six-clawed hands hanging on.
Biam yelled, “Flaming shit!” No one disagreed.
A hail of spears bounced off the monster’s sides and head, having no effect except to cause it to roar even louder. Men scattered out of its path, those who did not move fast enough being trampled or hurled aside. It looked as if this lizard at least was going to smash its way through the Benesh blockade.
The lancers! Where were the lancers?
Four lancers came trotting up the road, right in the monster’s path, each pair clutching a lance. They had barely started their run at it before the lizard impaled itself on the barbed bronze blades. One struck its leathery gizzard and the other ran into its gaping mouth. It bellowed and tossed its great head, snapping the lances like twigs and flipping the lancers through the air. The monster stumbled. Two more lance teams charged into it from the side, buying their blades in its thorax. Blood spurted. The lizard toppled over, tipping its riders off on the far side from Irona, but cheers from that direction suggested that the Gren over there were being well hammered.
Dofen screamed in triumph right in her ear, but she was doing the same in his. Thank the goddess for the two marines who had died in Achelone using an oar against a lizard! And more thanks for Jailolo Jingbo, who had seen and reported their valiant deaths.
Even now, the monster in the orchard was not dead, still thrashing weakly as a score of men jabbed and slashed at it, and presumably also at its former passengers. They were all yelling like madmen. Its corpse blocked the road and would slow down any others following. Judging by the noise and the way the marines were turning their attention, there was another lizard on its way.
Biam shrieked in agony.
Silay cried, “Holy Caprice, preserve me!”
“Not a hope,” lisped a new voice.
Silay hurtled backward into the cottage, propelled by Biam, who was continuing to scream and was himself being forced back by a gray-robed Gren, which had a taloned hand around his throat. The Gren crouched almost double to clear the door lintel, then kicked the door shut. It dropped Biam and reached Silay before he could draw his sword. A single slash of its taloned hand ripped the flesh from his face. He screamed and collapsed in a heap: whimpering, thrashing, and bleeding.
Dofen roared out an oath and struggled to draw, but he was not fast enough. The Gren raked his chest with its talons. He toppled on the others, so then there were three young men writhing on the floor in their death throes. Biam had gone into convulsions already. Dofen began turning purple. Silay was spurting blood in jets between his fingers. Appallingly, all three still seemed to be conscious.
Irona was hard against the wall, clutching Vly’s jade-handled dagger, which she always wore on campaign.
The Gren was too huge for the tiny cottage, bent over under the beams. It threw back its hood to reveal a grotesquely narrow head and elongated features. It had no external ears and no hair, only a sort of fleshy crest like a gray cockscomb.
“Seven 700, you have risen since we saw each other last.”
It was the Beru itself, Hayklopevi.
Irona was edging away along the wall, knowing that there was nowhere to go. The three dying boys had sunk from screaming to whimpering, although they were still thrashing in terrible spasms. Judging by the noise outside, the battle was raging hotter than ever, so no one was going to walk in here and rescue her.
Podakan was awake in the background. She dared not look at him in case she alerted the Gren to his presence. Very slowly, Podakan had risen to his feet. His sword lay on the bed, beyond the intruder, out of reach. Would he have the sense to dive out the door and run? Irona was beyond help. Run, my baby, run! Save yourself!
“How did you find me?” she asked, amazed that her voice worked as usual. The Gren warlord had certainly not been riding on the lead lizard.
That was a smile? “Easy. I tasted you as soon as we crested the slope.” Hayklopevi’s black tongue flickered out briefly, like a serpent’s, although it was not forked. “A faculty you cannot understand.”
“The last time we met you didn’t speak Benesh.” She edged farther away.
It followed, eyes glittering with joy or hatred. “I consumed a man who did.” It opened its mouth, the narrow jaws spreading as wide as a lion’s. It had at least two banks of teeth in each jaw, and she looked away quickly.
She could no longer see what Podakan was doing,
because Hayklopevi was in the way. Pod hadn’t fled, either because he had dreams of killing the Beru and rescuing his mother or because Silay’s body was preventing the door being opened. Nor could he get at the monster, for the floor was covered with thrashing bodies.
“You can’t hope to escape from here, you know,” she told the Beru. It had thrust her back until her heels were against the edge of the sleeping platform.
“An insignificant detail.” Threads of slobber hung from its lips. “What happens to this vessel is of no importance, to me or anyone.” Fast as a snake, its hand shot out and hooked its talons in her jade collar. She felt the claws cold against her throat, but the points had not pierced her skin.
Irona rammed the dagger into the monster’s chest. The blade broke off near the tip.
“That tickles,” Hayklopevi growled. “You cannot injure me, woman. But you are dangerous in other ways. You have acquired some immunity. Do you know what we do to prisoners, Seven 700?”
“You eat them.”
“Certainly. And the first thing we do is make certain they cannot run away. We need to keep the meat fresh, you see?”
It pushed, so she tilted backward, flailing her arms for balance, but supported by its grip. It tightened its hold, pushing its fingers into the collar to throttle her and make her panic.
“Thus!” It stomped down hard on her left knee.
She heard the bones break, the tendons snap. As the Gren let go, she crashed down on the platform screaming in an inferno of mind-destroying agony that drowned out everything else in the world. Even childbirth did not compare with that instant, unexpected torment.
In a few moments, terror overcame the pain enough for her to look up at the gloating monster looming above her. There was only one thought in her mind: that nothing must move or touch her leg, absolutely nothing. If she lay completely still, she could survive, but rather death than the least motion of her shattered knee.
