Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2)

by David Sherman

  “That’s far less risk to us,” Stonearm agreed. “It will work. They will suffer so many casualties before they close with us, they’ll have to retreat.”

  Haft turned to him. “Have you ever seen the Jokapcul fight?” he asked coldly. “I have. They don’t fight like any other men I’ve ever seen. When they charge they don’t seem to care if they live or die. They will close with us. They won’t retreat.”

  Fletcher cleared his throat. “What you say is true, Haft. But by the time they close there will be few enough remaining that we will be able to defeat them. Remember, I’ve fought the Jokapcul almost as often as you have, I know as well as you how they fight.”

  Haft cocked an eyebrow at him, Fletcher hadn’t been there when he and Spinner fought a squad of Jokapcul light cavalry—and Spinner already wounded before that fight started! “What about their demon spitters?” Haft demanded, not yet ready to surrender the point. “They can fire from beyond bow range.”

  “That’s why we will be in trenches and pits until the Jokapcul close with us,” Spinner said. “The demon spitters won’t be able to hurt us in the trenches. Anyway, Xundoe can use his magic to counter them.”

  Haft turned to Takacs, who had been trying to look invisible so he wouldn’t be sent away while the leaders argued about what they would do, and asked. “What kind of demon spitters do these Jokapcul have?”

  “They just have the tubes.” He held his hands apart to show the length of the tubes, his arms were stretched almost to their full length. “I didn’t see any of the small ones like Mage Xundoe has.”

  Haft gave the others a superior look. “Those demon spitters have greater range than the small ones. Xundoe won’t be able to counter them. And they are much more powerful than his, they can break through breastworks.”

  “Enough!” Spinner shouted. “We don’t send out an ambush in force, we defend here. Let’s get ready and finish preparing our positions.”

  Haft studied Spinner for a long moment. “You’ll see,” he finally said. “You’ll see.”

  Silent took out the squad of Zobran Border Warders to track the Jokapcul closely and send in frequent reports. He stayed out with them.

  The reports came in over the course of the morning: The Jokapcul had stopped less than an hour’s march from their overnight bivouac and set up the small pavilion for their commander. When he was ready, they broke down the pavilion and resumed marching as briskly as ever. Their order of march was the same as earlier. They stopped again a half hour later. After two more stops, Silent returned and said they should appear at the edge of the southern forest in less than half an hour.

  All work ceased and the fighters took their positions, weapons were issued to as many able-bodied men as there were spare weapons. To guard the company’s campsite, a small mixed force of Eikby Guards and the Blood Swords was stationed at the western defenses under command of Corporal Maetog. More men were hidden in an orchard close behind the defenses. When they were needed they would come out and take weapons from the wounded and dead. Silent took a squad of horsemen to their position for “Plan B.”

  Finally, Spinner and Haft took positions standing on top of the archers’ berm where, crossbows in their hands, they were fully visible facing the south. With their cloaks blue side out, they were readily recognizable as Frangerian Marines. Fletcher and Captain Stonearm crouched below them.

  When the last scouts sprinted out of the forest, the tramp of marching feet and the clop of horses followed them. Then the Jokapcul point scouts appeared at its edge. They walked with a swagger that contrasted sharply with their dun-colored forager caps and uniforms and lack of armor. Two of the four carried swords dangling from their hands, the other two had theirs scabbarded and held bows. None of them bore the bucklers on their left forearms in a manner suggesting they were ready to fight. The quartet advanced a short distance into the open, then stopped and looked about with undisguised arrogance.

  “Banty little cocks of the walk, aren’t they,” Haft sneered. He stood hip cocked, left arm akimbo, crossbow dangling from his right hand.

  “As rapidly as they’ve conquered the southern part of this continent, I think they’ve earned the right,” Spinner replied.

  Haft curled his lip.

  The van of the Jokapcul column marched into the open, swordsmen clad in the same unarmored dun as the four pointmen, save for two who wore purple hats with modest plumes. Their swords were sheathed and bucklers rode easily on their left forearms. The swordsmen advanced to join the pointmen and arrayed into two lines facing the fence. Behind them, led by the commander, came the pikemen. The tall purple plume that jutted from the crest of his cone-shaped, gilt-banded helmet made the commander easy to spot. Archers followed the pikes and lined up behind them. Last came the light cavalry. All but two of the cavalry peeled off in two columns, one to the right and the other to the left, where they formed in double rows at the ends of the lines of swords. Unlike the swordsmen and the archers, the commander and his cavalry were armored; they wore dyed purple-leather armor covered with metal rectangles. Neck flaps studded with smaller metal rectangles hung from the backs of their plumeless helmets and wrapped around to cover their throats. Aprons hung fore and aft from their armored jerkins, and curved shields flared out over their shoulders. Glittery chain mail covered their arms and legs. Studded gauntlets and boots completed their armor. They carried their swords in scabbards on their backs. Each horseman carried a short lance, its butt in a cup on his right stirrup, right hand holding it upright. The commander advanced to a position in the center of the swordsmen. Two horsemen who didn’t go to the ends of the formation had small plumes on their helmets. They took positions immediately behind the commander. The sergeants of foot were distinguishable by the small plumes they wore on their purple forager caps. At least four of the swordsmen had the tubes of demon spitters slung over their left shoulders.

  “They move like a silent drill team,” Haft said, chuckling over the way the Jokapcul had moved into formation without shouted commands.

  “Yes,” Spinner said softly. “They are well-disciplined troops.” He didn’t relish the prospect of fighting them.

  Without any signal the two Marines could hear or see, one of the lesser-plumed horseman behind the commander moved around him and advanced on the gate. Four swordsmen trotted at his side. None of them stepped on caltrops; they were all on the road, which hadn’t been seeded. The envoy reined in several yards short of the gate and looked sneeringly at the fence. Then he spoke loudly in a drill sergeant’s voice.

  “His Zobran is pretty bad,” Stonearm said from his concealed position, “but I can understand him. He’s demanding that the mayor come to open the gate and surrender Eikby to the might of the, I’m not sure of this title, High Something or other, and someone he calls ‘the Dark Prince.’ How do you want me to answer?” The mayor was still under house arrest and they weren’t about to release him to answer the Jokapcul.

  Haft snorted. “Tell him if he wants the mayor he’ll have to break him out of jail.”

  “Don’t,” Spinner said before Stonearm could speak up. “I’ll answer him.” He shifted to Zobran just as bad as the Jokapcul sergeant’s, and called out in a voice just as loud, “The free town of Eikby recognizes no superior power and surrenders to no man. Leave or face our righteous wrath.”

  The sergeant puzzled over Spinner’s words for a moment, then glared at him. Spinner didn’t need a translation of what he said next, “Surrender now and death for your defiance will be fast.”

  “Prepare for your own death if you come closer,” Spinner shouted back.

  “That’s the way to tell him!” Haft hooted.

  The sergeant understood faster this time. He slapped a gauntleted hand on a mailed thigh, spun his horse about, and cantered back to his commander. The swordsmen raced to keep up.

  The sergeant saluted the commander and gave his report, then resumed his position behind him. Once more in response to a command the two Marines neit
her saw nor heard, five swordsmen ran forward from the second rank, spreading out as they ran. When they halved the distance they unslung demon spitter tubes and dropped to one knee. They balanced the spitters on their right shoulders and sighted along them. Pthupping noises came from the tubes. An instant later dirt erupted at the base of the fence to the left of the gate and a crossed pair of posts collapsed, sagging a section of the fence. Wires went sprang in the gate. Dirt gouted in the open ground between the archers’ trench and the fence on the right, more gouted between the trench and the gate.

  Haft raised his crossbow, then lowered it—the demon spitters were much too far away for him to reach.

  “Fletcher, can you reach them?” Spinner asked

  Fletcher stood up and looked. “Maybe,” he said. He studied the grassy field to determine the direction and velocity of the wind, then nocked a shaft to the string of his longbow and drew it back. The arrow struck the ground short and slightly to one side of the Jokapcul he aimed at. He tried again. This time his shaft struck the enemy soldier’s thigh. The soldier yelled in pain and clutched his thigh, then crawled back toward the line.

  “The others are too far,” Fletcher said and ducked back down.

  While he was engaged in wounding one man, the five demon spitters fired again. One gatepost splintered and another fence support collapsed. More dirt gouted where the demon shots missed and passed between the wires. The rest of the Jokapcul stood their ranks. The four remaining demon spitters kept firing.

  “So much for fences,” Haft growled.

  “They won’t take it all down,” Spinner said.

  Haft snorted. “They don’t have to.” He watched the demon spitters as they spat again and again, and the swordsmen who carried them fed their demons after each spit.

  “Too bad we don’t have one of those,” Fletcher said, looking over the berm.

  “We don’t.” Spinner shook his head. “If we did, we could destroy their formation, but we don’t. Instead, we have to wait for them to move into range of the weapons we do have.”

  The Jokapcul showed no indication they were ready to advance. The two Marines wondered why the commander didn’t send another soldier forward to use the abandoned demon spitter. None of the demon spits reached the trench, though it looked like the soldiers with the weapons tried a few times.

  “I didn’t know they did that,” Haft said after a spell.

  “What?” Spinner asked.

  Haft pointed. One of the demons had climbed out of its tube and was basking on top of its soldier’s hat. The soldier looked to be cajoling the demon, asking it to return to the tube. The demon accepted the food the soldier offered, but refused to return to its tube. “I wonder if Xundoe could explain that to us.”

  Spinner shook his head. Xundoe was with the small contingent guarding the campsite. Spinner knew demons had to be fed regularly, but he’d never heard of one simply refusing to spit after being offered food.

  Moments later another demon stopped spitting, then the last two as well.

  The Jokapcul commander drew his sword, looked to both sides, then swept his sword forward. His troop began advancing at a walk toward the fence. Whole sections of fence were down and much of the rest sagged. The gate hung by one leather hinge.

  “Archers stand by,” Spinner called out. “Stay down until my command.”

  “Yours nothing,” Fletcher said. He stood to look over the berm. “I know a longbow’s range better than you do.”

  Spinner didn’t argue the point.

  The Jokapcul reached the line where the demons had spat, then broke into a trot.

  “Archers, up!” Fletcher commanded. Eighty men stood and nocked arrows to their bowstrings. “Ready!” Fletcher called out, and they drew the shafts to their ears. “Aim!” The archers aimed. “Fire!”

  Eighty arrows arched into the sky and down at the center of the Jokapcul lines. Before they struck, another flight of eighty was in the air. Then another and another. Many shafts fell short or flew over the lines, and the Jokapcul swordsmen raised their bucklers and deflected many of those that found the range. But here and there a man toppled. The commander barked and the orderly trot became a screaming rush that barely maintained the lines. A few footmen stumbled and fell, horses began rearing and kicking, screamed as some of them stepped on caltrops. Riders were thrown, some of them screamed when they landed on caltrops.

  When the remaining Jokapcul neared the broken fences Fletcher called out, “Select targets!” The archers stopped volleying their arrows and began picking out individuals to shoot at. More of the swordsmen dropped.

  The horsemen heeled their mounts and angled across the front of the advancing footmen toward downed sections of fence. On the left a horse’s leg tangled in a coil of broken wire and it tumbled, throwing its rider onto a jagged post stump; the rider screamed once, his limbs flailed, then he lay still. The horse screamed, tried to get up, staggered and fell down, blood coursed from its fetlock where jagged bone cut through its hide. On the right, another horse screamed and reared when a hoof landed squarely on an upturned barb of twisted wire. Its rider struggled to get it under control, but the barb stuck in the quick of its hoof and it stumbled. The rider leaped off and ran toward the trench.

  “Swords, advance!” Spinner shouted.

  The soldiers in the pits behind the archers clambered out and rushed forward to bound over the trench and stand on the berm in front of it. A hail of arrows came from the Jokapcul archers, who’d stopped at the fence line and drove them back into the trench. The charging Jokapcul were almost to the trench.

  “Archers, to the pits!” Spinner shouted, and the archers jumped out of the trench and retreated to the pits the swordsmen had left.

  Running swordsmen and galloping horses stepped in the small staked pits and fell, screaming from the agony in their pierced feet or hooves. More of them fell to the arrows of the archers. But most of them still reached the shallow trench before the berm. The thin camouflage covering the shallow trench fooled the leaders of the screaming rush and they fell into it. Some were impaled on the stakes, others fell between them and scrambled back to their feet to wade through and mount the berm. The Jokapcul swordsmen who came behind saw the shallow trench and waded safely through to gain the berm—the horsemen drew up and dismounted to fight as heavy infantry.

  The archers, safe for the moment in the pits, shot at the attackers as they came over the berm, and knocked many back or tumbled them wounded and bleeding into the trench. The swordsmen—Zobran, Skraglanders, and guards—swung their blades at the legs of the Jokapcul, trying to cripple them and knock them to the bottom of the trench where they could plunge their weapons down into their chests and bellies. The Skraglander Bloody Axes did the same. Pikemen, Zobran, and guards alike, thrust upward, swung the butts of their lances and halberds, and took a terrible toll. Yet many of the Jokapcul made it uninjured into the trench where the archers didn’t dare shoot at them, and fought with a ferocity few of the defenders could match. Some leaped the trench and headed for the pits and the archers they protected. More of them were coming.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  A bellow came from an orchard a short distance to the left side of the trench and a dozen horsemen burst from it. Half of them galloped in a line to the berm and crashed through the Jokapcul on it—Silent was in the lead, his mighty sword swept side to side, chopping deep into Jokapcul flesh, cleaving through the armored plates on the dismounted horsemen. The other six horsemen smashed into the Jokapcul charging the arrow pits and bowled them over. Archers dropped bows in favor of long knives and short swords. Farmers and tradesmen armed with swords and lances, scythes and pitchforks, hoes and hammers, climbed out of the pits to stab and chop Jokapcul soldiers where they lay dazed after the horsemen had knocked them to the ground.

  The Jokapcul commander made it all the way into the trench and leaped into it only feet away from Spinner. He grinned when he saw his opponent’s quarterstaff—it was too
long to be used in the trench except as a blunt spear. He growled something in the gravelly language of his home islands and rushed to dart inside the slight arc of Spinner’s weapon. He should have faced the other way when he jumped into the trench—Haft was behind him and wasted no time in bringing the half-moon of his axe down in a powerful overhead swing that caught the commander at the juncture of his neck and shoulder and chopped deep into his chest.

  A swordsman saw his commander go down and leaped out of the trench, screaming in terror. In seconds, the remaining Jokapcul were in full flight—sixscore and more Jokapcul had charged through the broken fence to the trench, fewer than half that number fled for the safety of the forest. The defending archers regained their bows and ran back to the trench, leaped across it, and stood on the berm to down the fleeing foe.

  Silent roared out another war cry and the horsemen rallied to him. He waited until the fleeing Jokapcul were almost at the fence, and roared again. He led a pursuit across the open, pitted ground between trench and fence. One of his horsemen failed to watch the markers for the punji traps and was thrown violently forward when his horse stepped into one. He hit the ground hard, bounced, and lay still. His horse struggled to stand on its maimed, broken leg and screamed in pain until a swordman rushed forward and ended its agony. A healing witch ran to the rider.

  The remaining horsemen bounded over the downed parts of the fence and rode among the fleeing Jokapcul swordsmen, swinging their blades, cutting the running men down like mad farmers scything ripe wheat. Most of them remembered the marked lanes through the caltrops; one who didn’t was thrown violently when his horse stepped on an elevated spike and fell. Haft led a score of swordsmen to the field to take possession of any Jokapcul who chose to fall to the ground in surrender rather than die. The Eikby Guards, flush with victory, raced after them.