by Don McQuinn
Drawing his sword, Gan sketched their position in the dirt, then illustrated flanking thrusts and a massive center attack. Muttering, he continued scratching marks. “Scouts and refugees all say the mass of men is in the valley. Other scouts say Kwa warriors are on the ridges. We’ll engage the thrust on the north side with our cavalry. Emso, after you’ve stopped the southern thrust, drop onto the rear and flank of the Kwa main strength.”
Leclerc studied the marks in the dirt. Carefully expressionless, he looked to Emso. “If that’s what the Kwa propose, this is a good counter plan.”
Emso snorted. “Dying in bed’s a good plan. Are you betting on it?”
Gan laughed, vastly entertained, and Bernhardt muttered to Leclerc, “How can he do that? I know he cares about all of us, but he enjoys this murderous foolishness. It doesn’t make sense.”
By then Gan was speaking again. “If my plan works, we hurt the Kwa. We may be crushed, even so. If we meet him head-to-head, we must be crushed. I’m not betting on anything but you, Emso; you and our Wolves.”
Emso smiled crookedly. “Your tongue’s as quick as that murdat. You want to speak to the Wolves? There’s no time to waste.”
Leclerc and Bernhardt fell in behind Gan and Emso. Bernhardt said, “I won’t be able to keep up with these men.”
“They’ll make allowances for us.” He slapped the stock of the wipe. The sound brought Emso’s head around. As if aware of the discussion, he said, “You’ll travel mounted, with my reserve. Our footpace is too much for you. I’ll assign a man as escort. When we find the Kwa, I’ll try to get word to you where I want you to use the lightning weapons. If I can’t reach you, let the escort decide where you’re to strike.”
Leclerc’s jaws tightened. His mouth worked, biting off unspoken words.
Unaware of Leclerc’s irritation, Emso turned back to Gan. Bernhardt put a hand on Leclerc’s forearm. He refused to acknowledge the contact, but she spoke anyhow. “It’s nothing personal, Louis. Emso doesn’t act offended when you school him on how to use your black powder. He respects your knowledge and skill. All he’s asking you to do is afford his assistant the same respect.”
“He’s telling me I don’t belong, that only my weapon is important. ‘Warriors to the front. Leclerc to the rear with the women and children.’”
The cavalry was already moving off to the left, keeping well hidden. Without his mounted Dog warriors, Gan had only his heavier Olan farm-horse cavalry. They were, of necessity, both scout and shock unit. The farmers, fishermen, and loggers from the western side of the Enemy Mountains were grim, hard fighters. Their forests obviated the fleet swirl of cavalry soldiering.
When they clambered aboard a horse, it was to ride over someone, not around him.
Gan’s defense of the knoll relied on the training and techniques of his men. They had portable barriers to disrupt the battlefield. They carried special weapons, extremely long spears, designed to extend beyond the barriers into the attacking force. Shallow trenches circled the knoll near its top. The excavated earth was piled up periodically to form small bulwarks. Archers could move through the trenches protected from enemy arrows, then mass their own fire from relative safety.
The portable barriers were Leclerc’s project. They were simple articles. Short poles lashed in a cross constituted the two ends. Smaller poles lashed between provided strength while creating an encumbrance to advancing men. Additionally, the connecting poles were strung with stout cord and metal hooks. No man could fight and drag such an impediment around with him. Nevertheless, they could only be considered a nuisance; small, light, and fairly quickly destroyed.
Leclerc made them deadly. Each barrier carried a small leather sack filled with small rocks, a tightly wrapped charge of black powder, and a fuse that theoretically had a four-second delay. In testing, the fuses lacked perfection. Some sizzled off all too rapidly. No one was seriously injured. Several men acquired a disturbingly intimate knowledge of the sound of rocks over taking and passing at high velocity. Everyone admired the superior footwork exhibited. Soldier humor leans toward bleak.
Off to the right, the solid blue banner of the Galmontis pack crackled above warriors testing the portable barriers one last time. To the left, the Fin pack worked under their yellow with black stripes. Eleven West and Malten manned the forward positions, ready to delay the Kwa advance before falling back to the knoll. Far to the rear, the Olan units formed a reserve out of sight in a sheltering orchard.
A flash of bright purple caught Leclerc’s eye. The Violet Abbess, swirling her cloak about her. Gathered together with her six War Healers, the older woman’s brightly embroidered robe stood out against the somber black of the Priestess’ garb. Leclerc frowned, thinking how the Abbess had recently been heard harshly criticizing Rose Priestess Sylah, blaming her exclusively for the rift in Church.
There was no time to dwell on that. Leclerc consciously looked away, only to spot a pair of Messengers loitering in the distance, easily identifiable by their garish clothing. Leclerc had no fondness for Messengers, an attitude he shared with Gan Moondark. As Gan said, they were like buzzards, always around in times of trouble. Messengers moved without hindrance across everyone’s territory. If one of their guild was interfered with, much less injured or killed, all Messenger service was denied the group on whose territory the deed took place until compensation and punishment were agreed on and executed. In a world where plague sprang up with the swift unpredictability of a spring rain and where neighboring tribes treasured enmities for generations, lack of communication with others was a death warrant. Everyone welcomed Messengers, catered to them. No one liked them.
The Jalail Wolves’ marching drum rumbled its assembly call. There was no further signaling. The column trotted through brushy cover into the streambed as stealthily as a brotherhood of thieves. The splashing of their progress turned the water creek into hysterical brilliance.
Leclerc and Bernhardt hurried along in trail. A few hundred yards upstream, their escort announced they were far enough into timber for his wards to mount up. Red-faced, wheezing torturously, Leclerc pretended to weigh the merit of the idea. It offended him to see how gratefully Bernhardt accepted. Lips pursed judiciously, Leclerc was careful to infer he was grudgingly following orders. They soon caught up to the Wolves.
Soon after, Leclerc was shocked out of introspection by an agonized scream. The sharpness of it seemed to actually lighten the forest gloom. The rational part of his mind warned him that this was psychological reaction. The rest of him didn’t care.
Roaring commands and the shouts of men in combat struck next. The Wolves ahead of Leclerc and Bernhardt broke out of their column and into squads. Half advanced with notched arrows to their bows. The other half held up heavy rectangular shields on their left arms, while the right hands brandished murdats.
Surrounded by the twenty men who made up the reserve, Leclerc and Bernhardt waited.
The Wolves were forced back. Leclerc was astounded to notice that most of the reserve appeared more anguished than apprehensive. He had to reason it out; they heard their comrades engaged, but were forbidden to help. Murdats in anxious hands twitched like cat’s tails. Leclerc suffered no such delusions. He wished with all his heart the Kwa would turn and flee.
Three short and two long whistle blasts sent the pent-up reserve howling forward.
Leclerc kneed his horse ahead. Their lone warrior escort caught the reins. “Not yet. We wait for the signal.”
Infuriated at being denied, ashamed of the relief surging through him, Leclerc yanked his reins free. As he did, the first casualties staggered toward them. Leclerc’s breath caught at the youth of the pair careering from tree to tree. One had shed his hide armor. Blood pumped from his left bicep.
Leclerc observed the wound coolly, wrote off the arm. His own callousness appalled him.
The second man supported his friend on his left side. The broken shaft of a spear extruded from his rib cage on his right. They barely look
ed up as they passed. The man suffering the spear thrust mumbled to himself.
The command whistle shrilled again, two staccato notes, then two more.
“Now!” The Wolf escort slapped the horses’ rumps, making them rear. Before the animals could recover, he himself was sprinting off toward the battle, murdat drawn. Leclerc and Bernhardt raced forward through the thick forest.
Bernhardt screamed involuntarily at the sight of men simply, industriously, killing other men. The disciplined Wolves fought as units. In pairs, they moved as one, parrying with shields to strike with murdats, deflecting with murdats to smash with shields. The Kwa warriors, wildly painted, fought with heavy, two-handed swords they swung with the cutting, crushing power of axes. Leclerc winced as one battered the shield of Wolf, sending him sprawling. The Kwa poised for the finishing stroke. The downed Wolf’s partner struck first. The Kwa dropped, writhing, screaming.
Leclerc was firing before he fully realized it. His mind roiled with inchoate images of brute violence. The awareness that he was bowling over a fellow human at every report threatened to empty his stomach. Beside him, Bernhardt was screaming for everyone to stop. Tears poured down her cheeks, leaping off her chin every time she squeezed the trigger and the wipe slammed her shoulder. Leclerc had hoped that the crashing report of the weapons would send the Kwa streaming for home. They were of sterner stuff. It was casualties that stopped their advance, broke them, and finally sent them into headlong retreat.
It was very difficult to accept that the fighting was stopped. The Kwa, dragging their wounded, filtered through the forest in escape. The injured left behind shared common misery with stricken Wolves. Slumped in the saddles, Leclerc and Bernhardt watched Emso begin checking the fallen for those who could be helped. While the bulk of the force watched for counterattack, others carried their comrades to a central treatment point.
Bernhardt and Leclerc joined in the crude first-aid efforts. They quickly had one man washing wounds and another tearing up cloth to make bandages. Emso smiled grim approval, saying, “I’m sending a man to fetch a War Healer. One man will stay here to care for these casualties. We carry out the rest of our mission.”
Leclerc, tying off a bandage, jerked his chin toward the remains of the Jalail pack. “You don’t even have enough men to guarantee a safe retreat to rejoin Gan’s defense. You can’t attack anyone.”
It was as if Leclerc spoke an unknown tongue. Emso’s strained ferocity rejected him. There was something so unbearably intense in that expression that Leclerc looked away before Emso spoke. “We leave at my word.” Emso strode away.
Leclerc started to argue. Bernhardt hissed at him. When he faced her, indignation boiling over, she said, “He has no choice.” She returned to her work.
So did Leclerc, but the movements were automatic. Images crowded his thinking. Emso’s controlled ferocity. Gan’s clipped decisions, like scissors snipping away alternatives, reducing the world to a series of absolutes. He remembered other faces, men he couldn’t even name. They all behaved, looked exactly alike. Leclerc agonized: Why did he know they simply felt differently about all this than he did? How could they?
Then came a chilling comprehension. They were at a level of commitment men never achieved under normal circumstances. Nor could any man maintain that level of involvement for long and remain normal.
Leclerc looked into himself. Hunter, camper, skydiver, surfer, car racer. He enjoyed risk. Challenge. He took chances that could lead to serious injury. Possibly death.
These men threw themselves wantonly into a situation where someone must die.
None courted death, none challenged it. But they went where death was, and staked their lives on their ability to embrace her and survive.
In that moment he touched the edge of their being, felt the lightest tremor of the blood-race of exaltation.
He loathed that contact.
Louis Leclerc would never be like them. Whatever enabled men like Gan and Emso and Conway—yes, and women like Tate—to bet their lives with an eagerness that counterfeited love, it wasn’t in Louis Leclerc.
Leclerc looked up to wipe away sweat from his brow. Bernhardt was watching him. She said, “Promise me; if we get out of this, you’ll decide exactly what you want to do, who you want to be, and follow that decision. Will you do that Louis? Please?”
For one shocked moment, he thought she’d read his thoughts. Humbly, he said, “I promise, Kate. Thank you.”
Blushing faintly, Bernhardt returned to her patient.
War Healer approached, sidesaddle on a small donkey. The animal picked its way past the fallen, groaning men with a heedful, stiff-legged grace. Stoic patience emanated from the small, gray mount and its hooded passenger.
Leclerc moved to Bernhardt’s side. He jerked a thumb at the War Healer, snickered. “Did you see her ride up? Right out of the New Testament.”
Choking with emotion, Bernhardt rose, backed away quickly from the man she tended. “Have you lost your mind? Do you know what these people would do to us if they suspected you spoke to me of the One who rode an ass? He’s forbidden to women. And another thing: remember that self-pitying blather about riding with the women and children? Well, forget it; I don’t think you’re tough enough to live in third class with us.”
She stalked off toward the War Healer, leaving him openmouthed. By the time he recovered, she was in low, controlled conversation with the Priestess. Leclerc swallowed his indignation. Nothing was working out the way he intended. He started toward her, determined to apologize properly.
She saw him coming, smiled a tentative, forgiving welcome.
Emso’s hoarse order to form in march column cut off Leclerc’s carefully composed speech.
Chapter 5
Emso’s intercept force was barely into the forest when the main body of the Kwa advanced on Gan’s knoll. Loosely grouped in four large units, they dressed in a wild array of furs and coarse cloth. Like the Wolves, the Kwa covered themselves with hide armor or chain mail. Helmets were motley, from artfully formed brass and copper to towering antlers fixed to leather. Swordsmen carried tall, narrow shields strapped to a forearm; they reached from just below the eyes almost to the ground. Advancing, they pounded the shields in unison. That noise, in tempo with rattling drums and lowing brass warhorns, created a storm-sense. In the wake of the advance crops were crushed, orchards broken and bent. Pastures were flattened, dusty.
Behind the Kwa, waiting in reserve to exploit any break in the Wolf front, were the Mountain People. Their warriors went to war painted in death masks, representations of black-eyed, bloody-mouthed white skulls. They wore torso armor called a barmal, a shell of black wildcowhide over woven willow wands. When on foot, as today, they fought with short swords known as ma.
A flight of arrows—a nervous-sounding covey of death—arced up and out from Gan’s most forward defensive positions. Kwa shields rose almost in unison as experienced warriors automatically defended. Some pained cries erupted. Two black-robed War Healers dragged three, four, then a fifth man to the rear. Other wounded helped each other or fended for themselves. A lesser number lay where they fell.
Organically, the mass closed on itself, healing, dismissing its injuries.
A man trotted to the fore, alone, bold. He wore a steel helmet with a huge span of wildcow horns. Steel bosses gleamed on a shield that, like all others, was painted with a demonic face. Crushing silence fell across the entire Kwa force as the man raised a double-bitted axe. Facing the defenders, his voice swelled. “Yooou!” It lowered, left shivering, ghosting echoes. Then the entire Kwa force repeated the sound.
Hackles rose on Gan’s neck. All around him, men shifted, hefted weapons. One Wolf, isolated within his own thoughts, cursed steadily, softly.
One by one, the lone Kwa called the names of the Wolf packs. His men echoed each time. Gan’s name came last, punctuated with a thunder of swords on shields.
Two Kwa warriors then hurried forward, supporting a struggling, bound, a
nd gagged prisoner. A bearded figure hobbled along behind. In his long, earth-brown robe, the older man superficially resembled the black-clad women of Church. His walking staff was a head taller than himself. Atop was a horizontal disk. Clear quartz crystals dangled from it. Although heavy clouds threatened to block the sun, the decorations glinted wild, hard sparks.
Gan watched the scene unfold with suspicion. The acrid scent of prebattle tension took on an evil pubescence. Gan noticed that the cursing man among his own troops was quiet.
The brown-robed man moved to stand before the horn-helmeted leader, who dropped to one knee. The bearded figure gestured, his words lost in distance. The entire Kwa host knelt, as well. From under his robe, the older man produced something large and white. Bending to the leader, he put the thing—a mask—in place, and stepped back. The enemy force rose as one; the rustle and clash whispered menace throughout the valley.
Facing the Wolves, the Kwa leader posed in his new persona. The mask was vaguely egg-shaped, narrowing from top to bottom. It extended outward almost to the wearer’s shoulders and stretched from the center of the helmet to a handsbreadth below his chin. It curved back toward the ears slightly to allow peripheral vision through down-sloping slot eyes. The mouth was a bent oval, curved toward the chin. There were no other features. The flat white expression was of unspeakable anguish. Gan felt as if that empty, inhuman visage stared into him personally.
Noise brought Gan’s head around to see who was behind him. The Violet Abbess said, “The North Wind,” and made an elaborate three-sign. Her eyes wandered, the nervous flit of a creature seeking escape. She continued. “It’s their god of war. The Kwa People say that, in the beginning, it was North Wind who brought unending cold and rain that killed. The old man is a priest. Watch.”
