by Don McQuinn
Gan turned. The priest stepped back, touched the bound man with his staff. Raising it to the vertical, he spun it. The crystals circled, glittered. Continuing to back away, the robed figure kept the bright circle rotating.
The two men holding the prisoner stepped to the side, retaining their hold on his arms. The leader raised his axe, chopped. Twice. Yet again.
Released, the slain prisoner dropped, quivering.
The Kwa bellowed.
The Violet Abbess gasped, then, “You brought this on us, Gan Moondark. You and the apostate Sylah and her accomplice, Lanta. You let them go on their foolish quest, and their blasphemy has sundered Church. Because of your sin, the One in All turns His face from you.”
The woman’s malediction was a clammy hand on the small of Gan’s back.
The Kwa charged. Their archers released swishing flights of arrows over the assault units to drop on Gan’s defenders. Gan’s archers returned fire, giving ground to shelter in the trenches.
Shrill pain ripped the brave fabric of war cries and exhortations.
From the forested slope of the northern ridge, a column of horsemen lanced out, driving at Gan’s flank. Gan signaled. A horn blared. A thin white banner rose on a tall pole. The heavy cavalry of the Three Territories galloped out of their hidden position in the streambed to engage their counterparts.
The Kwa hit the portable barriers. Gan exclaimed in grudging admiration as the first warriors simply threw their bodies across them, becoming human pathways for those who followed. Wolf spearmen, surprised by the quick failure of their defenses, fell back awkwardly, the thrusting weapons too clumsy for effective combat.
Just as it appeared the Wolf spearmen must be overrun, the first of Leclerc’s black powder sacks exploded. The Kwa warriors checked as if the detonation were a wall. More sacks went off. The charge collapsed. Men howled fear and agony as whining stone tore flesh, burst armor, shattered bones.
Gan signaled again. His huge leader’s drum, as long as a man and half that diameter, roared. The paired drummers, one at each end, beat out the command to counterattack. From their shielded orchard position, the Olan force responded. Signal flags directed the counterattack around the knoll’s right. The Kwa forces were retreating down the hill when the armored Olans crashed into them from the side.
Surprise was complete. Victory seemed ripe for the picking.
Slanting off to his own left, the Kwa leader directed the bulk of his forces at the Olans.
Shattering reports from the lightning weapons announced the arrival of Leclerc and Bernhardt. Flechette rounds, blistering the air with their velocity, sent Kwa warriors spinning and tumbling like fall leaves.
The Kwa force shuddered. Once again, Gan thought of a single organism. This one, wounded, stunned, was straining to maintain itself. Gan anxiously sought the Kwa leader, knowing that, like himself, that other man saw this conflict balanced on a razor’s edge.
Warhorns droned down on the valley floor. To the east, galloping out of a covering wrinkle in the landscape, the Kwa cavalry reserve rumbled into view. They hammered down the southern side of the valley, driving for the lightning weapons.
Rushing to the men engaging the Olans, the Kwa leader, now on horseback, renewed the attack himself. Sheer numbers forced the Olan pack back.
Searching to his left, Gan saw his cavalry successful, the surviving enemy streaming back to the shelter of the forest. Gan’s drum summoned his riders, sacrificing pursuit of the broken force to the more pressing needs of the failing defense.
Now was when the training and communications within Gan’s forces would be tested to its limits. The men of the Three Territories had never retreated under pressure.
Gan recalled the lectures of his War Chief father. The tradition of the Dog People was lightning maneuver, strike and retreat, wheel and strike again. Trained infantry could do the same, albeit slower.
Gan’s drum dominated the battlefield, rode over the smaller unit drums, shrieking whistles, and the unending human voices. Packs charged as units, goring the Kwa mob. As swiftly as they’d come, they stopped, then fled. Invariably, the mauled Kwa cheered and pounded after them, only to be struck from a different direction by a different pack.
Yet the Kwa pressed forward. Always forward.
Gan looked east and south. Emso and his men, with Leclerc and Bernhardt, were held in place. Whatever damage they were doing, they couldn’t free themselves to reach the main battle.
Gan Moondark was beaten.
The realization came to him as his Olans were forced back along the shoulder of the little knoll and raging Kwa stormed up the slope. It shocked him, as if someone he admired had whispered something unspeakably obscene in his ear. Disbelief thickened his mind.
Stumbling backward, arms flailing, he stared at the quivering, bloody arrow embedded in his chain mail. The links held the barbs out of his flesh. He jerked the thing free, flung it away with a low growl.
Confusion was gone. In its place was release, the willing surrender to battle-madness. He vaulted onto his war-horse, calling the great hound, Shara. Sword in hand, Gan howled, reveling in the absolute of mortal combat. Gone was the crushing responsibility to direct forces, gone the need to mourn men killed and maimed doing his bidding. Gone was Murdat. Man, horse, and dog flew at their enemies, a trilogy of death.
Ordinary warriors of both factions fell away from the maelstrom of destruction. Some Kwa, brave beyond wisdom, stepped in front of the team. The horse’s iron-shod hooves flailed. Shara’s crushing jaws snapped bone. Gan’s murdat stabbed. He sought the Kwa leader. Even when he felt the pressure of the Kwa encircling, he thrust his way deeper.
Near the rear of the Kwa force, the leader’s personal guard killed Gan’s horse. Riddled with arrows, screaming defiance, it charged into the tight ranks. Collapsing, kicking and biting, its dying fury scattered men. Gan pitched out of the saddle, landed on his feet.
Mere steps apart, he confronted his masked foe. For an instant, the combined mass and might of both opposing forces were as nothing. Two opposed wills were all that existed.
Rolling thunder announced the duel. Ignoring that, and the first splatter of rain, the Kwa leader waited as if acknowledging an expected event. Kwa warriors surrounding the tableau edged away in awe.
Rain came in earnest, heavy drops that ran red off the skirt of Gan’s chain mail and formed tiny, jagged streams the length of his sword blade.
A younger man rushed to stand beside the leader. Both men were the same height, nearly the same weight. Heavily muscled arms. Strong men. Calm, confident. The masked leader circled left, both feet always in contact with the ground. The younger man held fast, lowered to a crouch. Each carried a double-bitted axe and the long, narrow shield.
From within the mournful mask, the older man’s deep voice had a weird, removed sound. “Us then, Gan Moondark. I am Red Sky. This is my son, Two Fists. Me and my son against you and your son. You have the best of it, I think; your child resembles you even more than mine does me.”
Gan smiled easily. “The dog has met his father; that boy can only wonder if he has.”
Two Fists took the bait. Screaming, he charged. From the corner of his eye, Gan saw Red Sky jerk, knew it was a dismayed, aborted effort to stop his son’s rash move. Then the older man came, as well. Stepping back and to the side, Gan forced Two Fists to turn to follow, putting father and son together in front of him. The move prevented a Red Sky attack from the side.
Shara rose on his hind legs beside Gan, muzzle gaping, forcing Red Sky to shift to a better defensive posture. At that, the dog dropped to all fours and lunged.
Red Sky was very quick. His axe fell with incredible speed. Shara yelped as the blade glanced off his ribs, opening the flesh in a long, ugly flap. Nevertheless, the dog’s cry was muffled, because his teeth were fastened in Red Sky’s thigh. A shake of the head severed arteries, stripped meat from the heavy, startlingly white thighbone.
Red Sky tumbled to the ground.
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br /> Two Fists, having been feinted into missing Gan on his initial rush, whirled to find Gan waiting for him. The son’s gaze went to his father’s efforts to escape Shara. Blood jetted from the older man’s ruined thigh. Two Fists completely lost control.
Pity slipped across Gan’s concentration, a swift unimportant whisper. He stepped back, letting Two Fists’ axe swish past. Then, sliding to his left, he drove his sword into Two Fists’ unprotected kidney. The axe, on backstroke, soared off into the watching warriors.
Two Fists dropped to his knees, toppled onto his face.
Gan turned, crouched. Shara circled Red Sky, who was on one knee, mask askew, struggling to regain his feet. The man faked a move at the dog, then spun to lash at Gan’s legs with the axe.
Only reflex saved Gan. He leaped straight up. The gleaming blade hummed under his feet. Gan slashed his attacker as he touched the ground. The murdat severed Red Sky’s spine. Tore through the flesh and muscle of the neck. Crashed into the back of the mask. Decapitated, the Kwa leader fell, convulsing. A man’s length away, its whiteness fouled with mud and blood, the mask covering Red Sky’s face lamented up into the falling rain with empty eyes and silent woe.
Calling Shara, Gan sprinted for the gap created by Two Fists’ escaping axe. The priest moved to block them. Unintelligible noise and saliva sprayed from the gray-bearded mouth. The ornate staff rose in threat. Shara exploded past his master, seized the man’s whole head in his jaws. Twined together, man and animal fell to the ground. Growling, Shara shook his quarry as a terrier snaps a rat. The crackle of breaking bones triggered screams of disbelieving rage and shock from the Kwa.
Slashing furiously at those quick enough to try to stop him, Gan hurled himself onto one of the horses tied up in the rear. Flattening himself against the animal’s neck he shouted at Shara to attack the rest of the mounts.
Arrows slipped past, dug into the ground around the darting, barking Shara. A spear, seemingly as big as a log, flew over Gan’s shoulder, the shaft actually bouncing off the horse’s upflung head.
Shara squealed. Gan looked to see the dog snap at an arrow in his side, close to the nasty axe wound. The arrow broke off, and Shara regained his speed in two bounds. He was abreast of Gan in a few more ground-eating strides.
Just as Gan was congratulating himself on escaping, the arrow struck. Then he was holding the reins in one hand, clawing at the thing in his neck with the other.
He gritted his teeth and broke off the shaft.
Turning his head was agony. Distant Wolf signal flags ordered retreat.
The leader’s drum sounded. His drum.
Thunder rocked the valley. Rain came in torrents. Small knots of men still struggled around the Wolf defenses, but the flow of the Kwa warriors was toward a large, growing circle of men who stared in mute disbelief at three sprawled figures.
Not all merely stared at the dead, however. A full twenty or more pounded in pursuit. They screamed vengeance. Spray exploded as prey and hunter blasted across a rain-polished bean field.
Clapping a hand to his neck to staunch his wound Gan felt his strength ebbing. He willed his mind into the stabilizing near-trance of nara, the warrior’s hard core of courage and composure.
Shara strained to keep pace now, sorely favoring his injured side. Gan urged him on. Ahead were trees. Cover.
Gan grieved for the lost glory he expected to bring the Dog People and the Three Territories. Into the thick, scented air of the forest. Uphill. Seeking a final stand.
He was not to die on his beloved prairie. It was the thing he’d feared since the day he crossed the mountains.
* * *
The story continues in chapter 6 of Malice, the seventh book of The Moondark Saga, available individually and in Witch: The Moondark Saga, Books 7-9.
Dedication
To those who completed the circle
—Betsy, Alison, and Robin
—with love and great pride.
About The Author
Don McQuinn is an American best-selling author and retired U.S. Marine. He was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and lived in several places before moving to Texas. Don graduated from Galena Park HS, and after a year of military school in Minnesota he won a USNROTC scholarship to the University of Washington.
After graduating with a BA in English, Don served twenty years in the Marines—retiring in 1971 as a Major—before becoming an author. His books have won major awards and been on bestseller lists, and he's written in genres that range from contemporary women's fiction to science fiction. He lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with his wife and three grown sons.
Contact Information
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Table of Contents
Map
Start Reading Book 4
Start Reading Book 5
Start Reading Book 6
Afterword
The Story Continues
About The Author
Dedication
Contact Information
Book 4: The Path Of Mistakes
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Book 5: The Path Of Confusion
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Book 6: The Path Of Discovery
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
; Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Table of Contents
The Moondark Saga: Book 4 The Path Of Mistakes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
The Moondark Saga: Book 5 The Path Of Confusion
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
