Witch: The Moondark Saga, Books 7-9 (The Moondark Saga Boxed Sets Book 3)

by Don McQuinn

  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.”

  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.
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  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.

  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.

  Chapter 6

  Shara’s breathing was the sound of a rusted saw. Head down, moving with a strained, off-center motion as his wounded side stiffened, the dog stared fixedly ahead. Gan fared little better. Keeping the horse balanced on the steep, slick grade and its treacherous footing taxed him to his limit. The energy surge of combat had long drained away. He was soaked, chilled, and exhausted. The arrowhead in his neck stabbed anew at every heart-beat, every movement.

  Gan thought enviously of his friend and mentor, Clas na Bale, who could step outside pain almost completely. Wounds were an inconvenience for Clas, except for the blood loss.

  Concentrating on the inward-turning mental power of nara, Gan mapped the pain, imaged it. He used it to stimulate his senses.

  Far below were the voices of his pursuers and chuffing, snorting horses. Around him were smells; wet bark, coniferous needles, ground litter. The unmistakable scent of wet dog. It couldn’t be Shara; wind direction precluded it. That meant wolves. The knowledge pleased him. Wolves had entered his life before.

  Rain. Enervatingly cold, almost blinding. Gan decided the latter was a blessing. If he couldn’t see, neither could his enemies. He twisted to look back down the mountain.

  The arrowhead seized at the move, punishing like a live thing. Shock rushed to break his will. Faintly, he heard Clas: “Pain is a killer. Run, and it’ll overtake and destroy you. Face it. Let it be what it must. Separate the injury from the rest of you. Wall it off, Gan.”

  His wheezing horse labored onto a shelf, a high meadow where the earth was luxuriously near level. A few more steps and the animal stopped, head down, legs spread, totally used up.

  Gan dismounted quickly. The ground sloped away gently on three sides. To his left the mountain shouldered up into shrouding mist. A prudent man would head downhill and attempt to outrun the pursuit. After all, their horses were exhausted, too.

  Gan grinned tightly at Shara. “Even if I could run away, I don’t think you’re good for much longer, are you, boy?”

  Sprawled on the wet grass, the dog moved his tail in weak acknowledgment.

  At the juncture of meadow and mountain stood an outfall from ages past, a frozen surf of boulders standing in unmoving waves. The mountain wall was split by several narrow clefts.

  A whack on the spent horse’s rump made it hunch its back, groaning. When it turned to look at Gan, blood trickled from its nostrils.

  Far away, men shouted. A horse whinnied.

  “You’ve got to lead them away,” Gan said. “If they find you, they’ll know I’m nearby.”

  The horse swung its head forward again, where it drooped almost to the ground. It shivered violently, coughed.

  Gan drew his murdat. If he killed the animal among the nearer rocks, it would probably be overlooked.

  The mute, helpless look of the spent horse twisted in Gan’s imagination. The face became human. Many faces. Gan saw men fall under his own weapon, more clearly now than when the deed was done.

  That was war. Life. That was the way.

  The pursuit was closer. Individual voices shouted distinguishable words.

  Gan sheathed the murdat and ran. By the time he reached the rockfall the Kwa were just below the crest where the meadow started. Crossing the rocks was leap after leap from one rain-slick boulder to another. Each jarring landing threatened to buckle Gan’s knees. Shara alternately growled and whined at his own pain.

  Someone shouted discovery of the abandoned mount.

  It was impossible to continue across the rocks without being seen. Gan dropped onto his stomach. Shara stretched out beside him. Behind them, the Kwa searched for tracks.

  Gan crawled to one of the narrow gaps. Tantalizing, it revealed a cluttered pathway barely wider than a man’s reach. Rocks of all sizes formed a haphazard uphill staircase that disappeared in rain and mist. If it ended just beyond the limit of Gan’s vision, it was the worst kind of trap. “Not much of a chance,” Gan said, ruffling Shara’s head. “Up or nothing, dog.”
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  Brown eyes met his, trusting. For a fleeting moment, Gan remembered the horse in the meadow.

  The Kwa were combing through the rockfall before Gan and Shara progressed ten body-lengths. A boulder, far larger than it appeared from below, blocked the passage. Gan clawed his way up and over, spurred by the excited calls of the searchers. Shara, on hind legs, was just out of reach. He leaped, tried to scramble up the stone face. Whining pain and frustration, he fell back time after time. Gan coaxed as he never had.

  Shara gathered himself for the effort Gan knew must be the last. Facedown, draped over the boulder, the pain of the arrowhead toyed with Gan’s consciousness. The image of the dog wavered, disappeared, returned.

  Shara bounded upward. Gan lunged. Fingers looped under the war collar. Whatever happens now, Gan told himself, we end it side by side. We’ve given too much to each other to separate now.

  He was glad Neela would never know he’d made such an incredibly stupid decision.

  A spike from the collar poked Gan’s wrist. It worked against the flesh as the dog struggled. When the point pierced, the bite of it was actually a relief from the grinding pressure. For an instant. Then the shaft was working back and forth along the bone. Gan moaned through grinding teeth. Little by little, the two of them won. Gan praised the dog. He cursed his great bulk. When Shara got his hind legs under him and pushed up onto Gan’s level, they collapsed in one dirty, bloody pile, too exhausted to move. Only when Shara lifted his head, yanking the spike free, did Gan react. He managed to stifle the yell. It took several deep breaths to quell the shaking.

  Keeping low, he crawled to the edge of the boulder, peered over. A Kwa warrior squatted at the passage’s mouth, examining the rocks. Gan barely ducked in time to avoid the man’s upward glance. He and Shara stumbled on, hearing their pursuer shout for his companions.