by David Weber
"Okay, already," the prince said, pulling himself back onto the civan and kicking it on the snout as it turned to take a piece out of his leg. "I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow. See you after the surrender."
"Yep," Pahner agreed, with a waved salute as casual as Roger's own. He waited until the prince and his Mardukan guards were well down the road before he shook his head.
"Whose, Your Highness?" He murmured then. "Whose?"
* * *
Roger tapped on the door and entered at the grunted reply.
He'd returned to Mudh Hemh accompanied by a bare minimum security detail, but when he reached the town and found only two guards on the entire front wall, he'd realized the extent to which it had been stripped of defenders to reinforce Nopet Nujam. So he left his three Diasprans at the gatehouse to reinforce the Shin guards, and he was accompanied only by two Vashin. Those he left outside as he entered the dwelling the Gastan had turned over to Cord.
The interior was dark, but high for a human. Stone benches along two of the sides were covered in pillows, and the back side of the chamber was occupied by a cooking hearth and a large, low bath.
Cord was dangling his feet in the latter with his back to the door, while Pedi and the two serfs they'd liberated from the Lemmar rubbed his back.
"It looks like you've fallen into a good pond, Old Frog," Roger observed with a chuckle.
"I'm glad you've returned safely," the shaman said, and Roger carefully hid his concern as Cord clambered laboriously to his feet. Officially, his wound was well on its way to healing, but the old warrior wasn't snapping back the way he had after he'd been wounded at Voitan. Indeed, Roger was beginning to worry, very privately, that his asi might never snap back. Not all the way, at least.
"And I'm ashamed of my weakness," Cord went on, almost as if he'd read Roger's thoughts. "Anasi should have been at your side."
"I have plenty of bodyguards," Roger remarked. "I have far fewer counselors I trust. Although, come to think of it, I'm running low on bodyguards, as well. It doesn't really matter, though. You need to get healed up; worry about the rest later."
"So why are you here?" Cord asked, limping over to one of the benches.
"Despreaux's on her way here from Nopet, which means they must be about to put off the shots. It should be spectacular, even from here. I thought you'd like to watch."
"Oh, that would be fun to watch," Pedi said. "You're taking off the whole face of Karcrag, yes?"
"Pedi should not be exerting herself," Cord said, lying back on the bench. "We will stay here."
"Pedi should not be exerting herself?" Roger repeated. "What in hell does that mean?"
"Nothing," Pedi answered angrily. "Nothing that he has any right to make a decision about."
"You are my benan," Cord said coldly. "It is my responsibility to ensure your welfare as it is yours to ensure my safety."
"Welfare, perhaps" she spat back. "But not safety. I will be fine, thank you!"
"Whoa," Roger said. He glanced at the other two former slaves, who were huddled in the corner, clearly unhappy about the argument. "I don't want to cross this whole planet just to die in a domestic disturbance. Cord, you need to get out in the fresh air ... well, as fresh as it gets around here. We'll head up to the walls, watch the shot, and come back. And while we're walking, both of you can be thinking about what you want to tell me about what's going on."
"It is none of your responsibility, Prince Roger," Cord said.
"As you've pointed out to me before, Old Frog, I'm responsible for the success or failure of everything in this band. And we will have that talk. After we watch the shots."
* * *
"They're getting nervous," Pahner said. The Krath had sent another group up the mountain, using a different path from the one their own people had used. Since the security team had pulled back, it was just as well that the Krath would be too late arriving. They'd also pulled most of their forces out of the tent city, however, and seemed to be preparing for a large-scale assault.
"Yes," the Gastan said silkily. "Isn't it lovely?"
"You have your daughter's approach to handling enemies," Pahner said with a laugh.
"Fortunately, I don't have her approach to handling friends," the Shin king replied in a tone which was so suddenly exasperated that Pahner looked at him in genuine surprise.
"And I thought we were welcome," he said. "Or is there something I'm missing?"
"No, you're welcome, even chased by an army," the Gastan said. "It should be obvious to your Light O'Casey that this war has permitted me to consolidate my power as no Gastan has in three decades. And your support has been invaluable in that. But I could wish that my daughter had made better personal choices."
"Okay, now you've really got me confused," Pahner said as the Krath began filing into the assault trenches. The Gastan looked down at him and made a gesture of confused resignation.
"I wish that I understood your human body language better. Are you jesting? Or do you really not see the signs?"
"Signs of what?" Pahner asked. In the distance, the Krath assembly horns began to sound as the entire host started to move forward. The troops in the assault trenches would seek to pin the defenders in order to clear the way for the mass assault of the walls.
"You really don't see them, do you?" the Gastan said. Pahner gazed back up at the Shin's ruler and shook his head.
"She's pregnant," the Gastan said as the explosives on the hillside detonated and the mountain came apart.
* * *
By luck, more than knowledge, the amount and spacing of the explosives was almost perfect—not too hard, and not too soft. At first, the only sign of the impending disaster was a series of muffled thuds and a dust-jet mushroom shape above each of the boreholes. Despreaux had set them to detonate sequentially, instead of simultaneously, and the series went off like a very large machine gun as the sixteen charges exploded in under three seconds.
For a moment afterwards, there was stillness, and Pahner feared that all the planning had been for nothing. Then, slowly, the face of the mountain started to slide. The giant faux-teak trees were the first to show the movement, swaying back and forth as if tossed by a heavy wind before they began to slide. Then dust began to rise, and finally the whole mass began sliding towards the valley floor to impact in a gigantic crash that was felt as far away as Mudh Hemh.
At which point, the blocked waters started looking for an outlet. And looking and looking ... and rising and rising.
* * *
"Cool," Roger said, gazing at the neat divot that had been taken out of the side of the mountain. He and Despreaux had moved to the wall of the Shin town, and now they stood watching the battle from the safety of the southern parapet.
The town's walls weren't very much compared to the mighty ramparts of Nopet Nujam. In fact, they were simply double wooden palisades with a stamped earth fill, and the works flanking the gates were open on top, with small guard rooms underneath. The walls of the town were designed to stop the occasional Scourge or hostile Shin raiding party, not to beat off the sort of serious attack that was directed at Nopet Nujam. And for the former purpose, they had worked just fine. They also made a dandy viewing platform.
From a distance, it looked as if some giant had taken an ice cream spoon and scooped out a serving of basalt and ash. The massive Krath fortress obscured anything but the column of dust rising into the air behind it, but it was clear that most of what they'd intended to do had worked.
"Now to see if it blocks the water," Despreaux said.
"You did good, Nimashet," he replied, slipping his arm around her waist.
"We'll see."
"Pessimist," he chuckled.
"I always keep in mind what can go wrong."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
"This isn't going well," Pahner said.
"Tell me something I don't know!" the Gastan yelled back as he stuck one of the short Shin swords through a spear slit and drew it back red.
/> The Krath had started a full-court press, and unless something changed drastically very soon, it was going to work. The assault groups had come hollering out of the trenches, piling up bodies on the already blood-soaked ground. They'd barely made it to the walls before dying, but in doing so, they'd absorbed enough of the defenders' fire to permit the main Krath force to come in behind them in successive waves. The frenzied assault had concentrated on the main gates and the walls to either side, and the third wave had managed to smash the Shin defenders on the battlements and take three sections.
The humans' contribution had mostly been to remove the leadership, and they'd done a good job. Krath companies that had made it to the wall with any officers still on their feet were rare, but even that hadn't stopped the assault. The pressure from behind each wave had driven even the most cowardly into the defenses and up the walls. Now the gates' defenders were down to holding the gate-flanking bastions and doing their best to keep any battering rams away.
"Poertena, what do you have on your side?" the captain called.
"Krat', Krat', and more Krat', Sir," the Pinopan called back even as he took aim and fired through a slit. "T'e other bastion is holding out, though."
"Captain!" Beckley shouted from one of the front slits. "You can see water coming up out of the river! On this side of the fortress!"
"Where?" the captain demanded as he stepped across to a slit beside Beckley and zoomed up the magnification on his helmet. "Never mind." After a moment, he chuckled. "Now if we can only point it out to them."
"Look behind you, you stupid bastards!" the Gastan yelled out his slit. "The river rises! The river fights for the Shin!"
* * *
"Get it unplugged!" Tral shouted. "Break that dam! Now!"
"How?" the fortress commander asked. He'd already considered the problem, and he was preparing rafts loaded with gunpowder. He had his doubts about their efficacy, yet they were the only possibility he saw. Unfortunately, even if they had any chance of success of all, they would have to be guided into place, and in another hour—less—the water would be up over the work area. It was rising faster than the boatbuilders could finish their craft.
"I don't know!" the Sere commander snarled. "Figure it out!" He glared at the distant Shin fortress and waved both false-hands in a gesture of furious anger. "We have forces on the wall. All they have to do is take Nujam and we can move in there. That's all they have to do!"
* * *
"Tallow!" the Gastan ordered, never looking away from the slit. "Look behind you! The river rises!" he bellowed as the boiling fat was poured onto the Krath troops swarming atop the battlements outside the bastion. "Go cool off there!"
"They are," Pahner panted over the rising chorus of screams that greeted the splashing fat. The Marine had just returned to the slit beside the Shin king after dealing with another threat. A Krath assault group had forced the bastion's lower doors, and it had been hot work stopping them and then throwing up a barricade. The long climb back to the top hadn't done anything for his breathing, but he could clearly see the enemy army starting to stream from the walls. It was unraveling from the rear, where the remaining forces could see the river rising to overwhelm all their worldly goods. But those on the walls could see it as well, and they were scrambling down faster than they had come up. Already the water was halfway into the tent city; by the time those on the walls reached it, the entire area would be underwater.
"All we do now is wait for them to come to the inevitable conclusion," Pahner continued. "And conserve our own people in the meantime."
* * *
"That's it." Roger dialed back the magnification of his helmet. "There are no Krath on the walls. It's all over but the negotiating."
"That should be complicated enough to go on with." Despreaux shook her head. "That army is going to come apart when it realizes its predicament."
"I'm sure the captain can handle it," Roger replied, and turned as Cord and Pedi climbed up into the small, wooden bastion, followed by the two freed serfs.
"You sat this one out," Cord observed with a grunt. "Good."
"Are you up to this, Cord?" Roger asked. The shaman still had a pronounced limp and hunched to one side when he moved, and Roger didn't much care for the sound of his breathing.
"The healer Dobrescu tells me I need to start to move around," Cord replied. "I am moving around. The ladder, I admit, was unpleasant."
"Old fool," Pedi muttered under her breath.
"And you're looking better, as well, Pedi," Roger noted. The Shin female's step had a spring that he hadn't seen in quite some time.
"Thank you, Your Highness," Pedi replied. "It's amazing what a little sleep and some wasen can do for a female's outlook."
Despreaux snorted and shook her head.
"I could never get into the whole cosmetics thing. I'm totally challenged that way."
"It's like any other weapon or armor," Pedi said with a gesture of humor. "You must practice, practice, practice."
"Oh, like sex," Despreaux observed brightly, then grinned at Roger's stifled gasp.
"That is ... different with us," Pedi said somewhat primly. "We do not engage in it as ... entertainment."
"Too bad." Despreaux grinned again. "You don't know what you're missing."
"Well, isn't it a nice day out?" Roger waved to the north, where a darker patch of clouds indicated approaching rain. "Volcanoes smoking, smell of sulfur on the wind, Krath army surrendering ..."
"They've surrendered?" Pedi demanded excitedly.
"We haven't received a message yet," Roger admitted. "But they're off the walls. The war appears to be over."
"I look forward to slaughtering them for a change," the Shin female said darkly.
"Ah, we were intending to offer them terms," Roger pointed out. "I think it would be ... difficult to kill them all. And we can probably get more for them if they're alive."
"You humans are so silly that way." Pedi's gesture bordered on contempt. "I say chop off all their heads and float the bodies down the river. They'll get the message that way."
"Well, there are alternatives," Roger said. "We could simply blind and castrate them all and then have them walk back. All except one in twenty or so that we can leave with one eye to lead the rest. Or we could fire them out of cannon; you could load them all the way to the hips in the bombards. Or we could lay planks over them, then put tables and chairs on top of the planks, sit down, and eat our dinner while they were all crushed to death. Or, best of all, we could go retake the spaceport, come back with assault shuttles, and drop jellied fuel weapons on them. They want fire, we'll give them fire."
"Roger," Despreaux said.
"Those would do," Pedi agreed. "But I can tell you're joking."
"The point is that humans quit doing that sort of thing because we're too damned good at it," Roger said. "We can do it efficiently or baroquely, using a million different methods, culled from our entire history. I doubt that Mardukans can exceed our inventiveness, although they might equal it. But taking that route never gets you anywhere; you get trapped in an eternal round of massacres and counter massacres. It's only after you break the cycle and create strong groups—nations—that enforce the laws and demand some sort of international standard of acceptable behavior, that things start to improve."
"Fine, but we're here. And it's now," the Shin protested. "And when you humans leave, the Krath will still be there. And their soldiers will still be there, and the Scourge will still be there."
"All part of the negotiations," Roger replied. "They've lost their field army. If they don't get it back, they're dead meat for the other satraps. We'll strip them of their treasure, make them pay tribute, and have them sign binding treaties against slave-raiding. We won't take the tribute to 'punish' them, but to weaken them so that they're not death threats to you. The conditions might hold, and they might not. But humans who are friendly to the Shin will also be in control of the spaceport, Pedi. If the Krath get out of hand, we can
send an assault shuttle. And we will."
"What about the Scourge?" Slee asked.
"What about them?" It was the first time Roger had heard one of the released serfs ask a question, so it caught him a bit off guard.
"I don't care about the Sere, My Lord," the serf replied. "But it's the Scourge that has burned our homes and taken our children. Do they go free?"
"I doubt we'll be able to specifically target them," Roger said, after a moment. "But they'll be out of a job."
"Which means they'll go back to being bandits," Pedi said. "So be it. The Shin are better bandits than the Scourge any day."
"Not exactly something that I'd aspire to," Roger sighed. "But if that's what floats your boat."
"Your Light!" the sole Shin guard called. "There's a message from the north tower. A group has been spotted on the edge of the Fire Lands!"
"How large?" Pedi asked. She moved to the bastion's parapet and craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse beyond the northern defenses of the town.
"I don't know," the guard replied. "The message was simply 'a group.' " He pointed to the northern bastion, where a red flag with a complex design had been raised.
"Time to switch positions, people," Roger said. He turned and headed for the ladder. "I don't like this timing."
* * *
"Shit." Roger dialed back the magnification on his helmet. "Unless I'm much mistaken, that's a Scourge raiding party. How the hell did they get around our backside that way?"
"We knew that the Scourge had found a way through the Fire Lands," Pedi told him almost absently, straining her own eyes as she stared out over the wall. "We should have remembered that.I should have remembered, since it was how I came to be in their hands before the Lemmar captured me. But all of their captives were hooded on the way through the lava fields, so I was unable to tell Father where their route lies." She snorted bitterly. "It would seem they have chosen to use it again."
