The Starfollowers of Coramonde

by Brian Daley

  Besides those who might be this Lord of the Just and Sudden Reach and his subalterns, there was a strangely matched trio speaking softly together to one side. One was a sour-faced man, skinny, and not looking the part of a warrior. Moreover, he had an odd metal framework hung from his ears, which held circles of glass before his eyes. Doubtless a warlock.

  The second was plainly a savage of some type, wearing only a cincture and gloves, a heavy cestus on his left hand and a gauntlet with long, curving claws on his right. The third was more noteworthy, a woman decked out in armor, with knives strapped to her hips and a sword slung at her back. Her blond hair, bleached nearly white by the desert sun, fell to her waist. A woman, thought Aranan, allowed to go about as if she were a man? Really, the perversions of these outlanders! He hid his shame and fury, that a lowly female should witness the disgrace of an Occhlon general.

  In anger, he squared off before the tall warrior he assumed to be King. From habit, Aranan set his left hand on his empty scabbard. “We stand as your prisoners today, my Lord of the Just and Sudden Reach, but you would do well to remember balances; there is symmetry to war, as to the Wheel of Fate.”

  The man of Freegate looked him over carefully. “What would that mean, pray?”

  “That your grasp has overextended itself, and will be lopped off in due course. You have come too far.”

  “So? Never would we have raised the banner of war to you, but that you did so to us.”

  The Southwastelander’s face reddened under sun-browned skin. “My sword would answer you, were we on the field. We are Occhlon, a warrior race, premier in duty to our Masters!”

  “Among others, you mean?” the outlander asked with honest interest.

  “Lions among warriors!” the desert man barked. “There are the Baidii, but they are ancient, decadent and unworthy. And there are the Odezat, who fight more for pay than pride, but before all others there are the Occhlon.”

  “Your race lives for war, then?”

  Aranan’s chest puffed with pride. “Inspired to arms, we rose as the new champions of Salamá.”

  The mustache moved, a smile showing beneath it. “The field is ours today.”

  “Your reversal is forthcoming.”

  The northerner caught his lip between thumb and forefinger. “Our full strengths are yet to be matched.”

  Aranan spat on the carpet. “Strengths? Match yours against mine then, dung-eater!” He held his right hand out, daring the Freegater to try wrists. The northerner looked the hand over speculatively, but restrained himself.

  Another came forward, the savage whom Aranan had noticed. He watched the Southwastelander for a moment, then threw his left hand up and took the challenge. His fingers, in their cestus, interlaced with Aranan’s. “If you would try your might and main with the King of Freegate, your wish is now come as fact.”

  The Occhlon’s eyebrows shot up. “You?”

  Reacher saw no need to repeat it. Hands bore down and wrists flexed. There was a slight quivering as they stepped up their efforts. The southerner was shocked at the absolute resistance he met. Aranan, ever a winner at the wrist-duel, huffed and strove, but never gained a hairsbreadth.

  Reacher exerted himself. A sudden yielding, and their hands flip-flopped. It was the field marshal’s hand bent up and under, and he who cried in pain. Reacher let go and turned from him at once. Guards moved to take the prisoners away, but the general resisted, addressing Reacher’s back.

  “Go into Mother Desert then,” he invited, “go find your end. We are many, and we are ready. And forget it not, that you are rousing older, more terrible wrath. Do you think we fly the banner of Ibn-al-Yed idly, or that all his magic died with him? Mother Desert, and the Five who rule her, have many, many secrets to bring out in their good time. The Scorpion Flag is not thrown down so rudely.”

  Reacher, back still turned, gestured. The guards hustled the prisoner away. The officer who’d refused Aranan’s challenge said, “Will there be aught else, sire?” The King shook his head. They bowed, though he didn’t face them.

  His second-in-command, Katya, came to him. “Surely you pay that blusterer no mind?” she pressed. “We have broken them; they have no men left in this land to send at us.”

  “Which, I believe, is what your brother’s fretting about,” interjected Van Duyn. “The Masters have sent the majority of their manpower elsewhere, it seems, and you’ve dealt with what was left. Still, I’d say it’s obvious that they’re determined to buy time. Now, with no mundane resources left, to what will they resort, d’you suppose? Reacher’s wondering what else they might have in, um, reserve, just as I am.”

  The King confirmed it. The Snow Leopardess shook her head, white-gold shimmering. “Borrow no trouble, brother.” She took her casque up. “I will make the rounds.”

  Van Duyn said he’d come, and she accepted cheerily. She wanted to hear more of the tales he’d been telling her from medieval Japanese history. She thought highly of that culture.

  When they’d left, Reacher went to the flaps of his tent. The sun was setting on the Southwastelands. He wished he were back with his lupine foster brothers, running the High Ranges. What, indeed, would the Five send against him, now that their armed resistance had been thrown back?

  The King, stretching his fingers in their cestus and clawed glove, was plagued by that.

  Making his uneventful circuit of the camp, the guard swayed now and then in the saddle. Protracted battle had sapped the strength of every man in the army of Freegate, and the Horseblooded as well.

  His mount stopped, sniffing the slow breeze. He could see nothing there, but became more alert. It might be some jackal or other scavenger from the battlefield below, but again it might be an enemy. He clucked and advanced beyond the torchlight ring to investigate.

  His death, punctuated by his screams, roused that end of the camp. Two more guards came, shields up, lances ready, to see what had happened to their comrade. From the darkness came a rasping, like the uneven release of some immense, ratcheted wheel. Red points of light gleamed. One sentinel veered toward those, lance-head going before.

  His weapon was seized and snapped like a splinter, he and his horse flung aside with absolute force. The second rider bore in on the intruder’s side, though he couldn’t make out clearly what it was. His lancehead was stopped as if he’d ridden into a boulder, lifting him from his saddle; his horse foundered for a moment, was grasped and raised in the air. There was a sound like rusty, grinding metal, and the animal’s sides and neck were crushed.

  Horns blew, raising the alarm. Relief sentries grabbed torches and rode out behind their watch commanders. In Van Duyn’s tent, the Snow Leopardess and the American awoke. They slipped on clothes, took up weapons, and threw back the door-hangings. From there, they gaped out at the cause of the furor.

  Some Power had dispatched a servant against the invading army, an old and dreaded guardian of Mother Desert. While men rode in circles around it, waving firebrands and yelling half in provocation, half in terror, the enormous scorpion moved with purpose toward the slope leading to the King’s pavilion. This servant of Salamá had been set to slay the King of Freegate, removing the motivating force of the invasion. Katya saw that the thing didn’t swerve from its course when archers swooped in to loose their shafts at close range, nor did it stop to rend the fallen with its chelicerae and feed on soft tissues and juices. Its pharynx pumped, anticipating food, and its mouth frothed, but there was only one man in the camp who would sate its hunger.

  Arrows bounced off it; spears did no better, and sword cuts rebounded unnoticed. Strident raspings of its pedipalps against its walking legs announced its anger, but it wouldn’t be turned aside. A horseman came too close; the monster picked up his vibrations through its pectines, pivoted with amazing agility and trapped him in its claw, snipping him neatly in two. His companions fell back in horror. The scorpion dropped the pieces and scuttled on quickly.

  “He’s seen it,” the Snow Leopardess
said. At the summit of the hill, Reacher had appeared, staring down tight-faced at the monster. Katya wasn’t so contemplative; she took the first horse she came to, sword in hand. Van Duyn, looking around, could find no other mount. Shouldering the Garand, he went off after her at a trot.

  The camp was fully aroused, and more coherent defense took shape. A line of pikemen grounded their weapons’ butts and formed their hedge. The emissary of the Masters crunched in among them like a machine though, and the polearms were turned aside or snapped off by its thick chitin. Several of the heavily armored horsemen had been stung, and now the envenomed tail darted in among the infantrymen, everywhere at once, passing through their mail. Soldiers heaved in convulsions, their autonomic systems paralyzed. The blue of cyanosis was in some faces already, from the massive doses of poison meted out. Death was nearly immediate.

  Kisst-Haa and another reptile-man lumbered up to block its way, their armored tails thrashing. Kisst-Haa’s first blow missed; the scorpion’s movements were too quick. It struck him down with a claw, and he lay still. The sting curled in, quick as thought, transfixing the other reptile-man, piercing the scales of his breast. He went down, filled with poison; the monster clambered on over his body.

  Off to one side a ballista cracked, one of the many captured war machines. Its long shaft went true, but rattled off the thick plates covering the creature.

  Katya broke through the lines of demoralized soldiers. She galloped behind the thing, knowing its pedipalpi and stinging tail could only strike to the front. She cut at the busy tail as hard as she could, but only notched her sword. The scorpion whirled in an instant, catching her horse’s leg. She jumped free, but the animal died with a pitiful whinny. The thing started for Reacher’s pavilion. The King waited, analyzing its attack.

  Van Duyn came up with his M-l, to bar the way. The Garand belted against his shoulder over and over, empty shell casings flying from its breach. He used a whole clip, but the scorpion was unscathed. Its tiny median eyes and the smaller clusters on its side margins might be vulnerable, but they were impossible to hit at this range in torchlight. The monster swarmed past the helpless American.

  Alone now in his pavilion, Reacher collected a pair of javelins and a long firebrand, and loped toward the captured siege machines. He knew scorpions usually lie in wait and seize their prey rather than give chase, and had incorporated that in his plan. Moments later the monster plowed into the deserted pavilion like a reaping machine, flailing and snapping with its pedipalpi, shredding thick fabric, crushing tentpoles. Finding its prey gone, it reversed field and backed out of the ruin, its pectines listening, making its rasp of agitation.

  The monster had detected Reacher now, charging off on his trail. The King had gotten to the ballista, now left unmanned, its crew gone to join their captain. Dropping his javelines and propping his torch in the sand, he began spinning the winch to prime the colossal bow-engine, his back and arms bunching with effort. Hand over hand he turned the wheel that drew the great nock back.

  He heard rasping and left the machine as the scorpion flailed out of the night at him. Reacher grabbed the torch and a javelin and dashed out onto open sand, moving over it lightly, his stride resilient. The creature came after, wallowing a little in the looser sand, away from the summit of the camp. The King raced in a wide arc, drawing it along. When he had a fair lead on it, he dug his heels in to stop in a spray of granules, and grounded the torch.

  He poised, took a few running steps and cast hard at his pursuer, then sped away again. The weapon clattered at the thick carapace, glancing near the tiny median eyes. The scorpion stopped, rasped in furious challenge, then hurried after. But Reacher had dashed ahead, circled and come back to the half-cocked ballista. He jumped to the winch, taking the wheel through full turns at a time.

  Other warriors caught up now, but he waved them back; no weapon they carried could serve his purpose. The clash of chitinous armor came from the night. The King found the last prop he needed, a thick-beamed brace, like a sawhorse of logs, part of a disassembled trebuchet. He jerked it cleanly, to carry it at chest height, walking step by slow step to set it in front of the ballista.

  As the scorpion came into the light again, on his fleet trail Reacher snatched the remaining javelin and another torch. The scorpion sidled around to block him, anticipating his moves now. He broke to the right, releasing the other javelin, pivoting off his follow-through. The barbed head struck in among the foaming pharynx, making a wound this time. The grating of the monster’s wrath drowned out all other sounds, as it ripped out the javelin.

  It tried to close on him, but its claws clacked shut on empty air; Reacher had circled off to the right. They began a hair-raising dance, the King trying to stay away from his foe by staying close in behind it, the scorpion whirling madly to catch him. Van Duyn and Katya arrived, but couldn’t intervene or shoot in the darkness and constant, unpredictable motion.

  Reacher leapt, backpedaled and changed field. Spinning on its pairs of walking legs, the creature came near but never quite caught the monarch of Freegate. Bit by bit he teased and baited the monster to the position in which he wanted it.

  He skipped to the right, ducked under the claw that swung at him, and threw the torch into the chattering pharynx. The scorpion hissed, but he disappeared just before the sting smashed into the sand where he’d stood. Reacher whacked the sickle tail with his cestus and, spinning on his heel, dashed away.

  The scorpion scuttled after, driven mad by the taunting. Reacher sprinted toward the ballista, arms and legs pumping, head rising and falling in steady rhythm. Behind him came the pounding of the beast’s walking legs, the creak of unlimbering claws eager for his flesh.

  Just before he got to the ballista, he took to the air like a hart, and used the brace as a springboard. The scorpion, an instant behind him, scrambled up with its pincers spread. The King perched on the ballista’s long muzzle for a single glance back; the monster was hauling itself up hastily, all in its rage, sure it had him. Its walking legs clicked on the brace, its pincers clamped on the ballista’s huge wooden stave, tilting its snout down.

  Reacher gathered himself and dove flawlessly over the rear end of the siege engine, catching the halyard as he passed, tugging it free. The titan’s-bow released.

  The shaft, longer and heavier than a knight’s lance, tipped with steel, sprang point-blank into the scorpion’s underplate, where its carapace was joined. The monster’s breath whistled; its limbs thrashed, and it toppled, to writhe on its back in the sand. Sluggish juices ran from it. It struggled to right itself, the primitive nervous system surrendering to spasms. Soon, all its movements were random, erratic. Gradually, they became feeble. The King edged closer; Van Duyn and the Snow Leopardess joined him, along with revived Kisst-Haa. The side-margin eyes seemed to pick the little monarch out, burning with impotent hatred.

  The tumult had been heard in the prisoners’ tent but, shackled to their tentpole, surrounded by glittering spears, they were ignorant of what it meant. Aranan thought he knew though; in a way, he felt sorry for the King and his men, that they must go down to a Summoning, and not the proper force of arms.

  The curtain was tossed back. The King of Freegate strode into the room. He had Aranan unchained, then hauled him to his feet. Reacher turned and went back out; a foot taller than the King, a hundred pounds heavier, the general was tugged along helplessly, like some gangling adolescent.

  Reacher dragged him down the slope and flung him headlong to the ground before the quivering body of the scorpion. Its legs and terrible claws waved aimlessly, all but still. The long ballista iron rose from its carapace like a bare flagpole. The general tried to form words, but no sounds came.

  The King went down on one knee beside him, taking the edge of his breastplate and yanking him close. As ever, the words came softly.

  “There is your emblem itself cast down.” Aranan mouthed like a fish. Reacher shoved him, and he fell back in the sand under the stars and the Trailingsw
ord. “Tell me now,” Reacher invited, “how your Mother Desert will deal with me.”

  Aranan, in a fit of childish pique, burst out, “Hold this deed in your heart; you will have no other like it. Brave acts of arms will avail nothing if you are ill-starred enough to win through to—” He caught himself.

  “Go on with it,” the King provoked him, “finish your threat.”

  Aranan yielded to the baiting. “March south then, you overweaning savage. Shardishku-Salamá has that protection through which no mortal may win, the Host of the Grave.”

  Reacher, his emotions veiled again, left the man there. He went to stand among the wreckage of his pavilion, head bent in thought. The phrase took up residence in his apprehensions: the Host of the Grave.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  All in a hot and copper sky,

  The bloody sun, at noon…

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  THERE’D been no patrols from the southerners. They must fear little, Springbuck thought, here at the inner door to their heartlands. The Ku-Mor-Mai had thought to lead the flanking party himself, but Hightower had gruffly pre-empted him.

  Ironically, the added light of the Trailingsword became a complication. Hightower decided to minimize the danger of discovery by keeping to the shadows along the base of the crags forming the valley. He’d gone among the thousands, picking whom he wanted, five hundred men with infantry experience.

  Armor had been lamp-blackened, boots muffled, and metal sollerets and all needless trappings abandoned. Scabbards were wrapped with dark cloth to prevent sound. Each man had a light pack of provisions, climbing rope and water skin. Most bore lances to serve as pikes, but some had bows and quivers.

  They set out under a new moon, bent to inspect the ground over which they must find their way, each within arm’s reach of the man in front of him. At the fissures, they would rope themselves together. The gradual coiling of their march went slowly. Springbuck, seeing how difficult it was, hoped they’d have time to reach their goal and dig in before daylight. Scouts had already been sent to find another way, however precarious, to the end of the valley. The chaotic peaks and falls of the region made it dangerous, even for practiced mountaineers.