“I”--she pointed to herself--”Yek Mongol. Your”
“HaBandari,” Shulamit replied. This one must be from a long way away. A haBandari was distinctive enough, and a haBandari woman doubly so. “Go Ashkabad? Take Borte there, your people?”
The Mongol girl’s face went dull, expression draining out of it; she turned away, rolling herself into the blankets.
What did I say? Shulamit thought, and then dismissed it; it was surprising how well the other had born up, actually, better than many of the People would have in the same circumstances. She unbuckled her boots, put her weapons by her saddle and slid into her own bag; Pale-made, with a quilted lining and quick-release latches.
“There?” she said to Gorthaur, pointing to where one of the moons would be in six hours: they had divided the watches six and four, in practical recognition of the Sauron’s lesser need for sleep.
“Yes,” he said shortly, picking up a loose-woven wolfcloak of tamerlane fur and stalking away to a vantage point.
The haBandari lay back, feeling her teeth show in an unpleasant grin as he stalked away, unconsciously tracking his boots on the loose rock. It was difficult, he was extremely quiet for a man of the weight she remembered. She gathered the upper flap of her bag around her head, breathing through the fringe of cliff lion underfur, that had the unique property of shedding moisture. Sleep came quickly; rest was life, you could not afford to waste it. But it was light, a doze that left her half-conscious of outside noise; after an hour or so she blinked back to wakefulness.
What is that? A low whimpering and rustling behind her, three meters away. Oh. Borte was stirring in her sleep, in the grip of nightmare.
“Yewehdammit. Some p’rknz is playing a joke on me.” It followed me home, ma: do I have to keep it? she asked herself rhetorically. To the People there was no particular obligation to aid a stranger, but she could scarcely withdraw help once given. I’ll hand her over to whoever her kin are in town and that’ll be the end of it, Shulamit thought. Which left the little matter of getting there, it was four hundred kilometers of hostile territory. In theory a haBandari ought to be able to cross the steppe hereabouts, the Pale had a treaty with the rulers of Ashkabad for safe-transit. Practice was another matter entirely.
Sighing, she wormed her way over to the Mongol like a caterpillar in a sleeping-bag cocoon and tapped her on the shoulder. Borte came half awake with a start.
“It’s all right,” Shulamit said muzzily. “Go back to sleep.”
The cold had turned bitter when Gorthaur awoke her, scuffing his foot through the scree an arm’s length away. Reflex brought her up with the pistol in her hand, and frost crackled off the fur of the bag’s flap. Her first thought was resentment that he had awakened her before the time. That died as she saw the wary crouch of his stance: she slid silently out of the bag and refastened her boots. The fire had died to cold ash, and the breeze blew wisps of it about her, a sad bitter smell. The wind was down from the heights, cold air falling toward the relative warmth of the steppe trough.
“I hope this is important,” she whispered, following the Sauron to a rock-ridge. He pointed toward the western plain, that fell away from the foothills in a rolling plateau slashed with erosion gulleys. Shulamit closed her eyes as she pulled on her gloves, working stiffened fingers in the lambswool lining, then used them to shield her nightsight from the light of Cat’s Eye while she scanned; it was just a little too dim to be able to tell a white thread from a black. Nothing, she thought, peering out from beneath. Absolutely nothing. Of course, low-light night like this was worse for long-distance sight than the rare occasions of total dark.
“Well?” she said.
“Campfires, and large bodies of men and animals,” he said; his tone was as flat as ever, but she thought the crisp-vowelled Sauron accent was heavier. “I can see their heat.”
Shulamit winced, and drew her spyglass. “Point me,” she said. After a minute: “I think I can see one or two. I’ll take your word for the rest . . . what patterns?”
“Nothing regular,” Gorthaur said. “Larger fires, then smaller scattered around, with the animal sources further out still. Several dozen in all. Six to twelve kilometers from here, and directly on our route.”
The haBandari grunted. Not Saurons, then; they lit fires the way they did everything else, by the numbers and in straight lines. An army of the People was unlikely in the extreme, but even if there had been a haBandari force it would be grouped by squads and clan regiments. . . . Locals, then or--
“More of those Cossaki?” she asked.
“Impossible to say,” the Sauron said thoughtfully. “There have been operations in their sector--” he shut his mouth with a snap. “They have just made camp; if we leave within an hour, we will have the best chance of evading their pickets.”
“North or south?” she asked. Neither of them knew the ground in detail. South puts us closer to the Pale if we can’t make Ashkabad. North is closer to Quilland Base.
Gorthaur stared out into the night. “Logically, either might be better. Therefore there is only one sensible method of deciding.” He smiled and drew a silver coin from one of the patch-pockets that half covered his field uniform; Citadel-minted, the only stamped currency on Haven. One side bore the dagger shape of the Dol Guldur, the other an ancient motto of the Saurons in the Old Americ tongue: KILL ‘EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT ‘EM OUT. “Print or Pirate?” he said.
“I didn’t quite believe you, when you said your people could keep up with mine,” Toktai son of Yuechi said, watching the two columns pass below the hill-crest. “Those tall horses of yours look fine, but I’d have sworn they couldn’t keep up with our ponies.”
There were a hundred and fifty haBandari, as many of his household retainers. Twenty hours out from Ashkabad there was little difference in appearance, although the Mongols had started the journey more colorfully dressed; now both were the reddish-brown color of steppe dust. The warriors of the Pale were equipped alike, corselets and thigh-guards of overlapping bullhide plates on a backing of woven drillbit gut, bucket-shaped helmets; his men wore what they could afford, from a few with steel armor like his to a majority in lacquered leather. The haBandari weapons were similar to his; bow, saber, and knife, and a third carried lances as well. And a dozen bore rifles: the prince suppressed a moment of envy at that. His own pistols were the sole powder weapons among his band, more ornament than weapon. Well, the hornbow was the khan of weapons on the steppe, and the Mongol were second to none with that.
“Oh, they can’t,” Karl said, keeping his binoculars to his eyes and scanning westward; the party from Ashkabad was keeping to the edge of a string of volcanic hills, to reduce the plume of betraying dust. Of course, the gravel and sharp-edged rock was harder on the unshod nomad horses, but it was worth it. “Not for more than a week or so. War’s more confined, down here in the southern steppe.” A week’s hard ride from the Afritsberg to the Iron Limpers, and five from Quilland Base to the scrub-forests at the southern border of the Pale.
“Dust,” he continued, and passed the glasses to his ally.
“Tcha,” Toktai muttered, focusing them. “I wish your kapetein would sell us more of these . . . ahhh. Enough for five hundred men, in loose formation.”
“Or ten scouts dragging brush, or a herd of cattle,” Karl said, naming two of the classic tricks of open-country warfare. “We could put out a scout-screen? We need to know how many, their leaders--we need prisoners and reports.”
Toktai looked down at the passing warriors, thudding clatter of hoofs, creak of leather, rattle of iron; the light of the quarter-Cat’s Eye painted the edges of the lanceheads with blood.
“Yes. And that also warn them,” he said, beating one fist on his thigh. “Curse those turki dogs for fools and cowards!” His rage at the Turkmen tributaries of his folk seemed almost as great as what he felt for the invaders. “We’ve already come across two camps of them burned out by the Cossaki, yet they flee us as if we were the enemy!”
Karl shrugged. “I see the hand of Quilland Base in this,” he said “Those tribute parties probably passed the word to some of the clan chiefs; and the Cossaki are heading straight south like an arrow, killing everything in their path. The local tribes figure if they get out of the way they won’t suffer: and they’re more afraid of the Saurons than of you, my friend.
“Erika,” he turned to his wife, where she sat with compass and mapboard. She looked up at him, and a cold knot turned tighter in his gut at the calm confidence in her hazel eyes. Spirit of Piet, I wish I could send her out, he thought. ‘Courier back to Ashkabad and priority to Fort Kidmi; minimum two thousand sabers heading south. This is going to be the biggest fracas since the Aydin War.” She pulled out a scrap of brown rag-paper and began to write.
“In the meantime, our kinswomen are behind that,”
Toktai said, jerking his chin toward the eastern horizon. “To rescue, or avenge.”
“Yes, there is that.” Karl bar Yigal grinned, teeth white against the dirt-caked brown of his skin. Erika looked up from her note taking and stared at the expression wide-eyed; it was not a pleasant one, or something she had seen on her husband’s face before. “So if we can’t scout them, we’d better hit before they realize we’re coming.” Cut through the screen of outriders any force on the steppe drew about itself, cleave like a lancehead to the core of the enemy host, slash their way out again.
Whup.
“Shit!” Shulamit yelled, as the arrow split the air a meter from her ear. “Back, you cowfucker!” More yells from the pursuers, a high yip-yip-yip like animals in pain.
She twisted in the saddle; the long swooping rhythm of the gallop made that easy, wind cuffing at her face, huge muscles bunching and straightening beneath her knees. The bow came up in her hands and she locked a thumb over the shaft and drew. A Pale-made bow, the unique bare first crafted by the legendary weaponsmith Kosti Gimbutas, at the beginning of the People. With a rigid centerpiece, cut from the heart of the clownfruit tree; a molded pistol grip, with a cutout rest for the arrow, and a sighting ring above it; thick laminated arms, with the string running over offset bronze wheels at the tip of either stave.
Knock to the string, shaft to the ear, and loose, she thought, as the crosshairs fell on the Cossaki’s chest: there was the familiar rattle and hum, the snap of the string and the blurring trajectory, almost too swift and flat to see. Three hundred meters behind her the foremost Cossaki checked, threw himself flat along his mount’s neck as the arrow wasp-whined through the space he had occupied a second earlier; the other seven behind him came on, howling like stobor. Rabid stobor they were, but she had taught them respect for the haBandari bow; there had been ten of them, to begin with. It had taken that many for them to realize she outranged them by a third. Grudging respect: But they can ride and shoot, curse them.
She clamped her knees tighter, leaned forward again with the horses mane whipping into her eyes, that made less of a target--though it means if they do hit me it’s in the rump--if they hit the horse, she was dead, that was all--
“Come on, myn lekke, my sweet,” she crooned to the animal; its head was plunging, pumping up and down to the hrrrt-brrrt-brrrt of its hooves on the sandy dirt. Lather streaked its flanks and spattered musky across her face, but she could feel the spirit of a beast that would run until the heart burst in its chest. “Greutferd, g’rionferd, great horse, hero horse, you shall graze in clover and bear foals to the finest stallions in the Pale, run you bitch, run.”
The slope was coming up towards her, half a thousand meters high of sand and tumbled rock and bush; the Cossaki would be expecting to pin her against it or shoot her down as she climbed. And the mouth of the gully, wide enough for three riders abreast, shadow and the green-gray-red banded volcanic rock. Shulamit pressed inward with her toes, and the horse slowed fractionally as they plunged into the gloom; even with a mount as fine as this, you did not take rough ground that fast. A dogleg, right, left, cliffs like walls on either side where long-ago floods had carved the rock. Echoes, pounding hooves back redoubled and--
Yes. The file-on-rock shrieks of the Cossaki, loud enough to make her mare start and roll its eyes, almost crashing them into a boulder.
“Yeweh Mog’n haBandari!” she muttered in wonder, as hands and knees and weight made their dance of control with the horse. “Yeweh Shield of the People! Gorthaur was right, they followed me right in!”
Rock blurred by on either side, reaching for her with fingers of thorny qosbush. This was going to be tricky, the accursed gayam weren’t slowing down at all, only the twists of the gulley were keeping them off her back, and--
Light slapped at her eyes as the walls fell away; the opening was egg-shaped, a hundred meters broad and twice as long. “Heeeeeeeyaaaiiii!” she screamed, hauling the reins back. The horse screamed as well, high and shrill, neck arching, haunches sinking almost into a squat, almost going over but not quite, rearing and pig-jumping forward as it shed momentum. She brought it up and around again, wheeling in place, dropping just in time to let her snatch another shaft from the quiver before her right knee.
The first Cossaki came into the amphitheatre at a flat gallop that stretched his horse out along the ground, secure in the saddle as a centaur or an ancient Terran Commanche. There was nothing wrong with his reflexes either; he was drawing on her even as her arrow punched crack through the horn scales sewn to his long leather coat, through breastbone and spine with a wet crunch to flip him over his horse’s tail; the beast bucked and ran, circling the cliff and bugling its panic. Gorthaur had been waiting in the shadow by the narrow slit in the rock, with his saber cocked back over one shoulder. He was not an expert rider, nor trained to the sword. He did not need to be; the steel was a shining arc in his hand, and the next Cossaki tumbled to the gravel cut almost in half.
Then the others were out, bursting past the ambuscade, turning their mounts and drawing steel. Shulamit had just enough time to drop the bow into its case, snatch her buckler and draw before two of them came at her. Two to one was bad odds; she clapped heels to her mount and passed them on their left, ducking under a cut and slashing a blindside backswing behind her. The saber jarred in her hand as the armor over the man’s shoulder blades turned it.
“HaBandar!” she shouted as she reined about. The two foemen had done likewise; in a frozen moment she could hear a clash and scream from the group about Gorthaur, but there was no time to worry about that. If only they could use their pistols . . . no, that was death, the echoes carried too far in these badlands.
Two men, one in a leather breastplate and spiked steel helm, the other in sheepskin cap and jacket. Sharp-curved swords, plainsmen’s shamshirs, small bucklers like hers with central handgrips. Her armor was better, something of an advantage. She would need it.
“HaBandar!” The horses bounded forward off their haunches; she headed for the slight gap between her opponents. There was a brutal jarring as her tall mare slammed its shoulder into that of one man’s mount. That threw his cut off; Shulamit caught the stroke, his partner on her own sword, held it for a crucial moment while her left hand chopped the iron rim of her shield into the nose of the first man’s horse. It reared, bucked, twisted, out of control for crucial moments.
Kill him, kill him, kill him now, she thought, as the shamshir scraped along her saber with a long shungggg of steel on steel. They wheeled and cut, hard jarring in her wrist and arm as blade beat on shield, on blade, on shield. Shit, he’s too good, she thought, pushing despair back below the surface of the combat-mind. Man and horse both, he seemed to have never heard of the point but he was fast, she’d have to work his blade out of line. . . .
A flicker from the corner of her eye, the other Cossaki getting his horse in hand, but she couldn’t spare the attention, his friend was beating on her guard like a smith on an anvil--once and she brought the buckler around and up in a circle, protection without covering her eyes. The scimitar snicked off the curved leather with a hard bang
, deflected, reversed, came at her again in a smooth backhand cut. She pulled the hilt of her sword back, saw his eyes widen--thought I’d lock hilts and you could disarm me, didn’t you, gayam--and two she ducked and felt the edge ring off her helmet, stars and lights before her eyes, sick pain in her neck, but the point of her sword flicked forward. Sharp point, on a blade built to thrust as often as cut; punching through the leather coat, into muscle and gut that felt soft and heavy against her wrist.
Swordfighting was close work, no elegant affair of arrows where tiny doll figures fell off model horses while you rode away. Close enough to hear your opponent pant, close enough to smell his sweat. Shulamit set her teeth and withdrew as she had been taught, with a wrenching twist; making herself see the man’s face as a thing of shapes and colors, not human, not a mouth flaring out in pain, not eyes that knew their own death. Her blade shed an arc of red drops as she wheeled to guard against the other. The other who should have killed her already, Gorthaur was still fighting . . .
He was on the ground; beside a horse that dragged itself along on its forelegs, hamstrung. The man was dragging himself, too, crawling doggedly as Borte hacked at him, holding a saber in a two-handed grip like a farmer threshing grain. The Mongol girl was spattered from knees to face with the products of her earnest, clumsy butchery; Shulamit could hear it, whacking sounds as the sword turned on his hard-leather backplate, chunking as the notched edge met flesh. One wild flail crossed the back of his neck, and he stopped, spasmed, died.
Borte dropped the sword, looked up at Shulamit. “I cut the horse,” she said calmly. “It threw him, he landed on his face. Then I cut him.”
“You saved my life,” Shulamit said, feeling the same glassy detachment.
“You avenged my honor, even though blood cannot wipe out my shame,” Borte replied formally. Then she knelt and began retching bile.
The haBandari blinked bewilderment, even as she turned to confirm what peripheral vision had told her, that all the Sauron’s opponents were down. Shame? she thought. Doing pretty dam’ well, for a gayam. Especially a gayam woman, untrained to arms. Was she ashamed because she lacked a warrior’s skills? Some non-Bandari thought like that; the People held that war was waste, not glory, and trained to it because they must. There were some fire-eating youngsters who thought differently, of course; she wiped at the sticky drops on her face and wished that she could have some of them here.
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 31
