War World III: Sauron Dominion

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Are you injured?” Gorthaur called to her sharply. That brought her back to herself; she took a deep breath and forced alertness. Actual detectable concern in his voice, she thought sardonically. Why, Gorthaur, I didn’t know you cared. Her horse cantered over to the amphitheatre’s only exit, then shied at something that twitched.

  “No,” she said, looking down. The sight caught her attention; hand-to-hand combat with edged weapons was always gruesome, but this . . . Once she had worked for a summer in a wind-powered sawmill, on the southern border of the Pale; there had been an accident, one of the workers thrown into the path of the circular saw. This was like that, only repeated four times. She looked up to meet Gorthaur’s eyes; they were more alive than she had seen them, darting about, and she could see a flush on his cheeks. Maybe I was being overoptimistic, she thought, remembering her estimate that she could take the Soldier, wounded and unarmed. He let me live. Probably because I’m a woman: the more fool him.

  “I--” he glanced at the sword in his hand, began to wipe it. “We do not do much of this sort of combat,” he said. “At close quarters, like this. Against doctrine,” he continued, almost caressing the steel. There were a few superficial cuts on his face and arms, clotting even as she watched.

  “Your doctrine sucks wet muskylope farts,” Shulamit answered sincerely. “Your ancestors should have used more bombs, wiped out everyone who knew how to make gunpowder weapons. Hand to hand, there’d be no stopping you.”

  “There were considerations--” Gorthaur stopped, and his voice returned to the neutral tone. “This was . . . exhilarating, nonetheless,” he said. “Come.”

  Shulamit nodded; they had punched a hole in the enemy’s screen, thanks to a reckless bloodlust that Gorthaur had described and she had scarcely been able to believe. Now they had to get through it before it closed.

  “Borte!” she shouted. “Poed bruk, ans trek!” Damn, I’m forgetting. “Get our stuff, we’ve got to move.”

  Exhilarating, she mused, as the Mongol led out their remounts. HaBandari records went back to the coming of the Dol Guldur, if scantily; the Founder had written that the Empire of Man destroyed itself to crush the Saurons and scorch their homeworld. Now I see why.

  “Remember to lead him,” Erika told herself, snuggling her cheek into the cold wood of the rifle stock. “Breathe in. And out. Don’t think, this isn’t the time or place.” The tremor died out of her hands.

  The haBandari main body was nearly a thousand meters to her front, dipping in and out of sight as they galloped in a compact body before three times their number of pursuers. A mob, she thought. I can’t believe they’re going to fall for the same trick again. With another trick inside it, this time. For that matter, it was taking these Cossaki a long time to grasp that their bows simply did not have the range of the haBandari bare; there was a long train of bodies across the steppe, almost all enemy. Every one of them a human being. “He who saves the life of one, it is as if he has saved the whole human race--”

  “Stop that!” she scolded herself sharply. “If a man come up against thee, to slay thee, slay him first.” That was also the Law. Hooves made a thunder that vibrated the earth beneath her belly; the scent of horse and dirt and gun-oil was like a hunting trip, a drill, homelike. “Just a firing exercise,” she told herself. “The clan regiment’s out, and you’re showing what you’re made of.”

  The snipers of the Pale were lying in a staggered row, sighting across the saddles of horses trained to lie flat. Erika was in the center of that line, waiting as the chase drew nearer. Waiting, eight hundred meters, seven hundred, the horses turning from points to dolls to reality, looming out of the cloud of dust--

  Five hundred meters, she was sure of it. That was what the rifle’s sights were set for; she had always guessed right in the school range-estimation games, almost as often right as Shulamit; when was Itzhak going to--

  Crack. A dozen more; Erika’s finger stroked across the trigger. The flintlock kicked back into her shoulder; was that a man down, a horse tumbling, her doing, a life snuffed out? Impossible to tell; her hands moved, jerked at the lever that formed the triggerguard of the rifle. The mechanism clicked; a wedge swung down, and the iron and brass tube that sealed the breech popped up. Erika’s hand was already going back to the bandolier at her side for another of the paper cartridges as she blew sharply on the breech to make sure there were no sparks left.

  Bite the cartridge open, taste of sulfur and wax. Thumb over the end, use your hand to push the L-shaped pan cover and frizzen up. The first pinch of powder into the pan, the rest into the loading tube. Let the stubby cone of the bullet drop into your palm, thumb it into the barrel, jerk the lever forward. Visual check, to make sure the tube had slid forward into the breech, the wedge up behind to lock it. Pull the hammer back to full cock, click. Another target, not a man, a target, that was what Shulamit had told her, impatient when she asked what fighting was really like. And stroke the trigger, squeezing gently . . .

  Six times a minute in skilled hands, and the dozen rifles beat out a metronomic rhythm. The Cossaki band wavered, its pursuit of the haBandari turned to slaughter. If they run--Erika thought, as her hands moved through the drill. But they did not; instead they turned to the line of white puffs that marked the rifles and charged. There were still better than two hundred of them, only five hundred meters away. Half that, and they would be in arrow-range, dropping shafts on the marksmen hidden behind their mounts. There was not enough firepower in the haBandari firing line to stop them, not even with the mounted warband wheeling to race along behind their former pursuers. Not against men as brave as these; and these gayam were brave as g’rioni, heroes, you had to admit that. Erika saw Itzahk turn to wave behind, down the low slope at their backs.

  A jingling sounded, a clatter building to a thunder as the Mongols came up the rise that had concealed them. They threaded through the line of haBandari, building speed; the Cossaki band did not slow, it rippled with metal that blinked honed sharpness as the warriors cased their bows and drew steel. The warriors of the Pale did likewise, couching lance and laying sabers point-forward as they charged in wedge formation, a boulder-solid mass riding boot to boot. Erika expected a crash when the lines met, but instead there was only a sudden swelling of sound, scrap metal falling on stone, screaming, horses and warriors down in a mist of dust that rose saddle-high and glinted with movement.

  She sprang to her own feet, straddled her horse. “Up, Flower,’ she called; the animal rose in a surge, and she slid the rifle home in its scabbard as her feet found the stirrups.

  “Wait up,” Izthak called sharply, as she drew her saber. Her arm remembered the feel of the edge on meat; the clan drillmasters had students practice on animal carcasses occasionally, to get the sensation. It had been mildly disgusting at the time. Now it set her teeth on edge.

  “Wait up, you wildechaver,” the older man said again, as the snipers formed up in line. “Orders.” They were not to risk the firearms without need.

  But Karl’s down there! she cried within.

  “How many rounds?” he said.

  “Twenty-seven,” she replied automatically. The others spoke in turn; she was second-highest. That’s the price of eleven hundred sheep we’ve fired off today, some far-off irrelevant bookkeeper’s part of her mind recorded: Haven had many volcanoes but little sulfur. Ammunition was expensive, that was one of the many reasons firearms were rare.

  Itzhak’s eyes saw more than hers in the melee. “They’re breaking,” he said with satisfaction. First a scattering fleeing in all directions, like spattered droplets, then the whole of them, half as many as there had been a half hour before. “Right, let’s move.”

  Gorthaur reined in; his horse made a small sound of pain at the heavy tug on the reins. His head turned to the northwest, motionless for a moment. Then he dismounted briefly, pressing an ear to the ground.

  “There is a battle going on there,” he said as he rose and swung back into the saddle; he
did it swiftly, but without grace.

  “Nu?” Shulamit’s mount halted to the swing of her balance; she narrowed her eyes and peered. “Dust, yes, but we’ve been seeing that all day.”

  “Battle,” the Sauron said firmly. “I heard multiple firearms, and the hoof beats indicate a sizable mounted force in rapid motion. Not my people, black-powder weapons.”

  “Mmmm.” Shulamit blinked. She was exhausted, with a sick tiredness that owed more than a little to the blow she had taken five hours before; you paid for things like that. Think, cow, she told herself. “Well, that accounts for our getting through clear, once we took out those scouts, they pulled everything to meet whoever-it-is.” She reached for her canteen, then forced her hand away. There was not much left, and they had had to leave the camels. “South?” They should be nearly through the badlands in any case.

  Gorthaur nodded wordlessly and turned his horse’s head to the left.

  “Not going to win any prizes for small talk,” Shulamit muttered, following.

  “I was wrong,” Karl said, looking about. The Mongol troopers were walking their mounts delicately among the enemy fallen, spearing the wounded. Work the haBandari were glad to leave to their allies, essential though it was.

  Erika ignored the red-brown stickiness that coated her husband’s arm to the elbow and ran liquid on his sword; they leaned together in the saddle for a brief one-armed embrace.

  “I was wrong,” he said again, weariness in his voice. “This isn’t a warband on a raid, it isn’t even an army. It’s a fucking folk-migration, that’s what it is, and my temper got us right into the vanguard of it.” His shield-hand touched her on the cheek with a moment’s gentleness. “I’m sorry, Erika.”

  “I’m right where I want to be, Karl,” she said quietly. “With you.”

  They both looked up as Toktai reined in beside them with a spurt of gravel; there was a carnivore satisfaction on his face.

  “We gave them an expensive lesson,” he said.

  “Not one we can deal out again,” Karl replied, straightening. He pulled a cloth from his belt, looked at it, and threw it away, rummaging for a clean one in his saddlebags; even in an emergency, you did not sheath a blade with blood on it. “We’re running short of arrows, and most of my riflemen are down to a dozen rounds. Also there’ll be more of them, next time.” He looked down at the clump of enemy dead, at the scattering that trailed off across the rolling steppe. “They’re excellent individual fighters, but not very well ordered.”

  Toktai snorted. “Ordered? Stobor fighting over a dead horse have more discipline. One touman of my gur-khan’s troops could slaughter the lot of them.” He looked admiringly at the stolid clump of haBandari, caring for their wounded and seeing to their weapons. If they come against your people twenty thousand sabers strong, you will turn them into our advance, Karl my brother.”

  “Yes, we will,’ Erika said sharply. “And still there will be orphans, maimed, homes burned, and lives wrecked, even for those who live.”

  The Mongol looked at her with kindly tolerance; Erika felt her temper flare for the first time that day, and was glad when he turned back to her husband without answering.

  “We’re nearly to the canyon country,” Toktai continued. “We’ve punched right through, just as you said. In there, not ten times their number could find us, and I think they won’t stop.”

  “I don’t think they can stop, not if they have the Saurons at their back,” Karl said. His gaze swung consideringly to their north. “We’ve seen fighting men, mostly, only a few wagon trains.” Widely spread out, as any large movement must be, to give the draught animals grass and water. “The last two bands hit us too close together for my taste. They’ve got all the tactical cohesion of a tavern brawl, but somebody is directing them, and not badly. We’d better get moving; it all depends if whoever-it-is can get enough riders in front of us fast enough.”

  Toktai nodded. “Those we came to rescue ...” he shrugged. “They were caught like travelers in an avalanche; now we must rescue ourselves.” Grimly: “But vengeance we have had, and will.”

  “Vengeance tastes better as dessert than as appetizer,” Karl quoted: another saying of the Founder. “Let’s move.”

  “Down!” Gorthaur barked. Then: “No matter. They have identified us.”

  The Sauron was a little ahead of her on the slope, taking point while Shulamit rode beside Borte and the remount string; she spurred up beside him, peering ahead.

  “You certain?” she asked. The riders were a clump nearly three kilometers off, too far to make out details.

  The Soldier spared her a glance: “I said so,” he continued dryly. “They have altered direction toward us.” The three fugitives had been heading south and east, the party of Cossaki directly north. “Evidently they have a telescope of some sort.”

  “Yeweh dammit,” Shulamit said, feeling weight pressing down her shoulders. They should have been all right, the Cossaki should have assumed they were a part of this warband-army-host whatever. “I’m too old for this shit.” If--when--I get home, I’m going to endow a synagogue and buy a whole flock of sheep to sacrifice to the anima of the Founders. I must have done something horrendous to deserve this. You hear me, Yeweh? Piet? Ruth?

  Gorthaur blinked at her; a hundred hours at close quarters had shown her that was his equivalent of a puzzled frown. “I thought you were only twenty-one T-years,” he said.

  “That’s twenty-one T-years too many for this,” she said. “Which way do we run? Northeast?”

  This time Gorthaur did scowl. “Yes. Bad, but better than backtracking.” It would mean heading toward the action he had heard, but there were advantages to that; battle bred confusion. “Shulamit . . .”

  She looked up at his tone. “Shulamit, I have been . . . impressed with your abilities. Yours are obviously superior genes; it is . . . irresponsible that they should be wasted. When we have eluded pursuit, come with me to Quilland Base; you will have considerable status as my woman. You will be free of danger and labor, then; you deserve a civilized environment, and all you need do is bear Soldiers.”

  The haBandari stared at him, feeling her jaw drop slightly. She closed it with a snap. I thought jaws dropping in astonishment was a cliché, she told herself.

  “Nu, Gorthaur,” she replied. “Why don’t you give up being a Sauron and come to the Pale? I’ll get you a job in a coalmine, nice safe work.”

  They stared at each other for a moment in mutual bafflement, and then the Soldier shrugged the rifle off his back. “There is a horsetail banner with that party of Cossaki,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I can bring down a few of their commanders before they disperse; that will keep them from pressing us too closely, we may be able to lose them in favorable terrain.” He dismounted and trotted forward to find a prone firing position.

  Borte came up beside her. “What did Sauron say?” she asked as the first shot rang out.

  “I think he just . . . proposed marriage,” Shulamit answered. They looked at each other, and the haBandari saw the Mongol suddenly break into a grin.

  “Not . . . how say, not right time?” Borte said. Shulamit snorted.

  “You should have been born haBandari,” she said. “Now, let’s go.”

  “Yeweh’s eternal curse,” Karl said, lowering the binoculars. He turned to look behind them, and to either side.

  “What is it?” Erika rasped. This time she allowed herself a swallow of the brackish, bitter-tasting water in her canteen; it was glorious.

  “More Cossaki. Ahead of us. Between us and the badlands.”

  Itzhak bar David was near enough to hear. And for Erika to hear the phrase he murmured to herself, in a language far older than Bandarit: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

  “Oh.” Erika found herself making the same circuit of the horizon as her husband, past the exhaustion-slumped warriors sitting horses as droop-necked as themselves. There were converging dust plumes from east and southeast an
d northeast; and now directly ahead, from the west that had offered the false promise of safety. Dust, she thought bitterly, spitting to clear her throat and blowing her nose into the wadded linen of her handkerchief.

  “How many, my brother?” Toktai’s voice was almost as hoarse as hers.

  “Two hundred.” Less than the force they had left, but enough to hold them for the pursuers. Karl raised the field glasses again. “We underestimated whoever commands . . . wait.” His fingers moved on the beveled wood of the focusing screw. “Wait a minute, there’s somebody between them and us.” A pause. “Three riders, going flat out. Coming our way, they’ll get here first.” He shook his head. “Piet was right: luck does matter more than skill, at seventh and last. They’re being chased, whoever they are, and leading those Cossaki right into us.”

  Toktai growled something in barking Mongolian and spat on his hands before he drew his sword; their quivers were all empty, now. “Cut our way through them, eh?” he said. Karl forced a tired grin and fisted him on the shoulder.

  “As you say.” After the prince had wheeled off to take position before his countrymen, the haBandari spoke once more to his wife.

  “At my side, love.”

  “Always.” She took stance to his right and half a length behind, locking her toe underneath his stirrup iron. Tom Jerrison was on the other side, crusted sledge over his shoulder.

  With a hard snap, Karl called to Itzhak: “Sound charge, bar David!”

  The ram’s horn gave its daunting wail.