“I have heard the words of a coward!” shouted Safir Maraan in a high, clear voice. “And as an ‘ally’ ”—she bared her teeth in contempt—“who came here unasked for and without permission, I choose to go to the aid of another who was foolish enough to do the same!” She turned toward the wide-eyed Aryaalans in the gate towers.
“Open!”
“Do not!” screeched Prince Rasik. “I will have you impaled!” The windlass crews, torn between what they wanted to do and their terror, fled.
Queen Maraan turned and made a follow-me gesture to her guard. “We will go out the north gate, then,” she said to her warriors and stared at the royalty of Aryaal with feral hatred. “Perhaps we will only arrive in time to help them retreat, but it would be better to die with honorable strangers than continue to breathe the same air that has been corrupted by such cowardice.” Queen Maraan and her Six Hundred began to push through the Aryaalan troops.
“Stop her!” Rasik-Alcas screamed and leaped down from the litter, drawing his sword. In that instant, with hundreds of swords beginning to slide from their sheaths, Lord Rolak knew what he must do. He also knew that, whatever happened, they were probably doomed. He drew his own sword and stepped between Rasik and the queen. The prince stared at him in shock. Then, with a wild snarl, he lunged at Rolak with his sword. The old warrior batted it away with contemptuous ease and then laid the edge of his blade lightly against his prince’s throat. He looked over at Safir for just a moment, and nodded.
Another flare soared insistently into the heavens. He watched it rise, pop, and dissipate downwind. Physical shame coursed through his veins as he looked at the now cowering prince. With a growl, he lifted his head to shout. “I, Lord Rolak, Protector of Aryaal, am going to continue as before!”
“Any who follow him will die, as traitors to their king!” screeched Fet-Alcas.
“Who is with me?” Rolak insisted. Hesitantly at first, but then with greater enthusiasm, roughly a third of the Aryaalan warriors gathered around Rolak, shouting their support. Rolak estimated the force, but grimly shook his head. Not enough. They would never be able to break through from the south with so few. With sudden determination, he strode to the Orphan Queen. “My dear Queen Protector, it looks as though we will have to follow your plan after all, if you will have us.” He looked around at the troops who had stayed loyal to the king. Many were blinking in shame. “Together, we may still not have the numbers to relieve the sea folk from the south, as we hoped, but we have more than the king can stop with warriors who fear him more than the loss of their honor. With your permission?”
She smiled and nodded graciously and Lord Rolak raised his voice.
“To the north gate, as quickly as you can!”
“Go and die, Lord Rolak!” shrilled the king as he pounded the elaborate arms of his seat. “Die! The gates of Aryaal are closed to you forever! All of you! And when the Grik turn their might toward B’mbaado, we will not come! We will not come!”
The king’s rant echoed behind them as they ran through the deserted inner city. Word of what had happened spread as fast as they ran, and they gathered almost two hundred more warriors who wanted to join them. Some of these came from the east wall, where they could see the battle between the Grik and the strangers who had come to help them. “Hurry!” was all they said.
“They’re not coming,” Matt muttered to himself, and lowered his binoculars. He was standing on top of the dead brontosaurus to get one last look, to assure himself of the unbelievable. Keje held shields for both of them that were festooned with dozens of crossbow bolts, but so far neither of them had been hit. It wasn’t from lack of trying. Rolak’s aide had been killed, and the brontosaurus had finally taken what must have been the critical number of wounds to trigger a pain reaction reflex and it had gone amok. Silva emptied a BAR magazine into the thing—without orders, thank God—before it could stampede through the army and decimate a regiment with its death throes. Among other things, that would have immediately lost them the battle. The shield wall was the only thing that had kept them alive this long. Together, Matt and Keje slithered down from the dead beast and the thrumming bolts immediately diminished. Only when they were elevated did they present a real target for the enemy.
“They’re not coming,” Matt repeated with a tone of wonder in his voice. “My God, how could they be so stupid?”
“I told you about them,” Keje said grimly.
Matt smiled sadly. “I hate to say I told you so, huh?”
Keje looked at him and blinked. “No, I did tell you so.”
Matt shook his head.
“Buggers said they liked to fight!” groused Chief Gray.
“Yeah, so did them Eye-talian Marines that time in Shanghai,” Silva accused the Bosun. “I still can’t believe you put me on report for that!”
“You were pickin’ on ’em, damn it! One nearly died!”
Matt almost smiled despite the situation. He and his irrepressible destroyermen, two of whom had taken minor wounds, walked slowly along behind the battle line, shouting encouragement as they went. So far, the fighting at the shield wall had been remarkably one-sided. The Grik just didn’t know how to cope with it. They slammed themselves against it, battering with their bodies while the first rank leaned into the onslaught, doing little but holding the enemy back with their interlocking shields. The ranks behind did most of the killing, stabbing, and slashing with swords and spears through gaps and over the tops of their comrades. And how they killed! The ground in front of the shields was piled high with the dead, making the footing difficult for those that came behind. But still they came. Fresh Grik arrived every minute, and the shield wall was beginning to tire.
Occasionally the Grik eased back for a moment and tried to gall them with bolts. Whenever the pressure slacked, the muzzles of the six-pounders poked through and a double load of canister scythed into them, killing hundreds with each blast, so densely packed was their formation. But still, more came. It was insane.
Lieutenant Shinya trotted up with a reduced staff. Matt wondered how many had been killed and how many had been used to fill gaps in the line. Shinya himself was bleeding from a cut under his left eye. “We’re getting thin on the left, Captain.” He shouted to be heard. “They keep pushing there, trying to roll us back and force a way through by the river.”
Matt nodded. “It’s the same on the right, but probably not as bad. At least those bastards on the walls will still shoot arrows at them if they get close enough.” He paused. “They’re not coming, Tamatsu. We’re going to have to start pulling back.”
Shinya nodded. “It’s going to be difficult, Captain. Holding the line together is one thing. Holding the line together and advancing is another. Doing it while pulling back is . . . something else.”
“We have that one spot about fifty, seventy-five yards back where the front will be wider,” Matt reminded him. “We’ll have to extend the line to cover it. After that, particularly as we get closer to the barricade, the land narrows back down and we can thicken things up, I hope. Pass the word; at the next flare, we start to pull back. We’ve got to keep it together.” Shinya saluted again and trotted off. Matt looked at the destroyermen around him, cradling their weapons as they watched the battle. All were armed with Thompsons or BARs—probably half the weapons of the type that they had. No choice. “Forget the ‘no shooting’ order. I want one of you to each regiment, ready to pour fire into any breakthroughs if they occur. We’ve got to keep this line together at all costs. If it breaks, we’re dead. Conserve your ammunition and don’t get trigger-happy, but use it if you have to. Now go!”
They all hurried off except Silva, who stood rooted with a worried expression on his face. “But what about you, Skipper?”
“Never fear, Mr. Silva. I have my pistol. If that fails, the Bosun will protect me.”
Silva arched an eyebrow and a grin crept across his face. “But who’s gonna protect him?”
Gray’s face turned purple with
rage. “Buzz off, you goddamn weedchewin’ ape! Or I’ll let that crazy cook use you for fish bait!”
“Just worried about you, is all,” shouted Silva as he loped off down the line. Gray shook his head and stifled a grin. They were standing right behind the rear rank of the Second Marine Regiment. The Second was near the center of the line and it was spear-heavy, all of its members being large and strong enough to stand in the front rank. Those at the rear were methodically shooting arrows over the heads of those in front, and periodically they’d move forward and take the place of an exhausted comrade. It was a good drill and Matt wished the Guard regiments had learned to do the same. Many of those who came to the rear were wounded, some badly, and an increasing number of them were pushed or dragged out of the ranks as the fighting continued. A growing number of bodies, some moving, others not, were gathering behind the lines, waiting to be carried back to the barricade on stretchers to be tended in the field hospital.
“There ain’t enough stretcher bearers,” Gray observed grimly. “When we start to pull back, things could go bad in a hurry.”
Matt recognized one of the wounded Lemurians as he was tossed roughly on a litter. It was that runner of Shinya’s he’d spoken to before. He had a terrible slash across his chest and blood-soaked bandages were heaped high upon him. Matt hurried to his side. “Do you understand me?” he asked urgently. The young Lemurian nodded, his teeth clenched with pain. “The hospital must evacuate! Get the wounded to safety.” He grasped the runner’s hand in his. “Tell Lieutenant Tucker . . .” He paused. He didn’t know what to say. “Tell her to pull out now. That’s an order.” He squeezed the hand.
“I will tell her, Cap-i-taan,” the runner replied with a strained voice. Matt nodded and the stretcher bearers raced to the rear with their burden.
Chack-Sab-At gasped with pain as a Grik spearpoint skated off his shield and laid open the top of his shoulder. The thrust had overextended his enemy, however, and Chack drove his own spearpoint into the Grik’s throat with a triumphant snarl. An explosive spray of blood and spittle flecked his face as the enemy warrior went down. If it screamed, Chack didn’t hear it over the constant roar of battle.
For just an instant, his thoughts turned to his sister, Risa, and he wondered what she would think if she saw him now. It seemed so long ago that she’d virtually shamed him into taking the warrior’s tack. How little he’d known at the time; beneath his nervousness and protestation a warrior was what he was. Or perhaps, deep down, he knew it all along. Maybe that was why he allowed himself to be bullied and never tried to win the frequent bouts of his youth. Or maybe he was afraid of what he’d become. Afraid he would like it. That day upon the decks of Salissa, fighting to save his sister and his people and ultimately his very soul, he’d discovered he had been right to be afraid. He had loved it, and much to his great surprise, he had been good at it as well.
His warrior-minded sister had seen the change in him when she recovered from her wounds, but she’d believed it was just a sign that he’d grown up at last. She hadn’t realized the more fundamental nature of the change. Once, his greatest ambition had been to one day become a wing clan chief. That goal no longer even entered his thoughts. He no longer cared about running Salissa’s great wings, or those of any other Home. He still loved Salissa, but Walker was his Home now and he was a destroyerman through and through. He knew most people believed he was playing a game with Selass, rubbing her nose in her rejection of him for Saak-Fas. But as far as he was concerned, she could remain mated to the mad, broken shell that Saak-Fas had become. The only thing he really felt for her now was pity. He didn’t care about anything that once seemed so important—other than his sister, of course, despite her bothersome behavior, and the safety of his people and their strange tail-less friends. All that mattered now was the joy he felt when he was destroying their enemies. A joy he felt even now, in spite of the pain and thirst and exhaustion.
He’d spent most of the fight in the second rank, where his height gave him an advantage, stabbing and thrusting powerfully with his spear. Then the one in front of him, another wing runner from Salissa, fell. Chack immediately took his place. He couldn’t kill as many of the enemy from the wall, fighting and straining to hold back the weight of thousands, it seemed, but the wall had to hold. Another Grik took the place of the one he had slain, battering furiously at his shield with its sickle-shaped sword. Chack dug his feet into the slurry of sandy, bloody mud and leaned hard into his attacker. He let his spear fall toward the warrior at his back—quite certain it would be put to good use—and drew the cutlass that the destroyermen had given him. He slashed at the Grik’s feet under the bottom edge of his shield and was rewarded with a jarring contact of blade on bone.
The pressure eased, but as he stood up straight, a blow from an axe right on top of his head drove him down again. He was stunned for a moment and he’d bitten his tongue. His comrades to the right and left helped support him while his senses returned. Thank the stars for the strange, platter-shaped helmet, he thought. He spat blood between gasps for air. There was frenzied shouting from behind him and he risked a quick glimpse. The muzzle of one of the cannons was inching through the press. He and the others near him shielded its progress until it was right behind them and then, at a shout, they gave back on either side.
Instantly, there was a deafening thunderclap, seemingly inside his head. The pressure turned his bones to jelly and the fur on the right side of his body felt like it had been driven into his skin. A choking cloud of smoke engulfed him and a high-pitched ringing sound replaced the noise of battle. He didn’t care. For just a moment, all that remained of the enemy in front of him was a vast semicircle of churned, shattered gobbets of flesh. He barked an almost hysterical laugh and was surprised he couldn’t even hear himself. Recoil had driven the gun backward, and the wall closed up tight where it had been. Something caught his eye and he looked up. High in the air, beginning to descend, was yet another flare.
“It’s fallin’ apart, Skipper,” Gray wheezed, his hands on his knees. He had lost his hat and his hair was matted with blood. To their left, they heard the rattle of a Thompson on full auto. None of the guys could have much ammo left, thought Matt as he inserted his last magazine into the butt of the Colt. He glanced at the barricade behind them just a little over a hundred yards away now. They would never make it.
The withdrawal had begun well enough. They’d even made it past the wide spot he feared without too much difficulty. But the enemy had attacked with renewed frenzy as soon as they realized the army was retreating. There was only so much anyone could take, human or Lemurian, and as fresh enemy warriors arrived from across the river, the exhausted troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force had finally begun to break. It started on the left, as he’d expected it would. As the Grik lapped around their flank, the ever-shortening line tried to fold back on itself like it had been trained. But a maneuver like that was difficult even for troops that weren’t already almost too tired to stand. The line finally cracked and most of the Fourth Guard had been cut off. They bought the rest of the line enough time to complete a similar maneuver, but there was no way they could break through the enemy and rejoin. The dwindling survivors of the Fourth still fought, surrounded by a seething swarm of triumphant warriors from hell. Determined to sell their lives dearly, they coalesced into a rough square, their proud flag still waving in its midst, but they were doomed.
The rest of the line had no choice but to continue the retreat. There were other breakthroughs, at every point, and many died sealing the breaches. Matt, Keje, and the Chief had gone into the line themselves several times, fighting with swords and pistols until the enemy was beaten back. Matt’s expensive academy sword was now notched and encrusted with drying blood. He remembered doubting that he would ever draw it in anger. More irony. With salty sweat burning his eyes, he looked at the sky, at the soft, fluffy clouds and the bright, hot sun that glared down from directly overhead. To the south, twenty-five or thirty m
iles away, a continuous line of massive mountainous volcanoes loomed indifferently above what transpired on the coastal plain. They stood out, sharp and clear in the distance, their towering peaks lost in wispy clouds. Or was it steam? Could be. The long string of volcanoes that made up the spine of Java were all active as far as he knew. Or they were, anyway, back . . . Well. No matter. The view was so very similar to the one he remembered and yet also so alien. Besides the terror of battle that raged all around and the unfamiliar, embattled city, the very fact that he could see the mountains clearly without the smoke and haze of bombed-out Surabaya seemed strange.
He glanced back toward the bay, beyond the barricade. The battle line continued pouring fire into the enemy across the river, but Big Sal had her sweeps out, trying to maneuver into position to shell the barges as they crossed. He glimpsed rapid movement and saw Walker sprinting across the bay toward Big Sal. She’d been around the point, transferring men and equipment to Mahan. That was a sight he’d seen before, he realized sadly. Walker, confined in this same bay while events around her swirled out of control. Less than three hours for it to come to this, he thought. It had all begun so well. He stared at the walls of the city, forgotten now by the enemy, and wiped sweat from his brow. “Damn you to hell.”
Chief Gray fumbled at his side for his canteen and took a long gulp, then handed it to his captain. Nodding his thanks, Matt raised the canteen to his lips and felt the warm water soothe his chalk-dry throat. He’d been shouting for so long, mostly orders but at times with an animalistic rage when he waded into the fight, that he doubted his voice would be audible in a quiet room now. It didn’t matter. There was nothing left, really, for him to say. Beyond the diminished line he saw the mass of enemy warriors surging forward, heaving with an elemental energy. Grotesque standards waved above them as densely, it seemed, as the grass that had covered this plain.
Crusade Page 13
