"There's a long spur connecting it to the mountain, very broken and rough."
This evinced a satisfied grunt. "Good. We'll make them pay for chasing us."
The rebel stood up reinvigorated. Three quarters of the little force were dispatched towards the hilltop where they were to remain in full view of their enemies. The remainder were sent scurrying along the road to guard the wounded and to take their turn relieving the stretcher bearers.
Half a mile short of the gorge Caldar was finished. For the thousandth time the sweat ran down and stung his eyes, but he could spare neither of his blistered hands to wipe it away. Behind him the shouts and the clash of weapons were growing louder and closer, but he couldn't turn his head to see and he could have gone no faster if the enemy were treading on his very heels. He was not the only one staggering as the track began to climb more steeply and the carrying stints grew shorter and more brutal.
"Change." At Ledwar's command the youth stood swaying while the relief bearer lifted the handles right out of his cupped hands. He would hardly have his cramped fingers straightened out before the next change.
"It is time for you to stop this nonsense and come ahead with me to the gorge."
The Sarai were evidently quite happy to tell Zeddayahs when they were going wrong. Piddur eyed the white face and the bleeding hands critically. He felt no false sympathy, he had seen too many real wounds: but the Zeddayah was rapidly forcing himself past exhaustion to a point where he might do himself real harm. The Sarab had heard the story of the catacombs and he guessed that whatever Caldar had done there - his informants could not agree on that - it had cost the youth more dearly than he realised. Helping the wounded was draining him too and carrying the stretchers was just too much. Piddur's other charge, a Rahidor if he could bring himself to believe it, was limping alongside the stretchers, bow in hand, though with any luck the little party would reach the gorge without having to fight.
Not that the Deddi gorge offered final safety. Its sides were so steep that the army would find it hard to outflank them, while the narrow central passage was easy to defend. Yet against such numbers the pursuit could only be delayed, not stopped. There would be no rest for a long time yet.
Caldar stared dully at the track behind them, which ran down in a long curve to the last bend five hundred yards away. It was empty. So where was the fighting? Had he imagined those sounds? No, of course it was the army, still trying to dislodge the rebels from the hillside above. He could catch glimpses of knots of men moving here and there, some of them startlingly close. A moment later a press of men marched into view on the track below, yellow uniforms brilliant in the sunshine, and their excited shouts carried easily as they spied their quarry and began to run.
Without a word Piddur seized the youth's arm and dragged him forward at a shambling trot. The stretchers were already a hundred yards ahead, picking up the pace in a last desperate dash.
From the hillside Sammar watched the scene unfold on the track below. He had long since handed over to Idressin the coordination of his men's resistance. Each little group was fighting by itself, yet magically amid the chaos Idressin was contriving to keep them all roughly in line with their neighbours as they fell back towards the gorge. Several had already been surrounded and overwhelmed, but most were holding their place and exacting a hard price for the ground they lost. This was the kind of skirmish the Mederros understood well: a series of small-scale ambushes, traps, pincer movements, all designed to inflict casualties quickly and all followed by a swift withdrawal to the next position indicated to them by one of Idressin's scouts. The pace of the retreat was speeding up as the enemy poured more and more men over the hill in unending streams. Any minute now they would simply have to make a run for the gorge and try to take up new positions there.
Meanwhile the stretcher party on the road was being rapidly overhauled. Sammar grabbed the nearest thirty men and raced down the slope to their aid, but he would be too late. The gap was closing too fast. Two hundred yards from the first rocks of the gorge, ten of the little party turned to fight while the rest struggled on, every man's hand on the stretchers. Four bows and six swords against a solid column of two hundred soldiers.
The bows sang twice. Eight soldiers went down and the column came on. But they were slowing Sammar noted, almost with disbelief: they were definitely slowing. Then he realised that the soldiers had just run over half a mile uphill in full battle gear. If these were the usual levies, most of them would be in no case to fight by now, they'd be almost out on their feet. With a fresh burst of speed he plunged down the last slope and began to scream a warcry as he came.
To the flagging levies it seemed that the simple game of catching a tame rabbit had turned into a nightmare where their prey had suddenly sprouted claws and was attacking them from both sides. A few of the boldest turned to face the whooping rebels sprinting down on them: the rest drew one deep breath and started back down the track as fast as their weary legs would take them. In the first minute it was all over, and with Sammar's band forming the rearguard the last of the stretcher party tramped slowly up into the dry defile.
Without any need for orders a line of defence was established at the mouth of the gorge, stiffened by the growing stream of retreating rebels. The stream became a flood, then died away again to a trickle which all too soon stopped altogether. There would be no more groups coming back. A little cheer greeted the last, Idressin followed by Berin and four other weary scouts who had run themselves ragged carrying messages up and down the hillside. Behind them soldiers transformed the slopes from which they had withdrawn into an anthill and the track into a single multi-coloured snake that twisted in and out of sight until it finally disappeared round the hill two miles away. Like the ants, the snake was on the move. Towards the gorge. Towards the thin line of weary defenders. Towards the narrow track where bodies lay side by side, prostrate bearers indistinguishable from their charges.
In military terms the cost so far had been light, Sammar told himself: four out of five of his men could still fight. He knew very well that meant fifty good men dead and more when some of the badly wounded died also. But the time for a commander to reflect was after the battle and he had no illusions, the main battle was about to start. He had noted the tell-tale twinkle of bright armour in the column a mile down the road. Some general had had the sense at last to order up a squadron of cavalry, too late to catch them in the open, but in time to stop them simply running away. With cavalry waiting to join the pursuit, each line of defence would have to be held stubbornly to give the rest time to withdraw further: a lot of his men would never come out of this gorge.
One thing at a time. He kept forty of his fittest men with him. The rest he sent under Ledwar to make their best speed up the defile: some to man the next defensive point, the others to get as far ahead as possible. They looked pitifully slow as he watched them move away to the next bend, before he turned back grimly to face the enemy whose front line had stopped just out of bowshot. Thousands, the scouts had been right. How many thousand in sight altogether? Six, maybe seven. Was this going to be his last battle? Probably. Well, better than execution in Karkor or a horrific death in the catacombs. Here he was in the open air, fighting for what he believed in, and he would give them something to remember him by.
For a while nothing happened. As the minutes ticked away, Sammar could hardly believe his luck. His men had been told to make themselves visible and to move about to give the impression of a larger force. Perhaps there was no officer at the front bold enough to order the first assault.
Eventually there was a stir in the front ranks, which parted to let through a small group of horsemen, among them a diminutive figure in red armour. As one man the rebels took a tighter grip on their weapons. They knew now whom they were facing. General Plite Abbar claimed Mederro blood himself, but that had not stopped him from shedding it. He boasted openly that he took no prisoners. Wherever his forces moved, they left a swathe of desolation through
the Mederro homelands: nothing survived, men, women, children, animals. There was no doubt now that the attack would be pressed home regardless of casualties: the General's only aim would be to wipe out every last one of the rebels. And he would do it, Sammar conceded: brutal he might be and given to crude frontal assaults in overwhelming numbers, but today he had the odds to do exactly as he wanted.
Sammar felt a touch at his elbow and swung round to find himself face to face with Piddur. The giant Sarab had half-carried Caldar into the gorge earlier, then set him on his way with Ledwar's party; he himself had returned to the gorge mouth.
"Come to join our last stand? Well, we could use you."
"You must run away." Shattun had few niceties as a language, but just the tone of this abrupt order was sufficient to make Sammar bridle.
"Don't be a fool." Sammar had heard the story of this man, the mad Sarab who had run through the enemy lines to join them; so giving him the benefit of the doubt, he explained, "There's cavalry not far behind. We must hold them here as long as possible."
"No, go now. It is necessary."
The rebel leader swung away with a dismissive gesture, only to have his arm seized in a fierce grip.
"The Sarai have come to help you."
The man really was mad then. That joke that had gone around about 'the Sarai army' wasn't so wide of the mark after all.
Humouring him, Sammar said, "We need all the help we can get. Let me know when your friends arrive."
"They're already here. Come I will show you."
Piddur led Sammar out of sight of the enemy, then gestured up at the soaring walls of the defile. At first the Mederro could see nothing, then he suddenly caught a glimpse of a black figure darting swiftly among the rocks high above, then another lower down and another. As soon as they stopped moving, they seemed to disappear, motionless against dark rock or scree or hidden in the smallest shadows.
The Sarab lowered his gaze to his companion's face. "Go Sammar. We ask you to run, simply so that they will pursue you blindly. No one doubts your courage, but this time leave us to slam the gate. This is our type of country and they will pay dearly for entering it"
There was nothing for Sammar to say and no time for deliberation. Trust this foreigner? Or not? That's all it came down to. Once they were on the run, it would be very difficult to stop and check the pursuit. Could the Sarai hold off Abbar's thousands or would he be sacrificing all their lives if he abandoned this position? His first instincts were to stay. Mederro and Sarai had never fought together before and the gamble was too great. Then he recalled what he had heard of these people; their feud with Karkor was older and deeper by far than his own. There was no question, they would die to stop the enemy.
"We'll do it." He clapped the Sarab on the arm, then turned to explain the new situation quickly to his men, ordering them strictly not to scan the walls above while the enemy could see them. Leaving his ten best runners still in view, he led the rest of them scrambling down to the track and trotted off deeper and deeper into the gorge. After a few sharp turns they had just reached Ledwar's next manned position when the men left at the gorge mouth came up, running fast.
"They're not far behind," the leader panted. "We let them see us run, like you said. No cavalry yet, thank the gods. Look, there's the first of them now. Are we stopping here?"
"No, our job's to be the bait this time. Let's go."
They ran on, eighty men now, glancing up whenever they had time at the silent escarpments above them. Sammar felt his own doubts resurface. It was hard to believe there was anyone there, let alone a force capable of stemming the tide rolling up behind.
After a few more turns the track ran straight between steep cliffs before twisting sharply out of sight five hundred paces ahead. To their dismay the Mederros could see the rest of their force marching steadily away, the rearguard only halfway along the straight. How had they caught them up so quickly? As Sammar halted his group to assess the situation, they heard the sound they had dreaded echoing from the rocky defile behind. Horses. It was impossible to say how many or how close, the echoes rolled together into a growing thunder. Whatever the Sarai did was going to come too late.
This was a bad place to be trapped, the vertical cliffs on either side unscalable. Without a choice they ran on in the vain hope of reaching the scant protection of the next bend. Long before they reached it, the first rank of the cavalry burst into sight behind and a frantic bugle signalled the charge. Instantly Sammar's group turned towards the enemy.
"Aim for the horses."
"Loose at a hundred paces."
"Front rank move to the side and let them through."
The instructions were passed quickly to and fro. These were seasoned fighters and they already knew how to face armoured cavalry. They also knew the end was going to be the same whatever their tactics: they would be overwhelmed. The best they could hope for was to check the horsemen for long enough that some of the main group would get away.
The lances accelerated towards them at an extraordinary speed. The thunder of the charge grew to a deafening pitch: and then louder, and impossibly louder still. The Mederros stood awestruck by the monstrous booming that surely came from no earthly horses. Then the first boulders plummeted down from above to smash the front ranks of the cavalry into bloody ruin. As one man the rebels ran for cover under the cliffs and watched the rocks rain down, smashing and grinding in a haze of dust until they formed a wall fifteen feet high.
At last the thunder ceased, to be replaced by the screams of horses and men. Somewhere beyond the barrier a bugle shrieked in mad futility. Sammar ran forward to climb the rockfall, but the huge tottering blocks shivered at the first touch and he slowly drew back to safety. No one would be coming up the track for a long time. They were safe.
The Mederros simply turned and walked away up the defile, leaving the sounds of battle growing behind them: distant bugles, the roar of thousands of voices, the tremors of further rockfalls. Their new allies had indeed slammed the gate, as they said they would. Better leave the rest to them.
Karkor
Did he want to get involved or didn't he? The decision would shape the rest of his life and maybe determine its length. The events of the last two days were going to rock the Empire to its foundations and fate had placed Dettekar at the epicentre of the earthquake.
The operation against the Mederro raid on the Enclave had been well underway when the first hint of what was to follow had arrived in the form of the princess's summons. The irritation he felt at the news of the escaped prisoners had then been swept aside by the discovery of the Emperor's assassination. The General’s first concern had been to control the situation. Keep a tight blanket over the news, inform the right people and let them announce whatever agreement they came to in due course. Meanwhile he had his military role to play: the Enclave was still believed to be under threat and there was a party of terrorists to be hunted down.
It could have worked out. But it didn't. Not one bit of it. The Mederro attack melted away, leaving the Imperial Guard looking foolish; they were acting on SF intelligence reports of course, but no one would remember that. Meanwhile the assassins, whose position had been pinpointed in some uncanny way by Theyn, had been chased right across the city only to dive into the catacombs and disappear. They had apparently reemerged outside the walls at a point where patrols from Three Corps were already engaging a strong band of Mederros.
At this point the princess had intervened again and 'suggested' forcefully that if the Guard wished to redeem themselves for their failure to protect the Emperor, the least they could do was to bring the assassins and the rebels with them to justice. General Abbar of Three Corps was currently taking up the pursuit, but the princess would support Dettekar if he wished to take command as the senior officer. Dettekar had received many such suggestions in his career and knew an order when he heard one. This was not the time to point out to the princess that she had no formal authority to order him anywhere; unfor
tunately she was right, the Guard did need to redeem themselves. Would he like a written order under the Imperial cypher? He would. And at once he had found himself launched into a long frustrating day trying to overtake Abbar and prevent him from massacring every last one of the fugitives.
The flight and the front line of the pursuit had gone fast, too fast for Dettekar's force as they pushed their way forward through the thousands of troops clogging the road. What was Abbar trying to do with ten thousand men? Kill the rebels ten times over? They came up with the general having a meal with his aides at the gorge entrance, while company after company of his men marched steadily into the defile. He had greeted Dettekar affably enough, frowned over the princess's letter, then pointed out that technically the pursuit was already over: he had sent his cavalry into the gorge twenty minutes ago. By now there would be no one left to pursue.
Dettekar had just started to put the bloodthirsty little bastard in his place when the rumble and shock of the first avalanche had reached them faintly. More avalanches followed, growing in intensity as they fell closer and closer to the gorge entrance, which suddenly turned into a confused whirlpool as the survivors began to stream out of the trap. The ambush had been perfectly executed, Dettekar had to admit, and he was honest enough to realize only luck had saved his own Guards from losing their lives in there. There had remained little for him to do except to order Abbar to push his troops back into the gorge immediately to help the men still trapped, and then he had left to go and report failure to the princess.
It was near nightfall when he approached the city and smelled the smoke. From a distance he had not been certain, the pall over the city merging dully into the low clouds which had drifted in during the afternoon. Those same clouds now reflected a dozen fires, large ones too, no mere household disasters. What was happening? Another Mederro attack? No, they simply didn't have the capability for this. Then who? There was no major enemy force within two thousand miles. Borogoi had been reported this side of Tarkus; but a Borogoi raid on Karkor? It was inconceivable. Yet so was anything else.
The Tears of Sisme Page 77
