by Scott McKay
The Udar had doffed his headgear and released Sarah from his grasp. He stepped forward, away from the assembled captors and hostages. Sarah wasn’t free to step toward Ardenian lines, but Charlotte did drape Forling’s coat around her naked body.
Rapan’na began circling around Will, his face contorted into a series of furious and menacing expressions, his tongue intermittently displaying in full.
Forling stood still in a fighting stance, eyeing the man with a steely gaze. “I came here to fight, not make faces,” he said calmly.
The Udar then rushed at him, his right hand raised and the blade of his Izwei pointed downward in a stabbing position.
Will crossed his raised arms in a blocking position, right hand forward, catching the wrist holding the Izwei in the resulting X. Unlike Rapan’na, Will held his C-1 in a forward position, the effect of which was that when he disengaged from the block, he ripped the Udar’s knife wrist with the serrated edge of his C-1.
He’d drawn first blood. The Udar howled with rage.
…
“What the red hell is that?” said Patrick from the bridge of the Adelaide 1,000 yards from the shore, as close as the ship’s draft would allow without running it aground. He was one of four of the ship’s officers observing the events on the beach through field glasses.
“Single combat,” said Rawer, who stood next to him. “Same as that savage in the brig challenged you with.”
Patrick deduced the rest. The cavalry had probably gutted the Udar force at Sutton’s Hill the previous day, and in a pitched battle the enemy would have little chance of survival. With those hostages, though, the Udar would still have had the leverage to shape this encounter as they wanted.
And if their headman’s attitude was anything like that of the beast Ago’an his crew had hauled out of the drink the previous afternoon, the Udar probably expected no Ardenians would be a match for their champion. So they’d have a chance at salvaging their foray.
It was more than that, though, he thought. This was also a way to slow the action down and fix the Ardenians in a disadvantaged position.
“Just look at this,” he told Rawer. “The whole force, almost 400 men, standing around on a beach watching a knife fight. Sitting ducks, they are.”
“I imagine they figure this is the only way they’re getting those hostages out,” Rawer observed.
“I don’t disagree,” said Patrick. “But Udar has something else up his sleeve. Why’d they stay here last night instead of rushing away down the beach to meet the reinforcements? Why here? And now this spectacle with the knives,” he groaned. “Wasting time.”
“You think they’re circling around from the mountains?” asked Rawer.
“Can’t say. Just feels like something else is going on that we’re not seeing.”
“Commander, signal comin’ in from the Louise!” the observation tower called down. “They say they’ve sighted an enemy column coming up the beach. Division strength at least, cavalry and infantry.”
Louise had pulled into position slightly before dawn, locating herself three miles north of the Udar camp along the coast, on the other side of a small cape jutting west into Leopold Bay, just ten miles south of Strongstead. If they were spotting the enemy, that meant the Udar were advancing from the citadel, and the Ardenians would have maybe an hour to complete the evacuation before being overrun.
“Castamere confirms!” called the tower. The other frigate was parked just off the coast slightly to the east of Louise at the opposite end of the small cape; the two ships were perhaps a mile apart.
“And there it is,” Patrick said. He ordered a message sent via the signal lamp to both ships: OPEN FIRE.
Loud, rumbling booms issued forth in the distance as Castamere and Louise let loose barrages from their 100-pounder guns.
“There’s more of them somewhere,” Patrick said. He knew Udar attacked from the back whenever they could.
He panned the scene as the two champions circled each other–left, right, and up…
“There. You see that? One o’clock from the knife fight, about thirty feet up the cliffside.”
“I see a path,” Rawer said. “And it leads to…what is that?”
“It’s the mouth of a cave,” Patrick answered.
“Looks more like a doorway,” Rawer observed. “That looks like it’s been cut or blasted open, don’t you think?”
“Decidedly straight walls and an arc shape at the ceiling,” the commander agreed.
He put down his field glasses for a moment, his head in a nod. Then he raised them again and looked at the peculiar feature of the rock face.
Through the glasses, Patrick made out the figure of a man in the garb of an Udar warrior emerging from the cave mouth. He was shortly joined by another, and another, until the entire ledge adjoining the cave was full of Udar. Less than 300 yards down the rocky path from that ledge was the beach–and the Ardenians.
“Sonofabitch,” Patrick lamented. “I knew it.”
“All right,” he snarled. “Here’s what I want. Give me a firing solution for that rock face just above our little doorway. Continuous fire, please.”
Rawer relayed the order to the ship’s weapons officer, and Adelaide’s three 100-pounder pivot guns opened up with a series of thunderous blasts.
…
THIRTY SEVEN
The Beach – Morning (Third Day)
After Will’s opening score on Rapan’na, the Udar then withdrew into mostly defensive movements, continuing to circle the young cavalryman and restraining himself to a few feints, but no more lunges.
Forling decided it was time to take the initiative. He noticed that his opponent was bleeding freely from the slash on his right wrist, and questioned whether Rapan’na’s grip on his Izwei was strong enough to resist being disarmed.
So he advanced on the Udar, his blade in a forward position in his right hand at chest level. Will feinted at a knife-punch to the heart, bringing Rapan’na’s left hand up in a blocking motion to his inside, and instead he ripped down at the Udar’s wrist, opening a gash on the inside of his forearm. Rapan’na counterattacked, stabbing at Will’s throat with his right hand. That was exactly what Will anticipated, sweeping across with his left arm and blocking the Udar’s thrust.
Not quite enough, though, as the tip of the Izwei grazed Will’s left cheek as he turned his head away from the attack. A one-inch gash opened under his eye.
Will wasn’t through with the exchange. Having brought his C-1 down for the ripping motion on Rapan’na’s blocking arm, he swung his body back to his left and caught the Udar in the abdomen just above his navel with the tip of his knife, and then stepped away.
Two cuts for one. He wouldn’t be as pretty, but he was closer to getting out of this fight alive.
Just then Will could hear thunder up the beach from his location, and then three loud cracks in succession from very close by, followed by the whistling of shells flying overhead. The ground shook as those munitions pounded the rock face of the cliffside to his right.
Rapan’na suddenly appeared rattled, and clutched at the cut on his abdomen. “Zohi!” he barked at Will. “Sisgohad’da, mizuon. Quee bin’an.”
“There’s more where that came from, you sonofabitch,” Will replied, wiping the cut on his cheek and noticing the blood was flowing a bit more freely than he was comfortable with.
Little else was audible after that as Adelaide’s guns unleashed a maelstrom on the cliffside.
…
The first volley of fire from Adelaide’s 100-pounder guns didn’t quite land on the rock face above the cliff mouth. One shell landed below and pulverized the ledge some fifty Udar were standing on, sending the men into the air and tumbling down the cliff in a free fall.
They were out of this fight before they were in it.
Another shell directly hit the rock to the left of the cave, but didn’t do any structural damage Patrick could see. The third hit below the ledge, sending a hail of dirt a
nd rock flying out in the direction of the Udar camp.
“Adjust fire,” came the call from Captain Horace Frey, the ship’s weapons officer, relaying coordinates to the battery of pivot guns. Seconds later, the guns blasted out a new round of shells.
This time the rock face above the cave crumpled with the force of the three blasts hitting it. Large boulders tumbled down to what was the ledge at the cave’s mouth and rolled to the beach in a mini-avalanche. Smaller ones fell, it appeared, into the cave’s floor.
Patrick could see Udar pouring to the cave mouth, desperately attempting to clamber down the uneven cliffside where the path had been.
“Fire for effect!” called Frey. Another volley blasted out of the 100-pounders.
This time the cliffside just seemed to give way completely, and after the rumbling that followed, there was no evidence of a cave at all – just a large pile of stones filling a crevice in the rock.
…
In the human abdominal arena, on the exterior of the peritoneal cavity running through the rectus abdominus muscles from the ribs to the pelvis, is a blood vessel called the superior epigastric artery. The epigastric artery carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the anterior abdominal wall.
A lot of blood, as it turns out.
And when Will cut Rapan’na in the abdomen just before the cannon fire interrupted their bout of single combat, the tip of his C-1 severed the Udar’s superior epigastric artery.
A laceration to that particular blood vessel isn’t immediately fatal, but it’s far more serious than it appears. That became clear in this case, as blood continued seeping steadily from Rapan’na’s abdomen as he continued circling Will, cursing at him with utmost vituperation.
But Rapan’na’s fighting demeanor slowly became weaker and weaker, and after the cliff face exploded in a hail of flying stones, Will knew it was time to finish the Udar. He feinted to the right, noting his opponent’s loss of coordination in clumsily reacting to the feint, and lunged toward his knife hand. Will extended his left hand to block Rapan’na’s counterthrust, knocking the Udar’s right hand upward and loosening his grip on the Izwei. With his own right hand, Will plunged his C-1 into Rapan’na’s right shoulder.
He then ripped the C-1 out of the man’s body while planting a boot into his chest. Rapan’na fell to his back with a gurgle, then frantically rolled to his right in an attempt to get up. He crouched on his side, reaching for the Izwei, which had fallen just away from his hand.
But Will kicked the knife away.
“You’re finished,” he said.
Rapan’na silently rolled onto his stomach, attempting to push himself to his feet. His strength was fading.
“I said you’re finished,” Will said, as he brought his C-1 down on the man’s upper spine, driving him into the sand.
The Udar lay lifeless, his eyes filled with dull terror.
…
THIRTY EIGHT
The Beach – Morning (Third Day)
When Rapan’na hit the sand, and the reverberation of Adelaide’s cannonade began to ebb from the camp with only the lingering thunder from up the beach providing the roar of battle, the morale of the Udar subsided as quickly as the sound of the ship’s guns.
“Now hand over those hostages,” Terhune ordered to the woman standing next to Sarah. “And I mean right now.”
Charlotte, stricken, nodded. Sarah ran past the body of Rapan’na into the arms of her brother. The remainder of the Ardenian captives followed suit into the mass of the Ardenian cavalry, who were busily shedding jackets, unfurling bedrolls and coughing up whatever items they could to cover the captives’ state of undress.
What happened next had been discussed, but not rehearsed. Adelaide’s Marines set up a chain, a receiving line, of sorts, to usher the captives onto the ramp that Yarmouth’s crew had unfolded into the shallow water of Watkins Gulf next to the shore, and two by two the women quickly filed up the ramp to the sidewheeler’s deck. The cavalrymen assisted, some carrying captives too weakened or dazed by their ordeal to climb the ramp, and shortly a relatively smooth evacuation was underway.
“Come with us,” Will said to Charlotte. “It’s time to go home. You’ve had an awful time of it. Nobody should have to go through what they’ve put you through.”
“No,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “It’s too late.”
“It’s not,” he said. “The boat’s here. We can get you out right now.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “My three daughters are in Uris Udar. They are only safe because I made a promise. If I leave with you, I’ve betrayed them and they will suffer for my actions. One does not renege on a promise to the Udar.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Sarah, who had stayed behind. “Go with the rest of your camp?”
Charlotte shook her head. “I can’t do that either.”
“Why not?” asked Latham.
“Rapan’na never appointed a successor as Var’asha,” she explained. “So this Anur has no leader, and without a leader there can be no javeen. It is the law.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sarah. “So you’re not a javeen. So what?”
“I am not Udar,” she said, as a pair of warriors quietly came behind her. “If I am not javeen, I am azmeri.”
The others gave quizzical looks.
“No,” said Sarah, who understood what she was saying. “No, no, no. That can’t happen. You don’t have to…”
“Shhh,” Charlotte said, softly. She embraced Sarah lovingly, gasping with tears as she did so.
And then to Robert. “You look so much like Matthew,” she said, a weeping smile across her face as she put her hand to his cheek. “He was a wonderful young man. Take care of your sister.”
The noise of shells exploding got progressively louder to the west as the two Udar warriors approached Charlotte. She turned and nodded at them both, and then the three ambled away toward the large blaze still very much alight in the center of the camp.
Latham caught Will as he staggered a bit, his left hand pressed to the gash on his cheek. “It’s time to get you out of here,” he said.
The Ardenian group left on the beach was beginning to thin considerably. Nearly all of the captives had already been loaded onto Yarmouth; now it was the cavalrymen loading their horses onto its deck.
“Let’s go home,” said Terhune. “Come on now. That’s an order. I’m still the one giving orders around here, dammit.”
As she neared the bonfire, they could see Charlotte lifting a roll of necklaces off her shoulders and over her head and handing them to one of the women, while another buckled a collar around her neck. Two ropes were threaded through rings in the collar, to her right and left. And the Udar warriors escorting her then pulled those ropes taut, standing ten feet apart from her in each direction. Slowly, they walked her toward the fire.
“No bloody way,” Rob said.
“It’s the way of their world,” Broadham replied. “This is what we’ve been up against for as long as we’ve had a country.”
The sound of the guns increased again, and beyond the camp up the beach they could see Udar horsemen approaching rapidly, as they attempted to outrun the shells from the Castamere and the Louise.
Nothing else needed to be said, as that beach was about to become an inferno of violence. The cavalrymen had managed to escort the last of the captives and horses onto Yarmouth, which was now tightly packed. Not all of the Ardenians would fit aboard.
“There’s enough room in the lifeboats for the rest of us,” Broadham said. “We’ve got to move if we don’t want to end up in that fire.”
The remainder of the party, including Latham, Terhune, Rob, Will, Sarah, and the Marines, pushed the four rowboats off the beach and clambered aboard.
As they rowed away, they could see Charlotte, her head held high, calmly walking into the fire as the Udar warriors held the ropes taut against her collar.
Just then, the rain clouds which had b
een gathering since before dawn began letting loose their wares, and a warm rain pelted the evacuation.
In the second boat, Sarah buried her head in Rob’s chest and wept. He enveloped her in the most complete embrace he could manage as his own composure melted away. The two Stuart children silently disintegrated into mourning as the four boats made their way for Adelaide and safety.
As he rowed in the first boat, Will fixed his gaze on Sarah and Robert. The latter happened to look up at that moment, saw his friend amid the downpour, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head to cover the gash under his left eye. Will had a vacant, spent look in his eyes.
It was then Robert recognized that as shattering as the experience had been for him, he might have come through it better than Will had.
…
THIRTY NINE
Belgrave Station – Early Morning (Third Day)
Cross wasn’t unfamiliar with all-nighters, but for most of his life the circumstances of his skipping nocturnal respite involved intoxicating liquors and pleasures of the flesh. This time he’d almost pulled another.
The previous night’s activities had no such recreational component to them, though if Cross were to be honest with himself, the great game he was joining was as much a source of entertainment as any debauchery he could find in the Elkstrand on a Saturday.
The five conspirators, Sebastian, his father, Gregg, Dees and Reeves, stayed aboard the yacht until after midnight, going over a plan to turn the Special Air Force into a showpiece for Ardenian technology buried by bureaucracy and corruption over the past ten years. The fresh outbreak of war with the Udar two days earlier had provided them with a perfect opportunity to do just that. With a desperate disadvantage in manpower against what was rumored to be an Udar invasion force numbering in the millions approaching the Tweade, firepower to serve as a force multiplier was Ardenia’s only hope to avoid being overrun, and that prospect meant no one in his right mind would refuse hardware donated to the cause when it was brought to the battlefield.
The Special Air Force was going to be the conduit for that hardware.
