Makos smirked. “The Dura girls are as dusty and sweaty as every other peasant wench in this country. You can smell them coming. Not for me, thanks.”
“Your nostrils are very delicate,” Keltos said.
“Father’s probably got a short list back home,” Makos said, serious now. “He and mother will have narrowed it down over the years, winnowed away the ones that didn’t suit. You know.” He broke off, embarrassed for his friend.
Keltos knew. His own sister, Nealtha, had once been on that list, but after the Kurons’ disgrace and fall from power her name had quietly been removed from it. The two families remained close, but it was a strained alliance.
Nealtha, once one of the most eligible maidens in Tekelin province, had overnight seen her life’s possibilities reduced to nothing by penury and shame, dependent solely on the generosity of the Viperion family. Quiet, sweet Nealtha, who never once complained at the reversal, and accepted her new station with a grave dignity beyond her years.
“When I return, I’ll be expected to make the rounds and pick one,” Makos said. “Whichever is most suitable of all. Our parents will have plotted out the joining of estates and fortunes to the last detail.”
Keltos narrowed his eyes craftily, eager to put the dark thoughts behind him. “What if all the girls your parents pick are ugly?”
Makos shrugged, grinning. “My parents want beautiful grandchildren. They’ll be careful.”
“They’ll have to find some rare beauties, then, to compensate for your diseased visage.”
“Dine on dung, you addle-pated gong-farmer.”
“Gong this,” Keltos rejoined, making a rude gesture.
“You’re an affront to the gods, Kel.”
“The day I need theology lessons from a guttershink like you—”
A flicker of motion caught Keltos’ eye and he suddenly stopped talking. Pale shapes, many of them, had emerged from the dark line of trees and were covering the ground between forest and fort with disturbing speed. They were humanoid but ran in a shambling lope horrible for its utter silence.
“Rukhal’s guts, Mak! Apes!”
He whirled to tear the alarm-horn from its tether on the wall nearby.
Makos stared out into the dark, gripping his lance. “Let them come! What can apes do against walls this high?”
Keltos gave a loud blast on the horn, then filled his lungs for another. “They’re apes, Mak! They can climb!”
The look on Makos’ face was a blend of comprehension and dawning fear. Keltos sounded the horn until the blood thrummed in his temples and he felt light-headed. Beside him, Makos was screaming down at the buildings.
“Up, up, to arms! To arms! Enemy on the south!”
Other sentries took up the call and within seconds men were piling out of the huts, throwing on armor, and stampeding up the stairways to the walls. The wooden scaffolding creaked and groaned under the thunder of feet. The sergeants were bellowing orders, and new-lit torches flared below.
“Get up there, you whoreson dogs! Faster! Move!”
The soldiers were fast, but the apes were faster. Already the swiftest were halfway up the rough log walls, scrambling higher with an agility that few two-legged creatures could match. And there were many of them, at least a hundred. They kept coming out of the trees, sprinting toward the fort or shambling on all fours, alternating between the appearance of man and beast.
Pale fur glowed silver-blue in the moonlight. Keltos looked down over the rampart edge, saw the black eyes glittering in the torchlight, heard the scrape and rasp of fingernails on bark, the chuff-chuff of labored breathing. He grabbed a bundle of sticks and heaved it over the wall, hoping to knock down at least one of the climbers. To his amazement, the ape directly beneath the falling bundle saw it coming and swung wide on one arm, letting the obstacle fall between its body and the wall, to crash into the ditch below. The ape swung back in and resumed its climb, barely slowing.
Keltos threw his torch. It hit the ape and bounced off, falling next to the oiled stick bundle and igniting it. The ape snarled and kept climbing, highlighted by the swirling flames beneath. It was within arm’s reach now, and Keltos drew back for a saber cut. The pale head, with its low brow and jutting jaw, suddenly appeared, bellowing.
Keltos began his swing, then stopped short as Makos’ spear rammed through the thing’s open mouth, punching out the back of its skull. The ape disappeared, taking Makos’ spear with it.
There was no time to rest, or even draw breath. Pale shapes, hooting and gibbering, were spilling over the parapet in droves all along the wall. Keltos moved in fast and the next few minutes were a sweating nightmare of hacking, bone-cleaving slaughter.
His heavy bronze saber did its job well, and Keltos felt his arm muscles take the shock of deep cuts through fur, skin, bone and viscera. They came at him; he struck them down. Jagged fingernails scraped on his breastplate, long powerful fingers sought to rip his armor from him. Keltos snarled like the apes he faced and struck back mercilessly.
There was no time, no room, for tactics. Hot, fierce exultation throbbed within his breast as he hacked and slew, feeling the power of his arm wedded to sharpened bronze as he parted muscle and sinew in a ceaseless flow of bloodshed.
Hot ape blood sprayed across his face, blinding him. He staggered against the wall, panicked at the thought of falling backwards off the rampart, wildly swinging the saber to ward off any strike. Even as he clawed desperately at his eyes, he heard Makos’ battle roar beside him. An ape screeched in pain, and a heavy body knocked him to the floor.
The night was a cacophony of noise now. The apes had an initial advantage in scaling the southern wall at any point they chose, which provided them a broad front. The soldiers, on the other hand, were limited to the narrow staircases, already dangerously close to breaking under the weight of so many running feet, and could only enter the fight from the two nearest access points.
Sergeant Copper and ten of his hoplites reached the top of the wall in a bunch, wild-eyed and panting from the charge up the stairs at full speed. Few wore any armor, but each man carried his shield and spear. The wily sergeant took in the situation at a glance and bawled orders.
A phalanx only three men wide was formed across the rampart and the hoplites marched behind their shield-wall, driving the hooting apes before them. At first the apes lunged and hammered at the great shields, baffled by the lack of grips or holds. Spears licked out between the shields, stabbing, and pale shapes went down writhing. In desperation, climbing atop each other, the apes leaped onto the shields or swung from the edge of the ramparts.
One long arm reached around the clustered shields, gripping at the men’s ankles. It found one, and with a sudden yank the man was dragged sideways and off the edge. His screaming shape hurtled downward inside the fort.
The arm came back, but this time the hoplites were ready and a second-line man chopped down with his short sword. The hand was shorn from the arm. There came a screech of agony from beyond the shields, cut short as a spear from the front row punctured the ape’s lungs.
The cavalry troopers, without the great shields of the infantry, fought with sabers, lances, and tried to protect their sides with the smaller horsemen’s shields. The lances could keep the apes at bay for a moment, but the enemies were swift. More than one horse trooper stabbed out with a lance only to be overwhelmed before he could pull back his arm for another thrust. The apes’ horrible strength was sufficient to tear men limb from limb, and then came the sinking yellow fangs.
The skirmishers posted to the wall sent their arrows and sling-stones humming into the pale knots of struggling apes with practiced skill. Others, woken from sleep, elected to stay on the ground and send their missiles upwards at the sections of the rampart taken over by seething furred masses.
Many apes died under their steady accuracy, but several skirmishers were felled as well, charged in groups and torn asunder. Sojac, the javelin-caster, led a team of peltasts to the north wall,
then circled around the ramparts to a vantage point. Javelins started coming in hard, and apes squealed, kicking in their death throes, tearing at the long shafts transfixing them.
Keltos and Makos had been the first to meet the apes, and were now near exhaustion, their saber-arms stained red to the shoulder. They were in an exposed position near the main breach of the wall, but so eager were the beasts to get into the fort that the two young troopers were overlooked by more than one wave of apes that scampered past them without stopping.
But then a few more saw them and peeled off from the rest of the pack to charge the two exhausted lancers. A large ape raised its arms high and clobbered Makos’ helmet hard enough to throw him bodily against the parapet. It fell an instant later to a saber-cut from Keltos, but the damage was done and Makos sank to one knee, gasping and stunned. Two young bull apes hopped toward them, baring fangs and reaching out with clawed hands.
“Troopers! Get behind us!”
Keltos darted a look over his shoulder. A wall of shields reared there—Copper’s hoplites. He dragged Makos backwards with one hand, the other slashing back and forth with his saber to keep the slavering monsters at bay for a second longer.
The shields parted, absorbing the two cavalry troopers, and then came together again. Keltos and Makos lay flat as the infantry stomped past them on either side. Then they were alone, behind the phalanx.
Keltos rolled onto his belly, panting for breath. His helmet was twisted on his head and he tore it from him, then staggered to his feet, glancing around. Makos still lay, shaking his head against the dizziness. He too took the helmet from his head with trembling hands, examining a sizable dent in it with awe.
Bodies were strewn across the ramparts; in places it was impossible to take a step without treading upon corpse or carcass. Elsewhere on the wall small groups of soldiers still battled against snarling knots of the pale apes. They watched as one trooper, swarmed by two apes, lunged from the ramparts with his assailants and all three plunged to their deaths below.
A few paces away, the phalanx was pushing the apes ahead of it, but the two horse troopers now stood in a lull. And they could see that the tide was finally turning against the apes. Protected by their armor and wielding sharpened bronze that could hew through hide and flesh, the soldiers were transforming the southern ramparts into an abattoir. Too many apes had fallen to the skirmisher’s missiles and spear and saber. More and more troops were attacking fewer and fewer apes. Blood ran off the edge of the wall and pattered in a red rain on the sandy floor of the fort’s interior.
Chaotic bellows and shouts now rose from below. Keltos stared in helpless fury: apes were somehow inside the fort now, racing on all fours through the narrow streets, a river of pale fur headed toward the magistrate’s office.
“So many,” Keltos muttered.
“Let’s get down there,” Makos said, taking up his saber again. But he was still dazed, and staggered so crazily that Keltos pulled him back from the edge. They stood and watched the battle unfold below.
The pale flood converged on the office. In the open plaza below, a thin cordon of Sergeant Copper’s remaining hoplites stood with spears ready and shields interlocked, ready to receive the charge. On the porch of the office Captain Pelekarr stood in full armor, directing the defense, and at his side crouched Perian with her long dagger drawn.
Keltos wanted to yell, to scream encouragement, but it was hard to draw breath. What could one line of hoplites do against such sheer, bestial rage?
The apes hit the line at a run, screeching.
The line held. Spears punched out and apes died, some impaling themselves in their desperation to close with their enemy. The hoplites sagged back beneath the wild momentum, but only for a moment. The dead apes hindered their advancing brethren just enough to negate the charge. The wall of bronze remained intact, and at a shouted command from the captain, it began to advance, pushing back against the straining line of pale fur.
A few apes managed to leap clean over the phalanx and land behind it, but they were intercepted and cut down by sergeants with axes and swords. One managed to make it to the porch, its hairy arm reaching for Perian’s throat even as Pelekarr’s saber severed it at the elbow.
The hoplites finished the last of the apes in the plaza, but many had circled around to the back of the office, where they could hear the rapid huffing of the apes’ breath and the scraping of sand. Pelekarr loudly ordered the phalanx to respond, then leaped from the porch and cast a glance up at the ramparts.
“Ho, the walls!” he cried. “How many more?”
Panting men, bloody blades clutched in fists, peered over the parapet. In the combined light of the moon and the stick bundles burning in the ditch, no more apes could be seen.
Keltos waved at the captain. “The wall is clear!”
A few bodies lay twitching in the ditch itself, one with fur smoldering. The attack had ended as suddenly and silently as it began.
Keltos sagged against the rampart, chest heaving, his face sticky with ape blood. Makos leaned against the parapet nearby, bleeding freely from a deep cut on his face. His dark curls were plastered to his head with sweat and gore.
“Is that all? Are they regrouping?” Makos asked.
Keltos studied the tree line and confirmed what he’d shouted to the captain. “I can’t see a thing moving anymore. Telion’s crimson mane, what a slaughter.”
CHAPTER 17: A DISTURBING FIND
Unwounded men came up to replace the wounded on the walls. Keltos and Makos joined the line filing down the stairs from the ramparts and headed for a hut where injured men could find some level of relief. Along with other hale men that had treated wounds before, Tibion the cook was helping to set bones and sew cuts closed, though he kept cursing and wailing about having to do it.
Kerathi battlefield medicine was crude but effective against survivable wounds, and those that could be helped were soon patched together. The captain ordered more torches lit in case of another attack. Teams gathered the dead or those too wounded to walk unassisted.
Makos sat on a stump while Sojac, one of the skirmishers, stitched his face shut with a slender length of sinew. Makos made no sound, merely grimacing when the curved bone needle punctured his cheek. Keltos sat next to him, helping to hold down an infantryman whose bone was being set. No one spoke, but all listened as the captain held a quick council with the sergeants nearby.
“How many did we lose?” was the first question.
“Still counting, sir. Nine dead, so far.”
“Gods curse those blonde brutes!”
“What did they come for?” asked Sergeant Deltan. “Why attack us? We’ve done nothing to them.”
“We slaughtered an entire pack of them some weeks ago. Let’s not forget that,” muttered Pelekarr. “But this group was bigger than the one we encountered before. A different pack entirely. Did the survivors of our first attack communicate somehow with these ones, turn them against us?” He turned to Perian. “What say you, my lady? Can these pale apes speak to each other?”
“Of course. All beasts can communicate,” she answered with some asperity.
“Not communicate. Speak. Actually tell each other things, differentiate between human groups?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible that the ones who just attacked us did so in revenge for their slain kin?”
“It’s… possible.”
“Unlikely, though?”
“Very.”
“What then? We’ve been attacked in a fortified position by apes. If not for the walls, we had lost more than nine! You say they may hold grudges, but the odds are slim that this was such an act. So why attack us while inside a fort, at night, when we haven’t molested any ape in the area?”
“I know not.” Perian sounded troubled. “It is unusual behavior.”
The captain ruminated while reports came in. One of the more interesting concerned the prisoner, who had made a bid to escape the fort during the attac
k, hands still bound and legs hobbled, after his lone guard had dashed out to confront the apes among the huts. The Silverpath hunter had not made it far before being accosted by a passing sergeant, and now fumed under the watchful eye of a fresh guard.
The men on the walls reported no movement in the trees. It seemed the attack was an isolated one. It was even possible that no apes remained alive from this pack, given the number that had been slain.
The final death toll among the company came to twelve men. Two more had been wounded severely enough that they weren’t expected to last the night, but all the other wounded had been cared for. The ape dead were far greater: two score had perished within the walls of the fort, and many more lay dead in the trench just outside the stockade. An exact account would have to wait for dawn.
Both males and females had participated in the attack, ranging from adults to juveniles. Only nursing females and infants were absent.
Aside from those who died in the little plaza fronting the magistrate’s quarters, many apes, among them the largest males, had been surrounded and killed behind the main building. It was this news that finally roused Pelekarr from his intense concentration.
“Probably trying to sneak around and attack from the rear,” said Sergeant Bivar.
“Nay,” growled Sergeant Keresh. “They stayed behind the building and never struck us from behind. They’re lying there in a heap right now. Barely tried to fight us. We cut ‘em down with ease, for all they were the biggest bull apes of the pack.”
“Show me,” the captain said.
Keltos and Makos, unnoticed and not having been given any other orders, followed the little group of officers around to the back of the magistrate’s quarters. Here the fighting had been bloody, but obviously one-sided. The pile of bodies was an impressive sight. All large males, their pale fur sodden with blood, they lay in a tangled heap.
Pelekarr cast his eyes around, spied Keltos and Makos, and called to them. “Troopers Vipirion and Kuron!”
Red Valor Page 14