Shkai'ra drew her lance in a precise arc. Whistles shrilled in the attacking force and it drew back, forming into a single double line facing the village. Her own force drew up before them; she put her own bone whistle in her teeth and trilled coded signals. Two Banners remained mounted; the rest of the force swung to the ground, stacking their lances while they swung extra quivers up to their fellows. Then they formed in three ranks; the first line drew sabers and formed in a shieldwall, while the rear two held lances two-handed like pikes, a row of bristling points.
"Bring in the rest?" Eh'rik asked. There were two more Banners on the other side of the clearing, still in the woods.
"Nia," Shkai'ra decided: no. "When they break, too many could get through or over the palisade and run for the woods." They could never catch fugitives on foot among the timber. "Messenger, have them come out when we close: scale the palisade, fire from the top." There would be a parapet there, and attackers could use it as easily as defenders.
She blew a long descant on the whistle, and the whole force moved forward. Those on foot tramped steadily, slamming their weapons against the hard leather of their shields in an earthquake wham-wham-wham that echoed back from the walls and trees. The mounted ranks behind followed with an arrow on the string, reins knotted on the horses' necks. At three hundred meters the mounted archers stopped, raising their weapons. The foot-fighters stepped up their pace to a trot; the sun rose over the pines, ruddy fire on edged steel and the garish lacquer of the armor. Shkai'ra raised her arm and chopped it down, and the archers drew and loosed together. The air filled with the shrill whistle of arrows, and two more flights were in the air before the first landed. Hands stripped arrows out of the quivers at a speed that would empty the forty shafts in minutes… but the raiders' attack would cover the beaten ground before they reached the barricade.
Few of the Minztans dared rise to return the fire, and many were left writhing on the ground or pinned to the barricade by the meter-length shafts. The raiders charged, screeching as they ran. When they struck the barricade there was a sudden huge noise, thump and bang and rattle. Wood and steel on leather, on wood, skirling off steel or thudding dully into meat; shouts from the Minztans, screams born of sudden agony greater than flesh was made to bear. Over it all the ululating howl of the Kommanz warriors, wailing upward into the insane trilling of the blood squeal. Hands ripped at the barricade as the foresters thrust and hacked desperately to stop them; the attackers stood shield to shield and blocked the metal, striking back with sword and warhammer. Logs and wagons tumbled back, and the plains warriors surged through and over; moments later the defense burst back like glass struck by a sledgehammer. The attackers had better armor, weapons, above all the training since babyhood that made them warriors born.
Shkai'ra grunted as the fight moved back from the barricade. Mounted squads threw lariats over the obstacles and snubbed the braided leather ropes to the pommels of their saddles, dragging them aside as they might a steer. Behind there was a multiple creak and rattle as reins and lances were readied, shields un-slung, and arms thrust through the grips.
"Now!" she barked; horns gave a rasping snarl.
The heartbeat was loud in her ears, and she felt the familiar quasisexual tingling up her spine, drawing tight the skin on shoulders and breasts before settling under the rib cage. Dawnlight broke blinding-bright off the lanceheads slanting down around her, silver in a world of white on black. Breath rose like steam from horses and warriors, rich with the comforting scents of equine sweat and oiled leather. Through her gauntlet the rawhide-wound grip of the lance was a familiar weight dragging at her arm as the point came into view beyond her mount's head. As disciplined as their riders, the wedge of horses leapt forward off their haunches, building to a gallop in half a dozen paces. She felt the huge muscles bunch beneath her and then they were flying, weightless for a second at the apex of a leap that took them over a two-wheeled cart. Her teeth clicked together as they landed, hooves tearing out divots of packed snow and dirt.
Beyond, the enemy were in flight, little knots and clusters of them racing back toward the buildings. A few turned to meet the lancers; one threw a javelin, another knelt with square shield up and a broad-bladed bear spear aimed at the boiled-leather chest-plate of her horse. The Kommanza batted the flung spear out of the air with her shield and couched her lance. For an instant she could see the taut white fear-grin beneath the spearman's helm, and then the lancehead slugged home. Punching through the shield with a crack like a frozen branch breaking, then into meat and bone with a jarring thump that slammed back from elbow sling through shoulder to braced feet.
She tried to swing the shaft out to drag it free, but the inertia of the Minztan's body levered against the momentum of horse and rider to crack the tough wood across. Then her mount stumbled on the corpse and she had to spend an instant with knees and voice and reins to bring him up again. Her whistle trilled continue, and her mount skittered sideways as it swapped ends and killed momentum. The Minztan who had thrown the javelin was still alive, had rolled beneath her shield as the cavalry went overhead. Now she was up and dragging out a short broad chopping-sword, running in at Shkai'ra's horse from the left rear, always a rider's most vulnerable position.
"Hai! " the Kommanza shouted, her saber snapping out with reflex speed; knees and balance brought the horse around, pig-squealing itself and snatching at the enemy with huge yellow chisel-teeth.
The Minztan banged her shield into the horse's nose and stepped in close, cutting back-handed at the rider's knee as the animal shied. Shkai'ra stabbed her saber down and the enemy blade slid along it with an unmusical crash; in the same instant she kicked, and the stirrup-iron broke the Minztan's nose and gashed her face open along both cheeks. The curved plains sword came back until lay along her spine; Shkai'ra rammed her feet down in the stirrups and clenched her belly in a huff of concentration as her fingers milked the hilt of the saber. It came down with the beautiful fluid feeling that meant a perfect strike: this was the pear-splitter of the practice yard. Her arm tensed as it landed, thick wrist and strappings taking the jar. The Minztan dropped backward in a huge fan of blood, bright-red against the snow, brain leaking from the split skull.
"Ehv'ketel" Shkai'ra shrieked: I have eaten.
She stood in the stirrups to get an overview of the fight. Chaos swarmed around the village. Perhaps half the dwellers had run to earth in their homes, too few in each to make it a fortress; the rest were slain or taken captive. Already the Kommanz warriors swarmed around the halls, shooting at any sign of movement. Shkai'ra joined the officers in pulling them back out of easy crossbow range, setting some to breaking up carts to make improvised mantelets. When a band of Minztans tried a sally, whistles brought two Banners out of the saddle to form a shieldwall and smash forward, irresistible. Others rounded up prisoners, kindled fires, stood in the saddle to throw nooses around carved beam ends and swarm hand over hand to roofs, where axes soon thudded on the shingles. The Kommanz hurt were brought under cover, as were those of the Minztans not too badly hurt to heal in time to be useful.
One overexcited rider bent in the saddle to grab a torch and rode toward a kinhall.
"Smoke them out!" he yelled. His squadleader knocked him from his mount with a sweep of her bowstave.
"Burn somebody else's loot, steer-fucker!" she snarled. Shkai'ra saw, grinned, and decided the routine was in capable hands.
She took her whistle between her teeth. [Identity code], this-building storm, now-if-possible. Consolidate. Commander-FangBanner, rendezvous, fifteen minutes, two hundred meters north-northwest my-present-position, she signaled. Minztans tended to have concealed doors, from what she knew of them, and Shkai'ra cut between two buildings to make sure none opened on the stockade and the woods. Any who escaped would be a loss, and they might take their portable wealth with them: jewelry, say…
"Back, hold them and move back," Maihu shouted. "They're trying to delay us."
The knot of Minztans lu
rched backward toward the wall of the kinhall before the probing Kommanz lances; the riders were keeping their distance, the horses moving light as dancers as the warriors stabbed overhand at the shields. Steel banged off wood ahead of her, and one of her kinrmates lurched back. The lancehead jerked out of his face with a grating sound, but someone else stepped in and thrust a spear at the horse's eyes and it backed, shaking its head. People were lurching through the door behind her as she dropped the end of the crossbow to the ground and stamped her boot into the yoke. With a sobbing grunt she pulled it back until the sear clicked, then fumbled the last shaft out of the quiver at her belt and slapped it down in the groove.
"Through the door now," she screamed hoarsely, leveling it.
For perhaps three seconds the half-dozen riders hesitated. They whooped and yipped at her, painted faces split by the ridged nasal bars of their helmets; not afraid, but not thinking of this as real combat, either, trying to think of a way to capture her alive. Then they saw the others gaining the door, and two warriors screeched and spurred forward, bent low over the necks of the horses with their lances thrust forward; two more behind were slinging their spears and readying bows, while another swung his lariat overhead.
Tunng. The crossbow spoke, and the feathers of the short bolt seemed to sprout from the throat of one horse. It screamed, heartrendingly human even then, missed a stride and went down shoulder-first. The rider leapt clear with inhuman skill, but the other lancer had to draw up to avoid overriding her. Maihu used the instant to leap backward, stumbling over the doorsill into the entranceway. Blackness fell as the thick door slammed shut and hands threw the bar home. Seconds later metal began to hammer at it from the outside, then thunderous hooves as a Kommanza backed his mount up to it and made the animal kick.
For an instant all Maihu could do was sag against the planks of the inner chamber, blank-eyed and mouth gaping as she hauled breath into fire-tight lungs. Her kinmate Tomlu stepped up to the narrow slit window beside the door, poised her spear and thrust. Shouts and screams outside and she dodged back; lanceheads probed in after her, but Dennai swept down a two-edged sword made for export to the country of the Inland Seas far to the east. Ashwood cracked; the other lance withdrew, but stayed poised just outside as a glittering threat if anyone should step up to the slit to shoot. Axes splintered at the door.
"Got to get moving," Maihu croaked. Dennai stood beside her, uneasy in his unfamiliar leather chest armor.
"What do we do?" he cried.
Maihu took a deep breath; a hand pushed a dipper of water at her and she gulped it. "Run. Run for the woods and get winter-travel gear from one of the caches, then go east for help. There are people of the Seeker's at Garnetseat. And an Adept."
"But the children!"
She took his head between her hands. "Love, I know. But we can't take them with us, and the faster word gets back the more hope of stopping these animals short of the steppe. And there is the Summoning."
He bit his lip until the blood came, and nodded. The ten adult members of the Jonnah's-kin ran through into the main ground-floor chamber. The tall doors were barred, and through the thick log walls came screams and clashes and the shrill neighing of horses. Maihu smelled her own fear, tasted it flat and metallic on her tongue. Her wombchild Taimi burst into the hall, gasping, his eyes glittering with the heedless excitement of his thirteen years.
"The back—" He paused for breath. "The back is clear, right to the stockade, and the field beyond to the woods."
One of her kinmates yelled from a window slit. Seconds later a tremendous splintering crash slammed against the door, shaking the boards beneath their feet. Dust flew up from crevices, choking. Somebody sneezed.
"They've got a log slung lengthwise between horses!" Zimdi called, and fired his crossbow. "Got one!"
Almost instantly a long arrow slashed through the narrow opening and took him between the eyes. The narrow pile head was driven by a hundred-pound wheelbow less than twenty meters away: it punched through his forehead and out the rear of his skull, the force of the impact picking him up and throwing him back three paces.
Maihu understood the westerners' tongue, heard a man screaming out in its ripping gutturals:
"At the middle! At the middle where the doors join, you sheep-raping pigs' arseholes! You, you, you, give them some covering fire next time; if we lose another horse I'll have your pubic hairs for a scalp!"
Jannu, her eldest kinmate, gripped her arm. "Well hold them," she said. A sweep of her arm took in half the kinfast. the elders, the lame, a man recently recovered from a fever. "You can make speed. Now go-"
Maihu hesitated for an instant. "Go in the Circle." she said, and led the others out at a run
.
Seconds later the ram hit the doors with a massive impact that tore loose the brackets and broke the bar holding it shut. Arrows whipped through the windows with a whining whup-ivhup-whup and a blast of frigid air blew past the shattered leaves of the entrance. A Kommanza hurdled the body of the dead horse outside and leaped through the narrow opening. He landed lightly on his feet, moving with a beautiful fluid grace. His shield was painted in the likeness of a gaping scarlet mouth ringed with fangs, and the long saber made a sound like ripping silk as it whickered through the air. Two Minztans rushed him. He threw himself forward and down, curling into a ball and rolling under their feet. The foresters went over in a thrashing tangle from which the Kommanza somehow bounced erect. The saber took one Minztan across the spine even as he pirouetted to kick the other precisely behind the ear. Another Kommanza pushed through the door, and another. One raised her bow and shot, filling the room with its great bass throb. Jannu braced to meet the first as he stalked her. Fascinated, she saw the downy black beard of youth on his cheeks, scars, a short gold bar through his nose, narrow green eyes lynx-steady. Her axe stroke bounced off his shield. She heard the clatter, felt a sudden intense cold. Looking down: the curved sword sliding up through her stomach, withdrawing red-black; a sudden foul smell.
"Ah," she said, falling to the floor and curling around herself, then: "Ah!" as the pain began to seep through. A hand gripped the hair over the crown of her head, pulled back until her neck creaked. The young Kommanza laid down his sword, drew his knife, and traced a palm-sized patch. With a grunt of effort he wrenched the scalp free and held it before her eyes. Fading, it was the last thing she saw as the knife slit her throat, neatly, from ear to ear.
Being preoccupied, Shkai'ra failed to see the rope lying across the lane before it snapped up under the forefeet of her horse. The animal went over with a scream of pain and fear, cut short with a sickening snap of neckbone. A lifetime's drilled reflex brought her feet out of the stirrups, curled her into a ball in midair. The hilt of her saber caught her a painful thump under the armpit, but she ignored it and the taste of blood in her mouth as rage and sorrow washed over her. Spring-Foot-Among-Wildflowers had been not only a trained warhorse and thus valuable, but a friend raised from colthood. By Baiwun Thunderer, someone was going to die for this!
She came to her feet and sprinted back for her bow. That turned into a frantic dive as a crossbow bolt whirred by her head and thumped into the logs. She pulled the bow free of its case, yanked a shaft out of the quiver, nocked, turned, and loosed in a smooth, flowing curve. The Minztan archer on the roof threw up her hands with a grunt no louder than the meaty thud of the arrow striking home and slid with her weapon to land at Shkai'ra's feet. She had used a broad-headed hunting shaft, better than a needle-thin bodkin point against an unarmored enemy, and it had driven up under the breastbone to sever the spine. Blood flowed out red as sunlight on the snow. There were only three unbroken shafts in the quiver. Shkai'ra mumbled a curse as she clenched them between her teeth and looked around for another target. She did not have long to wait: a section of one of the walls fell outward, and five of the enemy poured through. She was between them and the only hope of escape. They charged.
She dropped to one knee and shot three ti
mes in as many seconds, killing with every shaft; at that range shock alone would kill from a wheelbow as heavy as hers. The leader was a big man in a leather breastplate, swinging a long sword. Her shaft sank to the feathers in his chest, knocking him backward to trip the spearwielder following. Her second arrow slammed through that one's neck and nailed them together. The third paused to aim her own weapon, and waited a moment too long: hunters had less reason than a Kommanza to learn close-range snapshooting. The last two checked, long enough for her to shift the shield slung across her back to her left arm and snap out her saber.
For a moment they stared at each other, the Minztans stunned by their comrades' deaths, the Kommanza considering. The two remaining were a woman in her thirties, with a wooden shield and spear, and a slight youth with a spike axe that looked too heavy for his wrists. Shkai'ra made a swift decision. She had been standing in the standard footfighting position, crouched with her feet at right angles, left forward and shield up under her eyes, saber held high with the hilt toward the enemy. A vast lighthearted calm possessed her as she filled her lungs and charged with an earsplitting scream.
"AAAAAAAAAAüüMeeeeEEEEEEEE—" she shrieked, an endless saw-edged wailing that clawed at the nerves. Charging, she ran crabwise with her blade whirling to distract the eye; it was a reckless move against an experienced opponent, but a thousand subtle clues of stance and tension had told her that these were no warriors she faced.
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