Demontech: Gulf Run

by David Sherman

  Doli wasn’t the only one to object.

  “You cannot mean me!” snapped a woman in a thin gown that rippled in the light breeze.

  Alyline looked at her sharply. “Bel Kyn, isn’t it?”

  Bel Kyn held her head high, chin jutting arrogantly. “I am the earl’s concubine. You cannot demand such a thing of me.”

  Alyline gave her a steady, cold look. “In Dartmutt you may have been the earl’s bed toy. Out here, you’re just another woman—or a common trollop. Your choice. You will do what is necessary to save the caravan. Or do you want to be caned again?”

  Alyline paid her no more attention, but Doli had raised a point that she realized she must address.

  “When the Jokapcul come here, they will rape and torture and kill,” she said loudly to the assembled women. “You know that as well as I do. We have to stop them from coming here.

  “They are men. We are women. We know what men want from women.” She paused while a wave of nervous titters and shocked gasps made its way through the crowd. “Yes. So we let them think they are going to get it. I know the Jokapcul will follow a woman and not stop even when their officers order them to. I know that because I’ve led Jokapcul into an ambush before.” She looked to the east, where the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon.

  “Now strip off your clothes and let’s go!”

  Maid Marigold was almost as fast as disrobing as Alyline was. As soon as she was naked she faced the crowd; few of the other women had begun undressing.

  “I was a prisoner of the Jokapcul once,” Maid Marigold called out. “I know how they treat their captives. I will not wait here for them to come, I’d rather go out to attack them and die if I must! If one of them gets close enough to you, kill him without hesitation. When Alyline says ’Run,’ run as if your life depends on it, because your life and more does!”

  “Strip or I will strip you,” Alyline snarled at Doli.

  Doli sobbed but she shucked off her clothes and the others began to as well. Bel Kyn was the last to drop her gown. She did it reluctantly and with great embarrassment, but she did it.

  Alyline held her dagger up to catch the sun’s first rays. “Now let’s go!” she shouted.

  Three hundred naked women turned and trotted southwest, parallel to the road. In the distance they could make out, as a deeper shadow in the predawn dark, the Jokapcul troops advancing along the road.

  Dawn’s first light sped along the desert surface; illuminating the caravan’s eastern circles, it shot across the western circles of wagons, and cast harsh shadows on the battle just north of the caravan. It filled the grass and sandy ground beyond and seemed to pause when it reached the three hundred naked women running its way, as though it wanted to romp with them. But it couldn’t linger; it had to move on to shoot sparks off the weapons and armor of the Jokapcul marching up the road. It seemed to run onward a little faster then, as though it didn’t want to associate with those armed men. It reached the bowl from which the road emerged and dumped shadows in its depths, then climbed the bowl’s far side and quickly filled the land ahead as far as the eye could see.

  The Jokapcul shuffled forward rapidly, at a pace almost as fast as a trot, but less tiring. There was no great need to rush. They knew it would be better to arrive at the flimsy barricades when the shadows cast by the wagons weren’t quite so long. Six troops shuffled along, two in column on the road, the others in column flanking them to either side. All eyes were fixed on the nearing objective.

  Almost all eyes.

  The knight commanding the left-rear troop looked out over the desert, a landscape he’d never before seen. It didn’t look like he’d always heard deserts looked like—rolling hills of blowing sand, with plentiful sand devils dancing among them. Neither were there any of the thorn-studded, leafless trees he’d heard about. Instead, the land was flat and quiet, and there were large swaths of grass that horses could graze on. He saw the battle a couple of miles to the north, and smiled to himself at the surprise his troop—and the others—would make for the victors of that battle when they returned to the caravan. He was just swinging his gaze forward again when movement on the desert caught his eye. He saw people running parallel to the road, headed southwest. They were far enough off, more than half a mile, that he couldn’t make out any detail, but they didn’t look like soldiers; they weren’t in formation, and their gait seemed somehow wrong.

  He growled at his sergeant to keep the troop running forward in good order, then sprinted to the head of the central column, where the Kamazai Commanding led the force.

  The Kamazai Commanding looked to his left front and agreed, the running people didn’t look like soldiers, they looked more like refugees running the wrong way. He barked a laugh, then snarled a command. The knight growled his obedience and slowed to a walk until his troop caught up.

  The knight stopped his troop when they reached him and pointed to the running people. They were closer now and, while he still couldn’t make out detail, he was more sure than before that they weren’t soldiers attempting to come around behind the Jokapcul force. He barked out a short series of commands, then led his troop, spread out on line, to where they would intercept the runners.

  “Some of them are coming at us!” Doli squealed.

  “Good!” Alyline snapped. She raised her voice. “Stop! Everybody, stop where you are.”

  Three hundred women staggered to a halt, their strung out line telescoped closed until they were in danger of becoming too closely bunched.

  “Spread out, spread out!” the Golden Girl shouted. She turned them to face the oncoming Jokapcul and trotted in front of her troop of naked women. “Spread out! Let them see all of us. Hide your weapons behind your backs!” She watched while the women did her bidding, pointing to some who stood too close together, trotting here and there to push someone into line or separate women who crowded too closely together. They weren’t arrayed as well as she’d like, but she looked over her shoulder and saw the soldiers not much more than a hundred yards distant.

  “Look alluring!” she shouted, and turned to face the enemy, one hand planted on a cocked hip. “Smile at them!” she called out. Behind her, she heard nervous titters and anxious laughs. No one was sobbing, at least not loud enough for her to hear.

  Recognition rippled through the Jokapcul and excited cries broke out in their ranks. They slowed as they gaped at the heavenly vision before them.

  The Kamazai Commanding had promised them all the women they could take—and here were women offering themselves! Tall women, short women, plump and thin, and all sizes and shapes in between—and all beautiful. And they were willing! They had to be willing, they were all naked!

  “We outnumber them,” Alyline called out. “We can lure them in and kill them all before they realize their danger! Wave to them!” She lifted her hand from her hip and waved it in come hither circles. She glanced side to side and saw other women waving, some hesitantly, some invitingly, though some weren’t waving at all. “Keep your weapons out of sight,” she cried out a reminder.

  “Come to me, big soldier!” someone abruptly called out. “You’re so big and strong. Come to me!”

  Others picked up the call and girlish laughter pealed over the voices. “Come to me!” “You’re mine!” “I want you!” “I need you!”

  The Jokapcul had slowed almost to a stop when the women started calling to them. Then the calls galvanized them and they took off. Most of them dropped their weapons and stripped off their armor as they ran. A man has no need for weapons and armor when he’s about to be surrounded by such willing and eager beauty—does he?

  “They’re ours!” Alyline shouted gleefully when she saw the weapons and armor being tossed aside. “Surround them, two or three of you to each of them!”

  She fixed her eyes on the officer who trailed his men, barking and growling at them; he kept his sword in his hand and his armor fixed in place. Rolling her hips just so, she began slinking toward him. An unarmed s
oldier already stripped down to his loincloth grabbed at her; she imperiously brushed his hands away. He saw where she was looking, saw his commander looking back at her, and turned in search of a beauty who didn’t have her eyes set on the commander. Three women reached out to him and bore him to the ground. He never saw, and barely felt, the dagger that plunged beneath his skull into his brain from just behind his earlobe.

  The Golden Girl reached the officer and lightly placed a hand on his armored chest. He started to knock her hand away, but made the mistake of looking into her eyes and stayed his hand. He looked down the length of her body and back into her smiling eyes. He swallowed. Never in his life had he been so near such a beautiful woman, so golden a woman, so great a treasure. He went weak in the knees when she leaned her magnificent body against him and slid her left arm around his waist. She closed her face on his until all he could see was her eyes, eyes such that if a man lost himself in them and never found his way back out, he wouldn’t mind. She moved her left hand from his waist to his helmet and tugged it off. He placed his hands on her hips and slid them up her body to her breasts.

  His hands never reached their goal. They were halfway there when they shot to his throat, to quench the fire that flared there.

  The Golden Girl stepped back. Fresh, red blood dripped from the blade of the golden dagger she gripped in her right hand. Hot blood spurted from the officer’s slit throat, spattered on her face and chest.

  When she was sure he was dead, Alyline turned and looked around. The only people she saw standing were some of the women. Everyone else was on the ground. Some women were on their hands and knees, throwing up, some were screaming and crying and chopping and hacking at the corpses of the soldiers they’d slain.

  “Everyone, on your feet! Line up!” she screamed. “Everyone!” She strode to the nearest woman who was stabbing and stabbing a corpse and yanked her to her feet. The blood-covered, naked woman squealed and struggled in her grasp, lashing with her knife at the mutilated body that was now out of her reach. Alyline slapped her hard enough to stagger her. She blinked wildly when she regained her balance, then her eyes focused on Alyline and she panted, regaining her breath.

  “He’s dead, you can stop killing him.”

  “He is?” the woman squeaked, and looked down.

  “He is. Now line up with the others.”

  Shaken, staggering a bit, the woman did as she was told.

  Alyline looked around and saw other women doing the same as she had just done, shocking the women who were still chopping at corpses in their mania. She gave them a moment to get into line. “Are any of them still alive?” she called out. When nobody said yes, she asked, “Are any of us injured?” All the women were spattered, even coated, with blood, and she couldn’t tell if any of it was theirs, but none claimed injury, not even the woman who stood bent over, massaging her throat. She waved weakly that she was all right. Another stood precariously balanced on one leg. “I don’t think it’s broken,” she replied, and coughed out a sob of pain.

  Alyline looked back to the main body of Jokapcul. They had stopped their advance on the caravan and were looking at the women—but they weren’t moving north.

  “Gather swords, chop at the bodies!” she ordered. The women darted about, picked up dropped Jokapcul swords, and started hewing.

  The Kamazai Commanding shot occasional glances to his left front, watching the troop he’d dispatched closing with the running refugees. When the troop slowed, he growled a curse. Were they cowardly to hesitate like that before refugees? They started running again and his jaw dropped. They were now far enough away that he couldn’t see clearly, but it looked like his fighters were throwing away their weapons and stripping off their armor as they ran! He roared out for his force to halt and carefully watched what was happening. The troop closed with the refugees, and nearly everyone, fighters and refugees alike, tumbled to the ground. Were they engaged in hand-to-hand combat, grappling like a mob? Then they started rising, but not all of them. Some ran about doing—something. Then light flashed off blades as the standing people chopped at those on the ground. There were more people chopping than there were fighters in the troop!

  The kamazai’s observations were interrupted by the knight who commanded the left front troop, the troop nearest the—whatever it was that was happening out there. He had a fighter with him. The fighter dropped to his knees in front of the kamazai and bowed his head.

  “Kamazai,” he said when the commander acknowledged him, “this lowly fighter has the sharpest eyes in my troop.” He nudged the fighter with his foot. “Tell the kamazai what you told me.”

  “Kamazai,” the fighter said in a croaking voice, “those refugees are all women. I think they killed our fighters.”

  The Kamazai commanding looked at him in stunned disbelief for a few seconds, then lifted his gaze to the distance. Yes, they looked more like women than like men. And nowhere did he see a glint of sunlight on metal-studded armor. Suddenly he was both frightened and enraged. He roared a command, and his entire remaining force, all five troops, turned from the caravan and raced toward the people in the desert.

  When the troop peeled off, the light was wrong for Captain Phard to make out where they were headed. He’d sped back to the road-blocking circle when the runner Lieutenant Krysler dispatched to him gave his report—but not before detailing people in the circle held by the Earl’s Guards to guard the bandit women and take care of the Dartmutter women the bandits had attempted to abduct. He ordered Lieutenant Armana to come with him and bring his platoon. Armana had fixed his men with a steely look and told them they were heading into a fight. They had swallowed and jittered nervously, the exuberance from their victory over the bandits melting away, but they went with their commander.

  Captain Phard wondered what was going on when the entire Jokapcul body stopped still more than half a mile distant; that was much too far away for them to deploy into assault formation. He was bewildered when the entire force took off to the north. He curled his hands around his eyes to sharpen his focus and scanned the landscape north of the road.

  There! There were people running north! Where had they come from? Who were they? Then he noticed something much closer.

  “Where are the women?”

  Krysler looked about, surprised at the question. “Lady Alyline was here, she must have taken them.”

  “Were they armed?” Phard asked, feeling a bit sick.

  Krysler didn’t know, but one of his men said that he’d seen the women gathering knives and other bladed weapons.

  Phard groaned. That must be it: Lady Alyline had gathered a troop of women and taken them out to maneuver around behind the Jokapcul and catch them from the rear when they launched their assault. Such foolishness! Now the Jokapcul had seen them and were in pursuit. The women must realize they were no match for trained soldiers who outnumbered them by—he looked carefully to estimate numbers—two to one. Then he blinked. Where was that first troop that had left the main Jokapcul force to go north?

  He gasped. The Jokapcul paused where he estimated the women had been when the main force began its pursuit. Damn the distance! He couldn’t make out much detail, but it looked like the Jokapcul were examining the ground at their feet. Could it be the women had wiped out an entire troop of Jokapcul? No! That was impossible! And if they had, how many of the caravan’s women lay dead on the desert?

  He watched, wracked with anguish as the women ran north, toward the battle between their soldiers and the Desert Men, with five hundred Jokapcul in hot pursuit. The distance was too great for him to attempt to catch up with the enemy and attack them from the rear. Even if it hadn’t been, he knew there were so many of them his men would all die in the attempt to save the women.

  The women were doomed!

  Each chop of a sword sprayed blood into the air and splashed more red onto the naked women, until they almost seemed garbed in tight red shirts and leggings. Alyline hurried around the field, checking the bodies, a
nd breathed deeply in great sighs of relief when she saw they were all men. None of the women had been killed! She’d hardly been certain her desperate plan would work. But it had, far better than she had dared hope, and she was giddy with joy.

  But two of the women—only two! —were injured, and she had to see to them.

  The throat of a widow from a Bostian farm was badly bruised. “I killed him,” she croaked. “I sliced off his manhood before he died.” The smile on her face when she said that would have frozen the heart of any man.

  “Are you able to run?” Alyline asked, concerned.

  “Nothing wrong with my legs.” She swallowed, and it was obvious her throat was painful.

  “Yes, but can you run? It takes wind as well as legs to run.”

  “Talking hurts, but I can breathe all right.”

  “Good. Start now.” Alyline pointed north. The widow nodded and took off.

  Alyline found the woman with the injured leg sitting alone, rubbing her ankle.

  “Can you run?” she asked as she removed the woman’s hands from her ankle and gently probed it.

  “I don’t think so,” the woman said nervously. She nibbled her lower lip as she looked south to the watching Jokapcul.

  “I don’t feel any jagged edges, so it’s probably a sprain rather than a break,” Alyline said calmly. “What is your name?”

  “Cwen.”

  “Cwen, we have about a mile to go when they come after us. If you can’t run, they’ll catch you before we reach safety. So you have to stay here and play dead.” She smiled wryly, looking at the young woman. “You’re covered with blood, so if you lay still they’ll believe you are dead.

  “Now lay down, I’ll put bodies on you. That way you’ll look like you were killed by whoever is on top of you.”

  “Do you think it will work?” Cwen asked fearfully.

  “It will if you lay still.”

  “All right.” She trembled violently.

  When Cwen lay on her back, the blood made her look like she’d been butchered. Alyline dragged two bodies on top of her; one facedown along her length, the other across that body’s back. She studied the small tableau for a moment; it needed something else. She looked around, wondering what she could add to the display.