“Stop!” she shouted to a woman nearby who was hacking a body to pieces. She went and wrested the sword from her. The woman’s breath came in gasps and her face had a greenish tint.
“That’s enough, go sit down with your head between your knees.” The woman looked at her vacantly. She slapped her, hard. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Wh-what?”
“Go over there. Sit down and put your head between your knees.”
Dumbly, the woman did as she was told.
Alyline watched her for a moment, then went back to the tableau. “Don’t move,” she instructed the lame woman. Without warning, she lifted the sword and plunged it into the lower back of the top body.
Cwen screamed.
“Be quiet! I didn’t even touch you.” She studied what she’d done. The sword went all the way through the body, but not far enough. She gripped its hilt and leaned her weight on it. The blade slid all the way through and its point stuck into the ground.
“Remember,” she said to the nearly panicked woman, “don’t move when the Jokapcul come. They’ll believe you’re dead and leave you alone.”
“I will,” Cwen said, but her soft words went unheard.
“Alyline!” Doli screamed. “They’re coming!”
The Golden Girl looked to the south. The Jokapcul were now running their way. “Let’s go!” she shouted, pointing north. She waited until everyone was moving, then spoke to the injured woman.
“They’re coming, they’ll be here in a few minutes. Remember, don’t move! ”
“I-I’ll try.” But she spoke to empty air, Alyline was already running.
The women had nearly a mile to run, but they had a half mile lead on the Jokapcul. Many of them were frightened. Many? Nearly all. The Jokapcul chasing after them were terrifying enough by themselves. So were the Desert Men they were running toward. Most of them were still uncomfortable about running around naked, uncomfortable knowing that soon more men—including men they knew—were going to see them naked. And smeared with blood. Alyline had a hard time making them pace themselves; unchecked, most of them would sprint until they were exhausted, then be caught and slaughtered. She raced from sprinting woman to sprinting woman and grabbed them to slow them down.
“Slow down, they aren’t going to catch us,” she panted. “We want them close behind us when we get there.” She had to slap a couple to get their attention.
Doli was near panic herself, but she calmed when saw what the Golden Girl was doing. After a moment she began doing the same herself. So did Maid Marigold. Shortly after, several more women were racing to catch and slow down the quickly tiring sprinters. She did her best. By the time they were halfway to the battle on the north, they were in a group running at an easy pace. Women with stronger legs or wind helped women whose exhaustion was slowing them down.
The Jokapcul, running faster, steadily narrowed the gap.
When the women were about seventy-five yards from the battle between their caravan forces and the Desert Men, they began yelling to attract their attention.
The Jokapcul paused when they reached the site where the women had slaughtered the men of an entire troop. The sight of their butchered comrades enraged them. Women had done this! Women! They needed no urging when the Kamazai Commanding urged them on. What they had been planning to do with the women of the caravan once they were theirs no longer mattered—now the women were going to suffer severely, then die painfully.
The Kamazai Commanding and his subordinate knights bullied the fighters to keep their formations instead of rushing forward the way they wanted to. Soon they were close enough to see the women clearly. Then the men’s eyes opened wide and their pace increased, despite the roared commands of the Kamazai Commanding, and the lines of the troop formations grew ragged.
The women were naked! Oh, they would have fun with these women before they punished them!
Their attention was so fixed on the bouncing female flesh they were gaining on that they didn’t look beyond to see the other danger they approached.
The battle had raged since before dawn, and they were tired, all of them. Blood trickled from wounds on many of the fighters on both sides. Bodies—of the dead, the severely wounded, and those too weary to continue—were strewn about the battlefield, which had shifted south to barely a hundred yards from the nearest wagons. The Desert Men still had the advantage of numbers, but the soldiers from the caravan had the advantage of disciplined tactics. When they first clashed, the soldiers arriving piecemeal were cut down individually by the wild Desert Men. But once the soldiers arrived in force and got organized, they stopped losing.
The fighting in the predawn darkness was chaotic, groups of soldiers or Desert Men moving here and there in search of foes, or individual Desert Men running about looking for someone to kill. There were few casualties, since targets were hard to strike and most blows missed or caused only minor wounds. Still, the Desert Men were more familiar with melees, and all of them were experienced fighters; many of the soldiers weren’t. Only the infrequent use of demon spitters or Xundoe’s Phoenix Eggs prevented a Desert Men victory.
Since the rising of the sun, the fighting had slowed; the men were tiring. The Desert Men were too proud to run from a fight where numbers were in their favor, and wise enough to remain close to their foes so their enemy could not use its demon weapons effectively. And with the Desert Men staying so close, the soldiers couldn’t easily withdraw to the relative safety of the wagon circles—unless they were willing to leave their dead and wounded behind, which Spinner, Haft, and Rammer refused to do.
So there wasn’t enough din of battle to block the men’s ears to the yelling and screaming of the women. Indeed, exclamations of surprise from the combatants who looked quickly became louder than the battle as more and more of the men turned toward the yelling and, for the moment, were distracted from the fight.
The Desert Men were so stunned by the sight of so many blood-covered, naked women running at them, yelling and waving their hands in the air, that they didn’t notice how many of those waving hands held daggers, knives, and cleavers. The soldiers were equally stunned, though they were farther from the women. With the increased distance, and the Desert Men blocking their view, none of them recognized the women; they had no better idea than the Desert Men who they were or where they’d come from.
Alyline looked back and saw that the Jokapcul were only fifty yards behind, nearly as close as the Desert Men the women were approaching. The Desert Men hadn’t seen the Jokapcul yet; they were too busy gawking at the women. She gasped for extra breath and began yelling to the women.
“Point backward, point at the Jokapcul!” She put action to her words and screamed “HELP!” as she flung a pointing hand back. To her sides, other women did the same.
A few of the Desert Men directly to her front shifted their eyes and saw the rapidly approaching Jokapcul. They cried out in alarm and readied their weapons to meet the new threat. Then the women were among them.
All around, Desert Men who hadn’t yet noticed the Jokapcul grabbed at women and pulled them close, pawing at breasts and flanks and more intimate places. The women screamed and twisted and pointed. Then the Desert Men let the women go and braced for the assault. Anyone who didn’t pay attention to the screaming and pointing was stabbed, if not by the woman he held, by others who came to her rescue.
When the women reached the back of the mass of Desert Men, some paused to slash or stab at backs, or hack at hamstrings. A dozen or more of the struck Desert Men dropped, but one spun about, wrenching the knife in his kidney out of the hand of a Zobran innkeeper’s daughter. Swinging his sword backhanded, he split her head. Another staggered forward, jerking away from the cleaver blade that had chopped into his shoulder. He turned around, swinging his own sword. The wound in his shoulder was deep enough that he had no strength to put into the swing. His strike failed to take off the woman’s arm, but his blow broke the bone and knocked her to the ground. Enraged at
being struck from behind by a naked woman, he switched his sword to his left hand and plunged it into her chest. Three or four other women fell to avenging blades, but the rest made it safely away from the Desert Men, who were now fully engaged with the Jokapcul.
“Spinner, Haft! It’s us!” Alyline screamed as she led women toward the soldiers.
So did Doli.
“Haft, where are you?” Maid Marigold screamed.
Other women took up the cry, calling out the names of husbands, lovers, fathers, brothers.
All about, male voices replied to feminine voices and exhausted women were reunited with their men, who were nearly as exhausted.
Rammer was the first to recover. “Get those women back to the wagons!” he shouted. “The rest of you, collect our dead and wounded. Move! ” He looked around for Spinner and Haft, who should have given the orders, and snorted—Spinner was trying to dislodge Doli’s arms from their death grip around his neck, and Haft seemed too interested in forcing breath into Maid Marigold’s lungs to notice what was happening around him.
Alyline heaved a couple of times to regain her breath after the long run, then screamed, “Back to the wagons!” Her piercing voice caught almost everybody’s attention, and women began running for safety.
“Dead and wounded!” Rammer bellowed again.
Spinner finally managed to free himself from Doli’s arms and pushed her toward Alyline. “Take her,” he yelled at the Golden Girl, then looked around the battlefield. “Gather the dead and wounded!” he roared.
Maid Marigold gave Haft a last, quick kiss and bolted. He slapped her bare bottom as she took off, then echoed Spinner and Rammer in calling for the soldiers to collect the casualties.
In a few minutes all but a few of the dead were behind the barricade and the women were scrubbing the blood from their bodies. Other women and girls, who hadn’t gone out to challenge the Jokapcul, scurried to shoo away staring men and to fetch clothes for the naked women as the rivulets ran red and the ponds pooled with blood.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
At first the momentum of the Jokapcul gave them an advantage; the Jokapcul were tired from their long run, but not as exhausted as the Desert Men. But their advantage didn’t last. As more Desert Men joined in the fray, the advantage shifted again. But that advantage didn’t last either, as the Desert Men found themselves up against the same difficulty they’d had with the disciplined troops from the refugee train—their individual combat tactic wasn’t sufficient to defeat the teamwork the Jokapcul employed against them. Men fell on both sides, but more of the fallen were Desert Men than Jokapcul.
Haft stood leaning forward with a foot propped on a wagon tongue, watching the battle a couple of hundred yards distant. He gnawed on his lower lip and his fingers twitched against the tube of the demon spitter that hung down his side by its shoulder strap.
“I think we should do something to even the odds,” he growled.
“I think we should just let them fight it out between themselves,” Spinner replied. He stood erect and more relaxed alongside Haft, relieved to be out of the fight and in the relative safety of the wagon circles.
“When the Jokapcul win,” Haft said, “they’ll come after us. You know that, don’t you?”
Spinner reluctantly nodded. “Yes.”
“The Desert Men will run from them soon. They didn’t run from us because of these.” He slapped the tube of the demon splitter.
The small door on the side of the demon spitter popped open and a tiny, bald head poked out. “Eh! Wazzu doon’?” the diminutive demon demanded. “Mak doo mush noiz! Zhakim doo mush!”
“Oh, sorry,” Haft said quickly, taking his offending hand from the tube. Quickly, he fingered a small container from a pouch on his belt, popped it open, and removed a grape-size pellet, which he offered to the demon.
“Vood!” the tiny demon piped, and clutched the pellet to its chest. “Oo gud’ghie!” It let go of the pellet with one hand and reached out a gnarly arm to pat Haft’s hand, then popped back into the tube. The door slammed closed behind it with a sharp snick. A crunching, gurgling liquid noise, which Haft had no desire to investigate, came out of the tube.
Spinner shook his head at the proceedings. He didn’t understand the affinity Haft and that tiny demon had for each other.
“That’s it!” Haft exclaimed, looking at the tube and rubbing it. “We can do it with these!”
Spinner shook his head. “They’re too far away.”
Haft snorted. “That’s no problem. I’ll take three or four men with demon spitters. We’ll get close enough, get off a few quick shots, then run back here.” He began looking around for men with demon spitter tubes. “We’ll be back before they know what’s happening to them!”
Spinner studied the battle with a worried expression. “Then what?”
“What do you mean, ’Then what?’ ’Then what’ is the Desert Men wipe out the Jokapcul and run away—they’ll be afraid we’ll use the demon spitters on them if they attack us again, so they’ll run.” He pushed himself off the wagon tongue and darted toward two men he saw with demon spitters. As soon as Haft told them what he wanted, they took off in different directions. When he returned, Fletcher was heading for Spinner.
“It’s bad, but it could be worse,” Fletcher said, getting right to it. “We have more than a hundred casualties accounted for—half of them are dead. Most of the dead are from Company D”—Sergeant Rammer’s recruit training company, the first to race after the Desert Men when their initial assaults were thrown back. “More than twenty men are still unaccounted for—and half a dozen of those crazy women seem to be missing.”
Spinner and Haft both grimaced at the news, but, yes, it could have been worse. Those recruits had been fatally stupid when they ran in hot pursuit of the Desert Men—they were lucky they hadn’t all been killed. Now, though, the survivors might forever be worthless as soldiers.
“What missing women?” Spinner asked. “Alyline told me they didn’t lose anybody, or even have any serious injuries when they trapped that Jokapcul troop.”
Fletcher shook his head; he didn’t know. “Maybe some fell when they were running, maybe some lagged behind and got caught.” He looked out at the battle and shuddered. “Maybe they’re still out there.”
“That settles it,” Haft swore. He unslung his demon spitter. “I’m going to do it.” He looked in the directions the men with the demon spitters had gone and saw them returning; one brought another man with a demon spitter, the other brought two. He twirled a hand above his shoulder, signaling them to join him, then stepped over the wagon tongue and walked briskly into the open desert.
“We’re going a hundred yards,” he said without slowing his pace when the armed men caught up. “Then we’ll spit at the Jokapcul until the demons demand to be fed. Have a pellet ready for them. We’ll shoot again. Have another pellet ready, I don’t want the demons abandoning us because they didn’t get fed promptly. Any questions?”
“Don’t you want us to spit at the Desert Men?” one asked.
He shook his head. “Leave them alone. They’ll run as soon as they can. It’s the Jokapcul we have to kill. Let’s go!” He began running; he knew he had to hurt the Jokapcul, and hurt them badly, before they defeated the Desert Men. Within a minute the six of them were in position.
The Desert Men used their normal tactics; whether they milled about on their own or were packed together in tight masses, they fought as individuals. The Jokapcul, four troops abreast with one troop back in reserve, formed up four ranks deep and fought as teams. If a man fell, the man behind him stepped forward to take his place. The Jokapcul were slowly but steadily pushing the Desert Men back.
“Now!” Haft ordered, and they aimed at the back ranks of the Jokapcul troops, squeezing the levers that told their demons to spit. They didn’t wait to see where the spit struck, but immediately shifted their aim and shot again. After the third shot, they paused to feed the demons.
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br /> Haft took advantage of the brief pause to look over the battlefield. The fighting had stopped and everyone was staring in their direction. Small clouds of sand and dust, the remains of the explosive spit-strikes, drifted away from the Jokapcul. There were about a quarter fewer of them still standing. At this range, little more than a hundred yards, he could make out writhing bodies on the ground—and still bodies as well.
Then it was time to pummel the Jokapcul again.
Close to half of the Desert Men broke and ran when the demons’ spit erupted among the rear ranks of the Jokapcul, but most soon realized that the demon spitters were only striking their foe, and they stepped back to give Haft and his men a clearer field of fire. The Jokapcul began fleeing before the second fusillade of the second barrage was spat, and its eruptions tore apart what had been their front ranks.
Because of the casualties they’d suffered at the hands of the caravan’s women, the Desert Men, and the demon spitters, the Jokapcul fighters now consisted of fewer than three full troops.
When the Desert Men saw the men with the demon spitters retiring to the wagons, they let out ululating war cries and raced after the Jokapcul.
The Jokapcul had marched several hours before dawn, prepared to attack a weak foe. Then they had run at speed across a mile and a half of open desert into an unexpected battle, and along the way found a troop of their own men slaughtered. They had been close to winning their unexpected battle against the Desert Men, by now they should be chasing the survivors of the enemy they had fought. Instead, they had been set on by a different force with demon weapons that killed or wounded far too many of them. They were terrified and running for their lives, headed directly to where they thought the bowl was with its egress to the coastal plain and their camp. The entire day had been wearing, and many of them were weakened by wounds. The wear of the long day, the shock of finding an entire troop slaughtered by the naked women, the long running they had done, the battle they had fought, and the terror they now experienced, combined to exhaust them further. They weren’t in formations now, and nobody helped anyone who couldn’t keep up on his own. Those who lagged behind were caught by the Desert Men and summarily cut down.
Demontech: Gulf Run Page 26