For their part, the Desert Men were tired, probably more tired than the Jokapcul. But they didn’t run in terror, they ran in jubilation. The fastest among them began to catch up with the slowest Jokapcul and cut them down.
Slowly, they became aware of a drumming behind them. A few Desert Men twisted their heads to see who was coming. It was more of their own—racing on comites.
Two hundred mounted Desert Men sped through their running tribesmen, arrowing at the Jokapcul, screaming bloodcurdling war cries. The running men did their best to echo the war cries, but they didn’t have wind to spare.
The lead Jokapcul staggered to a stop—they were at the edge of the escarpment, not the bowl with its safe passage to the coastal plain. The rest shuddered into them, some with force enough to throw men over the lip of the cliffs. The fastest fighters hadn’t been racing toward the bowl, they had been running from the demon spitters and Desert Men; their thought hadn’t been a route off the plateau, it had been putting distance between themselves and the men who were killing them. Most of them had dropped their weapons along the way to lighten their loads and speed their feet; many had flung off their armor. They were easy kills for the mounted Desert Men, who left some alive for their running tribesmen to finish off. Some of the Jokapcul, seeing that kneeling with arms spread in surrender wouldn’t save them, chose to jump over the escarpment or attempted to skitter down its face. They lived little longer than those of their companions who had died under the swords and arrows on the plateau.
When the Desert Men had begun chasing the fleeing Jokapcul, Spinner snapped to Fletcher, “Take men out there, retrieve the rest of our casualties!” Then he ran along the outside of the great circle, watching in astonishment. Haft’s plan had been audacious, but Spinner knew that sometimes audacity achieved more than anybody could expect. He snorted when it flashed into his mind that Haft’s plan wasn’t even half as audacious as Alyline’s—and it was the success of Alyline’s plan that allowed Haft’s plan to form and succeed.
Haft caught up with Spinner by the time he reached the wagon circle from which the women had gone into the desert. So did Rammer. Alyline, Doli, and Maid Marigold, all dressed again, joined them there along with Xundoe. The Jokapcul and pursuing Desert Men grew smaller in the distance.
“Cwen!” the Golden Girl suddenly remembered.
“What?”
“One of the women, she was injured and couldn’t run, we left her out there!” She flew into the desert, the morning sun shooting golden sparks off her clothing. Spinner raced after her.
“You men,” Haft called to a lancer squad, “come with us. Bring extra horses.” He didn’t wait for them, but began running after Spinner and Alyline. So grim was he with concern for the woman left where they’d slaughtered the Jokapcul troop that he didn’t hesitate to mount the horse a lancer brought to him. Alyline and Spinner also leapt onto horses.
“Cwen! Cwen! Are you all right?” Alyline called as she neared the killing field. There was no reply.
The men pulled up short, looking at the gruesome ground. The grass and sand were splashed liberally with red; mangled, mutilated bodies, some naked, many nearly so, were strewn about. One of the lancers bent low over the side of his horse and retched. The horses shied from the gory battlefield, and the men struggled to hold their skittish mounts steady.
A body moved. Alyline leaped off her horse and ran to it, splashing through gore and unmentionable bits of flesh. “Cwen!” she cried as she tugged at the topmost Jokapcul corpse.
“I’m here, lady.” Cwen’s voice broke with sobs. “I’m here. Please help me!”
“Here,” Spinner said, appearing next to her. He gripped the sword that pinned the body to the ground and yanked.
Haft shouldered his way in and threw the body aside. But when he bent to remove the next body, Alyline shoved him away. Then she spun and pushed at Spinner, who was also reaching to fling aside the dead Jokapcul.
“Get away, both of you. She’s naked! You can’t look at her.”
“But—”
“No buts! You cannot look at her now, I won’t allow you to see her like this! Give me your shirt, one of you.”
Spinner gaped at her for a few seconds before tugging his shirt from under his belt.
Haft was faster and handed his over.
“Now go over by the horses and keep your backs turned until I say you can look. Your men too.”
Spinner and Haft backed off a couple of steps before they turned around. They made their way back the same way they’d come.
“You men, turn around, don’t look,” Haft bellowed at the lancers. He scowled fiercely.
The lancers gladly complied, welcoming the opportunity to look away from the mangled bodies.
Alyline had to kneel at Cwen’s side and push the second body off the hidden woman. As soon as she was freed, Cwen sat up, threw her arms around Alyline and cried into her neck.
“I was so afraid, lady, but they didn’t see me,” she burbled. “Then I was here for so long and nobody came, and I thought you forgot about me or maybe the Jokapcul caught you and you were all dead and I’d lay here trapped until the Jokapcul came back and found me and—” her voice melted away into uncontrolled sobbing.
“It’s all right, Cwen,” Alyline said soothingly, brushing her hands comfortingly over the woman’s head and shoulders. “You’re safe now. You were very brave, and I came for you. The battle’s over.”
She stopped talking and just held the crying woman for a few minutes until her sobs eased a bit, then said softly, “We can’t stay here, we have to go. Here, I have a shirt for you. Let me help you put it on.” She gently pulled Cwen’s arms away and pulled Haft’s shirt over her head, helped her put her arms into the sleeves.
The massacre at the plateau’s edge ended. From the wagon circles, those who watched could see the main body of the Desert Men heading north, angling away from them. At the same time, a small group rode comites toward the circle that sat astride the road—to parley, it seemed. In response, Spinner, Haft, and their companions trotted there as well. Captains Phard and Geatwe had already repositioned their men to meet an attack from the west and southwest and waited with their commanders.
There were six in the Desert Men party. They stopped more than a hundred yards from the wagons. Four of them sat in line behind the other two. The feathers of spread eagle wings on a staff, carried by one who stopped slightly to the rear of the leader, fluttered in the breeze. All kept their weapons sheathed or slung. The leader held his open right hand up, the fingers splayed.
“It looks like they just want to talk,” Rammer said.
Spinner nodded. Haft grunted. Both were wary.
“I will take a squad of Prince’s Swords and accompany you, Lord Spinner,” Captain Geatwe said.
“No,” Captain Phard interjected. “A squad of Bloody Axes must go with Sir Haft.”
Spinner and Haft looked at the company commanders, who were glowering at each other.
“We’ll take two Prince’s Swords and two Bloody Axes,” Spinner said.
Haft nodded.
Phard and Geatwe scowled, but they nodded and turned to order the escort.
“What language do they speak?” Haft asked.
Nobody knew for certain, but Rammer said, “Most likely they understand the Dartmutter dialect.” They sent for Plotniko in case they needed him to translate.
In moments the seven were mounted and trotting toward the waiting Desert Men. They pulled up twenty yards away.
The desert chief’s standard bearer called out something in a language none of them understood.
“I don’t understand,” Spinner called back in Zobran.
“Neither do I,” Haft added in Bostian.
The standard bearer spoke again.
“That’s Dartmutter,” Plotniko said. “His accent’s thick, but I can understand him.
“Tell him you will translate,” Spinner said.
Plotniko called out in the same langu
age.
The desert chief used his knees to move his comite forward, his standard bearer advancing with him.
Spinner and Haft also advanced, along with Plotniko.
“Who is your chief?” the standard bearer demanded in Dartmutter after the chief spoke in his own language.
Plotniko translated that into Zobran, and the reply, “We are,” from Spinner and Haft.
The chief sneered, then spoke again.
The discussion, passing through three languages, was halting with only the desert chief speaking his native tongue.
“The Low Desert belongs to us,” the chief said. “You do not belong here.”
“We were in danger, we only wanted to go around the danger.”
“What danger? I saw no danger to you.”
“There was a strong Jokapcul force on the shore. They would have attacked us if they knew we were there. And we couldn’t move inland, since there were strong bands of Desert Men along the road.”
“You were too strong, we would have let you pass our ambush unharmed, that’s why our men who you watched were relaxed instead of in position to attack the road.”
“You saw our scouts?”
“Your scouts are good in their own forests, but these lands are ours and we are better here. We are also better on the adjacent lands. As I said, this is our land. You trespassed, that’s why we attacked you this morning. But you helped us defeat the Jokapcul. For that, you may return unmolested to the road. Stay below the Low Desert and we will leave you alone.”
“Thank you. Going on the coast road will be easier for us. We will stay here for a few days and then gladly leave.”
“No! You will leave now!”
“But we have wounded. We must care for them, give them time to heal before they are strong enough to move.”
“You should have thought of that before you trespassed. The sun is not yet halfway up the sky. You will begin leaving by the time it reaches zenith. You will be gone from the Low Desert by the time the sun is halfway down the western sky.”
“And if we can’t start moving that soon?”
“Then three times as many Desert Men as attacked you this morning will attack, and you will all die.” He studied them for a moment, his gaze lingering on Haft’s bloody shirt.
“What your women did to the Jokapcul,” the desert chief continued, “is nothing to what our women will do to any of you we take alive.” He gave them a last glare, turned his comite north, and galloped off with his retinue.
“Start moving by noon?” Haft asked, astonished. “Is he insane?” He plucked at his shirt, drawing it away from his body.
“No,” said Plotniko. “I think he’s just the chief of a warrior tribe that doesn’t like strangers.”
“I think we should go like he says,” Spinner said. He shuddered in memory of what the Desert Man said about their women.
“But our casualties!”
“We’ll cope.”
Fletcher’s party brought back the rest of the bodies and a few severely wounded who had been overlooked when the soldiers withdrew from the fighting between the Jokapcul and the Desert Men. Three of the dead were women from the band Alyline had led out, as were two of the severely wounded.
Nightbird and the other healers objected to the move since there were thirty men and two women too badly wounded to travel safely.
“Use the aralez and the land trow on them!” Spinner snapped. “Have Xundoe help you, he’s got two of the aralez.”
“The demons can heal the surface wounds well enough,” said the Eikby healing magician, who had three aralez and a land trow. “But it takes time for the deeper injuries to heal. On the outside a man can look like he has nearly healed wounds, but inside he might still be severely injured.”
“If we don’t go now there will be many more people too badly wounded to move.”
The healers grumbled but agreed. They did manage to extract one concession: they and the worst wounded would be the last to leave. They set the aralez to work. The tiny doglike demons went from wound to wound, licking them, and in minutes visible signs of wounding lessened. Then a healing magician went from severe wound to severe wound, carefully watching his land trow. The demon, resembling a half-size man, lifted bandages here and there. Occasionally it poked a hand into an uncovered wound and probed about inside the injured flesh, then removed it with an ethereal glowing green something that disappeared altogether when it flicked it from its fingers.
Round and round went the five aralez and the land trow, licking and probing, and the wounds improved each time, until the healing demons had done all they could do.
By then most of the caravan was in motion and the lead wagons almost at the bowl. The healers quickly but carefully loaded the worst of the wounded onto the wagons and prepared to leave. They were able to move without a gap growing between their wagons and those in front of them. Watching from a distance, the Desert Men sat ominously on comites.
SECOND INTERLUDE
GUARD DOGS
OF HELL
University of the Great Rift
Department of Far Western Studies
The Editors,
Unnatural Skeptic
Dear Sirs or Mesdames,
Having perused several issues of your journal on the shelves of the bookstore newsstands in College Center, the town outside the campus, I have concluded that Unnatural Skeptic is indeed precisely the type of “popular journal” in which it would be advantageous to publish several of my papers which, for reasons of style or powerful academic disagreement, are not suitable for publication in The Proceedings of the Association of Anthropological Scholars of Obscure Cultures, in which scholarly journal more than three hundred of my papers have been published.
Therefore, I take pleasure in submitting for your consideration my most recent paper, A Factual Analysis of Guardian Demons Known or Suspected to be Currently Called Upon by the Jokapcul Armies Engaged in Attempted Conquest of All the Lands of the Continent of Nunimar for the Purpose of Debunking Certain Common Misconceptions.
As I do suspect it would be presumptuous of me to assume that you are fully aware of my identity, I offer the following c.v. :
I am a tenured professor of Far Western Studies, of which department I have twice had the onerous privilege of being chairman, at the University of the Great Rift, with which institution of higher learning I am quite certain you are more than familiar. Indeed, I suspect that more than one of your editors is a graduate of this esteemed University, as the brief biographies of several of the scholars whose papers you have published note that they have degrees from this University, though it appears that none are currently members of the faculty. As noted above, I am the author of more than three hundred papers published in The Proceedings of the Association of Anthropological Scholars of Obscure Cultures. In addition to those scholarly papers, I have in recent months had papers published in James Military Review Quarterly and It’s a Geographical World! I hesitate to add—but as I have been informed that when approaching a journal for the first time one should name all those journals in which one has previously been published—that a horribly bowdlerized version of a paper of mine was published in Swords and Arrows Monthly ; fortunately, they misspelled my name (their typesetter left out the apostrophe in my patronymic), so the bowdlerization has to date caused me no professional embarrassment.
I look forward with near unseemly anticipation to your acceptance of my submission. Might I inquire as to the size of the honorarium you offer?
I am,
Scholar Munch Mu’sk
Professor
From the Desk of the Editor
Unnatural Skeptic
Mangle,
Hey, it’s that Mu’sk guy again! He must never read mastheads, or he’d know UnSkep and James have the same publisher and editorial staff! Guess that would explain the “Dear Sirs or Mesdames” salutation.
There’s some good crap in here, but you have to dig to find it. Give it a title that
doesn’t read like an abstract and an opening ’graph that people’ll be willing to read, cut the redundancies, and knock out most of the superlatives. You’ll have to do some cut-and-paste to put it in an order somebody other than an academic can follow. I trust your judgment—but you know that.
Send him a your-firstborn-child-is-ours contract, minimum rates, he’ll be happy.
Thieph
Deadly Hauntings
By Munch Mu’sk, Professor
It was deepest night as the strongly armed, thousand-man raiding party approached the lines of the Jokapcul outpost. Not even starlight penetrated to the ground through the cloud cover. The commander stopped his force and called his officers and most senior sergeants together for a final review of the assault plan and to make sure everyone was in the proper place. When all declared their readiness, the commander dismissed them to return to their men and make ready. But before any of them made it back to their units, the night was rent with the bloodcurdling cries of men being most horrifically rent apart. The few who managed to escape, bloodied and bruised, told of being assaulted by trolls who used their inhuman strength to rip limbs and heads from bodies; huge Black Dogs with jaws able to rip flesh and bones from living bodies; mauth dhoog that lay in wait and tore feet and legs off unwary passersby; and sangmun that drifted foglike among groups of men, killing immediately each one they touched; and all the while imps sped chittering through the raiders, nipping bits of flesh from their bodies. A thousand-man raiding party was thus rent to nothing.
The astute reader will certainly have noticed that the above paragraph gives neither place nor army nor approximate date of the action; three strong clues that it is apocryphal. Indeed, although that description of an imaginary action demonstrates popular misconceptions about the named demon types, anyone familiar with the reality of said demons knows it is all wrong. To the ordinary person who goes through life without benefit of higher education, or at least wide reading or extensive travel, such descriptions seem credible because they hear the word “demon” and are ready to ascribe any manner of attribute to the creatures, no matter how unlikely or, even, absurd.
Demontech: Gulf Run Page 27