Demontech: Gulf Run
Page 34
He looked away from Zweepee and stared unfocused into nowhere. The caravan wasn’t a fleet in port, it was a mobile town. Those women with their own wagon who had joined them before the company reached Eikby—and given intimate female company to the unmarried men—weren’t available anymore. He was pretty sure all of them had paired off with one or another soldier. And, so far as he knew, no women had moved to take their place caring for the needs of the single men.
He’d heard of towns where there were more men than women, or more women than men. Whichever there were more of, enough left in search of mates that the balance was restored. People, especially men, particularly fighting men, couldn’t leave the caravan, couldn’t be allowed to.
He buried his face in his hands and wished Spinner was healthy so he didn’t have to face this problem.
“How much time do you think we have before it becomes a problem?” he asked through his hands.
Zweepee shrugged. “If we’re lucky, two weeks, a month.”
“If we’re lucky,” Haft repeated. He made a quick calculation and muttered to himself, “If we’re lucky, that’s long enough to get more than halfway from here to Handor’s Bay. “If we aren’t lucky …”
Zweepee answered as though he’d spoken to her. “If we aren’t lucky the problems are already starting.”
“Let me think,” Haft said. He briskly rubbed his face, then lowered his hands and walked away.
Zweepee watched him go. She also remembered the women with their own wagon and, unusual for a happily married woman, wished other women had taken their place. She shook her head. Not that four women would be enough. At least Haft knew there was a problem coming. Maybe there was some solution a soldier could think of that wouldn’t occur to a woman. She hoped so. The thought of hundreds of soldiers without women deciding to take their way with whatever women came to hand frightened her.
On the afternoon of the third day, the healers decided Spinner was well enough to travel—as were the remaining severely wounded. The caravan set out soon after dawn the next morning, with Spinner under strict orders to spend most of the day in a wagon instead of on horseback, riding from one end of the caravan to the other. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been to enforce the healers’ orders—the gelding Spinner had ridden since they left the Burnt Man Inn in far off western Skragland was dead, killed by the demon’s spit the Jokapcul officer had meant for him. He knew it would take time for him and a new horse to accustom themselves to each other. More important, he knew he wasn’t up to learning a new horse just then.
They traveled out of sight of the shore and sea and made good time for a few days. Then the Zobran Border Warders roaming to the front brought back word of another Jokapcul prison camp.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Two days after the caravan resumed its eastward movement, the Dark Prince scuffed his soot-black boots through the sand, scattering the insects that feasted on the blood caked to the sand grains; here and there his hard leather soles crunched a shiny carapace. His hair was black, his shirt the color of hard coal, his trousers a moonless midnight, his cape a bottomless abyss. He held a black scabbard on one black-gloved hand and tapped it into his other black-gloved hand. His expression was as black as his garb. His stallion stood calmly nearby, munching on a patch of grass. The tackle seemed to merge seamlessly into the horse’s ebon hide.
“Lord Lackland,” said the Kamazai Commanding of the Jokapcul forces, coming to a halt in front of the Dark Prince, blocking his passage. The Kamazai Commanding’s face was as heated as his expression was grim, lending it a color to match the bronze-dyed leather of his steel-rectangle-studded armor. His hands were wrapped so tightly around the hilts of the swords—one long, the other short—hanging from his belt that the knuckles were white.
The Dark Prince lifted his eyes from the sand and gifted the Kamazai Commanding with an expression equal in its grimness. Though in the case of the Dark Prince, fully half of the grimness was caused by the barbarian’s use of the hated sobriquet. Someday, he thought, he would make this insufferable kamazai pay most painfully for use of the sobriquet “Lackland.” For now, the Dark Prince said nothing. He waited for the Kamazai Commanding to speak.
“We have exhumed all the graves, the older ones as well as the fresh. The older held only the remains of slaves. The fresh ones held soldiers, more of ours than theirs.”
The Dark Prince swept the bloodstained sand with his gaze. Why did this buffoon bother him with that detail? Buried soldiers were only to be expected, following a battle such as the one that had obviously been fought here. “Yes?”
“Ours were buried in shallow, mass graves,” the Kamazai Commanding said through clenched teeth. “Theirs were put to better rest.”
The Dark Prince struggled to control his impatience—shallow, mass graves were better treatment than he would allot a vanquished foe. He feigned disinterest.
“There are only the bodies of one troop’s worth of our fighters,” the kamazai said. “There were seven troops here. Where are the bodies of the other six troops?”
That information was so unexpected, the Dark Prince blinked in surprise. “Where indeed?” he snapped. “Look farther.” It was impossible that six troops had mutinied and changed sides. Or … “Perhaps they pursue those bandits.”
The Kamazai Commanding shook his head sharply. “I have scouts searching as far as a half day’s march from here. The six troops will be found. They are not in pursuit. The bandits would not have had time to bury the dead if they had not killed the others.” It was equally unthinkable that the six missing troops would have run in ignominious defeat.
Caws drew the Dark Prince’s attention to the trees under which the dead had been buried. Carrion eaters were drifting down from the sky. Most of them alighted in the tops of the strange bumber trees; few attempted to perch on the branches of the fan trees, which were too springy to bear the weight of any but the smallest of them. Soldiers chased away the few birds bold enough to come to ground—chased them from the bodies of Jokapcul dead, allowed them to gorge on the bodies of the dead slaves and bandits. The Dark Prince imagined flies lighting on the corpses and laying their eggs, pictured the carapaced crawlers ponderously burrowing their way into the dead, and stifled a smile.
“Inform me immediately of your scouts’ reports.” He turned away to pace the battleground.
The Kamazai Commanding glared at the back of the arrogant foreigner who the High Shoton had seen fit to place in nominal command of his invasion force. A smile flickered across his face as he envisioned how he would make that insufferable princeling scream when he was finally given leave to dispatch him.
“Lord Lackland,” the Kamazai Commanding reported that evening. “My scouts have returned from east and west. They have found no more graves, nor have they found signs of pursuit to the east nor signs of retreat to the west.”
“And to the north?”
“None have yet returned from above the escarpment.” He looked stonily in the direction of the line of cliffs that barred access to the Low Desert. “I have sent a troop to find them.”
The Dark Prince followed his gaze and wondered.
The Kamazai Commanding thought and decided. “Some of the scouts who went west reported the bandit caravan left the road to climb the escarpment, then returned.”
The Dark Prince flashed him a look mixed of hatred, disdain, and anger. “Why would they have gone above and then returned?”
“The Desert Men.”
“They might have returned because of the Desert Men, but why would they have gone up in the first place?”
The kamazai only shook his head.
The two stood silent, side by side, for a few moments, each silently vowing death most hideous to the other, then looked to a sudden commotion in the forest and saw a young, mounted knight burst out of the trees.
The knight reined his horse mere yards from the duo and fell from the saddle as much as dismounted. The horse huffed
and its eyes rolled wildly. Its hooves tap-tap-tapped nervously, as though it wanted to gallop farther. Blood mixed with the lather on its flanks. The young knight himself bled from multiple wounds. There was no control to his body when he dropped to his knees to give his report.
“Lord Kamazai,” he barked, and added belatedly, “Dark Prince. Desert Men. They attacked. Killed all but me. We found—we found bodies. Scouts. Troops. All ours. Dead. Everyone.” He hung his head, his body sagging and tilting to the side.
The Dark Prince and the Kamazai Commanding looked at each other, for once of one mind. The Dark Prince nodded curtly. The Kamazai Commanding returned the nod more thoughtfully, then marched off, barking and howling orders to his troops to prepare to move out, up to the plateau to punish the Desert Men. No one could be allowed to defeat a Jokapcul troop. No one!
The Dark Prince looked coldly at the knight who had brought the report from the near reaches of the Low Desert and coldly watched him fall to the side. He walked to his grazing horse and mounted to follow and observe the coming victory over the barbarous Desert Men.
The battle, when it came, was hardly one-sided. Yet it was a slaughter. Unlike when they attacked the refugee caravan, the Desert Men did not avoid the magicians and other users of demon weapons. They died in their scores and hundreds, but were relentless in their attacks on the magicians and other demon-weapon users. When the remnants of the Jokapcul force retreated, the Desert Men chief ululated orders to his surviving warriors to let them go. He wanted the word to spread among the invaders:
Mount the plateau of the Low Desert and die.
By David Sherman
The Night Fighters
KNIVES IN THE NIGHT
MAIN FORCE ASSAULT
OUT OF THE FIRE
A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
A NGHU NIGHT FALLS
CHARLIE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
Demontech
ONSLAUGHT
RALLY POINT
THERE I WAS: THE WAR OF CORPORAL
HENRY J. MORRIS, USMC
THE SQUAD
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Copyright © 2004 by David Sherman
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eISBN 0-345-47202-0
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eBook Info
Title:Demontech: Gulf Run
Creator:David Sherman
Publisher:Ballantine Books
Format:OEB
Date:2003-10-28
Subject:?
Identifier:stro_1400077737
Language:en