“Why is this army so spread out?”
“They’re sealing the retreat,” Soddam said.
“What do you mean?”
Urban said, “They don’t want Shim or any of his men to turn back and slip by them.”
Sugar said, “It seems to me they’d want to focus on catching up to them first.”
“Unless they’re pushing them north.”
“But why would they do that?” Sugar asked.
“That’s a good question,” Soddam said. “What lies north?”
“The Warrens, a lake, settlements. If Shim makes the warrens, they’re going to have a hard time prying him out.”
“Then maybe they don’t know about The Warrens?”
“Or maybe,” said Soddam, “they’re driving the deer into the spears of the hunters.”
“We’ve got to get to him,” Sugar said.
“We’d need wings to get past this army,” Urban said.
Soddam said, “Or maybe not.” He motioned down the hill.
A hammer of Fir-Noy soldiers had just turned the bend on the path at the base of the knoll. They escorted a wagon heaped with barrels and crates. There were eight of them. Two on the wagon. Four in front. Another two behind. One man carried his spear, but the rest had put most of their weapons as well as some armor in the wagon bed. They were clearly not expecting any action. They’d stuck a banner upright in a corner. It was orange and blue, marking them so outriders wouldn’t mistake them for enemy.
“Rot Mokad,” one of the Fir-Noy on the wagon said, his voice carrying up through the trees. “The Fir-Noy should be in the lead. We should be the ones either sticking that Shim or taking him for a pretty ransom. We’re the ones who have had to live with and smell the Shoka stink. We’re the ones he’s slaughtered.”
“You’re a pea brain,” another man said. “Be happy you’re not facing some sleth pig bent on sucking your face.”
“I’m not afraid of sleth,” the first man said.
One of the men behind the wagon spoke up. “That’s because his sister looks like one. He’s been snuggling next to abomination for years.”
A number of the other men hooted.
The first man took off his sword belt, walked back, and slammed it down in the wagon bed. “Right here, you rotted goat-shagger. Come stand here and say that!”
The man in back grinned and scampered around to the other side of the wagon. “We can’t help it that she’s ugly.”
The first man’s eyes went as round as eggs with anger, and he dashed for the other man.
“Stop it!” the fistman riding on the wagon seat called.
The man with the ugly sister ignored him and continued to chase the other around the other side of the wagon.
“Now!” the fistman commanded.
The man with the ugly sister stopped and growled.
“Regret’s eyes, Fin,” the leader said. “We’ll have our fill of killing. If not those in front of us, there are plenty of Shoka behind. Houses to loot. Women ripe for the taking. You think our orders were to stay behind with some barrels of beans? I’ve got bigger plans than that.”
Urban looked at Soddam, then Sugar. He whispered, “That banner ought to let us ride free and clear.”
“I say we go rescue some beans,” Soddam said.
“Yeah, beans,” Sugar said, bristling for all the women these men thought were ripe for the taking.
Urban signaled to his men.
The fist of Fir-Noy moved closer.
“You hang back a bit,” Urban whispered. “I need you watching the plain, making sure we’re not noticed.” Then he looked down his line and closed his fist. His men nodded. And almost as one, he and his men rose and rushed down the last part of the knoll and out of the thicket, weapons raised. They made no shout or cry.
The fist of Fir-Noy turned, but Urban’s bowmen began to release their arrows. The Fir-Noy with the ugly sister raced to the wagon to retrieve his sword, but fell with an arrow in his neck. Then Urban and his men were in among the Fir-Noy. It didn’t take long before the Fir-Noy all lay dead.
Sugar scanned the plain. The only threat she saw were two dogmen and their pack in the distance. She walked down to join Urban.
“We’re clear,” she said.
Behind her, Urban’s men dragged the bodies of the Fir-Noy into the trees and hastily covered them with leaves.
“It won’t fool anyone looking close,” Soddam said.
“But the bodies won’t be out for anyone to see at a distance. Someone will have to travel right over this ground, and even then we didn’t leave a lot of blood.”
Sugar climbed up on the wagon seat and looked north. “I think I see a gap,” she said. “I see a way through.”
“Well then, Captain Fir-Noy, please lead the way.”
18
Feeding the Wind
ARGOTH, SHIM, AND ERESH rode out of the column up to the top of a rise and looked back at Mokad’s army. Their divisions darkened the plain like ants, bristling with weapons, and banners. It was a horde. And if they caught Shim’s army, there would be no release.
A slight flutter of fear rose in Argoth’s breast, but he ignored it. At least that host did not have its Skir Master. He looked past the enemy to the south, hoping Mokad had turned all its attention here, and that Serah and the children were making their way south in safety. Gracious Six, let that be the case.
“Regret’s eyes,” Shim cursed. “Look at Hardy’s column!”
Closer to the base of the mountains, Lord Hardy’s column of Shoka and Vargon soldiers had indeed lagged behind Shim’s and the other taking the coast road.
“The lout probably stopped to eat lunch,” Shim said.
“He’s going to be lunch if he doesn’t get moving,” Eresh said.
Two packs of dogmen appeared on the plain only a few hundred yards behind the rearguard of Hardy’s column.
“The ugly whoresons,” Eresh said.
“Those packs have been getting just a little too bold,” Argoth said. “They’ve been roaming closer to all of the columns. I think it’s time we picked up the pace.”
“I think you’re right,” Shim said. He whistled down the hill to two of his captains. “Get them trotting,” he shouted. “And send a signal to Hardy. There’s to be no engagement with the enemy. None!”
The captains shouted orders. A horn blower blew out the notes ordering the column into a moderate trot. The signal was picked up by other horn blowers down the column. A rider lit out in a gallop to the flag men standing on a prominence to signal the orders to the other commanders.
“Now comes the chase,” Shim said.
Packs of dogmen appeared behind Shim’s column in the distance.
“Some scheme is afoot,” Eresh said.
A clamor arose up the road.
Argoth turned. A scout was galloping his horse at full speed, yelling for the column to make way. The men on the road moved their mounts off to the side to let him pass. Then the scout shouted something, and a number of the men pointed at the top of the hill.
The scout turned off the trail and rode his horse hard up the rise. The mare’s sides were heaving. Its hide glistened with sweat and lather. That animal had been riding hard for some distance. The scout didn’t look any better. His padded coat was torn, his arm bloodied.
“Lord Shim!” he called.
The scout’s name was Miles, but he’d been nicknamed Dirty Miles because he always came back from his rides looking like he hadn’t bathed for weeks.
Miles pulled his horse to a halt in front of Shim. “Lord!” he said. “There’s an army of men waiting on the other side of the ford.”
His horse jerked at the reins.
“I’d say it’s at least four thousand strong.”
An army?
A b
eat passed.
An army on the other side of the ford would be ruinous.
“Mokad or one of the clans?” Shim asked evenly.
“Every last one of the whoresons was wearing the white and red.”
The words struck Argoth like a hammer. The Echo was a fairly deep river. This was the closest ford across it. The others were well up Echo canyon. But the river made a big oxbow close to the mouth of the canyon, right up to a cliff face, cutting off anyone on the plains from reaching them from this side.
“They had hammers on this side of the river, looking for scouts. They got Jags and Piper. I barely escaped.”
“Composition,” Shim asked.
“There are a lot of bowmen among them. Ten banners at least. I counted two ballista. I’d say a thousand are pike sods. They’ve been waiting, Lord. Waiting a good long time.”
“Anything else?”
“No, Lord.”
“Well done, Miles. Go get a fresh horse.”
The man saluted Shim with a fist over his heart, then turned back down the hill.
“How wide’s that ford?” Eresh asked.
“We can go fifteen, maybe twenty men across,” Argoth said.
“Fifteen or twenty against four thousand?” said Eresh. “They’ll murder us in the water.”
“How is this possible?” Shim asked. “Why would they have sent four thousand men there?”
“Flax,” Eresh spat. “Where is that worm?”
Argoth looked back at Mokad’s army. “We’d have better odds focusing our might and punching through the line behind us. If we try to ford that river, the army on the other side will bottle us up. We’ll still be trying to cross when all of Mokad marches up behind us.”
“Or,” Shim said, looking at the mountains, “we circle around through the Corals.”
“Those are narrow roads. We’ll be stretched out for miles.”
“Better than turning south. Better than that rotted ford.”
“Gah,” Eresh said. “Argoth, you whoreson. I thought you said you mortally wounded that Skir Master.”
“I buried my knife to its hilt in his gut,” Argoth said.
“Then explain that,” Eresh said and pointed to the sky behind them.
Argoth turned. Rising from the plains in the distance were three kitemen.
Shim said, “Maybe they’re using the wind from a minor skir, controlled by a lesser Skir Master.”
But then, out on the plains, a line of dust kicked up and began to swirl, flattening the grass and whipping a cluster of trees violently, kicking up dust and debris. Then the wind grew wider.
“That’s more than a random breeze,” Eresh said.
Another wind kicked up closer to Hardy’s column.
Four men in a wagon carrying a small catapult, bounced out close to the wind. The wagon stopped. Two men in back pulled back the arm almost to the ground. The two men on the driver’s seat opened a barrel and dumped its contents into the basket and stood back. A lever was pulled. The arm flew up, but not to toss something at Hardy’s column. It flew up to toss the contents of the basket into the wind. A mass of small dark things flew into the air, and then the wind caught the objects, jerked them up and around to join the swirling dust and debris.
“They’re feeding it,” Eresh said.
This was one of the ways a Skir Master armed a wind. The objects in the basket could be stones or thin scraps of metal. Sometimes they fed such winds sand to blind the enemy.
The men pulled back the catapult again and dumped in another barrel. This time the contents flashed in the light as they flew into the air.
“Glass,” Shim said.
The riders in Shim’s column had turned in their saddles. A murmur of exclamations ran down the line.
A similar wagon raced to the whirling dust forming behind Shim’s column.
If the winds caught them out on these plains, they’d cut the horses and men who were exposed to ribbons. They’d put the whole column in disarray, sending the men to find cover anywhere they could. And while the wind pinned the army down, Mokad would approach and surround them.
“Fort Echo,” Argoth said. “They fix us in place out here, and we’re done for. Behind those walls, maybe we can trench.”
“And what?” Eresh demanded. “They’ll surround us just the same. I say we charge now before those winds reach full force, get inside their reach, so that any wind they bring rips their own men as well as ours.”
“That’s exactly what they want us to do,” Shim said. “But we’re too far away for it to work. They’ll see us and move back, and the winds will catch us just the same. We’re not going to succeed in any charge we make at this distance.”
“There is supposed to be a path leading from Fort Echo into the cliffs,” Argoth said. “Then back into the Corals. And there are caves. If we can hold out until nightfall, we might be able to save some of this army.”
The wind behind Shim’s column grew in force. Another wind kicked up behind the third column. “Gods,” Shim said.
“Let’s get to the fort,” Argoth urged.
Shim’s face turned to thunder. He shouted to his captains. “Quick gawking, you whoresons. Get the men in order. We’re riding for Echo! Now!”
Across the gently swelling and dipping plain stood Fort Echo at the bottom of a range of cliffs and hoodoos. Shim wheeled his horse, called for his standard bearer. The rider galloped up the rise, Shim’s banner of the brass sun shining in a field of blue snapping high above his head. The riders behind him turned off the road and followed him like a great snake.
“Ride!” Shim shouted. “Ride!” Then he put his heels into his mount. Argoth and Eresh did the same. The column’s horn blowers blared for the riders to shift direction. A messenger galloped down the column, shouting for the men to follow Shim to the fort. Another struck out for Hardy’s column. A third for Lord Vance.
More riders began turning off the road to cross directly over the plain. Argoth’s horse picked up speed, along with hundreds of others down the line. The thudding of their hooves sounded like a low rolling thunder. He looked for Flax, but did not see him. When Eresh had become too bellicose, Shim had sent Flax forward to separate the men. He hadn’t come back. Argoth did not see Matiga either.
Shim, Argoth, and Eresh galloped down a slight dip and up a gentle swell.
“If we hold, they’ll bring that Skir Master up,” Eresh shouted. “We need a hammer of good men to conceal themselves.”
“The dogs will sniff them out,” Shim shouted.
But Argoth’s mind went to the river. “There’s a stretch along the bank of the river that’s nothing but sheer rock. It’s downriver from the old docks. There’s a line of shallow caves where the old settlers used to stow goods they were sending downriver.”
Shim thought about it. A few gallops later, he said to Argoth, “Send Varro.”
Varro was a long-time dreadman of the Shoka clan. He’d almost died earlier this year at the hands of the Bone Faces when his weave had failed. Now he commanded a terror of men. Argoth peeled away from Shim and Eresh and raced down the line of riders charging across the plain until he saw the banner for Varro’s terror. It was a white horse on a field of black.
He gave Varro the charge, told him what to look for. Told him to flee north across the river when the deed was done and wait for them in the Warrens. And if someone from Shim’s army didn’t show in three days, to go north and get a ship from the clans there. Varro saluted with a fist to his breast, but his eyes revealed that he knew this was a suicide mission.
Varro took a hammer of his men, dropped behind the line galloping across the plain, and raced toward the river.
Argoth rode forward with the rest of Varro’s men. He was close enough to see the hundreds of riders that made up the end of the column charging across the plain, their b
anners snapping. Beyond them the dust of the building whirlwind twisted up into the sky.
* * *
Talen rode his stolen gray horse down a trail that was lined with wild plums. River was in front of him on a large bay. Chot and his five warriors were bunched up on two fetlocked plow horses. Harnock brought up the rear on a fine big stallion. They’d been trotting for an hour now at a quick pace.
River clip-clopped around a bend in the trail and pulled her horse up short. Talen followed her around and saw a cluster of Fir-Noy youths, maybe around twelve years old, sitting on their own horses in the middle of the road.
There were boys and girls in the group. One of the boy’s eyes went wide. He made some exclamation, and the others turned.
Talen immediately looped the reins around his pommel, grabbed his bow from its sheath and nocked an arrow.
Two of the woodikin hooted.
The children had some bows and one old spear among them, but they didn’t move. They just sat there in shock and fear.
River didn’t halt. “Out of the way!” she shouted and tapped her bay with her heels. The horse picked up its pace to a canter. Talen followed her lead. The draught horses picked up their pace as well, and soon the whole procession was thudding forward in a gallop.
The children, seeing the charging horses, started kicking their mounts, pulling them off the road in a panic, opening the way through.
A moment later River, Talen, the woodikin, and Harnock thundered by.
The children stared wide-eyed at the odd company as it passed. They’d probably been on their way to see if they could watch the army from a safe distance, hoping they’d have the luck to see a battle.
Talen looked back. The children were still dealing with the shock of what they’d just seen. If their curiosity got the better of them, they’d wait, and then try to follow. If their fear or brains took hold, they’d send out a rider to alert someone.
“Was that wise to just ride on by?” Talen shouted up to River.
“Did you want to kill them?”
“They might raise the alarm.”
“We’ll deal with alarms later,” Harnock said from behind. “What I want to know is why you didn’t warn us about them.”
Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Page 22