Hours passed, and men died, and the stars stayed hidden by the mist. Keyoke was crossing the clearing to inspect two men who appeared injured by thrown rocks when something struck him in the right leg like a needra calf’s kick. He staggered and all but dropped to his knees as pain exploded in his right thigh. Two soldiers ran to assist him as he began to collapse from the arrow that protruded from his upper leg. They carried him a short way and gently placed him so he could sit with his back against a relatively sheltered part of the canyon wall.
Fighting off a threatening blackness that circled his vision, Keyoke said, ‘Gods, that hurts.’ He forced himself to look at the shaft that was buried in his thigh. It had struck downward – one of the random shots into the canyon – and he could feel the head scrape the bone. ‘Push it through and cut off the feathers,’ he ordered. ‘Then pull it out.’
The two soldiers exchanged glances, and he had to repeat his order, shouting through clenched teeth that they should pull the accursed shaft free.
The soldiers’ eyes met again, over the dusty plumes of Keyoke’s helm. Neither wished to speak the truth: that to pull the arrow free would likely tear an artery and cause death in a spurting flow of blood.
Keyoke cursed, very clearly. He pulled one gnarled arm from the supporting hold of one warrior and, with a surprisingly steady hand reached out, grasped the arrow, and snapped the arrow. ‘Push it through!’ he demanded.
The shaft that still held the head remained embedded in flesh. The hole bled sullenly, swelling rapidly to purple.
‘That will fester,’ one warrior said gently. ‘It should be cut out, and the wound allowed to drain.’
‘I haven’t time,’ Keyoke said, his voice not as steady as his hand. The agony that cut through him had little to do with pain, which he had known before and endured, as now, when necessary. ‘If the arrow is not removed and the gods-damned head keeps rubbing against my leg bone, I will likely lose consciousness. Most certainly I will not be able to walk and continue commanding our troops.’
The soldiers said nothing, but their unspoken reproach was noticed.
Keyoke reined in his anger. ‘Do you think any one of us will be alive for long enough for me to die of a wound gone bad? Tie off this leg and push the damn thing through!’ They reluctantly obeyed. Pain caused Keyoke’s vision to swim, and for a few minutes he lost his sense of time and place. After a few moments of darkness, his wits returned and he found the soldiers binding the wound; the agony in his leg fell off to a dull ache.
Keyoke ordered the warriors to help him to his feet and he stood unsteadily for a few moments. He refused to cut a cane from the brush, but stumped about with half-steps, his thigh throbbing angrily and each bump and jostle of motion a torment. But no man in Acoma green would dispute his authority; he was still in command of his army.
He promoted a particularly bright young soldier, Sezalmel, to acting Strike Leader, only to watch the man die less than an hour later. Reacting in inspired frenzy, Sezalmel had repulsed the largest Minwanabi offensive since sundown, the second near breaching of the barricade. His sortie drove the attackers back, but only in exchange for heavy losses. The Acoma were tiring, while the Minwanabi warriors seemed inexhaustible. Keyoke took no time to promote anyone else. There was no need, with Acoma numbers fallen below that of a small strike force. A second commander would be superfluous.
Keyoke shuffled wearily over to the servants and instructed a distribution of rations. Given the fatalities, there was now enough food for every man to eat as he wished. If the soldiers could not have enjoyed a hot meal, at least they would be restored by a full stomach. Keyoke took a cake and piece of jerked needra. He had no appetite, but he forced himself to chew. The painful throbbing in his right leg and the burning ache of swollen tissue were incessant. In the end, when no one was looking, he spat the tasteless morsels on the ground. He drank when the water skin was passed, and controlled the heave of his stomach. His throat still seemed dry from the cake, and he wondered if he was beginning to get feverish. Then, as always, his thoughts returned to his command.
Keyoke estimated that more than three hundred and fifty Minwanabi had fallen before the barricade throughout the day. The night’s numbers would be fewer, lessening as his soldiers tired. At least fifty enemies had perished after the hour of sundown. His soldiers were killing Mara’s foes at a rate of five to one. Losses were increasing, however, and very soon would become critical as his own forces were cut down until, inevitably, the Minwanabi would win past the barricade and rush through to slay the survivors. Keyoke concluded his review with pride. The Acoma forces had surpassed expectations, and the end might be prolonged until dawn.
Sitting back against the icy damp of the rock wall, Keyoke removed his helm. He scraped back soaked grey hair and reflected that he had never known such fatigue in his life.
The exhaustion brought on a regret: that he should be guilty of an old man’s vanity. He berated himself for not spending more time training Lujan and the other Strike Leaders. He should have insisted all the officers dine with him in the servants’ hall, instead of in the barracks with their own companies, while he took his meal with Lady Mara, or Nacoya, or Jican. Every chance missed to educate those young soldiers came back to haunt him.
Too late, now, to wish a younger man here in his post. A hot flash of pain from his wound reawakened anger. Cursing himself for a fool, he put aside his sorrow. He refused, at the last, to be a man caught up in black contemplations. A battle continued to be fought, and morbid reflections required effort better spent on the field.
Keyoke propped his wounded leg out before him and was racked by a stab of agony. He made no sound, but only sweated under the weight of his armour. By the gleam thrown off by banked coals, the flesh around the puncture looked red – a deception of light, or inflammation, he had no means to tell – and it throbbed unmercifully. No matter, he thought. A wound was but a way to measure growth for a warrior. Life was pain and pain was life. His circling thoughts drifted as his body attempted to fight off the aches of battle, injury, exhaustion, and age.
He must have dozed, for the next he knew, a soldier was shaking his shoulder, exhorting him to wake. Keyoke blinked gummed eyelids and fought to clear senses that normally came instantly alert. Without thought he attempted to rise, but pain seared the length of his leg and caused him an audible gasp for air. The soldier offered a steadying hand and tried to keep pity from his eyes. ‘Force Commander, we hear armed men approaching in the hills above the canyon!’
Keyoke squinted at the narrow crack of sky above the cliff walls. There were no stars, nor any lessening of darkness to indicate the hour. He had no way to estimate how much time had passed. ‘How long until dawn?’ he asked.
The soldier frowned. ‘Perhaps two hours, Force Commander.’
‘Bank the fire,’ Keyoke snapped. Sure that the enemy had by now encircled the mountains and flanked his position, he hobbled over to the men who readied themselves for the next assault. A frown marred his forehead. ‘If Irrilandi has sent troops to crush us from the hills, why attack in the darkness?’ he said softly, unaware, through his fever and his pain, that he did his musing aloud.
Then a crack resounded across the clearing. The barricade exploded backward under a wave of orange-and-black-armoured bodies, and Acoma defenders were hurled in all directions. A heavy log burst through with a grind of stones and a tearing of stinking needra flesh. The canyon had been breached by a ram, run by the short defile under cover of darkness, and wielded with devastating effect.
Minwanabi soldiers rushed screaming into the canyon while the Acoma sprang to engage them. Keyoke called to the servants to take cover behind the bulwark of silks. Soldiers fell thrashing in death throes or groaning in mortal pain. The fighting spread into the breached canyon. Bodies draped twitching and crushed between the stones and large branches of the shifted barricade; others writhed, impaled. Some few fumbled to lift swords while they lay with broken legs and backs.
Keyoke absorbed this without pause to register the horror, for Minwanabi soldiers poured through the gap. The defile might only admit one or two men at a time, but it was open, and the Acoma were in retreat.
Keyoke drew his sword. His helm was off, abandoned on the ground where he had slept. He rejected the idea of searching for it, not trusting his balky leg enough to attempt unnecessary steps. Only the will of the gods might determine whether he should die proudly as Acoma Force Commander or as just another nameless old soldier. With Mara left threatened, in the end, he judged, it mattered little.
‘Burn the silk,’ he called to a servant, who hovered awaiting orders by his elbow. The man bowed swiftly and left, and in the soft, untrustworthy light of blossoming torches, as loyal hands threw flaming brands upon piled silk, Keyoke hurried forward in a stumbling half-hop. Through a spinning haze of fever he was aware of the screams of dying soldiers and the clash of arms punctuated by the crackle of silk and dry wood exploding at his back in a leaping wash of Are. A Minwanabi soldier spun backwards, stumbling from the blow of an Acoma warrior. Keyoke dispatched him with a reflexive slash, and a grim smile stretched his lips across his teeth. His leg might be ruined, but by Turakamu, his sword arm still functioned. He would see the Minwanabi as his escorts into the halls of the Red God.
The battle raged across the narrow draw, hemmed between rock walls and a blazing barrier of silk. Men struggled in a dance with death, their swords shining red in the night. Fighting, stumbling ahead, Keyoke squinted against the glare and tried to sort friend from foe. The warriors of both sides looked like nothing so much as a scene from some demented battle hell as the fire burned in brilliant fury.
Beset by another Minwanabi, Keyoke ducked a sword thrust and countered with a single chop to the throat. The warrior fell, gurgling, and precious seconds were lost because Keyoke could not raise his injured leg high enough to step over the man’s death throes. The Acoma Force Commander’s knee trembled as he limped around, and pain jabbed him from ankle to thigh each time the limb bore weight. The agony knotted his belly, and he swallowed to keep from voiding his stomach. Dizziness teased at his balance, and his vision swam.
Keyoke hobbled headlong into his last fight, where two Minwanabi soldiers hammered at the shield of an Acoma. Hide and wood parted with a crack, and a blade struck home. The Acoma warrior went down, and his dying eyes met those of his officer.
‘Force Commander,’ he called clearly, before an attacker trampled over his face.
Then a figure in orange and black was shouting and pointing his sword, and warriors turned and converged. The clash of arms swelled on all sides. Believing the sound to be amplified by his fever, Keyoke focused only on the recognition reflected on enemy features.
‘The Acoma Force Commander!’ someone called clearly and Keyoke was beset by enemies. His sword spilled their blood, but his feet were not nimble. His guard was hampered by his lameness, and in the press of cut and thrust he was aware of other soldiers rushing him from behind. He could do nothing to prevent himself being surrounded. Driven to his knees and crippled, he wrestled through spinning vision to ward off the blows hammered down on him. The Minwanabi soldier before him suddenly stiffened. His expression of astonished disbelief was swallowed by darkness as he fell. Keyoke caught sight of a meat cleaver protruding from Minwanabi armour, and a frightened servant backing away. Keyoke cut sideways with his sword, and at least one more enemy died before he could avenge his fallen comrade. The servant perished anyway, cut from chest to crotch by another soldier, and then the same bloody sword was pointed and slashing at Keyoke. More men pressed in from the sides. He fought them, with a skill honed by forty years on the field.
Sweat ran down Keyoke’s temples. He blinked salty drops from his eyes and slashed through a white haze of pain. Dimly he noticed an Acoma servant crouched near him, and hands attempting to prop him upright. Then the servant’s eyes went round and he lurched forward. His back lay opened to show the white ribs, and his weight drove Keyoke to the ground.
Blinded by dust and agony, Keyoke struggled to rise. His ears rang and his hands would not grip. Numbed fingers could not find his sword, and he was conscious of wetness flooding down his flank beneath his armour. He gasped, but there seemed to be no air to fill his lungs. Above him he made out the shape of a Minwanabi soldier, pulling back his blade from the thrust that had dispatched the valiant servant.
Keyoke groped in the dirt, found his sword, and struggled against the twitching weight of the corpse to raise his guard. The soldier pulled the servant aside, then aimed a killing stroke at the beaten old Force Commander at his feet. Keyoke raised his arm to parry and drew upon his last shred of strength to commend his wal to Turakamu. Then sword met sword, and the laminated hide screeched with the impact. The blow deflected, but barely. The Minwanabi stroke missed the heart and glanced down to pierce through armour and gambeson and, finally, through the flesh of Keyoke’s belly.
The soldier jerked back his blade. Flesh tore and bled, and Keyoke heard a distant, hoarse cry, as torment forced his own lips to betray his weakness before an enemy. At the ending of life, Keyoke invoked his soldier’s will to greet death with head up and eyes open. Through the pounding of blood in his own ears, the Force Commander heard a distant voice crying, ‘Acoma!’ He felt only pride for that one brave soldier.
Blurred shapes swam in and out of focus. Time seemed unnaturally slowed. Through the darkness, a hand caught the Minwanabi soldier’s arm, yanking back the descending sword. Keyoke frowned and faintly wondered whether this was the god’s reward for lifetime service: for his valour in Acoma defence, he would not feel the death blow. ‘Turakamu,’ he muttered, believing himself bound for the Red God’s halls; then the earth overturned, and he knew nothing as the sword slipped from his hand.
• Chapter Ten •
Masterplot
Sounds intruded.
Through an encompassing dark, Keyoke heard voices. They echoed dreamlike through his mind, amid a growing awareness of pain. He listened for the singing of warriors, the Minwanabi dead who would attest to his valour as he entered the hills of Turakamu.
But there came no singing, only spoken words in a voice that sounded like Lujan’s.
No, thought Keyoke. No. Through a stirring rush of anguish that mushroomed into despair, he listened more carefully. There had to be singing.
‘… not regained consciousness since the battle,’ Lujan’s voice continued, ‘… been delirious with fever … serious wounds in his belly and side …’
Another voice interjected, Nacoya’s surely. ‘Gods. Mara must not see him like this. It will surely break her heart.’
And then a bustle amid the darkness, and someone that sounded like his mistress crying out in an anguish too sharp to rein back. ‘Keyoke!’
There was to be no singing, then, the old warrior understood in cold sorrow. Accolades would not herald a warrior who died in defeat. The Acoma must have been vanquished for Mara, Lujan and Nacoya to be present here, in the halls of Turakamu. The Minwanabi army must have gone on from the canyon to attack the estate, and the cho-ja defenders must have fled or been overwhelmed. The end must have come with the enemy in triumph, and the Acoma crushed.
‘Mistress,’ murmured Keyoke in his delirium. ‘Lady.’
‘Listen! He speaks!’ someone exclaimed.
‘Keyoke?’ Mara’s voice said again. Cool hands brushed his brow, the fingers lightly trembling.
Then light shone, blindingly bright through half-opened eyelids, and consciousness flooded back, along with full awareness of the pain.
‘Keyoke,’ Mara said again. Her hands settled on either side of his temples, gently and insistently framing his face. ‘We are all well. Ayaki is well. Lujan speaks of a battle bravely fought in a canyon. The Minwanabi brought five hundred men to attack, and we hear your small company battled to the death defending the silk.’
The Force Commander struggled through a haze of fever and managed to focus his eyes. His
mistress bent over him, her dark hair still loose from her sleeping mat, and her pretty brow furrowed with concern. He was not in the halls of the Red God but in the courtyard before the doors of the Acoma estate house. The grounds were peaceful. Shapes stirred in the surrounding mists as warriors of Lujan’s company dispersed to their barracks. A servant with a cloth hovered nearby, ready to wipe his sweating face. Keyoke drew a difficult breath. Through the fiery pain of his injuries he gathered his wits and spoke. ‘Lady Mara. There is danger. Lord Desio has breached your security.’
Mara stroked his cheek. ‘I know, Keyoke. The spy who was tortured escaped and brought us word. That’s how Lujan knew to rush his company to the mountains to your aid.’
Keyote thought back to the sounds of fighting that had broken out at last, in the hills behind the canyon. Lujan, then, had flanked Lord Desio’s army and put it to rout up the ravine.
‘How many are alive?’ Keyoke asked, his voice barely a croak.
Lujan said, ‘Six men, Force Commander, counting yourself. All seriously wounded.’
Keyoke swallowed hard. Of the hundred warriors and fifty servants, only five besides himself survived the Minwanabi trap.
‘Don’t mind that the silk has been lost,’ Mara added. ‘The cho-ja shall eventually make more.’
Keyoke fumbled a hand free of the blankets that lapped over his chest. He grasped Mara’s wrist. ‘The silk is not lost,’ he gasped clearly. ‘Not all of it.’
This brought an exclamation from Lujan and a whispering stir among the servants. Only then did Keyoke notice the presence of Jican, hovering, bright-eyed, to one side.
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