Wagons were easy to find, but they were much the worse for wear after the long wet spell. The axles in most had seized solid. Since there weren’t any herd beasts to pull them, it was the labourers who now provided the power, once the wagons were cleaned up and the axles re-greased with fat.
Despite the willingness of the labourers to help, Daneesa did not forget the humble position they were putting themselves in, and she tended to them as if they were people from her own village. When the supply wagon had been positioned beside the kitchen tents, she hurried to provide water for the burly men. On long days like today she flavoured it with the bitter quinac that eased tired muscles and stopped them cramping overnight.
Menona had been looking around for Menon, and when she didn’t see him she came over to help Daneesa with the water. Menon had known his partner in life would travel up with the wagons when she was well, but he didn’t know she would arrive today. Her long convalescence at Shellport, after the operation to relieve the pressure on her brain, was at last over. With the ongoing help of the Human medical team at the sea village she was almost completely restored to health.
It still made Menona’s heart stand still when she thought of these strange pale creatures from another world, and the alien ship that had brought them to Hud, and now floated far above the clouds.
“Ah, Menona,” hailed a voice from behind her. Both Daneesa and Menona turned with a wave to meet Hudnee. He smiled softly at his wife, and touched his left ear momentarily. Daneesa understood this old signal from their flight across Hud. It meant that Hudnee would find her as soon as he finished with a few things that couldn’t wait.
“Come with me,” he said quietly to Menona, and led her through the bustling campsite. Menona had never seen so many people in one place in her entire life. It had the feel about it of entire populations from a number of villages, all on the march together. Hudnee led her to Habna’s tent.
“Ah, child, I am so happy to see you!” exclaimed Habna. “Do you feel entirely well?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Menona, her voice carrying some of the respect she felt for the old healer. Habna had been a venerated medicine woman, and a guide in all matters for her village, since before Menona was born.
Habna prepared a hot drink for both of them, and listened in fascination as Menona told her about the strange things the Human healers had done to bring her mind back to a healthy state.
When she had finished her drink, Habna changed to a new topic.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said quietly, “but Menon isn’t here.” Menona looked up, a puzzled look on her face.
“We think he has been captured by the Descendant guards,” said Hudnee, and Menona immediately looked alarmed.
“But we think he is all right,” said Habna reassuringly.
“Metris took a squad out to scout the trail ahead,” she continued, “just before we were to meet up with the southern militia. Menon went along to add a bit of experience to the squad. I think he also wanted a bit of time out in the countryside.” She smiled.
“He prefers it to being stuck in camp. You know what he’s like.”
Menona nodded and smiled back.
“The squad must have run into the Descendant guards that escaped from Harrow’s Crossing. The southern militia took the town, but the guards managed to fight their way clear. There were signs of a skirmish not far from the town, and there were losses on both sides, but Menon was not among them.”
Menona looked relieved.
“Metris hasn’t been found either,” continued Habna, “and none of the missing members of his squad have reported back in the last two days, so we think they’ve been taken along by the Descendant guards. We figure they’ll reach Roum about four days before we do.”
“But can’t we cut them off before they reach Roum?” pleaded Menona. She did not want to think what would happen to her special, clever, wandering husband if the Descendant guards took him to Roum.
“That’s not possible,” said Hudnee, a look of pain on his face.
“They have had too much of a head start. We might quick march half a dozen squads to Roum in time to catch up with them, but losses in a battle would be high – especially with tired men, and having to be careful with the captives during the fighting.”
It had been his decision, and he didn’t like it any more than Menona. The trouble was he had to weigh up the losses that would be required to free the remaining members of the squad. It didn’t help that the Earth people had asked for more trainees to pilot their star ships.
He had given up three squads of his youngest militia members. At least he had been able to send the least experienced members of the militia. Still, it reduced numbers, and the combined militia would soon be going up against Roum. The southern scout had told him it was a vast conglomeration of towns really, backing onto a bluff over a river, and the front of it was very heavily fortified indeed.
The fact Menon and the squad with him would soon be inside those walls added to the pressure. Somehow he had to crack that giant nut open, and get his people out.
“We leave tomorrow,” continued Hudnee, “now that you and Daneesa have arrived with more supplies. The militia companies will travel light and arrive first. They will test the defences when they get there, but we will wait until the wagons and the baggage train arrive before launching anything major. We will need to have a lot of things in place before we start our main attack. We’re also lucky to have the Human medical team helping us on this one.”
Yes, thought Menona. She had benefited from their magic over the recent weeks, and she knew it would save many lives in the days to come.
“Just tell me what I can do,” she said steadily. The only way she could improve Menon’s chances of surviving was to help make the attack on Roum a success. That would take the Descendants minds off the captives.
CHAPTER 23
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Menon looked up at the walls of Roum in surprise. He’d heard of the great walls and massive gates of the Descendant citadel, but had not expected them to be like this.
The walls had clearly not started life as walls. They had started life as a series of step pyramids, built in stone and stepped up every three paces or so. They had been built in a row, right across the entrance to Roum, at some time in the distant past.
Menon understand the purpose of them at once. These were monuments to the Prophet that the Descendants revered, and they were meant to impress the citizens of Roum and visiting pilgrims alike. He could see that the walls between them had been added later, when the rains came and food grew scarce.
The first layer – flush with the lowest step of the pyramids – had also been built of stone, but a second layer on top of it had been more hastily constructed out of timbers. It was more like a wooden stockade.
When the guards and their captives had been descending from the hills, Menon had seen how the Descendant capital had been built onto a bluff that backed onto a river that ran around it. That left a frontal attack as the only real option, though that was where the fortifications were strongest. As the column got closer he scrutinised the walls more closely, but there were no weaknesses that he could see.
The gates of Roum had been built at the same time as the stone pyramids, and were just as solidly made. They might have been no more than ceremonial before the rains, but they’d been solidly made, and now stood as one of the strongest points in the wall.
As the column passed inside Roum, the militia could see how crowded the streets were. The influx of Descendants from the regional centres, plus those fleeing from the advance of the militias, had restored the numbers. Roum had initially lost half its population to the illnesses and injuries of the rains, and the villagers who had disappeared as living conditions got harsher. But crops sown in the improving weather had now yielded their first harvests, and Roum was growing strong again.
The Shellport captives were marched along a wide thoroughfare leading from the gates to the centr
al market area. Menon could see the magnificent Descendant pilar topping the rise behind the market place. How Hudnee would love to get a look at that, he thought. He would want to see the ways the builders had overcome the problems that went with the massive stone pillars and great arches that supported the roof.
Well, thought Menon resolutely, Hudnee would be standing on the plains outside Roum in a few days. If it was up to him, he would find a way to let the militia into Roum, and then Hudnee could be in here examining the pilar at his leisure.
The Shellport squad was thrown into a windowless room with a dirt floor, somewhere under the sprawling offices of the Descendants. The offices were a huge, monastery-like building that had grown ever larger over the years.
There was a hide bucket of reasonably fresh water in one corner of the room, and a rather unsanitary looking bucket for human waste in another. Demarc scuffed at a greasy black stain on the floor, and raised his eyebrows.
Menon slapped him on the shoulder, making the still weak squad member stumble.
“Don’t worry, that isn’t going to happen to us,” he promised grimly, avoiding the pool of dried blood.
They weren’t in the room for long before two of the squad were dragged out by Descendant guards. Menon had figured the interrogations would start straight away. The more the Descendants knew about the militia the more prepared they would be. The others kept a tense vigil until the two men were shoved back through the door several hours later.
“What did they want?” queried Metris, once the men had been given a little water from the bucket. They had been beaten, though perhaps not as badly as Metris had been beaten by the Descendant captain on the trail to Roum. The man’s face was firmly fixed in Menon’s mind. There would be a day of reckoning for that.
“They wanted to know how large the militia was,” said one of the men wearily.
“What did you tell them?” asked Menon in a kindly voice. He didn’t want to embarrass the men if they had given any information to the guards. The size of the militia wasn’t that important anyway, the Descendants were going to find it out when they looked over the walls of Roum in the next few days.
The other squad member started to chuckle, and this turned into a fit of coughing. Menon watched him closely. He hoped the man hadn’t been kicked in the ribs, and wasn’t bleeding into his lungs.
“Perondo here told them all sorts of lies,” said the man at last, when the coughing had stopped.
“He should be a storyteller, the way he was going on, and him with a straight face! All I had to do was groan as if I couldn’t believe he was telling them our secrets, and pretend to spit on him now and then in a fit of anger.”
“What on Hud did you tell them?” said Metris, with a barely-contained laugh. He was intrigued by this evidence of ingenuity among his men.
“That the militia was about twice the size it really is,” said the man, “and some of the militia had turned into cannibals with the shortage of food, especially meat. How they usually attacked in the dead of night, after a big cannibal feast where they cooked up the fallen villagers and a few of the Descendants from the last place they’d captured.”
Menon grinned. This was the sort of stuff Habna would approve of.
“You took a big risk,” he said, “but it looks like you might have pulled it off.”
“I thought he’d gone too far,” said the other man, “when he begged to be allowed to stay in Roum. Said he was just a simple villager, and this was all too much for him.
“But they bought it,” he concluded.
Menon congratulated the two men on their quick thinking. They had done well to retain their presence of mind, especially when they were being beaten by the guards.
“Partheni was there,” said Perondo darkly. “Just for the start of the interrogation, and he didn’t stay long. He wanted to see us hurt though, that was very clear. That piece of dried dung’s got a real hatred for the militia.”
“I’m sure he has,” said Menon quietly, “now we’ve broken up his little power-crazed empire, with him using the villagers as his slaves!
“Get some rest, you two,” he continued. “We may have to make a break for it tonight, and I want both of you recovered enough to keep up with the rest of us.”
The two men found the cleanest corner of the room and curled up against the wall. With any luck they could doze for a while and recuperate their strength.
Menon didn’t believe the story of the cannibal army would hold much weight by the time it got to the ArchOrdinate of Roum. The militia men had probably been lucky – given the once over by zealous but none too bright guards for this first time round. But the squad’s luck wouldn’t last.
If Partheni ran true to form, he would mean to kill them all on the walls of Roum when the militia arrived. Whether as an act of defiance or an attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the militia fighters was hard to say. People like Partheni, vicious and unprincipled, rarely let reason interfere with their mad view of the world. At least that had always been the case in Menon’s experience.
When the guards came again on dusk, Demarc was shivering in a corner, his shirt tossed to one side.
“What’s wrong with him?” said one of the guards, pointing with his drawn sword.
“Swamp fever,” said Menon. “He got it on the coast, and it returns from time to time.”
In truth they had used the last of the water in the bucket to give Demarc a sweaty look, and he was holding his breathe and trying to look as red-faced as possible.
“Is it contagious,” said the guard, walking over to Demarc for a better look but stopping well short of him.
“Oh, very,” said Menon, waiting for Metris to take the plan a step further. Metris had torn a strip off Demarc’s shirt and scoured the dirt floor for suitable stones. Now he whipped the makeshift sling around his head and fired a stone at the back of the guard’s head. The man staggered, and dropped his sword, before collapsing to his knees.
The remaining guards rushed at Metris, who got off one more stone from the sling before the guards surrounded him, and wrenched it from his hands. The rest of the squad, who had been waiting until the guards were intent on Metris, jumped them from behind.
Menon scooped up the sword of the fallen guard and took the nearest attacker out of the equation. The remaining two surrendered when they were-choked from behind and borne to the ground. Menon gave them a hefty tap on the back of the head with the flat of his sword, and they were tied hand and foot with strips torn from what remained of Demarc’s discarded shirt. Demarc took the best shirt the new captives had for his own.
“That should give us a head start,” said Menon triumphantly. “Four armed guards against six Shellport men, and it was no contest – we were always going to win!”
The others laughed, as the adrenaline of the moment drained away.
“Let’s see what mischief we can get up to in Roum,” said Menon, and led them down a corridor toward what seemed to be a storeroom. “First though, we have to wait until it’s night.”
The squad settled in for the wait.
Not that far away, two lines of the solidly built pilar labourers sweated as they hauled supply wagons down off the hills and across the plain toward Roum. Daneesa rode in the lead wagon with Leran, while Habna and Menona walked alongside.
Daneesa spent her time calling out minor adjustments to the route ahead. The labourers preferred just to lean into the harnesses and walk forward, looking down. She also arranged breaks for them, picking a spot where the trail was a little wider, and carried their food and water supplies in the wagon. They obeyed her with the same loyalty they showed to Hudnee, as a master builder of pilars.
She hated to give the labourers any more weight to pull than was absolutely necessary, but Leran was still weak from his time holed up beside the trail without any food. The labourers had insisted he ride with her in the wagon.
Ahead of them the militia were already camped in front of Roum. She could se
e columns of smoke where the first attacks on Roum had tried to burn through the stockades on top of the stone walls. She knew these were just feints, that the attack wouldn’t start in earnest until wagons arrived with enough supplies for an extended period of fighting.
Daneesa was still trying to get her head around the fact a Human medical team had arrived at the supply wagon campsite the previous evening. They had come in under cover of darkness, but that hadn’t lessened the eerie effect it had had on all the people in the wagon train. Only Habna had seemed excited by their appearance.
The camp had watched the dark shape fall like a stone from the sky and land some distance away. Although they knew these strangers meant only to help them, many of the labourers made signs to avert evil and bad luck.
The medical team came in to the camp wrapped in dark clothing and gloves, only the smallest part of their strange white skin showing. They were taller than the people of Hud, but more slightly built. Daneesa detailed two of the labourers to help them put their equipment on the last of the wagons. To their credit the labourers did not flinch at the task.
Then the Human team erected a strange closed-in shelter nearby. Daneesa was there with Habna when the strangers placed a box on the ground, and activated it with a smaller box one of them held in his hand. The box on the ground unfolded, somehow, into a large tent. It seemed to be a lot more rigid than material had a right to be.
Daneesa presumed the leader was a male. In the darkness, with only the leader speaking her language, it was hard to tell about the others. Habna explained they were setting up their own camp separately so they wouldn’t unsettle everyone else, and Daneesa could see the sense in that.
It was late the following day when the wagons finally pulled up behind the huge, sprawling militia camp. Daneesa found Hudnee’s command centre, and her man sent his captains away so they could be alone for a while. Then he listened to her news about the wagons and the medical team.
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