The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “And if we can’t leave, we have to secure the best possible position for ourselves. We saved Melek and his men. We rescued a maiden from the slavers...”

  Ezra interjected, “Which is, by the way, an almost magical, historical moment for them.”

  “Yeah. Andie, this isn’t Kansas. Life with Melek’s people is, I suspect, as good as we’re likely to get here. We have to do whatever we have to do, to secure our welcome. And if that means putting our asses, individually or collectively on the line, that’s what we have to do. This is as good as it gets,” Kris told her friend.

  Collum said something and Melek turned to Ezra and spoke a few words. Ezra turned to Kris. “Kris, they have to know what we’re talking about -- they’re not stupid. But Collum wants a translation of what you just said.”

  “Then give it to him,” Kris told Ezra.

  Ezra and Melek conferred for a bit, but finally it was Collum who nodded.

  There was a long explanation from Melek to Ezra, that Ezra had to go back and explain a few things. Finally Ezra turned back to the two young women.

  “Politics! Don’t you just have to love it! One of their fighting groups or societies or whatever you want to call them, is trying to get all the others to join them in fighting the dralka. Melek says that the beasts are numberless, and that for the next thousand years they will do nothing but fight dralka, and the ancestors that they once promised to return to rescue will be forgotten.

  “That is, by the way, another reason why they want to go south. Defeat the old enemy, rescue some of the dozen-and-a-half slaves, and their political opponents will be without ground to stand on. If they run away, those enemies won’t be considered as a terrible scourge, not if this one fighting group goes south and puts paid to them.”

  “Christ, I wonder if those people in the SCA with their ‘back to the Middle Ages’ have a clue what that would mean?” Andie said with a laugh.

  “Considering SCA and Ren Faire politics, I think most of them do,” Ezra told her.

  “Yeah, so off you go, Ezra. You have to promise us you’re not going to fuck this up,” Andie told him. “If you go and get killed, I’ll fire your ass.”

  “If I get killed, I’ll have quit first.” They all laughed, but it was forced.

  Collum had turned serious and was in deep discussion with the captain and Melek. Ezra once again translated. “We’re going to go a little south this afternoon, in the last dregs of light. There are two hills we saw, near the shoreline, about a thousand feet high. Collum wants us to camp on the easternmost hill and a cold camp at that. He wants a fire lit every morning and evening on the other hill -- the idea is to attract any scouts to the wrong place.”

  They prepared for the last push, and Kris had to admit the thought of riding in a wagon instead of having to carry her pack was a pleasant relief. It was done quickly and as it got lighter, she had a chance to study the draft animals.

  They looked more like buffaloes than horses or oxen. They were definitely not happy with being harnessed and having to pull heavy loads, and were mean and nasty. She asked Ezra who talked to Melek who confirmed what she’d thought. Originally the draft beasts had been meat animals, but the loss of anything else to do draft work had made them turn to the faux buffaloes. Probably, she thought, in another few hundred years, they’d be better domesticated, but not yet.

  At the night’s stop it was Rari who was the center of attention, with his tales of Chaba’s life.

  Finally, Andie tugged at Ezra’s sleeve. “See if you can get her to talk about that ship of theirs. Can it tack? Sail upwind?”

  Chaba wasn’t educated and her captors hadn’t spent any time educating her. But, Andie had been right -- she made it clear that their ship had been able to sail into the wind.

  That right there nearly got the results Kris would have preferred -- that everyone would turn around and go back to the city where these people had come from, because once again Andie had stressed she could show them how to do the same thing.

  The actual result was that Captain Dumi assigned ten men to protect Andie and Kris instead of the five he’d originally planned on.

  Andie showed Kris what was needed to make arrow caps the next dawn. She had a half dozen men with hammers to supervise, and she kept them at it until there were no more of the little copper shell-things left to fashion. They had a hundred and three crossbow bolts prepared, and it wasn’t even a tithe of the arrows that filled cask after cask in the wagons.

  Andie had men learning their individual tasks, and as she’d expected, the bottleneck was fashioning the crossbow stock. Still, that was something that Collum showed two other men, both older. In a short while they were showing others how to do it. Kris wasn’t sure why they made ten stocks, but that’s what they produced.

  As night was falling, men worked to assemble the weapons, and by supper time, they had finished. Kris was aware that all of their hosts were impressed that so many new weapons could be fashioned so quickly.

  They wouldn’t let Andie, Kris, or Ezra test them -- that fell to privates. Only one failed, and while it left a nasty gouge in the man’s cheek, he survived when the sword blade broke. It was replaced by another and that weapon worked.

  Much later Kris found Andie sitting in a dark corner of the camp, chewing on something that she couldn’t identify.

  “Are you okay, Andie?”

  “I’m ashamed,” she told Kris. “Did you see them today?”

  “They worked hard,” Kris told her.

  “Yeah. Me, a teacher! Go figure! I would never have thought I’d be a teacher in a million years! A good teacher? Ha! I hate the fuckers! Now I are one!”

  She lapsed into silence for a while, and Kris waited patiently for her to speak. Finally Andie looked up at her. “It was like pouring water onto dry dirt, bone-dry dirt. They sucked it up, Kris. They just sucked up whatever I had to teach. They were eager, hungry to learn. I’ve never seen people like this.

  “I mean, you and I were good students, but I don’t think you were that different than me. We learned what they put in front of us, and hardly cared what it was. They could have taught us basket-weaving, and we’d have dutifully turned out the best baskets in the class. We didn’t give a shit what it was, we just learned.”

  “You did have one or two objections along the way,” Kris pointed out.

  “What the fuck does a teenager know? Like I hated history and geography. What the fuck did I care about how some stupid fucker screwed up a thousand years ago? Two thousand years ago? Who the fuck cares?”

  She stopped talking again.

  “And yet,” Kris ventured, “here we are, where it does matter -- even to where things are on a map and how far apart they are.”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe how much I took my brain out of gear and parroted all that crap they were filling our heads with! What a useless bunch of shit! The fucking teachers didn’t care anymore about geography, history and learning foreign languages than we did! What the fuck does a teenager know about what’s going to be useful later in life? For that matter, those fucking teachers weren’t much smarter than we were!”

  “We’re still alive, Andie,” Kris tried to reassure her friend.

  “Yeah. You realize it took me about thirty seconds to come up with a way to make the crossbow bolts work better? It might have taken these people a century. They might never have figured it out.”

  “That’s because you’re a genius, Andie.”

  “Yeah, you tell yourself that. Think what kind of a fucking genius I’d have been if I’d paid attention to more of the classes that counted!”

  Kris laughed. “It seems to me that you’re doing well enough, Andie!”

  “Yeah. Well, tomorrow Ezra goes south, leaving us on our own. I tell you true, Kris. I have a bad feeling about this. No shit, a really bad feeling. I mean, those Tengri fuckers want to win, right?”

  “Sure. From what Chaba says they are arrogant and think they are the lords of creation.”r />
  “Right! So, I don’t want to tell Ezra how to do his job, because I’ve never studied it. But I have to say, I sure as hell wouldn’t sit on my ass and wait until overwhelming force dropped down on me! I’d sure as fuck would want to change the odds! I couldn’t do that sitting on my ass!”

  Kris laughed. “I’ve read a lot of history, Andie, where evidently you weren’t paying attention. You’re assuming the other guys are as smart as you are! Not!”

  “Mark my words, Kris! Maybe they are brain-dead stupid! That’s possible. But if I was thinking about what they’d do, I’d assume they weren’t and I’d try to counter whatever it is that they are likely to do.”

  “What are they likely to do, Andie?” Kris asked.

  Andie waved at the range of mountains to the east. “I’d go up on the ridge, where I had lots of options to run away to. I’d keep a close watch on what was happening down here. That fucking smoke from the fire that Captain Dummy wants is going to attract them like honey does flies.”

  “We’d see them going past.”

  “And what could fourteen of us do against fifty or sixty? Die valiantly?” Andie asked.

  Kris has no response to that beyond, “We’ll have to keep a close watch.”

  Andie snorted in way of a response.

  Kris hugged Ezra and to her surprise, Andie did too, before he joined the column already headed south.

  Kris and Andie met again a little later, after a lesson from Andie gave the soldiers on the care and feeding of crossbows.

  “I tell you true, Kris, these guys are well meaning but total fuck ups. The guy in charge is a complete dick. Rari is smarter. The sergeant is all but crying that we’re going to shoot arrows with copper bottoms.”

  Kris had to admit that Sergeant Crownar was indeed a dick. He had no ability to think beyond what he was told. Maybe the sergeant was ignorant of how the other men thought of him, but is was clear to Kris that they were contemptuous of the sergeant. Rari, the one man left with them that they knew, was of the same opinion. And all of the men were reluctant to practice even once with a copper-clad bolt.

  “Lady Kris, please... would you see that Chaba is safe, no matter what happens to me?” Rari told her.

  Kris had already learned that they didn’t use formal titles unless they had a good reason. She’d picked up enough of the language to know what Rari wanted.

  “We will, but do not worry! Ezra! Melek! Collum!”

  It bucked up Rari for a day or so. Inactivity, Kris learned, was a terrible thing. It leached courage like water running down a drain. You could see confidence vanish every hour that there was no word from the south.

  On the third day, Andie spoke to her. “Kris, this is totally screwed up. These guys totally have the wind up.”

  “Yeah,” was all Kris could say.

  “Well, you have to know that they all worship the ground you walk on.”

  “They like you too,” Kris told Andie.

  Andie laughed. “Like, yes. Worship? No! I’m not sure what you’ve done, girl, but the only one of these bastards not eating out of your hand is Crownar.”

  It was an hour before sundown on the third day that Rari appeared, concerned and terrified. “They come, Lady Kris! The Tengri!”

  She followed him, wishing she understood more words. There was no doubt of it, a large party of fifty or so Tengri was passing the base of their hill, headed towards the dying streamers of smoke to their west.

  “The fire-makers have returned?” she asked, and Rari nodded.

  “Well, tell everyone to hold position and not to do anything that would reveal us. Maybe they won’t find us.” Rari obviously didn’t think that was likely, but he wasn’t going to contradict Kris. A few moments later, Chaba came and silently bowed to Kris, and took position behind her.

  “I don’t think this is good, Andie,” Kris told her friend.

  “Yeah. That fucker, Kit! If we had decent radios that worked at any other time than at night, we could tell Ezra to turn around and hustle back here! I’m going to kill the fucking asshole! Dead!”

  It was an old refrain and good for only a few moments of release. Kris kept low, looking over the terrain. If she was smart, what would she do to attack defenders on top of a hill?

  She closed her eyes. One rush. One determined rush and they’d be rolled over. Then she saw a half dozen of them turn and head towards the hill they were on.

  This was it, she thought. This was really it. She was going to die so far from home, she seriously doubted if she could see the sun, even if she knew where to look.

  She missed seeing Rari hand Andie his crossbow. She missed seeing one of the men rise up and knock their sergeant unconscious as he was about to order a general retreat.

  She did see, however, the Tengri in the lead. He was about three hundred feet below them when Kris heard one of Andie’s crossbows fire. She turned, about to chastise whoever it was who’d fired early, but all she saw was Andie with a wicked grin on her face. She turned, and saw the Tengri in the lead was down, a bolt in his chest.

  The Tengri spread out, looking in the close distance for the archer who’d marked down their leader. It took nearly an ten minutes before they started up the hill again. It was much darker, and Kris was aware that she couldn’t see more than a few hundred yards.

  Again, Andie’s crossbow thumped. Kris looked downhill and saw a man rise up and measure his length on the ground. “Two of six, Andie! Good going!” she shouted to encourage her friend.

  “Except they had to have sent for help. Two of fifty!”

  Kris settled down. So, not so good! One of the other men tugged on Kris’s sleeve and pulled her off to the left. Two men were walking up the hill, looking warily in every direction, their muskets held across their bodies. They were less than two hundred yards away. Everything Ezra had said told her that firing her pistol at a target that far away was a waste of time.

  Screw it! She took a careful sight picture and fired. She was pleased! She saw where the bullet hit, well short. She lifted her aim and fired again. The two men had stopped, looking for the source of the strange sounds. She saw that the bullet was still short, so she lifted her sight picture the tiniest bit at the man, standing stock still, his neck swiveling, looking for the source of the sounds.

  The third shot sent him wind-milling backwards, sprawling in the rocks. The second man went to cover, looking carefully uphill. It was of little comfort to Kris that he was looking first at the area halfway between them.

  “Things getting hot?” Andie called.

  “Yeah, they are trying to come this way.”

  “Well, one of our guys just killed one of them to my right. Shot him, I see, right in the chest. They are going to go slow now and try to outflank us.”

  Kris nodded to herself.

  She was going to die on this hillside, she knew it in her bones. They were outnumbered, five to one. Their weapons might be only marginally less effective than their enemy’s, but their enemies had numbers on their side. Three of them stood up as she watched and rushed uphill. Around her, four crossbows thumped loudly.

  One of the attacking men dropped instantly, an arrow through his head. A second was limping away, an arrow in his thigh. Kris remembered the sight picture that had worked before and fired a shot from her pistol.

  It was just like when she’d killed Chaba’s Tengri master. The man’s head exploded and he toppled forward.

  “They are going to try a rush in a minute,” Andie called. “Send everyone over this way.”

  Kris did that, even sending Rari who only departed when she got upset.

  Sure enough, there were crossbow snaps from where Andie was, followed by several pistol shots. Moreover, to make life interesting, five men rushed towards her. She hit one with her third bullet. The sounds weren’t, she thought, terrifying. The four survivors had gone to ground and she watched where she thought they’d gone. It was hard, because every time they fired a musket, they were lost in a billowing
cloud of smoke. They never reappeared where she had last seen them, either.

  A moment later Chaba smiled at her, and handed Kris a crossbow, a quarrel in place. Kris closed her eyes. The only way Chaba would have a crossbow was if her guard had been killed or badly wounded.

  “You okay, Andie?” Kris called.

  “Fuck yes! If they keep coming like this, it’ll be easy!”

  A man stood and charged diagonally forward, and Kris fired Chaba’s crossbow. Kris was impressed by how good her shot was. She’d hit the man in the chest, while he running across their front.

  A desultory hail of musket shots came in reply, but was well wide of where Kris and Chaba were crouched. Kris got Chaba’s attention and pointed more to their left. It would leave more of a gap between her and Andie, but a steady drizzle of shots was an unacceptable risk. Chaba stayed low, grinned at Kris, and went where she was directed.

  “We’re moving further left, Andie!” she called.

  “Yeah, it looks like they’re about to try another rush here! Watch your ass!”

  There were thumps from crossbows, then three quick shots from Andie’s pistol.

  “Cool!” Andie called. “Six fewer for the next rush. I do believe they are losing interest! Once more and I think that will be that!”

  A man appeared less than twenty feet from Kris, rushing towards a low spot between her and Chaba. Kris didn’t even need to think. She shot him and he tumbled down, his musket rolling on the ground. More musket balls came, better directed than before. Kris wormed her way more to the left, cursing the need to go that way.

  Three men jumped up and headed towards Kris. She fired twice and two of them dropped, and Chaba handed her the cocked crossbow and even the hasty shot Kris got off nearly clipped the survivor’s arm. He was up a second later, running full tilt downhill. Kris contemplated shooting at him and decided that it was a poor shot and held off.

  “They bugged out, Andie!” she called.

  “Funny you should say that. The cavalry is at the bottom of the hill, and the survivors are having serious second thoughts! Stay down! They may decide if this hilltop was a good spot for us to hole up on, it would be good for them too!”