Oakleaf bearers ra-4

by John Flanagan

  In addition, the Temujai now realized that their own favorite tactic had been effectively countered. If they sent one group into close combat while another stood off to provide covering fire during the withdrawal, they knew that the second group would instantly come under fire from the archers on the Skandian right flank. It was a new experience for the Temujai. Never before had they encountered such disciplined and accurate return fire.

  But they were no cowards, and some of the commanders were now substituting raw courage and ferocity for tactical ploys. They began to storm toward the Skandian line, abandoning their bows and drawing sabers, trying to break through in close-in fighting, determined to bury the Skandians under sheer numbers if necessary.

  They were brave and skillful fighters, and against most adversaries they might have faced, their ploy would probably have succeeded. But the Skandians reveled in hand-to-hand fighting. To the Temujai it was a matter of skill. To the northerners, it was a way of life.

  "This is more like it!" Erak bellowed cheerfully as he moved forward to intercept three Temujai scrambling over the earthen bulwark. Halt felt himself shoved to one side as Ragnak rushed to join his comrade, his own battle-ax causing terrible havoc among the small, stocky warriors who were swarming over their position.

  Halt stood back a little, content to let the Skandians take on the brunt of the hand-to-hand fighting. His gaze roamed outside the area of immediate engagement until he saw what he was looking for: one of the Temujai marksmen, recognizable by the red insignia on his left shoulder, was searching the milling crowd of men for the Skandian leaders. His eyes lit on Ragnak as the Oberjarl called more of his men into the breach the Temujai had forced. The Temujai's recurve bow came up, the arrow already sliding back to full draw.

  But he was two seconds behind Halt's identical movement, and the Ranger's huge longbow spat its black-painted shaft before the Temujai had reached full draw. The rider never knew what hit him as he tumbled backward over the withers of his horse.

  Suddenly, the savage little battle was over and the surviving Temujai were scrambling back down the earth slope, capturing any horses they could and hauling themselves into the saddles.

  Ragnak and Erak exchanged grins. Erak slapped Halt on the back, sending him reeling.

  "That's better," he said, and the Oberjarl growled agreement. Halt picked himself up from the dirt.

  "I'm so glad you're enjoying yourself," he said dryly. Erak laughed, then became serious as he nodded his head toward the right flank and the small group of archers, still pouring steady fire into the attackers.

  "The boy has done well," he said. Halt was surprised to hear there was a note of pride in his voice.

  "I knew he would," he replied quietly, then turned as Ragnak dropped a ponderous arm around his shoulders. He wished the Skandians didn't have to be quite so touchy-feely in expressing their feelings. Built the way they were, they put normal people at risk of serious damage.

  "I've got to admit it, Ranger, you were right," the Oberjarl said. He swept his arm around the fortifications. "All of this, I didn't think it was necessary. But I can see now that we would never have stood a chance against those devils in an open conflict. As for your boy and his archers," he continued, gesturing toward Will's position, "I'm glad we looked after him when we first caught him."

  Erak raised one eyebrow at that. It had caused him considerable anger that Will had been assigned to the freezing conditions of labor in the yard-an assignment that should have meant almost certain death. He said nothing, however. He assumed that being supreme leader gave one a license to forget uncomfortable events from the past.

  Halt was studying Will's position with a critical eye. The defensive line in front of the archers was still well manned. Of all the Skandian positions, it seemed to have suffered the lowest number of casualties. Obviously, he thought, the Ulans were avoiding direct confrontation at that point. They'd seen what had happened to the troop that had charged directly at the archers.

  But he knew that the Temujai general couldn't allow this situation to continue. He was losing too many men-both to the constant volleys of arrows and in the desperate hand-to-hand fighting with the Skandians. Soon, he would have to do something to nullify the unexpected problem posed by the archers.

  He would have been interested, but not surprised, to know that Haz'kam's thoughts were running on pretty much the same lines.

  The general cursed softly as he studied the casualty reports brought in by his staff.

  He turned to Nit'zak, his deputy commander, and indicated the sheet of parchment in his hand.

  "We cannot go on like this," he said softly. His deputy leaned toward him, turning the sheet of hastily scribbled casualty figures so that he could read it. He shrugged.

  "It's bad," he agreed. "But not disastrous. We still have the numbers to defeat them, archers or no archers. They can't stand against us indefinitely."

  But Haz'kam shook his head impatiently. Nit'zak had just confirmed what he had always suspected. His deputy was a capable leader in the field, but he lacked the overview necessary to make him a commanding general.

  "Nit'zak, we've lost almost fifteen hundred men-either killed or wounded. That's nearly a quarter of our effective force. We could easily lose that many again if we keep on like this."

  Nit'zak shrugged. Like most Temujai senior officers, he cared little for the size of his casualty reports, as long as he won the battle. If Temujai warriors died in battle, he thought, that was their role in life. Haz'kam saw the gesture and correctly interpreted the thinking behind it.

  "We're two thousand kilometers from home," he told his deputy. "We are supposed to be subjugating this frozen little corner of hell so that we can mount an invasion of the Ara-land. How do you propose that we do that with less than half the force we started with?"

  Again, Nit'zak shrugged. He really didn't see the problem. He was accustomed to victory after victory and the idea of defeat never occurred to him.

  "We knew we'd take casualties here," he protested, and Haz'kam let go a string of curses in an unaccustomed display of temperament.

  "We thought this would be a skirmish!" he spat angrily. "Not a major engagement! Think about it, Nit'zak: a victory here could cost us so much that we might not even make it home again."

  That was the uncomfortable truth. The Temujai had two thousand kilometers to cover before they reached their homeland on the steppes once more. And all two thousand were across hostile, temporarily conquered territories-territories whose inhabitants might welcome the opportunity to rise up against a weakened Temujai force.

  Nit'zak sat his horse in silence. He was angry at the tone of rebuke in his commander's voice, particularly in front of the other staff officers. It was a gross breach of Temujai behavior for Haz'kam to speak to him in such a fashion.

  "So:what do you propose?" he asked finally.

  For a long time, the general didn't answer. He gazed across the intervening space to the Skandian lines, looking from the command position in the center to the line of archers drawn up on his left-the Skandian right wing. Those two positions, he knew, held the key to this battle.

  Finally, he turned to his deputy, his mind made up.

  "Strip the first fifty Ulans of their Kaijin," he ordered. "And assemble them here as a special force. It's time we got rid of those damned archers."

  36

  "H ERE THEY COME AGAIN," H ORACE SAID, AND W ILL AND Evanlyn both turned to look toward the Temujai forces. The riders were cantering forward again, and this time it looked like a major attack. Haz'kam had committed nearly two thousand men to a frontal assault on the Skandian lines. They rode forward, their hoofbeats echoing in the valley, formed in a wedge shape that was aimed at the Skandian center and the command post where Halt, Erak and Ragnak directed the Skandian defense.

  Will and Evanlyn had taken advantage of the lull in the fighting to take a quick bite to eat, and a welcome drink of water. Will's throat was parched, from both the tension and
the nonstop shouting of orders. He guessed Evanlyn felt the same. Horace, who had already eaten, had been keeping watch. Now, at his call, Evanlyn slipped down into her sheltered position and the archers, who had been sprawled comfortably against the earthworks, came to their feet, bows in hand. The shield bearers, who had also been relaxing, took their positions beside them.

  Silently, they waited. In the lull, the arrow bin in front of each archer had been replenished with new shafts. Even now, the women of Hallasholm were gathered in the Great Hall, making fresh arrows for the battle.

  Will studied the mass of riders. He had seventy-five archers still standing in the line, several of them lightly wounded. They had lost eleven men, killed by Temujai arrows, and a further fourteen had been wounded too seriously to continue fighting. As the Temujai force advanced, Will estimated that he could manage four volleys before they reached the Skandian line. Maybe five. That would be three hundred arrows raining down on the tightly packed mass of horsemen, and in that formation, the incidence of hits would be high. If Will aimed for the center of the mass, even his undershoots and overshoots would be effective.

  "Left front, position three!" he called, and the machine swung into action again.

  "Ready!" called Evanlyn.

  "Draw:shoot!" shouted Will. He gestured for Horace not to call the shields into position. As yet, they were not under attack. The more time he had to do damage to that mass of Temujai horsemen, the better chance he would give Halt and Erak to repel the Temujai's main thrust.

  "Reload!" he called, and waited for Evanlyn's call once more. When it came, he sent another volley on its way. As it started its upward trajectory, the first volley came down and he saw horsemen falling once again.

  "Left half left!" he called, swinging the aiming point to match the progress of the horsemen as they moved from right to left across his front. He called the elevation again, shortening this time, then another seventy-five shafts soared away with that now-familiar slithering sound of arrows scraping across bows. Now the horsemen were galloping and he adjusted the angle once more.

  "Left left! Position two," he called. Evanlyn's call told him that the men had reloaded.

  "Draw:shoot!"

  And now he heard the first sounds of close combat as the leading ranks of horsemen made contact with the Skandian lines. It would be too risky to try to shoot into the Temujai front ranks now, but he could still interdict the ranks behind them.

  "Left half left!" he called, and the archers swung their aim point back to the right by twenty degrees. Then suddenly, the air around him was alive with the hissing sound of arrows and all along the line his archers were falling, some crying out in pain and shock and others, more ominously, silent.

  "Shields! Shields!" Horace was yelling and the shield bearers moved into position-but not before more archers went down. Desperately, Will swung around and saw, for the first time, the smaller group that had moved forward to attack his position while he had been busy engaging the main force. There were about fifty archers, he estimated, all mounted, pouring steady, accurate shots into his position. Behind them rode another, larger group armed with lance and saber.

  "Target front!" he called, and muttered an aside to Horace: "Be quick with those shields when we need them."

  The warrior apprentice nodded, watching anxiously as the fifty riders continued to shoot. Now arrows were thudding into his own shield, and into the earth rampart in front of them.

  "Position one!" Will called. This was straight and level-point-blank range. "Draw!"

  "Ready!" he heard Evanlyn call. Then Horace yelled for the shields to open and Will, almost on top of him, called for the release.

  As the volley hissed on its way, Horace was already calling for the shields to come back into position again. But even in that short time, another half dozen of their men went down to the Temujai arrows.

  Now Will noticed the red insignia on the Temujai shoulders and he realized why the standard of enemy archery had picked up in accuracy and rate of fire.

  "They're all Kaijin!" he said to Horace. As he spoke, he raised his own bow and, shooting rapidly, emptied three saddles before Horace dragged him behind the shelter of his shield again. Half a dozen shafts slammed into it as he did so.

  "Are you mad?" Horace cried, but Will's eyes were wild with pain as he looked up at his friend.

  "They're killing my men!" he replied, and went to lunge out into the open once more, obsessed with the idea of stopping the Temujai specialists from picking his men off one at a time. Horace's big hand stopped him.

  "It won't help if they kill you!" he yelled and, slowly, the sense of it all sank into Will's brain.

  "Ready!" called Evanlyn. He realized that it was the third time she had given the call. She was prompting him to action. Still covered by Horace's shield, he assessed the position.

  The lancers and swordsmen, unhampered by any harassing fire from the archers, were already closing with the Skandians in front of his position. Hand-to-hand fighting was breaking out along the line. Farther to his left, the main body of Temujai were engaged in a savage battle with the center of the Skandian line. The position was too confused to see who was winning if, indeed, anyone was.

  Meanwhile, to his front, the Temujai marksmen, gathered by Haz'kam into a special unit, were cantering parallel to the Skandian defensive line, widely dispersed so as not to offer a massed target to his volleys, and engaging his archers with accurate, aimed shots as they were exposed. He knew that if he attempted to direct another volley at the Temujai, he would lose half his men in the exchange. There was only one solution now, he realized. He leaned over his parapet, yelling to the line of archers below him-a line that was now severely depleted, he saw.

  "Individual shots!" he yelled, pointing to the cantering lines of Temujai Kaijin. "Shoot whenever you're ready and aim for their bowmen!"

  It was the best he could do. At least this way the Temujai would not be presented with an open line of shields as his men fired. They would have to react to individuals firing irregularly. It would give his men a better chance of survival. It would also lessen the effectiveness of their shooting, he knew. Without central direction, their accuracy would fall away.

  There was, however, one more thing he could do. He glanced down to make sure that the arrow bin in front of him was fully charged and quickly plucked four shafts out, nocking one and holding the others ready between the fingers of his bow hand.

  "Keep that shield up and ready," he said to Horace, and stepped forward to the parapet, still concealed by his friend's large shield. He took a deep breath, then stood clear and let the four shafts go in rapid succession, spinning back behind the cover of the shield as the first Temujai shafts whistled around their ears in reply. Horace, watching, saw two of the shooters go down to Will's arrows. A third took an arrow in the fleshy part of his calf and the fourth arrow missed entirely. He whistled in admiration. It was remarkable shooting. He was about to say something to that effect when he noticed the look of total concentration on his friend's face and decided to say nothing. Again, Will took a deep breath, nocking another arrow, then spun out into the open, loosed again and lunged back into cover.

  Now Horace began to truly appreciate the uncanny accuracy that had been drilled into his friend in the woods and fields around Castle Redmont, as Will spun in and out of cover, loosing off shots-sometimes one, sometimes two or three-and hitting mark after mark. The other archers in the Skandian force added their contributions as well, but none of them possessed the speed and accuracy of the apprentice Ranger. And as more of them were struck by counterfire from the patrolling Kaijin, the survivors became more and more nervous and arrow-shy, more likely to shoot without aiming, then dive back behind cover again.

  "Change sides," Will ordered him briefly, gesturing for Horace, who had been standing to his left, to step across to the right. Horace shifted the shield to his right arm and Will ducked below the breastworks level and moved to Horace's left side. He had been varyin
g his shooting pattern, sometimes shooting just one arrow, and at others letting go a rapid volley, to keep the Temujai guessing. Now he decided that they were accustomed to seeing him appearing to the right of the big shield. He selected another four arrows and stepped to his left, shooting as he came clear. Two more saddles emptied and he darted back into cover again. The change in sides had worked for him. Not a single arrow had come near him in reply.

  He stepped left again, snapped off another shot and then, not knowing what instinct prompted him do it, dropped immediately to his hands and knees behind the earthworks. A vicious hiss split the air directly above him as he did so and he felt his mouth go dry with fear. Horace, seeing him drop, thought he was hit and went to his knees beside him.

  "Are you all right?" he asked urgently. Will tried a weak grin but didn't really think it came off.

  "I'm fine," he managed to croak around the dryness in his mouth. "Just scared to death is all."

  They stood again, sheltering behind the shield and feeling the rattle of Temujai arrows against it. Will realized that the pattern had changed once more and the majority of the Temujai archers were concentrating on his position. It was a chance for his men to release another massed volley, he realized. But if the Temujai saw or heard him preparing them for it, the element of surprise would be lost.

  "Evanlyn!" he called to the girl, sheltering in her covered position below him. She glanced up at him, a question in her eyes, and he continued: "Relay my directions! We'll get in another volley!"

  She waved her hand, indicating that she understood.

  Unwittingly, as they had concentrated on his position, trying to hit the elusive figure who darted in and out of cover and peppered them with a deadly hail of arrows, the enemy had begun to bunch up. There had been little in the way of effective fire from the other archers for some minutes now and the Kaijin had all moved toward the command position to get a shot at Will.