The Shasht War

by Christopher Rowley

  "The scouts saw nothing?"

  "They saw signs of the enemy's passage, all the way up and down that road. But they didn't see the enemy."

  "He could be withdrawn into the woods."

  "I don't think so. I think he's going for the Meld, and we've got to hurry up that road and stop him."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Catch him between two stones and crush him!"

  The orders went out, and the mots were up and moving, with an eager spring to their steps. This was what they had been trained for all winter. Now was their chance to avenge Creton and Tamf.

  They advanced down a straight stretch of road with flat polder off to their right, bordering the river. They crossed the Chenna Bridge and went on through the village, which, though empty was untouched. Beyond the village the road ran between meticulously kept fields bounded by wooded hills. The enemy were not in sight; however, along the road debris of all kinds had been tossed aside. They saw scraps of clothing, plundered from a mot village, fragments of bushpod, and empty sacks that had once held dried apples.

  The mot regiments moved up the road in a long column. The Sixth Regiment was in second place, with the Fourteenth in front and the Second right behind. The Fourteenth set a good pace. In fact, the Sixth were slowly losing ground.

  Thru had dropped back to talk with Ter-Saab about this. The Sixth were tired, yes, they were all tired, but there was a fight coming today and they had to be ready for it. Thru wanted his mots to pick up the slack, at once.

  Suddenly there was a shout; heads came up.

  Scouts were running down from the nearest wooded hill, and were waving their arms wildly. Thru felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  Bugles blew up and down the columns. The regiments crashed to a halt. Orders went out at once to turn to the right and form in defensive alignment.

  Thru saw Colss hurrying past, flanked by worried-looking aides. He met the scouts halfway across the nearest field. There was a hurried conference and more orders came down. The men were coming; they were hidden in the trees off the road.

  Thru felt a thrill of dismay. They had marched into an ambush. Worse, they were strung out on the road with the broad river at their back. The enemy hoped to trap them here and destroy them with his superior numbers.

  And then the men broke out of cover from the trees. A long line of them, their armor glinting in the sunlight, their long red banners unfurled and flapping in the wind, and the sound of their drums throbbing through the air.

  Thru felt the tension rise. Here they came. Now would be the decision. More flags appeared, dozens of them, as more regiments emerged from the trees. Thru realized that six thousand might be an underestimate. Skirmishers, peltasts with bows and javelins, were hurrying forward to make contact.

  Mot archers were sent forward, too, and soon shimmering arrows were whistling through the air. As the arrows fell among the ranks a mot here, a brilby there, staggered and fell.

  "Prepare to receive the enemy!" came the command from Colss.

  The pikebearing Quarter moved to form the front line. Behind them was a line of mots armed with two throwing spears. Behind them was the third line, mots armed with spear and shield who would move forward to engage when and if the pike line was ruptured.

  In that event the big kobs and brilbies who wielded the pikes would move to the rear and form a new line with whatever weapons were available.

  They had practiced these maneuvers countless times. Thru prayed that they could execute them now when their lives depended on it, when the chaos and the tension could make mots panic and run if their discipline broke.

  The archers fell back and filed through the lines. The enemy skirmishers had retired as well. Now the long lines of men marched closer under the ominous scarlet banners with the white fist of Shasht raised high.

  Mots waited, as calmly as they might, shields and spears ready. At the order they lifted their spears into place.

  The men now gave a great shout and broke into a run. The drums were banging insanely behind them, and their war cry echoed off the forested hillsides.

  Arrows began to fall among the mots, so they raised their shields. Mot archers were already pacing their ranging shots among the advancing horde.

  Coming at a run now, the lines of men were still holding firm. They had their throwing spears at the ready, their shields bobbing as they ran. Spears flew between the closing lines, here and there a man fell. Mots sagged and crumpled as spears found gaps between shields.

  Then the men came up against the pikes.

  They swung shields and engaged with their spears. The pikes and spontoons were wielded by the strongest brilbies and kobs. They pulled and jabbed, keeping the men at bay. The momentum of the charge was dissipated. Thru felt a surge of hope. The lines of men piled up just at the outer range of the stabbing pikes. A huge clatter went up as men used shields and swords to try and divert those long, vicious pikes and get in close. Screams of agony and triumph announced the success of the pikebearers as they sought to hook or stab their opponents.

  Here and there, though, the men got through. They were veterans and they'd fought against massed pikes before. A skillful parry of the pike, perhaps driving it aside with the shield and the spearman was inside the range of the pikebearer. Another shove, a step or two, and the spear or sword could be buried in the chest of the pikebearer.

  This was where the mots in the second line came forward to engage, pushing past the pikebearers. However, this tended to break up the pike formation, and that allowed more men to push in past the lethal pike points. Mots and brilbies died as the lines coagulated and the formation broke up.

  Colss had waited too long to order the pikebearers to withdraw. In truth, they lacked time to execute any such maneuver. Pressed this hard by men skilled at turning aside a pike, they could do nothing except struggle to hold the front.

  But after just a few minutes of this furious battering, the pikes had been abandoned, broken off or their bearers forced back into the general mass of mots. The pikes had proved a failure, despite the training.

  The men were better trained, but their superiority was dissipated in the brutal slugging match that developed. So the battle teetered here, neither side gaining an advantage, while every so often a combatant would stagger back and sit down, stabbed too badly to continue.

  Now the enemy began to use their superior numbers, concentrating the weight of their attacks at either end of the line of mots, forcing them back into a U that was anchored on the river. Inside the U was a stretch of polder, broken up by low stone walls across the fertile muck.

  The ring of sword on sword was coming more and more often as spears were given up in the tighter press. Within the press it was becoming very difficult to move. The mots went back, step by step, but they were stubborn and exacted a toll from the men who pressed forward. The dead continued to accumulate.

  Thru saw the danger of the slow movement backward. The U would contract until the mots were eventually crowded against the stone walls of the polder. Their formations would break up against those walls, and they would be slaughtered in the confined spaces.

  He pulled Ter-Saab aside.

  "Have to counterattack. Before we get crushed into those walls."

  Ter-Saab had seen the problem as well.

  "Get two hundred mots," said Thru. "We're going to surprise them."

  "Easier said than done," said Ter-Saab, looking at the sprawling lines, locked in combat.

  "Get it done!"

  Thru turned away to organize a line of archers. He wanted a sudden storm of well-directed fire at a narrow part of the enemy line. The archers were to be thrust into the heart of the fight, where they could make sure of their targets.

  As it happened, Thru and Ter-Saab were given a gift. For a moment there was a spontaneous separation of the lines, both sides drawing breath.

  Ter-Saab used it to pull a Quarter into shape. His big voice was unmistakable as he bellowed orders to whi
p the mots into four short lines. Archers came forward to take up places at the ends of these lines. The order was given, and just as the Shasht drums started, the mots drove forward. The front line parted, the assault group burst through and attacked the enemy line.

  The tip of the assault was borne by a dozen kobs and brilbies carrying spontoons. They hooked and pulled and stabbed and kicked their way through the opposing line. In a matter of minutes the enemy regiment was broken into two halves. The mot archers fired along the lines and took many victims.

  The enemy horns wailed with a frantic edge, the drums thudded, and stentorian voices yelled orders, for the Shasht line was broken.

  Another regiment came hurrying across from the center to fill the gap, but for the moment the intruding assault group was free to turn the lines on either side and break up the entire enemy formation.

  Training had paid off. The attacking Quarter had kept a vestige of organization. The mots of the first line went into defensive deployment, while the rest turned on the men to their left and right and enlarged the breach in the lines of the enemy regiment.

  Suddenly the whole fight broke open as the men's lines collapsed completely. The mots of the rest of the line pressed forward, spears stabbing into the confused and broken masses in front.

  Men died in exactly the way that Thru had seen so many mots die on the field at Dronned when their formations broke up. The side in chaos, with soldiers getting in each other's way, was the side that took the casualties. But now the enemy's reserve regiment was ready to engage, and the mots of the Sixth came to a halt. Orders went out for them to fall back to preserve the main battle line.

  Alas, as can happen with relatively untrained troops, the grand but terrible energy of battle had overwhelmed their discipline. Having the hated enemy on the run and vulnerable to their spears was so intoxicating that they could not be stopped. They kept pressing, moving farther apart from the main line.

  The enemy reserve regiment was coming on fast and would envelop the assault group of mots in a few moments. Thru saw the disaster looming.

  "Come on!" he roared, drawing his own sword and driving all the mots around him, into the fray. "Forward, we have to hold them off!"

  About fifty strong, including Thru's own brigade staffers, they sprinted forward to bolster the assault group, arriving just as the enemy regiment took a grip. Thru found himself holding the left flank of the Quarter, and immediately engaged by spearsmen.

  He had his sword but no shield and could only parry spear thrusts as they came in. A brilby joined him, and then another, armed with a stump of a pike that he wielded like a club, hammering a spearsman into the ground with a terrific overhand blow.

  Thru knocked aside a spear thrust, then felt a shield slam into his chest. A powerful man heaved him back, the spear thrust came down. Thru knocked it aside, and got a hand over the edge of the shield and tried to pull it down. The man snarled and slammed his helmeted forehead down on Thru's fingertips.

  Thru heard himself howling in pain, while he hit the man on the head with the sword, but the blow slid off the helmet. Still it dazed the fellow, and Thru was able to shove back the shield.

  The brilby on his left suddenly crumpled, a spearhead erupting from his side. A man was trying to pull his spear free. Thru struck with his sword, took the man in the shoulder. There was a scream in his ear, the spearsman hit him with the shield again, and he felt the spear slice across his arm, but miss his ribs.

  Something hit him hard across the back of the head, but his backhand with the sword took the spearsman in the face and the man fell away howling in a spray of blood.

  Another man was in his place, another was thrusting at him. Thru dodged, struck back, was joined by more mots who thrust in on either side and reinforced the flank. The stabbing spears withdrew, the mots attacked.

  Suddenly there came a change of phase, rippling through the enemy lines. They had lost the momentum of their thrust. With well-trained precision they drew back to regain their formation.

  Running up and down in front of the mass of mots, Thru and Ter-Saab screamed, shoved, and even slapped at them with the flat of the sword to get them turned around and moving back to the main line of the regiment.

  The mots were on fire with battle. They could barely hear the commands shouted into their faces. But after intense work by the officers, they gave way and tumbled back to the main line. The mot army's front was reknit: spontoon bearers to the front, spear throwers behind them.

  Almost immediately the men on their front charged, hoping to catch them on the hop while the mots reorganized. They came in with a determined thrust, but the spontoons proved deadly; being smaller and lighter than the pikes, they could be worked more quickly and the best brilbies with the spontoon were unbeatable. Now the fighting became intense right along their line.

  Thru was in the thick of it, unable to disengage and return to the command post. It was close work with sword and spear, hard, dangerous, and confusing. When the two sides drew back again for a breather, he noticed that he'd taken a hard blow to the right shin, which was bleeding freely. His fingers were also bleeding. He'd lost a nail.

  Around him the lines of the Sixth Regiment reformed as everyone found their own unit commanders. What had been total chaos was reshaped into something resembling a regiment.

  Thru saw that Ter-Saab was still alive, still fighting, still bellowing orders as the units coalesced once more.

  Horns blew on the Shasht side. The men on their front withdrew to the limit of bow shot and stood behind a wall of shields. More men were in motion behind them as the enemy prepared another assault column.

  It would be a minute or two before they were ready. Thru took the opportunity to run across to Colss's command position. It took him just a few moments to sprint along behind the regiments, but when he reached the table, set beneath the brigade and army banner, he found disaster.

  Colss was on the ground, dying in the arms of a sergeant. A stray arrow had taken him in the neck, penetrating clear through to the other side.

  Crouched down beside the dying Colss was a nervous-looking Colonel Floss, a Sulmese aristocrat now grappling with the reality of command in the middle of a battle.

  Lieutenant Chillespi was also there, the efficient youngster who ran Colss's staff.

  "Brigadier," said Chillespi as Thru came up. Thru took it all in with a single glance. Ross was floundering, but prickly; Colss was done for. The pool of red around him was overwhelming. Despite the efforts of two orderlies, he was dying.

  "General Colss is unable to speak, sir."

  "I can see that, Lieutenant." Thru turned to Floss.

  "Colonel, we must fall back over the stone walls at once. We can't allow ourselves to be trapped against them."

  Floss saw the walls, but was obviously afraid of trying to withdraw in the face of the Shasht army.

  "How?"

  "Now's the moment. They're reorganizing before they attack again. We will simply pull back and keep moving. The enemy stood down, they're getting their breath back and putting together a fresh attack. You hear those horns?"

  Floss licked his lips. "Yes, what do they signify?"

  "Those are regimental horns; I hear two different pairs. It's a big attack they're planning, but that means it will take a half a minute. If we hurry."

  Floss stared at him.

  "But if they're gong to attack, we should make ready."

  "We need to be behind those stone walls. We don't want them at our backs."

  Floss still hesitated. Thru didn't wait, but simply turned to Chillespi. "Orders for the army. Moving to the rear. All units are to withdraw over the stone wall into the polder. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "But, wait, who are you to take command?" said Floss.

  "Someone has to, or we will all die here."

  Floss stared back at him, the indecision writ large on his face.

  Thru's order went out, and was obeyed. Thru was in effective comm
and.

  "Everyone, back behind the walls, at the double!"

  And they went, at a run. Crossing the walls in a mass and forming up on the other side with the low wall in front of them now.

  The Shasht army leaped forward after them, but too late to take advantage. The clash came when the walls were between the two armies and the fight stabilized there, the whole line ringing with the sound of steel on steel while curses and cries of pain rose up in two tongues.

  The mot line held. There were incursions, but each time, the mots drew strength from other units and counterattacked and threw the men back over the wall. After a half hour of combat, the men drew back and the mots surveyed the scene behind an unbroken shield wall.

  They had held, but they had paid a price. Both sides had left more than three hundred dead on the field. In places they were heaped up three or four deep.

  As soon as the men had drawn back out of bow shot, Thru ordered the wounded to be evacuated. They were brought back through the polder lanes to the riverside and then ferried downstream in the boats of the watermots of Chenna.

  Thru himself went to study the river. Around the bend the polder gave way to wild water, a patch of the river bottom left uncultivated. While he investigated, an old river mot came up from the polder to help.

  "You soldiers can climb out through the reeds down there. They be very thick reeds in there now."

  Thru nodded, the seed planted in his head.

  "Thanks, old-timer, that's good advice."

  Thru knew he had to get these regiments away from this battle. With their superior numbers the men would eventually push them against this river and annihilate them there.

  He decided to risk everything on a footrace to the crossroads at Shimpli-Dindi. If they could get there first, then they could reach the Meld first, and then things would be different.

  Of course there were no boats left, so they would have to swim. Even their carts would be thrown into the river and left to float downstream. Same with the donkeys. They might not want to, but it was better than being left for the men, who would probably eat them.