The Shasht War

by Christopher Rowley

  "The Sixth is the last reserve this army has. Look, see how the enemy are moving away. They were expecting this attack from us."

  Ter-Saab bit back any further comments.

  The Shasht assault columns were pulling back and forming a defensive shield wall. Thru's regiments had clashed with them and caused some casualties, but the men had disengaged with skill and were reformed and waiting.

  The attack was stalemated, and Thru was about to order the regiments back, when a messenger, covered in blood and dust, ran up.

  "The men!" said the messenger, eyes staring, obviously struggling to speak.

  "What men?" said Thru, grabbing him by the shoulders.

  "Surprise attack. The Meld is lost."

  Thru whirled to see Ter-Saab and the Sixth marching back around the flanking works of the ditch and rampart.

  "Back everyone, support the Sixth!" He grabbed Chillespi and bellowed in his ear. The lieutenant was quick on the uptake, and nodded agreement at once.

  Thru ran for the Sixth.

  A Shasht regiment had somehow crept up unseen on the far side of the hill. They had crossed the rampart facing that side unopposed and smashed into the Meld's command post and the rear of the main line of the army. The shriek of their horns was plainly audible now over a renewed clamor of war.

  That was the signal the main body of the enemy was waiting for. Now the assault column on the right side of their line charged once more, slamming into the Ninth Regiment in the center of the Meld's line.

  The Shasht regiments of the other assault column were held back, facing off with Thru's regiments. And now the southern regiments were turning away, pulled back by Thru's order to close up on the Sixth, which was marching back the way they'd come.

  Thru caught up with Ter-Saab, who still hadn't received the word.

  "Hurry! The enemy has broken at the rear!"

  Ter-Saab stared at him blankly for a second, then he sprang into action. Orders were bellowed, and the Sixth Regiment surged around the end of the works.

  "At the double!" Thru roared at one stunned lieutenant that stared back at him with mouth hanging open. The mot gulped, then whirled and started shouting at his mots. Thru set off alongside Ter-Saab at a dead run.

  Rounding the gap in the works, they saw a confused mob of mots broken out of the rear of the Meld's forces. Beyond them the Blitz Regiment of Shasht was driving hard into the rear of the Ninth Regiment, which was simultaneously receiving renewed attack on its front.

  Complete disaster loomed, except for the presence of the Sixth Regiment.

  With swords and spears at the ready, they drove through the fugitives broken away from the Ninth and other regiments and hurled themselves into the Blitzers, taking them in their right flank.

  The Blitzers turned to fight, and the battle along their flank quickly became disorganized as men and the mots of two regiments fused into a chaotic mass of fighting.

  Thru ran past the Meld's command post. The tents were down, bodies scattered here and there, but he saw no sign of the Meld himself. There was no time to search, the armies were still locked together in confused combat. The Ninth Regiment had been reinforced from the regiments on either side, and it had held the assault column at the rampart. But in the rear there was still a tense struggle in progress between the Sixth Regiment and the Shasht regiment. The men had done terrible harm to the Ninth Regiment, but the flank attack had prevented a complete breakthrough.

  The situation continued to be fluid, however. The men had lost cohesion, but they extricated themselves from the fighting with skill. As they fell back, they instinctively began to dress out their lines and on the turn lock their shields and prepare to deliver a riposte. They were the crack troops of the Shasht army, and they came together with a clack and a crash and roars of their war cry.

  Thru saw the danger. The Sixth had lost the impetus of its charge. The men were about to regain the initiative, and they might scatter the Sixth with a strong enough thrust.

  Thru spun about and ran back to the confused mob of mots and brilbies that had been flung out of the way of the initial charge into the rear. They had stopped running once they'd been passed by the Sixth. Now they were standing there in several groups, unsure what to do next.

  Thru jumped up on a broken, overturned wagon.

  "Do you see those men?" he roared pointing toward Shasht soldiers. "If they win today, they will kill you all. They will kill your families. They will leave none of us alive. Do you understand?"

  "For I was the broken pig!" shouted a voice. And every mot and brilby heard the first line of the ancient poem, and a collective shudder ran through them. Then anger exploded into a roar of rage.

  Thru waved his sword toward the Shasht regiment and, yelling for the charge, he jumped down and started running at them.

  He had no idea if the rest were following; he knew he didn't dare look back, didn't dare falter a step. This mad charge was it, the moment of truth, because if they didn't halt the men's advance here, then the whole army could be destroyed.

  He passed the lines of the Sixth. They were reforming, but still not ready. He heard a swelling noise behind him, and he ran on. With two hundred or so mots behind him, he could only hope to slow the Blitz Regiment, but that would gain enough time for the Sixth to regroup and join them.

  Thru heard an arrow whisper past his head and dodged a javelin that bounced on the ground and skimmed past his ankles. Then another javelin zipped past at waist height, and now he found other mots had caught up with him. They were possessed by the spirit of war, yelling continuously as they ran straight for the enemy. A moment later they joined battle with a smashing crunch that immediately sank beneath a swelling roar of screams, shouts, and the clatter and clang of weapons and shields.

  Thru had only his sword, but he used it to deflect a spear thrust as he ran in and leaped up to stab over the nearest shield and down into the man's neck. His blade cut into flesh and bone and then slipped off armor. He felt something hard strike his shoulder, something else banged off his helmet. He got a foot up against the nearest shield and threw its owner back and off his feet. As he went down, another man in the second line was there, he thrust with the spear at Thru's head. Thru ducked, was hit from behind, tripped and went down on one knee.

  A brilby with a broken pike had come in behind him, and he knocked the spearsman down with a crunching blow from the pike handle. A mot went over Thru's bent back with a howl and a spray of blood as a sword found his unprotected chest. Something hard and heavy struck a glancing blow off the side of Thru's helmet, and he saw stars.

  The big brilby was using the broken pike like a club, knocking men down, hammering their shields so hard they were driven back a step with each blow.

  More mots came up, swords rang on swords, Thru was back on his feet, conscious that someone else's blood had soaked one side of his face.

  He crossed swords with a snarling man, wide-eyed in battle rage. Thru tried to fight with the benefit of kyo, but in this frenzy there wasn't the room for kyo maneuver. In a tight press they simply hacked and stabbed at each other. Thru pulled the man's shield away, opening the man up for his sword. He stabbed, and stabbed again. The man toppled backward. Thru released the shield. Other men trampled their fallen fellow and thrust at Thru with their spears. He slipped, almost fell, and just managed to knock up a spear that would have gutted him. Mots on either side slammed up against the spearman. Wicker shields crashed against wood and metal. Swords, spears, and pikes clattered along the Blitzer's front.

  Thru looked along that line and let out an exultant yell. It had worked. The Blitz Regiment of Shasht had plowed to a halt. And now he heard the Sixth Regiment coming on behind them. They had stifled the enemy's deadly thrust.

  Something smacked him hard on the back of the head, and a moment later he found himself kneeling on the chest of the man he'd stabbed to death. The man's face was curiously peaceful in death, as if he'd died in his bed. Thru shoved himself back onto hi
s feet. He felt distinctly strange.

  The Sixth Regiment flooded around them and struck the enemy front. The men of Shasht were thrust back a step, then another.

  Thru felt arms around him. A voice in his ear. Chillespi.

  "Are you all right, sir?"

  Thru didn't know.

  "Yes, I think so."

  It's not my blood, he wanted to say, and then everything seemed to lose color and form, and Thru felt his knees buckle as darkness enfolded him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Thru awoke in a dark place with a sense of closeness and the smell of sweat and excrement. He turned his head slightly. He was lying under a blanket on a pallet. His clothes were gone.

  He put a hand up to his head and found it wrapped in heavy bandages. He tried to sit up, but the pain in his head was sharp. Instead he lay still and listened to his surroundings. After a while he realized he was in a tent, in camp. Outside, he could hear the sounds of woodchopping and voices some distance away. The wind soughed in trees overhead.

  Later a mor pulled back the flap of the tent and brought in a basin of water and a cup. By the red armband she wore, he knew she was with the volunteer medical corps. She gave him water to drink, and then she unwrapped the bandage and examined the wound.

  "Your head is pretty hard, I'd say." She cleaned the wound area on the side of his head and began to rewind the bandage. "Should have broken your skull, but it didn't. You're lucky to be alive."

  "Where is Ter-Saab," he said thickly, "and the Meld?"

  "I don't know. I'll have to ask the surgeon."

  "Yes, please do that. Quickly. There's a lot I need to know."

  "Well, you won't be doing anything about war for a good while yet. That wound will take time to heal. They laid you open there, right across the back of your head."

  He recalled dimly the feeling of blood running down his face. A wild melee came to memory filled with flashing swords and shields with eyes painted on them. The roar of battle left him shivering for a few moments.

  "The battle was won, then?"

  "Oh, that's what you want to know is it? Yes, your precious battle was won, but we'll be burying the dead for days to come."

  The battle was won. Then he could rest. He'd done what he had to do. Released from immediate worry, he fell asleep after a while.

  The next time he awoke the nurse looked in and then hurried away. Soon afterward Chillespi entered and sat cross-legged beside him.

  "Congratulations on your survival. When we pulled off that helmet, we weren't too sure you would live."

  "I think I must be pretty lucky from what the mor tells me."

  "She's damned right. Anyway I thought I should tell you what's been going on the last few days. I knew you'd want to know."

  "How long?" Thru started to say.

  "The battle was four days ago now."

  "The Meld?"

  "Is recovering in the next tent. He was found after the fight was over. He took a knock in the surprise attack. He'll be up and about pretty soon, not as badly hurt as you."

  Thru supposed that was good news.

  "Who's in command now?"

  "Colonel Ter-Saab. But the Meld will reassume command when he returns."

  "That's good. Where are the enemy?"

  "They ran for it to the coast. Ter-Saab took the army in pursuit. I came back yesterday to help organize our supply train."

  "Any chance that he'll catch them?"

  "No. Our mots were tired after the battle. I think the enemy are already at the coast. They will escape."

  "That's a pity. We had a chance to finish them."

  "But we did hurt them. They left six hundred dead here. And there were more than four hundred found on the site of the first fight near Chenna."

  "And what of our own losses?"

  "Not sure yet of the totals. They have found eleven hundred bodies here. Probably another five hundred at Chenna."

  Thur winced. "Too high. We can't sustain those kind of numbers."

  "Nor can they."

  It was small comfort, but alone again in the darkness Thru grasped at it. The enemy expedition was far from home and had limited numbers; their losses could not be made up. In his mind, however, he relived the two battles, the sudden ambush at Chenna field and then the long march to the Sow's Head and the fighting on that sunny morning. The chaos and noise, the crippling fear of making a mistake. It was a while this time before he was able to banish those images and put himself back to sleep.

  The next day he was visited by the Meld. The little old aristocrat had a bandage around his head and another on his right hand and wrist, but the weight of responsibility had visibly lifted from his shoulders. He seemed ebullient, in fact.

  "Thru Gillo, you are the hero of this fight. You saved the day. Turned the Sixth Regiment back in time, then rallied the rabble of the Ninth and stopped the enemy cold."

  "Well, we managed to hit them at just the right moment. Stopped them gaining momentum."

  "But you held a regiment back. I did not order that. You did."

  "I had a premonition. I don't know why, but at the last moment I knew I had to."

  "Well, thank the Spirit for that premonition, then."

  "Yes, indeed, sir."

  For a moment they were quiet together, giving thanks for the victory they'd eked out on the hill.

  "What news have you from Ter-Saab, sir?"

  "He has pursued the enemy to the shore. But they got away on their ships."

  Thru groaned softly.

  "You wanted more?"

  "I wanted to see the enemy destroyed. That way they will never come back."

  "Ter-Saab says the enemy were so afraid, they ran all the way. Our mots could not keep pace with them."

  "I was afraid of that."

  "But we won a victory!" and the Meld leaned over and squeezed his shoulder. The King is ecstatic."

  And with that Thru had to be content. The next day the Meld traveled to Sulmo to report in person at a royal war conference. Thru was not yet fit to travel, so he spent a few more days recuperating in the tent. Then his clothes and other things were brought back, cleaned and pressed. His sword had been polished, too.

  When he took a look at his helmet, he gave an involuntary whistle. Along the back was a neat-looking slice cut into the lacquered wicker. The helmet had saved his life all right, but only just. He saw the wisdom of having a steel helmet like the men. Alas, metal was too scarce in the Land to make helmets for soldiers. They needed what they had just for weapons.

  His first unsteady steps took him around the village of Shimpli-Dindi, which was steadily getting back to normal. The people had come down from the hills and were hard at work repairing what had been damaged by the men of Shasht. Fortunately they hadn't had time to set the place on fire.

  He was taking a mug of weak ale outside the village tavern when a child ran up shouting something incomprehensible and everyone nearby stood up and looked off down the road.

  Then came a whistle and more shouts from the east. Now they heard something else, a steady tramping sound, and up the road from the coast came the first of the regiments of the army, back from chasing the men out of the Land.

  They came with the tired tread of those who had been marching for days. But despite obvious fatigue, their eyes gleamed. They had discovered a new pride.

  Their army had driven the men out of the Land once again. They'd held their own against the men and in the end they'd beaten them and forced them to retreat.

  The villagers were pouring out of their houses, others were running up from the polder. Shouting and singing, they kept it up as regiment after regiment marched by, the bulk of the army in fact, heading down the road toward Chenna.

  Thru watched them go and felt some of the same pride. They were all farmers, more or less, but they were learning how to be soldiers, and they'd met Man the Master, Man the Cruel himself, and come away with a victory.

  Later Thru learned more about the chase from Ter
-Saab by the campfire.

  "They ran, they literally did not stop running until they reached the coast. We could not keep up."

  "And when you got to the coast?"

  "They were almost all off the shore in boats. We chased the last few hundred right into the waves. They chose to swim rather than stand and fight. We found a few hiding in the rocks and killed them. They would not surrender."

  Thru shrugged. That was the way with the warriors of Shasht. Surrender was alien to their thinking.

  "The ships turned away from the shore and were gone that same evening."

  "Heading?"

  "South, across to Fauste or Mauste I expect."

  "You sent messengers?"

  "To all the coastal cities, runners south to Glaine and north to Annion."

  "And a bird took the news to Sulmo."

  "Correct."

  Thru raised his mug. Ter-Saab raised his.

  "May they never come back!"

  They drank to this, but neither believed in his heart that the war was over.

  Thru's head was still wrapped in bandages, so it was too soon for him to resume active duty. Indeed, he was still suffering from headaches. But he was the nominal commander of the army at that moment. He made the decision to split the army. He sent the trained regiments back to their postings and the rest back to Sulmo. Ter-Saab and the Sixth Regiment headed back down the road to Glaine. Thru remained in Shimpli-Dindi.

  He was still there three days later when a royal messenger found him and delivered a sealed packet. He opened it and found a letter from Toshak. He was summoned to Sulmo at once to share his opinions of the battle of Chenna/Sow's Head with the Royal Council. New training decisions needed to be made, and they wanted to hear from the veterans of the battle before they made them.

  The following morning he set off, riding in a donkey cart, since he was still unsteady on his feet, and by noon he was far up the road to royal Sulmo, rolling through the lush landscape of the Sulo Valley.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The great Shasht fleet rode at anchor in the bay. Thirty-three ships, most of them giants with three and four masts, were set in long lines across the water. Their names spoke of the civilization that had built them: "Sword," "Mace," "Axe," "Spear," and the mighty flagship, "Anvil."