Homecoming y-2

by John Dalmas

  To the Alpha’s infrared scanner,the paddock was conspicuous in the night.

  For the Northmen, archery was more than a lifelong sport and sometime tool of war. It had also been an important means of feeding themselves, and its use had developed in them a fine sense of general marksmanship. They knew and used without questioning the basic principle that the way to hit something was to have a target and intend to hit it, not questioning your ability.

  Charles had explained the automatic rifles to the four men assigned to him, through the bilingual skill of Sten Vannaren, had demonstrated and given them some dry firing. Finally each had fired several short bursts, and their targets were quickly rags. Afterward, waiting, they’d dry-fired from the door of the grounded pinnace at imaginary orcs, shouting “da-da-da-da-da-da!” like little boys. Charles had grinned at the sound as he worked beneath the nose of the craft.

  The targets beneath them now were live, but the barbarians felt no qualms. A floodlight from above startled the sentries; then automatic rifles roused the camp. Slowly the pinnace circled the paddock as two riflemen fired into the horse herd. When one had emptied his magazine he threw an H.E. grenade from the door while another man seated a new magazine in the rifle and took his place. Hobbled horses pulled their pickets, milling madly or crowhopping through the confused camp and into the open prairie.

  The well-spaced orc patrols, circling two to three kilometers away, stopped in the darkness to stare at the distant light, listening to the strange and somehow dangerous sounds. In a general way they realized that the camp was being attacked, and fearful and isolated though each squad felt, they did not ride toward the disturbance.

  The distant floodlight blinked out, the explosions stopped, and they felt their aloneness even more in the silent and unrelieved darkness.

  The darkness did not hide them. To the Alpha they were bright clusters of oblong lights. The pinnace settled undetected above one patrol and two grenades were tossed out, one H.E. and one fragmentation. Then it moved silently on to the second. The patrols were victimized by their separation; only three of the ten realized what the occasional scattered blasts meant and whipped their horses at last toward the crowded anonymity of camp.

  Nearly 3,000 orcs huddled in the night, too disciplined to panic, too shocked and bewildered to plan, afraid to go out and hunt their horses. Not until dawn did they round up their animals and count them. Nearly a hundred had been killed or disabled by the Northmen from the air. Hundreds more, wounded or dangerous with panic, had been killed by the orcs to still their frantic hooves. Many, in the open prairie, had been felled with swords by night-covered Northmen riders.

  The legion could not seek help or advice; there had been neither radio nor psi-tuner to send with them, nor apparent need. The commander and his staff agreed; they could reach the shelter of foothill forests with two days of steady riding-with only one more night beneath the open sky. Then perhaps they still might carry out their mission.

  The eight hundred on foot might make it in four days of hard marching, but they’d be on their own. The men on horseback would not stay with them.

  As the climbing sun began to heat the day, the orcs started westward again, heavy with foreboding. The prairie now seemed huge and hostile, with no help to be had, and home almost a four-day ride behind them. To go west, as they were, might be logical, but psychologically it was devastating. Especially to the men on foot as they saw the cavalry move farther and farther ahead and out of sight.

  That same night the First, Second, and Fourth Legions had camped on the last extensive dry ground west of the Danube’s old west channel. They numbered 7,300 instead of 9,000; the five cohorts guarding the City had been assigned from the Fourth Legion and were half of its roster.

  The old west channel had long been merely a marsh, with a series of lakes and sloughs connected by flood channels. Between it and the river the country was mostly more marshes and wet meadows. Across the marshes the orcs had built a military road to the Danube, of squared stone slabs laid on gravel. It crossed flood channels and creeks on low causeways. On the east side of the river it continued again to the City. The river itself was not bridged; men customarily swam their horses across.

  The Northmen had not taken this road, and again Kamal was puzzled and mistrusting. They had followed instead an old road southeastward. This second route was really a cattle trail located to take advantage of what firm ground there was, filled with broken rock in the worst places, with a rough causeway over the main flood channel. It reached the river about six kilometers upstream of the military road, at rough stone docks. The dock location took advantage of the current in barging cattle to the City via the ancient ship canal.

  It was disturbing when a shrewd and deadly enemy did the illogical for an unknown reason. It smelled of trickery. The best explanation Kamal could think of was that the Northmen feared meeting a strong orc force on the military road-feared being caught between armies where the marshes would frustrate their freedom of movement. They would have to abandon their horses in order to flee.

  That was probably it, Kamal decided, and felt better. The Northmen were always wary of traps and couldn’t know there wasn’t another orc army. Kamal sent a light scouting patrol pounding down the Northmen’s trail while his army rested their mounts. Three hours later they returned on lathered horses. The Northmen, they reported, had followed the route to the river and entered it below the docks.

  Kamal still wasn’t sure, but now this was beginning to smell like the overdue stroke of luck that could ensure success. For where the Northmen had crossed would put them on the south side of the ship canal, and the City was on the north side. When they discovered this they’d have another crossing to make, an impossible crossing. The bridge above the City was easily defended, and its center section could be raised. As for fording, the canal’s smooth current was strong, and except for easily defended boat landings, its sides were too steep for horses.

  He had his trumpeter signal a speed march. Thousands of horses began an easy trot, taking the military, not the cattle, road. Within an hour Kamal was at the river, its dark water nearly a kilometer wide. Nagged again by misgivings, the grim-faced orc stared across for a bit. But he had to cross somewhere, and this was the logical time and place. Trumpets blew and the lead cohorts spread to form ranks along the shore. With the next signal, the first rank urged its mounts carefully down the rip-rapped bank and began swimming.

  Hovering an oblique six kilometers away, Ivan Yoshida switched the visual pickup from the waiting Northmen to the orcs swimming their horses toward the ambush. When the first rank of their tiring horses had no more than fifty meters farther to swim, arrows began to sleet into it.

  After a moment’s confusion the line of orcs straightened, still moving forward, the second rank advancing steadily behind them. Three thousand orcs were in the water now. Trumpets blew, and in less than a minute Kamal knew about the ambush. He realized at once what had happened. The Northmen must know the country after all. They had baited him by taking the cattle road, then had swum their horses downstream as they crossed, to land on the north side of the canal after all. He snapped a command. His trumpeter signalled a flanking movement and certain cohorts began letting themselves be carried farther downstream.

  Alpha slid through the sky, quartering gravitic vectors, braked, and flew down the fourth rank of orcs at twenty meters, about eighty meters out from the east bank. Charles alternated short bursts from the two automatic rifles he’d mounted beneath the hull. His Northmen leveled oblique fire from the doors.

  The run was completed in seconds, chopping up the third, fourth and fifth ranks. Many of the survivors continued their advance, but some milled in confusion and many others turned their horses downstream. Alpha banked and circled for another run. The first two ranks had taken heavier losses to neoviking archery and a few were fighting on the bank. Kniv had platoons of mounted warriors in reserve to hit any bridgehead the orcs might establish.

 
Meanwhile Beta had also entered the action, flying a deadly first run near the west bank. The orcs swimming there broke and turned back, as much because of a screaming siren mounted on the pinnace as the streams of deadly bullets. Troops not yet in the water held back their horses, looking nervously toward their trumpeters.

  Ram himself flew the Beta. His second run was down the river’s midline, siren shrieking again, but he withheld the fire from his mounted guns although his door gunners took their toll. He would be content to break the crossing without maximum kill.

  All the swimming ranks began breaking up now in turmoil, trying to get back to the west bank or escape downstream. After his third run, Ram flew to hover seventy meters above the junction of road and river. His voice boomed from the partly raised commast.

  “Orcs! Do you surrender? Do you surrender? Dismount, stack your weapons, and line up unarmed, and I will spare your lives.” He paused. “Shout your answer! I will hear it!”

  There was no immediate answer. Ram glared across at the Alpha still moving busily up and down the river killing orcs.

  Kamal’s aide-de-camp looked worriedly at his commander.

  “No!”

  “But my Lord, we have no choice! We have no way to fight back!”

  “Orcs have never surrendered. Never! I will die first.”

  As if in answer, Alpha skimmed across the water toward them, spewing bullets. The command staff threw themselves from their saddles and embraced the ground among stamping hooves and falling horses. When they got up, those who did, Kamal raised his fist to shake it at the banking Alpha, then pitched forward with a dagger between his shoulder blades.

  “We surrender!” bellowed his aide-de-camp. “We surrender!”

  “Stack your weapons beside the river in big piles,” commanded the voice from the sky, “then line up on the road and picket your horses.”

  Beta floated watchfully as trumpets blew and couriers galloped. Alpha was downriver again, killing orcs. Along the banks grew piles of lances, swords and bows. A sluggish stream of mounted orcs flowed onto the road, still disciplined but without their arrogance, finally picketing their horses along the shoulders and forming ranks on foot.

  Downstream the short bursts of gunfire from the Alpha retreated to the edge of hearing. Suddenly she was back, strafing the long and unarmed ranks upon the road while fragmentation grenades tumbled from her doors. She made but one run; the orcs scattered into the marsh grass to flee or hide. Ram was screaming invective into the radio, spitting with rage, then shot forward and banked toward Alpha.

  Nils shouted in warning; “Alphal Ta flykk!” Alpha shot into an accelerating climb, and after a moment Ram halted, turned to Nils and poured obscenities on him. When his surge of rage had passed, he stood panting, face red, eyes bulging.

  “You didn’t ask my people whether they were willing to let the orcs surrender,” Nils responded bluntly. “You made your peace with them, but you do not speak for my people. You presumed too much. To the tribes and many other people, the orcs are a deadly enemy who would destroy them if they could and enslave the survivors.

  “And how had you intended to deal with your thousands of prisoners? You have no place to take them, nothing to feed them, and you could not control them for long. Your action was without thought.”

  Ram glared. “And Ivan!” he said hoarsely, “that treasonous bastard! He could see what I was doing, and still he strafed them.”

  “Why Ivan?” Nils asked. “Sten Vannaren can fly her and probably did. I told him to make sure he learned.”

  “I’ll bet you did.” Ram fixed him with his eyes. “I’ll bet you were behind the whole rotten treacherous thing. Well, that’s it, you barbarian filth! Hostages or no hostages, you’ll get no more support from me; no air support and no more ammunition. Absolutely none!”

  “Then I’d better explain to Kniv Listi.”

  The response had been completely matter of fact. Ram hesitated briefly, then reached for the transmitter switch. The exchange in Scandinavian took several minutes, then Nils turned to Ram. “Listi asks no more help from the Beta, and will kill no unarmed prisoners in your control as long as they are in your control. He retains the right to kill any others. Meanwhile you must bring more ammunition and grenades or he will keep your people.”

  “But I have your vow!” Ram snapped. “And your woman and brat! You think I won’t do anything to you. Don’t be too sure.”

  Nils’s mind stared mildly into Ram’s, and although the captain usually kept outside thoughts from his consciousness, he felt it opening now to the Northman.

  (Ram, Ram, you have become dangerous to yourself. A minute ago you were willing to kill two of your own people; in your rage you didn’t care. If you’d killed them, you would have destroyed yourself as well.

  (The tribes are not your enemy. They withhold your people because they see your help as the fastest and least costly method of driving the orcs away. Without it, many of my people will die, and, many others in other lands.

  (So go back to your ship before you do something you will not forgive yourself.)

  Ram shivered, feeling physically ill. The word-thoughts flowed on with sure calmness. (The land of the orcs is not the place for you. Ugly things happen here-evil things. Perhaps Chandra and Anne Marie will tell you a little of that someday. Perhaps.

  (You are Ram Uithoudt, master artisan, maker of wonders, who sails between the stars. You are not prepared to live with war. Let Matthew Kumalo lead your people down here beneath the sky. He is not as smart as you, but he is wiser, and he has a stronger stomach.)

  While the two had faced each other in pregnant silence, the crew had looked on soberly. They had not needed to hear speech to know that something decisive was happening or who was prevailing.

  Their captain turned now to the co-pilot.

  “Take us back up, Lee,” he said quietly, “back to the ship.”

  When the Beta had disappeared, Sten made a run along the bank, spraying the orcs who had crept out of the reeds and tall grass and were rearming themselves from the piles. It was time, he decided, to see if the incendiary grenades could really set the heaps aflame, as Charles had told them.

  XXVIII

  Corporal Sabri had felt it in his bones that today would be different. They’d walked more than forty kilometers yesterday in the trail of the cavalry. Forty kilometers and no sign of the sky chariot that had attacked them in the night, or of Northmen. It was as if they’d been lost track of.

  But then, twice in the night mounted men had pounded through the fringes of camp, trampling and slashing. They hadn’t been overlooked after all, and he knew that something very bad would happen this day.

  So far it hadn’t, and the sun was past midday.

  The prairie was hilly here. A route along a river would be level but there’d be marshes and meanders to detour, adding miles. If they camped by a marsh it would be harder for horsemen to attack them, or if they camped in a marsh. But then they’d be eaten alive by mosquitoes, and it would make little difference to the Northmen anyway. He’d been in the Ukraine; the Northmen always found a way. Masters of trickery, surprise and ambush, they fought head on only when they had to, and then they were the worst of all. Never corner a Northman.

  Probably if they captured their women they’d find them all with poison barbs in their loins.

  It was heavy work walking uphill through thick knee-high grass, even though the cavalry had ridden it down the day before. Here in the lead rank, locusts rose at their approach, flying jerkily, clicking and buzzing. And increasingly there were flies. The horsemeat they carried was beginning to stink. They’d have been better off to take time to smoke it, if the Northmen weren’t going to harass them any more than they had. Probably they were harassing the bastards who still had horses; serve their asses right for riding off like that. Orcs shouldn’t ride off like that and leave their buddies. They hadn’t even left them any mounted scouts; just abandoned them.

  The slope was le
veling off, and a trumpet blew the halt. He raised his eyes and looked around. They had climbed a long rounded ridge, affording a view of the previous one behind them and the next one waiting ahead. Above was a vault of pale blue without a speck of cloud to shield them from a baleful sun. And no puff of breeze today, even here on top. Usually there was a breeze, but that too had abandoned them. He wiped sweat from his eyes with a hairy gritty wrist and reached for his canteen.

  The murmuring around him changed tone and he looked again toward the west. One of the scouts was approaching, striding steadily toward them against the grade. “What is it?” men called out. “What did you find?”

  Sabri couldn’t hear his reply, but got it in installments as murmurs crept through the ranks. The cavalry had camped just ahead the night before. There were hundreds of bodies there of men and horses. Served them right, he told himself, the dirty dog robbers.

  And there was more to report. The men who’d been left without horses there had not marched on westward; their tracks turned south.

  It was a longer break than usual. When the trumpets raised them to their feet again, they too were ordered southward. Any pretense of marching to attack the Northman villages was dead. The idea now was to escape.

  The sun was low and they were tired, and impatient to make camp, when the sky chariot came. They stopped, upright and helpless, watching it approach. As it passed overhead, small objects hurtled from it to burst with a roar, and death hissed and warbled. Ranks broke, squads scattering. It circled, swooped, and more of the death stones were hurled at clusters of orcs. The clusters broke, men running singly and in twos and threes and fours, scattering outward, away from each other. The chariot continued to circle low, seeking groups, making loud sharp claps and staccato rattling sounds, and men fell with bleeding holes.

  When night came, orcs were scattered over several square kilometers. In the darkness they encountered one another to form small bands. Some moved back to make isolated camps along a creek they’d crossed earlier. Others spent the night where they were. Still others moved on in the darkness seeking safety in maximum separation. No longer were they an army; they were fleeing refugees.