Parties of Eaters were farther in, trying to wade through the mud closer to shore and then giving up and slithering forward on their bellies like a mass of human snakes; it was a good thing the tide was out and putting more soft ground between water deep enough to float a canoe and the high-water shoreline.
Luanne Salander had her borrowed horse well in hand, near where the doctor bent over the wounded. She also had two extra quivers from the Rangers’ baggage slung on either side of the saddlebow; she trotted her mount out along that good firm sand just inside the high-tide mark, wheeled it right so that her left side faced the water, and began to shoot methodically with her four-foot cavalry recurve. The range was short, and the targets were naked Eaters trying to crouch under the pier and strike upward, or crawl through the mud. Neither could move very fast, and hiding behind the pilings supporting the pier wasn’t much better . . .
Four broke out of the water and dashed at her, waving spears and knives, anonymous in their head-to-toe coating of thick slime. A shift of balance set the well-trained Dúnedain horse moving inland at a slow smooth canter, and she twisted in the saddle to shoot backward over its rump
“Hakkaa päälle!” she screamed as she loosed. “Hakkaa päälle!”
The formal war-cry came from Mike Havel, Órlaith’s own father’s father and the first Bear Lord. It meant chop ’em down!, more or less, or get stuck in!, the battle yell of his ancestors that his new-founded folk had taken as their own.
The Eaters were overtaking the horse in a flat-out sprint. It didn’t occur to them that she was letting them do it until an arrow thumped into the breastbone of the first and the triangular head and eight inches of shaft stood out of his back. He took three dragging steps, staring down at the gray fletching, then collapsed forward less than ten yards from the rear hooves. Her next took the second in the back as he tried to flee, and the third. The fourth turned and couched his spear as if a boar were charging him.
Luanne’s backsword came out, rising and falling as the dappled gray Arab horse bounded forward into a run with jackrabbit acceleration. She didn’t bother with the shield slung at her crupper, keeping her bow in her left hand.
“Hakkaa päälle!”
Horse and rider hid the action for an instant; when the gallop slowed to a canter again the Eater was lying on the ground shaking and twitching with a massive cut to the head. Luanne wiped her sword on a cloth tucked through her belt before sheathing it and putting another arrow to her bow.
Faramir and Morfind joined her moments later; they’d sprinted down the pier and then vaulted into their saddles without breaking stride. The horses had stood still as statues save for a twitching of eyes and ears, despite the scents of fire and blood, until the Rangers’ feet found the stirrups. Soon bodies bristling with shafts littered the tidal flat. It took training from childhood to make a really first-rate horse-archer; Órlaith knew she couldn’t have done nearly as well herself, but all three of them were very good indeed. Of course, even if they’d shot their quivers empty and killed with every single arrow there would still be many hundreds of the Eaters, but the distraction gave the column on the pier time to get ashore and form up.
Behind Órlaith the wharf was still a pillar of fire, and she felt a profound sense of relief as her boots crunched on gravel rather than drumming on the planks. Fire was spreading to the pier’s drier wood; the whole structure would burn down to the waterline. She could feel the savage heat on her face when she turned a glance that way. The little clutch of small wooden buildings that was Círbann Rómenadrim was ahead as they trotted inland, along a rutted dirt street. And it was—
“Deathtrap,” Sir Aleaume said tightly.
She nodded; the furnace behind them demonstrated that, and sparks were settling on the dry shingles even now.
The Montivallan and Nihonjin warriors had settled into a uniform pounding jog—instinctively falling into step, a massive thudding sound beneath the rattle and clatter of their armor and gear as more than threescore feet hit the ground with every stride, with the sailors and their stretchers in the center of the formation. They went through the single scatter of buildings amid a strong smell of curing fish, then into the woods beyond with a sudden shock of shadow after the bright sun and cloudless sky. The ground right at the edge of the wood was densely grown with tangled, sticky coyote brush and bitter-scented wormwood and crimson-starred feral roses, and the fighters had to break ranks as they shoved and hacked their way through.
Órlaith’s skin crawled under the sweat-sodden fabric of her arming doublet as the shade of the trees fell across her. She closed her eyes for an instant to make them adjust to the shadow faster. This would be the moment of maximum danger, as they moved into the insect-shrilling dimness of the belt of forest; the part of the Nihonjin force with long spears fell back, and the archers kept their higoyumi slung and forged ahead with their katanas glinting. Some drew the shorter wakizashi with their left hand. Branches and twigs crackled underfoot, spiny weed and brush scraped across their harness and poked for her face. She used her shield to push them aside, or break them with the edge. Dapples of light flicked at her eyes, and the crunching passage of so many feet buried any noise in the background.
A movement to her right, figures erupting out of the leaf-litter with soundless snarls, and suddenly everything slowed down. She started to draw the Sword, but Heuradys was already moving, a lunging thrust that glittered and flickered like metallic lightning in the beams and patches of light streaming through the trees. The narrow point of her longsword smacked through an eye and the thin bone beyond it and twisted free without even breaking stride.
“Alale alala!” the knight shrieked, and cut backhand behind her as they passed the clump of Eaters.
The brain-stabbed dead man leapt in a galvanic bound, precisely like a headless chicken, and her point laid open another’s forearm so that he reared back in shock. The combination neatly tripped several more into the path of the Japanese.
The keen-edged curved swords moved in long looping drawing cuts, blurring-fast sweeps diagonally across the full width of a man with all the precisely-applied power of arms and shoulders and torso behind them, and the three savages seemed to explode into fans of blood and . . . parts. Reiko’s naginata speared neatly though a throat, blurred sideways to lay open a thigh in a huge flap from hip to knee, whirled to dish in the side of a head with the butt-cap. An ancient sledgehammer smashed at her; she blocked with the shaft of the polearm held between her wide-spaced hands. The wood bent and cracked across as it stopped the twelve-pound lump of steel and left the wielder staggering; she promptly jammed the splintered ends into the Eater’s throat, dropped them and drew her sword . . .
Another savage was standing with his hand cocked back, a javelin aimed at Reiko, the whetted head a spot of brightness in the gloom. Órlaith wheeled as she ran, tucked the shield into her shoulder and simply smashed into the half-seen shape of the Eater with a little crouch and leap just before impact: the technical term for it was overrunning.
He tried to wheel and face her at the last instant. The kitchen-knife head of the throwing-spear went over her shoulder, and the metal curve of her shield became the face of a two-hundred-odd-pound club moving as fast as her long legs could drive it. The shock jarred her as her body flexed but bones crumbled beneath the shield in a grunting wail of pain and blast of fetid air gasped out of a mouth full of rotting filed teeth. She chopped the lower rounded point of the kite down into the man’s neck as she hurdled his fallen form.
From elsewhere in the woods and brush around her she could hear similar brief scrimmages, snarls and grunts, bang and boom of impacts on shields and armor, the wet thudding of edges in flesh, one high endless shriek that sank away into a bubbling moan and abruptly ceased.
A hatchet-head on a long shaft banged off the curve of her helmet as she landed and she staggered, but the blow had been oddly feeble. She turned her head and saw Reiko poised in
a perfect follow-through, a spray of blood still following the curve of her Masamune sword. The Eater she’d struck was staring at the stump of an arm taken off a handspan below the shoulder and shrieking mindlessly as the blood fountained; then he took one rubber-kneed step and collapsed.
Blue eyes met black, and both nodded gravely.
A last flurry. The sight of John laying a man’s arm open from shoulder to elbow, and Evrouin using his glaive in a brutally economical stab-chop-smash rhythm, the steelshod butt nearly as deadly as the blade and hook, the stretcher-bearers they were protecting plodding on without looking up as they muscled their burden through the brush. Then the warriors were breaking through the inland edge of the forest and its fringe of brush, blinking in the bright sunlight, sucking in air that was pungent with crushed bayleaf and the spicy-dusty smell of the eucalyptus trees that were ubiquitous here in Westria. Nobody came out after them, not yet.
“Well, that was so not fun at all,” Heuradys panted, and Órlaith nodded wordlessly.
Orange monkeyflower and purple-and-white ithuriel’s spear starred the grass as they surged forward, going down beneath the boots.
“Slow down, close ranks, let the stretcher-bearers through first!” Sir Aleaume barked, and the men-at-arms and crossbowmen obeyed as discipline overcame instinct. “This isn’t a foot-race, comrades. Crossbow squad first, skirmish order, spread out halfway to the crest and cover us, fall back to the crest after we get there!”
She’d been about to suggest that, and was glad she hadn’t—thirty-odd men didn’t need two immediate commanders distracting them by giving duplicate orders, and he had them well in hand. Instead she concentrated on climbing the steep slope herself, about a one-in-three and covered in knee-high golden-brown grass, the mass of slick dry stems a little slippery beneath the soles of her boots and hiding the occasional rock that threatened to trip her. If she did fall . . .
That would be suitably heroic, sure and it would, falling on my ass and going back down the hill like a toboggan in Yuletime!
Worse, it would make others put their lives in danger to save her.
The crossbowmen fanned out ahead, weapons at their shoulders as they climbed with quick agility. They halted fifty yards above up the slope, turning and facing the way behind, kneeling and covering the swordsmen and glaivesmen panting and toiling in their less heavily burdened wake and prodding down now and then with the butts of their polearms and the bottoms of their shields. The Japanese archers had stopped in about the same place, bows out and arrows on their strings, motionless as statues save for the slight movement of the sashimono banners some wore standing up from their backs. The silk rippled in the warm breeze, a slight rich fluttering sound.
Now and then Órlaith dug the lower point of her shield into the ground to help her climb; by the time she topped the edge of the steep slope and came out onto the more gently rolling crest only training was keeping her from panting like a bellows, and the clothing under her armor had that familiar sopping sweaty feel, as much greasy as wet.
There was a feeling of release and freedom on the top that made no sense but was true enough still. The hill was essentially a piece of plateau, eroded away on three sides, and the top was only gently curved before the steeper drop-off on the sides. On the north a narrow strip of flattish land connected it to the next hilltop, dipping slightly in the middle and only broad enough to take three at a time. The hill there was more broken, and more heavily wooded.
There was one tree on this hilltop, a big broad-spreading live oak casting an oblong of shade; the ground was hard and dry elsewhere, the grass knee-high where it hadn’t yet been trampled, gold except for a few blue asters. Birds exploded out of the oak as the humans approached, iridescent green creatures with bright red heads and hooked beaks giving shrill awk-awk cries—the Dúnedain called them bornaew. Butterflies started up from the boots, drifts of orange Monarchs and paler Painted Ladies.
The leaders walked around the hillcrest from one sentry to the next to get a feel for the details of the position—what could be seen from where and how the folds and crannies gave potential cover. The slope was never less than thirty degrees except on the saddle to the next hill northward, and even steeper on most parts of the circuit. If the defenders stepped back from the edge, anyone coming at them would have to get to the crest of the hilltop before they could do more than loose blindly. Órlaith found herself nodding, as if her father or mother—or Edain or Lady d’Ath or Father Ignatius—were standing behind her making approving sounds as she picked the best ground on an exercise.
Reiko flicked her katana to one side as she walked, shedding a spray of blood-drops, and then wiped it with a fold of paper held between thumb and forefinger in the same motion as sheathing it; considering how sharp it was, she did that with considerable savoir faire and without looking down. You had to wonder what Masamune would have thought, if he could have known how far and how strangely his masterpiece would fare, in years and in miles.
“No water,” Egawa said thoughtfully, looking around as they came back to the big live-oak.
Which showed a grasp of the basics, which surprised her not at all. They were all streaming with sweat, which except in very cold weather always went with fighting in armor, or running and climbing in it, and they’d been doing all of those. They ignored the thoroughly familiar sensation, but eventually you just couldn’t ignore dehydration because you fell down raving and died. A human could do without food for days, if they absolutely had to; water, not so much.
“We won’t be here that long,” Sir Aleaume said.
Órlaith nodded and added: “You could be after saying our canteens should last us . . . one way or another.”
Reiko translated that, and Egawa gave a grim smile and nod at what was both an observation and a warrior’s joke. He aimed the point of his sword at the saddle joining this to the next hill northward and tried his slow, thickly accented English.
“Jinnikukaburi come that prace.”
Aleaume nodded agreement, but Órlaith held up a hand and spoke in English and then Nihongo.
“That’s the best ground tactically, but there are a lot of them and they’re not organized enough to rotate fighters in and out of the front line. Most of them will try there where you said, General Egawa-san, but a lot of the rest will get impatient and come up the hillslope elsewhere. Just by accident, that may well be the best thing they could do.”
The others nodded respectfully. Reiko said quietly: “This is proof that the thing we seek is something that will shake the earth when it is returned to my family’s hands. The enemy . . . and the bakachon are but a finger on their hand, I believe now . . . would not put forth such effort otherwise.”
Egawa gave a single sharp nod. “Hai, unquestionably true, Majesty; actions reveal priorities.”
Órlaith translated, and out of the corner of her eye saw Aleaume and Droyn look at each other soberly. They had both come out of personal loyalty—and because she’d painted it as something out of a romaunt. Now the reality of what the term Quest meant was coming home to them, and that this was more than a war of human kind squabbling over territory and power.
And coming home to me, though I understood it with my mind. Now also with my gut, so to say!
“The reinforcements?” Reiko said briskly, in both languages. “Time is short.”
They could hear the Eaters again now, a snarling brabble that rose occasionally into shrieks and gibbering squeals—battle cries inherited from those driven insane by horror, passing horror on down the generations.
“Sometime between one hour and three,” Órlaith said.
“One hour would . . . could . . . be good now, Your Highness, but three would be a little late,” Aleaume said dryly, and everyone chuckled.
“With your permission, Your Highness, we’ll put the Guard men-at-arms and spearmen on the saddle, it’s steep enough they’ll have to c
ome right into our faces with the crossbows on the flanks. If any crawl up the slope there they can kick them in the face. Our allies could hold the rest of the perimeter as they think best.”
Egawa nodded crisply and spoke, with Reiko murmuring the translation: “We will form a reserve, here by the tree, to strike wherever the enemy try to scale the hill behind you. But we need constant observation on all three sides to prevent surprise. That will be difficult—single sentries could be overrun quickly and we cannot afford to lose men unless we must.”
“We three can ride around the perimeter and spot enemy massing, or pick off lone wolves,” Faramir said. “We’ll have extra height, and we can retreat quickly and shoot as they come . . . you all right with that, Luanne?”
Luanne nodded quickly and looked away, absently checking the arrows in her quiver and then staring with mild surprise at the spray of drying blood across the back of her right hand. Faramir gave her a careful and respectful glance; they hadn’t met, but after all she was the granddaughter of his mother’s uncle, and she’d performed very well, up to the Bearkiller reputation. Órlaith supposed there was something inherently pleasing about seeing your kin live up to expectations.
“Steep for horses,” he said, looking around. “Particularly at the edges.”
“Well, it’s the hill we’ve got,” Luanne said.
“The others within reach all had much easier approaches,” Órlaith said.
Luanne nodded. “So it’ll have to do, steep or not. Shouldn’t be a problem, really.”
The Bearkiller was trying to make her voice cheerful, but she swallowed a little, and wiped the back of her hand across the spray of blood-drops on her face.
“I’ll get used to this, I suppose,” she added quietly, probably a thought she didn’t altogether realize she was speaking aloud. “I think I understand Mom and Dad better now.”
Except for the Japanese, I’m here with a force of untried youngsters, Órlaith thought. We’re doing well so far . . . and I couldn’t have gotten this number of veterans to come along. So, they had their day. This is ours!
The Desert and the Blade Page 23