The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

  The thought flashed through her and away even as the man toppled backward, blood that looked more black than red in the darkness spraying from mouth and nose. Some of it glittered like rubies for an instant where the spray passed before the firelight. She took another step and tossed the Sword upwards, caught it in the double-handed grip as it sliced through the netting with no more effort than it would have if she’d waved it through a cobweb, and brought it down in a straight overarm cut, putting her back and gut into it and clenching both hands and wrists at the last moment with a huff! of expelled breath.

  The slash landed precisely on the spot where the coil-springs of the catapult were welded to a plate that resisted the cocking mechanism’s pull on the right throwing arm. Hard impact jangled against her wrist, and there was a ringing tung as the thumb-thick rod parted and the springs sprang into extended bobbing uselessness. She struck twice more with flashing speed, cutting part of the anchor-point between the recoil mechanism and the main frame and then into the rods that joined the cocking system to the throwing arms. None of the damage could be repaired by snapping in a new part, and nobody was going to use this device again without a lengthy visit to a foundry and well-equipped machine-shop, of which the closest set she knew was in Corvallis and about eight hundred miles northward as the crow flew.

  Just as the edge struck steel for the third time a caroling cry of: “Alale alala!” sounded from above and then a hollow hissing shump sound as a hang glider’s wing struck the netting about halfway across the battery position. It had been perhaps twenty-five or thirty seconds since her own feet punched through and she dropped to the ground.

  Thank Lord and Lady in all Their forms! Órlaith thought, with quick sincerity. Aloud:

  “Here, Herry!”

  Heuradys d’Ath landed in a cat-crouch as she shed the harness and spotted her, reslinging her longsword from where she’d had it over her shoulder to her belt as she rose—drawing a long blade from across your back was damned awkward, and worse still rather slow.

  She also had her pre-Change crossbow cinched across her chest; it weighed nearly nothing, but that must have been awkward. She loosened it as she trotted springily up and snapped a blackened-aluminum bolt into the firing groove. Her teeth flashed white for an instant beneath the shadow of her helm.

  “By Wingfoot Hermes, isn’t this fun?” she dryly said and put it to her shoulder, standing slightly crouched and ready to snap-shoot. “Covered, Orrey.”

  “Now that you mention it, no, it isn’t,” Órlaith said dryly. “I’m going to work down this line.”

  But she was grinning as she turned away so that they were three paces apart and back to back. Walking backward to keep her covered wouldn’t be easy, but if Heuradys d’Ath wasn’t up to it, lead would float.

  Another hiss and whump; someone else had landed. It was awkward having people arrive one at a time, but trying a mass landing at night in a confined space like this would be asking for disaster. As it was, each landing made the next easier, as the bright reflective paint on the upper surface of the wings guided the next flier in. Herry gave the shout to draw them; Órlaith was single-minded action now. The catapults were as alike as peas in a pod; she wouldn’t be surprised if the parts were genuinely interchangeable, something usually worth the trouble only for the few genuinely mass-produced items . . . and military equipment. She walked steadily from one to the next, making the same three hard fast precise cuts and leaving ruined scrap behind.

  Until the last.

  A figure rose up before her then, in wild baggy costume of many colors, all muted to an infinitely drab taupe in the uncertain light; a tall three-pronged gold crown of filigree was on his head. He smiled at her like worms writhing in a pool of ink.

  I . . . see . . . you.

  The world froze.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY OF TOPANGA

  (FORMERLY TOPANGA CANYON)

  CROWN PROVINCE OF WESTRIA

  (FORMERLY CALIFORNIA)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  JULY/FUMIZUKI 28TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/SHOHEI 1/2044 AD

  “Here they come,” Boudicca hissed.

  Karl started violently—he would have sworn by Cernunnos’ horns and a lifetime’s hunting by day and night that nobody was close except the others lying under their war-cloaks in the hot darkness, but she was kneeling just behind him.

  Well, that was why you talked her into this, he thought; at least it made the sneeze he’d been suppressing go away. The local vegetation smelled like a dried bouquet from his mother’s herb garden.

  Ahead of him, two hundred yards southwards, was the enemy camp that held their artillery. Most of an old parking lot was covered by netting strung between the long-dead concrete lampstands, and beneath it were the neatly-spaced shapes of six war-catapults, field-pieces; the low red glow of the banked campfires flickered on the undersurface of the camouflage cloth, like the roof of a big low tent. The lumpy shapes of men snoring on the ground in bedrolls lay beyond it, with an occasional sentry pacing through, and a line of tents. Horses were drowsing along a tethering line behind them; he could smell the beasts, their wastes and their fodder and their own earthy-sweet scent.

  Then he could hear the hooves drumming through the ground and into his belly, even if they couldn’t be heard through the air yet. They were coming from the north, just as planned. The McClintocks and Topangans had overrun the horse-herd and its guards.

  “Everyone up!” Karl snapped. “Right now our Nihonjin friends should—”

  They’d insisted they would take out the sentry-posts. Karl had grumbled about it, but on reflection having two separate groups who didn’t know each other well and couldn’t speak more than a few words of each other’s languages crawling through the night with knives between their teeth and minds primed to lash out and kill was a little risky. He wouldn’t have wanted the Mackenzies and McClintocks both doing the task, for instance.

  Suddenly fire-arrows were streaking through the night towards the enemy camp. There was a brabble of shouting and the glint of steel. The position of each enemy guard-post was known to him; he heard a grunt not far to the front and the wet smacking sound of a blade hitting flesh, then a series of Nihonjin war-shouts.

  “That should get their attention good and proper, so,” Boudicca chuckled. “That being the point.”

  Someone in the camp dumped split, tinder-dry pinewood into the watchfire and started blowing on a whistle; which lit the camp and woke everyone up, and also alerted anyone else who might be in the neighborhood and made the lit camp an island in a well of blackness to anyone close to the fire. The moon was still up, and the stars were as bright as anywhere Karl had seen them, even the dry eastern country around Bend, over the Cascades. He’d have smothered fires and put the lanterns out if he’d been in charge of a nighted camp that suddenly came under attack, and made no more noise than he absolutely had to. Not that he’d ever been in that position, but he’d listened to the tales of dozens of those who had since he was a little lad.

  The local equivalent of knights came boiling out of their tents, some of them stumbling a little as they stamped into their boots, and dove into their armor with commendable speed. With considerably less wit they all swung into the saddle as soon as their grooms brought up the horses which had been standing ready on the picket line behind their tents and took their lances in hand. Just then a single rider came down the pathway from the north, the shod hooves of his horse striking sparks from the broken pavement. He nearly died on a dozen points, but he was yelling some password as he pulled up and pointed back the way he came. And now the neighing and squeals of angry, frightened horses and the drumming of scores of hooves came from that direction too. Mingled with it were a chorus of banshee shrieks; casting a glance in that direction Karl caught a glint of metal, an
d he could imagine the grinning tattooed faces. That was the sound of McClintocks doing what they loved best, stealing someone else’s stock by moonlight.

  Doing it very well the now, too, Karl thought. Have to get the story of that—didn’t expect them to get it moving so very quick. Were the enemy all asleep there?

  There were eleven in his party, now that Feidlimid was sped—and Gwri was with the McClintocks, a feeling she’d had. The remaining ten all came up to one knee. Now they stood and let the war-cloaks fall back from their shoulders and tossed back the loose hoods that had covered the helmeted heads. The material was much the same in concept as the camouflage netting over the catapults, though finer-grained: loose mottled fabric sewn with loops for bits of twig and leaf, and they’d carefully consulted the Topangans on what grew hereabouts. You could hide very effectively even in daylight and plain sight with them; at night you looked like a bush even quite close by. Their faces under the helms were covered in war-paint; Karl and Mathun used gray and dark amber, for the fur and eyes of their sept totem, Father Wolf.

  The militiamen up ahead had been startled out of sleep and were running around and bumping into one another, waving spears and swords and a few of them loosing arrows blindly into the night—which might actually be dangerous, but just by way of accident. More flights of Japanese arrows came in on their position; not loosed at random. There were few things more terrifying than being shot at accurately with arrows at night—you couldn’t tell where they were coming from, and Mackenzies had used that tactic themselves more than once, from the stories. There were other armored men there, in the gear that had been described to them as Korean. One of them whirled and slumped, trying to hold himself up on the frame of a catapult, and then falling.

  “Waegu! Waegu!” they screamed; an officer or underofficer of some sort got them lined up and moving away towards the Japanese position.

  Then a war-cry: “Juche! Juche!”

  Not something I’d like to do, playing where’s-the-spear in the dark with the Nihonjin. But not our concern. Now, those Chatsworth Lancers . . .

  The way the Topangans put it was that the Lancers loved their warhorses more than their children . . . and they were very fond of their children. The Princess had explained her thinking a bit more. Each was a marker of rank and a huge investment and they belonged to each high-status warrior individually, not to their realm as a whole. The leader there—Karl could see the ostrich plumes on his helmet, nodding bright—screamed:

  “Follow me!”

  The command was reinforced by a youth with a trumpet, the brassy scream cutting through cries and confusion. The Lancers fell in, two ranks of six, and headed out . . . northward, towards the approaching dark mass of horses being driven against their will through a night full of obstacles that menaced their legs. The lances sloped forward, and the horses began to trot . . . towards their precious spare chargers and towards the Mackenzies they hadn’t seen with their fire-blinded eyes up there ten feet tall in the saddle. Ten feet tall and silhouetted against the fire.

  Beside him Mathun was muttering, probably without knowing it:

  “The nock to the cord

  The shaft to the ear

  And a knight’s breast-plate for a mark!”

  That was an old ditty from the wars against the Association, fought and won before any of them were born. Won by the Clan’s arrowstorms not least. All of them had a bodkin-pointed shaft shaped like a metalworker’s punch on the strings of their longbows, and three or four more clenched between a forefinger and the grips of their bows, a snap-shooter’s trick. He waited until the approaching horsemen were figures with faces, not just outlines, the drumming of their hooves building as they legged their mounts up to a reckless canter.

  And sure, against the Topangans what they’re doing would probably work. Probably. Even in the dark. They’re brave, that they are, but . . .

  He waited until he saw their commander’s figure straighten in shock as he realized what stood in their way, and what it was that glittered coldly from the points of the bodkins.

  “Draw! Wholly together—loose!”

  He drew with a grunt and shot, stripped another shaft from beneath his finger and drew, shot, drew, shot, drew, shot, drew, shot.

  The others were only a little slower and the range was less than fifty paces and the vision as good as could be expected with the sun down. Half the first volley of ten struck men; one more hit a horse, and the beast’s piteous, hideous scream split the night as it reared and dropped and rolled, legs kicking in the air.

  Epona, Lady of the Horses, pardon human-kind that we bring Your children into our quarrels.

  One of the hits stuck thrumming in a shield. Another skewered a shoulder and a lance dropped to the ground and its bearer lost all interest in anything but making his escape bent over the neck of his mount.

  The Mackenzies were chanting as they shot; it helped you time the continuous hard effort, kept it smooth so that you tired less.

  “We are the point—

  We are the edge—

  We are the wolves that Hecate fed!”

  A Lancer pitched back over the high cantle of his saddle with a shaft through the eye; someone showing abroad, Mathun at a guess, or getting dead lucky. Karl’s own first punched through a hammered-steel breastplate and dimpled the backplate that stopped it; the man he’d hit might live for hours, or a few minutes if he were luckier, but he crashed to the ground leaking blood around the arrow and from nose and mouth. Another whanged off a helmet, and the man reeled and threw up both hands in uncontrollable reflex at an impact like a metal-tipped club slamming into his head. The fifth slapped into a belly, sinking feathers-deep in the leather between two plates, which was pure bad luck . . . for him. The man hit began to shriek like a rabbit in a wire snare before he hit the ground. It cut off when he did, perhaps lucky this time, lucky enough to break his neck.

  “We are the bow—

  We are the shaft—

  We are the darts that Hecate cast!”

  By then all of them had drawn and loosed again and again and again in a ripple of practiced skill, shooting off the clutch of arrows they held against the riser of their bows. A few seconds later several riderless horses galloped past, and one dragging a limp shape with its boot caught in a twisted stirrup.

  One remained; the youth with the trumpet, who was unarmored, with gangling hands just a little too big for his sleeves, about fourteen at most and pale-haired. He looked around him with eyes so wide that the whites showed in the dim light. His pupils had swollen wide too, enough that he could probably see the painted grinning faces, and the light on the many arrowheads pointing in his direction; it probably looked like dozens to him. He dropped the trumpet to dangle by its strap and fumbled at the hilt of his light boy’s sword, his face milk-white in the moonlight.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you, laddie,” Karl said, in a not-unkindly tone; the boy had the right reflexes, at least.

  The hand poised, uncertain, and he went on: “Off to your mother now, and leave the red work of Badb Catha to those of full years for it.”

  He stuck his face closer and jerked a thumb over his shoulder:

  “Boo!”

  The boy reflexively thumped his heels into his mount’s sides and thundered off. Mathun chuckled.

  “You’ve not made a friend there,” Karl’s younger brother said. “For that he’ll hate that you should lightly him.”

  “’Tis the Crone and the Keeper-of-Laws I was thinking of,” Karl said shortly. “Sith co nem; nem co doman. Doman fo ním, nert hi cach.”

  In the old tongue that meant: Peace to Sky, Sky to Earth, Earth under Sky, strength in each; or that each doing of human kind had its own laws and guardian Powers, war not least. It was ill-luck to kill an eòghann, an apprentice-helper, by design.

  He looked about. And that’s it for Lancers fool enough to
try and ride into the unknown in darkness, he thought. They could have given us hard trouble if they’d been less rash, come at us on foot say behind a wall of shields. Of course, they’ve never met Mackenzie longbows before.

  “Who’s hale?” Karl said crisply as he reached over his shoulder for another arrow from his quiver. “Who’s hurt?”

  They all answered; mostly at once, but his ear could pick out their voices. Nobody seriously injured, serious here being unable to run and fight. An ambush was vastly to be preferred to a stand-up battle.

  “Forward, the Princess needs us! On me, at the trot!”

  They fanned out on either side as he loped forward, instinct guiding his feet through the night. The netting was mostly fallen, much of it was on fire, and he could hear the clash of blades ahead. And something bright, something more than steel, something that called to him, to them all. The Sword of the Lady had been drawn in anger, and the impalpable substance of Earth flexed and shook.

  By the time they reached the catapults, the horses were thundering about them.

  • • •

  The world snapped back into motion and Órlaith staggered. A horse—where had it come from?—leapt over the last catapult, its white blaze and rolling eyes wild in the night. The beast landed badly, staggering into a three-quarter fall that saved itself only with a wild lashing of hooves. That brought fourteen hundred pounds of terror-maddened charger crashing into the kangshinmu, breaking the stasis. Half a dozen arrows thumped into him at close range instants later, but even as he flexed beneath the impacts his eyes were drawing at her again, like a pit infinitely deep.

  She thrust. The Sword seemed to leap forward almost regardless of her will, and a brightness shielded her for the instant that they were face-to-face. A shield to her, but she had never heard agony equal to the squeal from the sorcerer’s lips as he seemed to burn from within in a pitiless white torrent when it transfixed him. She yanked the weapon from beyond the world free with frantic strength and swept the long blade around in a humming cut. The body crumpled as the head flew free, but it seemed oddly diminished, and there was little of the firehose spray of blood that such a wound usually produced. Órlaith stumbled three steps and went to her hands and knees, retching uncontrollably. The remains of bread and stew spilled and spattered, filling her mouth with sour vileness that still tasted better than the inside of her mind as she spat frantically.