A tremendous roar went up from the Grik, a predatory roar of triumph as the shield wall broke yet again. This time, it was as if some critical point had been reached beyond all endurance. One moment, a few Grik were racing through a small gap, hacking and slashing as they came, and in the next, like a pane of glass in a hailstorm, the entire wall around the gap shattered and fell away. Lieutenant Shinya raced by, aiming for the breakthrough, but Matt caught his arm. The Japanese officer whirled toward him, an insane light in his eyes that dimmed just slightly when he recognized the captain.
“Save the guns, if you can,” Matt croaked. “Try to form a square around them. If we can make it to the breastworks, we might be able to hold them there.” Shinya nodded reluctantly, deterred from his suicidal charge. He ran off shouting for runners. They both knew it was hopeless. Too many had already started to run. But it was all they had left and they had to try.
Maybe not hopeless after all, Matt amended as he wiped his eyes and struggled to see through the developing chaos. The Second Marines and most of the First Guards had already formed a square of sorts. It was a maneuver the Marines practiced often and the Guards had simply retreated into the formation with the Marines. They’d managed to save at least a couple of guns too—suddenly a pair of bronze snouts pushed through and barked spitefully at the Grik that had begun to curve around and try to get between the square and the barricade. Scores fell beneath the billowing smoke and the banshee wail of canister. To the right, the line still miraculously held. But its severed end had curled back toward the wall to form a semicircle at its base.
Separate from either force, however, Matt, Gray, and Keje stood alone as the shield wall in front of them melted away, oblivious to anything but the need to escape. Behind them raged the thundering horde. Matt gauged the distance to the Marine square. Many within it were shouting his name, or Keje’s, and waving, urging them toward it. There was no way.
A lone Lemurian gunner, abandoned with her dead crew, stood waiting while the Grik swept down upon her. Crouching behind the axle as bolts whizzed by or spanged off the barrel of her gun, she looked small and frail compared to the monsters coming for her. There was no doubting the determination of her stance, however, and her tail flicked back and forth as if she was preparing to pounce. At the last moment, she touched the linstock to the vent and the gun blew itself apart with a tremendous blast. Grik bodies were hurled into the air or mowed down by fragments of the tube or pieces of the carriage. She must have loaded it to the muzzle, Matt thought, stricken by the act. Of the lone Lemurian gunner, nothing remained.
“Come, my friends!” Keje bellowed, pointing at the Marine square. “We must try!” With a final glance through the smoke at the momentarily stunned Grik advance, Matt and Gray joined Keje, racing toward the square as it resumed a slow, shuffling retreat.
Gray uttered a sudden, startled grunt of surprise and fell to the ground as if he’d tripped. Matt and Keje both stopped and turned toward him. He was lying on his side with a black vaned crossbow bolt protruding from his hip. Irritably, he waved them on. Keje disemboweled a Grik warrior with his scota as it ran toward them out of the lingering cloud and Matt took careful aim and shot another with his pistol. More were coming. Soon it would be a flood. “Go on, damn it! I’ll be along!” Gray yelled.
“Shut up,” Matt grated as he and Keje helped him to his feet. Stifling a groan, the Chief managed to trot painfully between them as they continued toward the square. Matt shot another Grik and then another as they struggled closer to the Marines, whose formation had started to expand toward them as it moved, hoping to take them into its embrace. Keje deflected a blow from a Grik sword with his small shield and Matt shot the creature as it snapped at Gray with its terrible jaws. His pistol slide locked back. Empty. He tucked the gun into his belt and parried a spear thrust with his sword. He wasn’t much of a swordsman, but holding the Chief and fighting with his left hand, he was almost helpless. He managed to deflect the spear just enough that instead of driving through his chest, the sharp blade rasped along his ribs. He gasped with pain but clamped down with his arm so the Grik couldn’t pull the spear back for another thrust and Gray drove the point of his cutlass into its eye. It shrieked and fell back, but then Keje went down, pulling them down on top of him.
Matt rolled onto his stomach to rise. All around him he saw running feet, Grik feet with long curved claws that slashed at the earth as they ran. He felt a searing blow of agony in his left shoulder blade that drove him to the ground, out of breath. He raised his head once more. There, just ahead, was the Marine square. He could see the tired, bloody faces of the people he had brought to this, staring expressionlessly back at him, but with their eyes blinking in frustration. He could feel Chief Gray, trapped beneath him and struggling to rise, and he tried to roll aside. Got to let him up, he thought. Then something struck him on the side of the head, and bright sparks swirled behind his eyes, quickly scattering into darkness.
“Through! Charge through! Do not stop at the barricade!” bellowed Lord Rolak, waving his sword above his head. He was nearly spent and his old legs ached from unaccustomed exertion. He stopped, gasping for a moment as his warriors flowed past, shouldering their way through the debris of a shocked and splintered army. He stared at the survivors of the sea folk as they stumbled, slack-jawed and empty-eyed toward the dock as if they knew, instinctively, safety for them could only be found at sea. He couldn’t believe it. They’d broken, yes, but they had fought against impossible odds for longer than he’d ever expected, and his shame warred with his pride for their accomplishment. Never again could it be said with honesty that sea folk would not fight.
Some fought still. A solid block of sea folk warriors with several flags held high in their midst was churning its way through a mass of enemies back toward the relative safety of the barricade. The block was dwindling even as he watched, but the path they hewed through the foe was out of all proportion to their losses. His sense of failure and shame was only slightly assuaged by the fact that he wasn’t entirely too late. It had taken his and the Orphan Queen’s forces almost two hours to work their way through the streets of Aryaal, streets that became ever more congested as they neared the north gate. The fighting had caused a general exodus of townsfolk to gather there seeking refuge from the firebombs and hoping that if the city fell they might yet escape to B’mbaado. It was an empty hope, of course, but it was the only hope they had. Then, when they finally forced their way to the gate itself, they found it closed and fortified from the inside as well as out. The king, or his brat, must have foreseen something like what Rolak was attempting and ordered his personal guard to prevent anyone from trying to leave. It was then that Rolak’s defiance of his king had sparked a civil war in the city of Aryaal.
He stormed the gate with Queen Maraan at his side. The fight for the towers that housed the gate windlasses was difficult and costly—he himself had overseen their construction years before with that very purpose in mind—but they finally hacked their way to the machinery that opened the massive doors, leaving scores of white-clad bodies behind them. When the gate swung wide, Queen Maraan’s Six Hundred and a slightly larger number of Aryaalan warriors—rebels now—swarmed down into the waterfront shantytown where fisherfolk and boat people dwelt. Through the squalid alleys filled with muck they raced, until finally they emerged behind the breastworks to see the disaster their king’s treachery had wrought. Tears of guilt and humiliation stung Rolak’s eyes as he beheld, at last, the extent of Aryaal’s dishonor. The fact that any of those they had betrayed still lived—let alone fought—was proof that if only they’d followed the plan, a great victory could have been achieved. Now all that remained was to save what he could of this valiant army as well as his own people’s soul.
“Straight through the barricade!” he urged hoarsely once more as another cluster of soldiers passed. He noticed a group of warriors standing nearby, leaning on their spears and watching the battle beyond the breastworks as the last o
f his own troops clawed through the gap and slashed into the milling Grik. “What are you doing?” he demanded. One of them looked at him and blinked confusion.
“We are the guard here. This is our station. We have no orders but to defend this position.”
Furious, Lord Rolak struck the hapless Aryaalan with the flat of his sword. “You do now!” he bellowed. “Through, now, the lot of you! Or I’ll have your tails for baldrics!” More terrified of the raging Protector than of the Grik, the entire barricade garrison hurried to obey. Rolak stood waiting, catching his breath and cursing his age and frailty until the absolute last of the defensive force hurried through to join the battle. He felt a hand on his arm.
“Rest here a moment,” spoke the queen of B’mbaado. Her eyelids flickered with concern.
“Never,” he said, “will I rest again until the honor that was stolen from me is restored.”
She turned her gaze to the battle that raged a short distance away. B’mbaadans and Aryaalans didn’t fight in the strange, ordered way she’d seen the sea folk begin the battle, but their tightly massed attack of screaming and slashing reinforcements led by an almost berserk Haakar-Faask had taken the Grik unawares. In moments they had battered a deep wedge through the enemy and were on the verge of linking with the exhausted Marines.
“In that case, Lord Rolak, let us salvage what we may of it while we can!” She flashed him a predatory grin and drew her sword. He nodded and smiled back at her. Aryaalan females never became warriors; it was forbidden. B’mbaadans almost never did, but there were a few exceptions—a noted one stood before him now. Sea folk females fought right alongside the males, and hundreds of them had died that day defending all the people of Aryaal, including its proud male warriors who had done nothing. He knew it was no use trying to make Queen Maraan stay out of the fight. She’d already been in the thick of it at the gate.
“Of course, dear queen, just promise not to outrun me. What little honor I have left would not survive.” She clasped his arm tightly this time, and together they charged into battle.
Matt’s eyes focused slowly on the battle lantern swaying above him. He didn’t know how long he’d been staring at it, but it seemed like quite a while. It was only now, however, that he realized what it was. He blinked and it felt like sandpaper rasping across his eyes.
“Unnh,” he said. It was all he could manage. His lips were cracked and stuck together and his tongue felt swollen and dry. He was lying on his back on what seemed to be a cot. Dingy canvas rippled in a stiff salt-smelling breeze just beyond the lantern and he knew he was beneath some sort of tent or awning. Around him he heard murmured voices, whimpering, and an occasional sob. A sudden sharp, short scream sent a chill down the back of his neck, and the movement was enough to awaken a terrible pain that existed somewhere in his shoulder. “Unnh!” he said again, and was distressed to hear his own voice sound so much like those around him.
Almost immediately, Sandra Tucker’s blurry face hovered inches from his own. Her light brown hair had fallen down from where she usually kept it tied behind her head and she wore an expression of grim concern. A cool hand gently caressed the side of his face. Someone else sponged water on his lips and, when they parted, let some trickle in his mouth. The sensation of refreshment it gave him was so intense that he felt utterly wretched. He reached up with his right hand and grasped Sandra’s wrist as he stared into her eyes. She smiled at him, raised his hand to her lips for just an instant, and then laid it at his side. “You just lie still for now, Captain Reddy,” she said huskily.
“Can’t,” he managed to croak, and he tried to rise. A searing wave of agony swept over him and he fell back onto the cot with a groan. “Unnh!” he said again.
“If you pull those stitches out, you’re liable to bleed to death!” Sandra scolded. “Just lie still! Everything’s being taken care of. There are others who can manage quite well for a while without you. You’re not indispensable, you know!” She forced another smile while inwardly she railed. Of course he’s indispensable, you idiot girl! To you as much as to this whole messed-up world!
Matt managed a sheepish, lopsided grin, but then drank greedily when someone held a canteen to his lips. Long before he was satisfied, it was taken away. “Aye, aye, Lieutenant,” he said, his voice more normal now. “I’ll try to behave.” He looked around for the first time, as best he could. Many more cots surrounded him and figures moved among them with lanterns or candles in their hands. The flames of the candles flickered with the same breeze that stirred the canvas overhead, and for the first time he recognized it as the fo’c’sle awning from the ship. It was rigged on poles driven into the sand to create an open-sided shelter like . . .
“We’re still on shore, right near the dock!” he exclaimed. Beyond the poles it was dark, but other lights moved about on the ground between the jury-rigged hospital tent and the breastworks. “But . . . the line broke! I saw it . . .” He paused and grimaced. “Hell, I was in it.” He looked at Sandra. “I ordered you to evacuate. Didn’t you get the word?”
She nodded. “Yes, but by the time I did, there was no reason to.” She didn’t mention that she would never have followed the order in the first place—something he’d suspected when he gave it. His mind did a sudden double take.
“What do you mean, no reason to?” he asked carefully. “The battle was lost! A disaster!” He closed his eyes. “My fault.”
“No! No!” she said in alarm and sat beside him on the cot. In an instant she knew the torment he must feel after the horror he’d seen—that she knew he’d feel responsible for. She’d forgotten he didn’t know what had happened at the end. He’d been unconscious and there was no way for him to know. She took his hand in hers again and, when he opened his eyes, he saw tears running down her face, leaving tracks in the grime. “Captain Reddy,” she said, her voice rising slightly so others nearby could hear her speak his name. An excited murmur began to build. “The battle was not lost!” All he could do was look at her in wonder and confusion. “The only ones to know defeat today were the Grik!”
A ragged cheer broke out and quickly spread to the area beyond the tent. It didn’t last long, because the voices that made it were exhausted and hurt, but it was real and it was sincere and he knew somehow that her words were true. He closed his eyes in confusion and saw it all again, those last terrible moments when he knew all was lost. He couldn’t imagine how they’d escaped disaster, but they must have. Sandra said so. He was alive, so it must be true.
Victory, he thought. “My God.” He squeezed her fingers gently.
Long after she felt his hand relax in hers, Sandra sat beside Matt on the cot, looking down at him, wiping away her tears of relief while he slept.
It had been like a terrible nightmare. They’d all been so confident, God knows why. Maybe the string of small victories Matt led them to had made them think they could accomplish anything. After the battle in the bay, that confidence was reinforced. Sandra had watched with the rest as the proud army marched across the field, banners flying, and opened the battle with a terrible, one-sided blow. Even from her vantage point, where she had a better perspective of the horde they faced, she’d still been confident. The battle was unfolding precisely as planned. The Grik reserve was distracted on the far side of the river and the entire force attacking the city had been diverted down upon the Allied Expeditionary Force. And then, like a puff of smoke in a high wind, the grand plan that would have led them to victory, perhaps even with relatively light casualties, was just . . . gone.
The whole thing depended on the Aryaalans coming out and striking hard into the enemy rear, which might not only have sent the Grik into a panic, but would also have cut them off from reinforcements at the ferry landing. She ran her fingers through her hair, scooping the loose locks out of her eyes, and glanced around at the countless wounded around her.
They’d been so stupid! Even in their own world people so rarely did the things they ought to do—had to do!—when the nee
d was so clear! Look at how long Europe had appeased Hitler. How long the United States had tried to accommodate Japan’s unspeakably brutal expansionism in Asia. Treachery wasn’t a unique and alien Aryaalan trait. Nakja-Mur had warned them, and Keje had too, not to count too heavily on the people of Surabaya. But under the circumstances, surely they had to see the logic? She snorted quietly. They’d applied their own concept of self-interest to others, she realized, and that was always a dangerous thing to do. It had been the greatest flaw in their plan.
She’d known something was wrong when the second flare went up. The battle line held and held for what seemed an eternity—surely longer than they’d expected to feel the full crush of the enemy assault. All the while, the booming of guns and the drifting white smoke made it impossible to see much detail. The first steady stream of wounded began to arrive, however. Up to that point there’d been a trickle, a few at a time, and most of those had made it to the rear under their own power or assisted by a comrade. Those that came as the battle raged on were carried, and their wounds were almost always desperate. She flew into the fray of spurting blood and severed limbs and directed the surgery with an energy and steady detachment that helped instill calm and confidence into the overworked staff of healers under her command. She was overjoyed when Kathy McCoy and Pam Cross arrived from Mahan, but there was no time for a proper reunion. Most of Sandra’s medical staff had learned to converse in English, so the two nurses could at least make themselves understood. But they hadn’t been part of the “team” Sandra had trained for just this situation. It took a while for Pam and Kathy to integrate themselves and find their most effective roles.
And still the battle raged. The wounded that returned from the fighting were no longer excited and boastful. An atmosphere of exhausted desperation began to prevail. They were fighting like fiends and the field was choked with Grik dead, but something was wrong. The Aryaalans hadn’t come. Then came Shinya’s runner, horribly wounded but able to tell her the order Captain Reddy sent. By then she half expected it, but it still struck her like a slap. She quickly instructed her orderlies to prepare to move the wounded and raced to the barricade to see for herself. The horror was beyond anything she’d ever expected, or could possibly have imagined.
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