The Middle of Nowhere c-5

by Paul B. Thompson

  Horses neighed loudly. Farmers and bandits alike paused their battle long enough to see what was disturbing the animals. What they saw delighted the villagers and dismayed Rakell’s raiders.

  Amergin and six hand-picked men had stolen out of Nowhere, circled wide of the scrap going on between Raika’s troops and the bandits, and attacked the men left behind to guard the horses. There were eight of them, minding close to forty horses, and they could not let go the animals’ reins to defend themselves without losing all their comrades’ mounts. Amergin and his slingers had popped out of the grass ten yards away and swiftly struck down one guard after another. Freed, the high-strung horses broke away, inspired by stinging stones flung against their rumps. As the last bandit guard was struck down by Amergin, all the horses scattered to the winds.

  Panicked by the sight of their precious mounts abandoning them, the bandits quickly ended the attack. Some even threw down sword and shield and ran full-tilt after their animals. Amergin and his slingers had a field day bouncing hard stones off the fleeing brigands. Their rout was so complete the defenders sallied forth to drag some of their fallen foes into the village, where their arms and armor were stripped off and distributed among the villagers.

  Victory seemed total when Howland heard a shriek rise from the east end of Nowhere. The wounded and elderly had crept away from the barrage of arrows, sheltering in the curve of houses on the northeast border of the village. They were safe enough there, but when the bandits were repelled, some of the villagers came out to see the enemy’s defeat. Among them was Calec, the ancient headman. As he hobbled across the common on stiff, aged legs, a stray arrow took him high in the thigh. He went down without a sound but his neighbors raised a wail.

  Howland hurried to the old man’s side. The cloth yard shaft had terrible force behind it, plummeting down from so high. It had passed through Calec’s left thigh, and the broadhead was buried halfway through his right as well. The impact had virtually nailed the old man’s legs together, piercing arteries in both limbs.

  Caeta cradled her father’s head. Howland knelt by the elder, ignoring the humming arrows that continued to fall.

  “They’re on the run?” whispered Calec.

  “They’re beat,” Howland said.

  The elder sighed, a long rattling exhalation. “Good. Hammer them like a gong-”

  Caeta closed his eyes. “Good-bye, papa!”

  More projectiles thudded around them. The archers could see villagers clustered around the fallen Calec and were concentrating on them. Gathering the old man’s legs while his daughter took his arms, Howland and Caeta carried Calec to a safer spot.

  Amergin and the slingers returned, laden with swords, shields, and good iron daggers. There was enough captured weaponry to equip every fighting villager with a metal blade of some kind.

  Calec was the only one killed on their side during the battle, but he was more than just the eldest of the village elders. He was the fighting heart of Nowhere, and now that heart was stilled.

  Yet there was little time to grieve. As soon as the bowmen returned to camp, a fresh party of riders issued forth. Unlike the previous bands of bandits the people of Nowhere had faced, this new force appeared well armored and mounted on fine-looking horses. They carried banners too, the color of faded gold, whipping from the tips of their tall lances.

  Raika’s and Amergin’s contingents rushed across the common to the south side, stumbling through a thick hedge of buried arrows as they came. Carver and his followers got down from the roofs and fell to harvesting this strange crop. The kender yanked an arrow out and examined the keen iron head. It was a real war arrow, and with the shafts clipped, they would make deadly whippik missiles.

  Robien counted the riders as they cantered in a double line, parallel to the village. To Howland he said, “I make it twenty-eight!”

  “Rakell’s elite,” Howland called back. “We won’t panic these men.”

  “Could be worse,” said Raika, taking a deep breath.

  Amergin inquired with a single raised eyebrow.

  “Could be ogres.”

  A signal trumpet blared, to be answered by horns in the other bandit camps. Once the armored brigands were in place, they halted, facing Nowhere. Long, pointed banners flipped slowly in the light midday airs.

  “Robien, go to Khorr. Have his men stand ready to reinforce us,” Howland said. The bounty hunter departed on his mission. Wilf stepped up beside the old Knight, nudging him.

  “What is it?”

  Wilf held a cavalry helmet out to Howland, one taken from the recently beaten bandits. “For you, sir.” Worn bright by years of use, it was real iron, with a peeling leather pad inside.

  “Thank you.” Howland slipped the helmet on. The cheek pieces were hot against his face. It fit perfectly. He buckled the strap under his chin.

  Wilf made an awkward attempt to salute. Howland was touched, but the moment was broken by Raika’s loud shout, “Wilf? Wilf? Where’s that idiot gone off to now?”

  The young farmer ran back to his place with the spearmen. Howland was waiting for Robien’s return when someone else touched his elbow: It was Ezu. Maybe the helmet muffled his footsteps, but Howland had heard and seen nothing of the odd traveler until he appeared.

  “Where have you been?” Howland demanded.

  “Here and there,” said Ezu. “You’re busy? I’ll come back-”

  “You stay right by my side!” Howland thundered. “I need you-”

  Out on the plain, the armored brigands started forward.

  “Stay by me!”

  “I’m no warrior,” said Ezu mildly.

  “You are now!”

  The bandit elite kept their lines straight and came on, not at wasteful gallop but at a steady trot.

  “Stand by to receive cavalry!”

  Raika, Amergin, and all the villagers looked at Howland in surprise. Though they’d heard his shouted commands for a while now, there was something different about his last command. Maybe it was the helmet or the sight of enemy knights, but the years seemed to have fallen away from him. He stood straighter, and his voice carried across the dusty common with uncommon energy and clarity. This was Sir Howland as he once had been.

  The villagers knelt in two staggered lines, spears wedged against the ground. No attempt would be made to meet the enemy in the gaps as before. Behind the spear carriers, Amergin placed his slingers. Carver and the oldest half-dozen boys occupied the rooftops, while the younger feverishly cut up arrows and passed bundles of remade darts up to their friends. Of Robien, curiously, there was no sign. Howland glanced around for him, frowning.

  At forty yards the riders swung their lances down, first the front rank then the second. They increased their pace to a canter.

  “What are you waiting for, kender? Let them have it!”

  With a whoop, Carver flung the first dart. It caromed off the visor of one of the riders. Dismayed, he ordered his boys to try their luck. Even with iron-tipped darts, they could make no impression on the armored riders.

  Reluctantly, for kender liked animals, Carver cried, “Aim for the horses!”

  At ten yards the enemy burst forward in a sudden spurt. There was no room to achieve a gallop, but they put on speed and crashed bodily through the barriers between the huts. Darts and sling shot clattered off them like hail. One or two horses got tangled in the vines and thorns, but the riders lowered their lance tips to the ground and with a single upward swing, swept the tangle aside.

  The farmers’ line of spears stirred restlessly. Raika, standing behind Bakar, called out, “Those lances don’t hurt at all, you know, going in.”

  “Really?” said Bakar, face streaming sweat.

  “Yeah, it’s the coming out that kills you.”

  Four armored riders broke through into the commons. One fell when Amergin put one of his precious metal stars through a slit in his visor. Howland drew his sword. “All right, then! Get them!”

  Shouting and screaming,
the farmers broke ranks and raced at the bandits. The rider nearest Howland calmly spitted first one, then another villager with his lance, flicking the impaled body of the first off before striking the second. Howland yelled to distract the deadly lancer, who promptly turned toward him. The black iron lance head cut through the air, driving toward Howland’s chest. Fear and weakness he’d learned since leaving the trade of arms vanished, and all the old moves flowed back from the depths of Howland’s memory. He struck the lance aside with the flat of his sword and got under his opponent’s reach. Once you beat the tip, he thought, a lancer was at a disadvantage against a good swordsman. Howland gripped his hilt in both hands and thrust hard at the rider’s belly. He twisted away, and the point of Howland’s blade skidded off his iron cuirass. The old Knight spun around, ducking under the horse’s head and coming up on the lancer’s left. The horseman was clad in three-quarter armor, not full plate, so the back of his legs were vulnerable. Howland swung with all his might, and felt his old sword bite hard behind his enemy’s knee. The bandit brought his heavy lance around, and the shaft connected solidly with Howland’s head. His new helmet saved him, but he went down. Moments later the lancer fell too, bleeding heavily from his leg wound. He tried to rise, but Wilf ran up and struck the lancer on the head with his spear shaft, flattening the struggling rider. Howland rolled to his feet, snatching the dagger from his belt. He jammed the point through the joint between the lancer’s gorget and helmet. Shuddering, the bandit went slack.

  On his feet again, Howland looked for the gallant Wilf, but the melee had separated them again. More lancers had penetrated the line of huts, and though the farmers were fighting valiantly, giving as hard as they got, the enemy was too powerful to stand up to at close quarters. Howland was about to order his people to fall back to the well when one of the whippik boys screamed, “They’re coming! They’re coming this way!”

  Between two houses Howland glimpsed another force of riders approaching. There was no way to stop them unless Khorr’s men left the trench and helped them. Where was Robien? Why had he not returned?

  “Fall back! Fall back to the well!” Howland cried. The defenders tried to obey, but they were thoroughly mixed in with the enemy. Bakar fell, lanced in the back when he dropped his broken spear and tried to run. Seeing him fall, Raika felt a surge of rage. She threw down her spear and sprang at the man who’d struck Bakar, vaulting onto the rump of his horse. The heavily armored bandit couldn’t deal with Raika so close behind him. She twisted back and forth until she got a hand on his chin and wrenched him right out of the saddle, hurling him to the bloody earth.

  Taking up the reins, she recovered a lance and used it to impale first one foe then another. The bandits shrank back, giving way before her.

  Howland and Amergin gathered eleven villagers by the well. Cut, bleeding, and panting, they put their backs to the stone wall, ready to ward off another charge.

  The elf felt something warm on his back. He was pressed against the Ancestor, and the fractured totem was warm to the touch, far warmer than the other stones in the wall. Yet there was no time to contemplate this mystery. The second wave of attackers were riding through the gaps created by the lancers.

  “Time to sell our lives dearly,” Howland shouted. Beside him, Amergin loaded his last bronze star.

  Just as the bandits cleared the huts, a noise at the flank made them slow. Startled beyond measure, the defenders clustered around the well saw what looked like a two-wheeled cart come charging over the dirt mound behind the trench. In the cart were Robien and three farmers, armed with spears. Pushing the cart from behind was Khorr, head down and feet churning.

  With a shout, the cart hit the horsemen, bowling them over like clay tankards in a bar fight. Having disrupted the second wave of attackers, Robien and the spearmen jumped down to join Howland by the well. Khorr backed up the cart and retreated to the trench.

  “Where have you been?” said Howland.

  “Preparing this surprise. I hope you don’t mind. It was Khorr’s idea.”

  “Where is he now?”

  In answer, the cart reappeared atop the mound, brimming with more spearmen. This time Khorr ran hard down the hill into the center of the enemy. Coming to a stop after upsetting four armored lancers, the minotaur put down the poles of the cart and laid about with his stone mace. Not even the thick plate of the lancers was proof against a blow from a twenty-pound stone, and the bandits withdrew. Now, ten of Rakell’s elite horsemen lay dead in the village, along with another eight rank-and-file bandits. Seven villagers were slain and many more wounded.

  Raika rode up to where Bakar lay, unmoving. She lifted one leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground.

  “Fool,” she said bitterly. “Never turn your back on the enemy!”

  She threw down her sword with disgust. It landed across Bakar’s back. He groaned.

  “What? Alive?” She rolled the farmer over. Bakar’s face was white as milk, but he was breathing.

  “You’re hitting me again,” he moaned.

  “Shut up!” Raika stood. “Where are those healers? We have a wounded man here!”

  Seeing the bandits ride sedately back to camp, Howland slowly let out the breath he was holding. Khorr presented himself with his men, saying, “We beat them again, Sir Howland!”

  “So we did.”

  “Will they come again today?” Robien wondered.

  “Yes.”

  Elf and minotaur looked crestfallen.

  The Knight explained. “If Rakell keeps to the strategy he’s been following, he’ll mount spoiling attacks all day to keep us off guard and prevent us from repairing our defenses.”

  Robien uttered a Kagonesti curse. Khorr asked, “What can we do?”

  “Carry on despite them. Any show of weakness will bring on an even more serious assault.”

  Suddenly Howland had a thought. “Where’s Ezu?”

  “Here.”

  Ezu was sitting cross-legged on the well wall right behind him.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Since you said, ‘Fall back to the well.’ Am I not where you wish me to be?”

  “Yes, fine. Don’t budge from that spot!”

  While weary farmers struggled to rebuild the broken-down barricades between the huts, others used Khorr’s cart to clear away the enemy dead.

  Raika, pleased with the fine horse she’d acquired, rode out sixty yards from the village and in full view of the bandits’ south camp thrust a broken lance deep into the dry turf. She propped a battered, blood-smeared helmet on the end of the lance, spat on the ground, and rode back to Nowhere.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Dragon's Head

  Four times more before sunset the bandits tested the defenders of Nowhere, pushing, probing, looking for any weakness that could be exploited. Before the sun was low and red in the west, the farmers were speechless with exhaustion, and Howland’s fighters had survived from one crisis to the next, throwing the enemy back each time with skill, determination, guile, or sheer will.

  After the last attack, everyone collapsed where they stood. Only Howland remained on his feet, endlessly circling the village, ever-vigilant for the enemy’s next move.

  Flat on her back Raika said, “How does he do it? How does that old man run and fight and command all day and not fall over dead from weariness?”

  Seated nearby, Robien put his face in his hands and mumbled, “He was bred to battle, like a hound to the hunt. He’ll keep going as long as his heart beats.”

  Raika gazed at the sky, still blue overhead but streaked with feathery, scarlet clouds. It was indescribably beautiful, and Raika stared at the heavens as though she’d never seen them before. At sea, the sky was always laden with portents for good or ill, mostly ill. A bank of clouds in the wrong place, the color of the horizon at dawn or dusk held meaning for the success or failure of a long voyage. On land, the sky said nothing to her, but it was beautiful.

  “Why am I here?
” she mused aloud.

  Lying on his belly a few feet away, Wilf stirred and raised his head. His freckled face was spattered with mud and blood.

  “You’re here to fight this fight,” he said.

  “What good will it do? Tomorrow, or the next day, we’ll all die. The longer it takes, the harder we’ll go …” Her voiced trailed off.

  “Nonsense!”

  Everyone around Raika sat up. Howland was standing over them, hands on hips. “We’re doing well!” he declared.

  Raika pushed herself up on her elbows. “Think so, old man?”

  “I do. The worst attack was the second, and every one since then has been weaker and more tentative. Their last attack was positively feeble! Carver and the children could have driven it off by themselves!” He gestured to the growing heap of bandit dead laid out by the trench. “We’ve killed thirty of the enemy and lost only nine killed and eleven wounded. Now’s the time to launch our stratagem. Before the sun sets completely, I will ask Rakell for a parley.”

  Robien got stiffly to his feet. “Do you really think the bandits will flee if their leaders are killed, Sir Howland?”

  “I do. They’ve taken a hammering today.”

  Raika sank back with a sigh. “So have we!”

  “Remember we’re dealing with warriors who could not take the discipline of a true army. They chose banditry to have an easy life. Today they’ve learned that not everyone will bow down to them.” He looked away to the brigands’ north camp. “I’ll wager some have deserted already.”