by John Norman
Like my own mission to the Kataii, Harold’s mission to the Kassars had been fruitless. For much the same reasons as the Kataii, Conrad was unwilling to commit his forces to the defence of Tuchuk herds. Indeed, as we rode together, we wondered that Kamchak had even sent us on an errand so unlikely of success, an errand in its way, considering the temper of the Wagon Peoples, so foolish.
Our kaiila were spent when we reached the wagons of the Tuchuks and the herds, and we were only two thousand.
Hundreds of the wagons were burning and fighting was taking place among them. We found thousands of bosk slain in the grass, their throats cut, their flesh rotting, the golden nose rings chopped or torn away.
The men behind us cried out with rage.
Harold took his Thousand into the Wagons, engaging the Paravaci wherever he could find them. I knew that in little more than fifteen or twenty Ehn his forces would be lost, dissipated among the wagons, and yet surely the Paravaci must be met and fought there as well as on the prairie. I swept with my Thousand about the outskirts of the herds until we found some hundred or two hundred Paravaci engaged in the grisly work of destroying Tuchuk bosk. These two hundred, stood, looking up with their quivas axes, startled, screaming, were ridden down in a matter of an Ehn. But then we could see, forming on the crest of a hill, thousands of Paravaci warriors, apparently held in readiness in case reinforcements should come. Already they were mounting their fresh, rested kaiila. We could hear the bosk horns forming their Hundreds, see the movements of the sunlight on their arms.
Raising my arm and shouting, I led the Thousand toward them, hoping to catch them before they could form and charge. Our bosk horns rang out and my brave Thousand, worn in the saddle, weary, on spent kaiila, without a murmur or a protest, turned and following my lead struck into the centre of the Paravaci forces.
In an instant we were embroiled among angry men the half-formed, disorganized Hundreds of the Paravaci striking to the left and right, shouting the war cry of the Tuchuks. I did not wish to remain on the crest of the hill long enough to allow the left and right flanks of the Paravaci rapidly assembling to fold about my men and so, in less than four Ehn as their disorganized, astonished centre fell back our bosk horn sounded our retreat and our men, as one, withdrew to the herds only a moment before the left and right flanks of the Paravaci would have closed upon us. We left them facing one another, cursing, while we moved slowly back through our bosk, keeping them as a shield. We wouldrennin chic cuough that small parties would not be able to approach the bosk with impunity again. If they sent archers forth to slay the beasts, we could, from within the herd, answer their fire, or, if we wished, open the herd and ride forth, scattering the archers.
Among the bosk I ordered my men to rest.
But the Paravaci neither sent forth small groups nor contingents of archers, but formed and, en masse, riding over the bodies of their fallen comrades, began to approach the herd slowly, to move through it, slaying them as they went, and; close with us.
Once again our bosk horns sounded and this time my Thousand began to cry out and jab the animals with their lances, turning them toward the Paravaci. Thousands of animals were already turned toward the approaching enemy and beginning to walk toward them when the Paravaci suddenly realized what was happening. Now the bosk began to move more swiftly, bellowing and snorting. And then, as the, Paravaci bosk horns sounded frantically, our bosk began to run, their mighty heads with the fearsome horns nodding up and down, and the earth began to tremble and my men cried out more and jabbed animals, riding with the flood and the Paravaci with cries of horror that coursed the length of their entire line tried to stop and turn their kaiila but the ranks behind them pressed on and they were milling there before us, confused, trying to make sense out of the wild signals of their own bosk horns when the herd, horns down, now running full speed, struck them.
It was the vengeance of the bosk and the frightened, maddened animals thundered into the Paravaci lines goring and trampling both kaiila and riders, and the Paravaci who could manage turned their animals and rode for their lives.
In a moment, maintaining my saddle in spite of the leaping and stumbling of my kaiila over the slain bosk, fallen kaiila and screaming men, I gave orders to turn the bosk back and reform them near the wagons. The escaping Paravaci could now, on their kaiila, easily outdistance the herd and I did not wish the animals to be strung out over the prairie, at the mercy of the Paravaci when they should at last turn and take up the battle again.
By the time the Paravaci had reformed my Tuchuks had managed to swing the herd, slow it, get it milling about and then drive it back to a perimeter about the wagons.
It was now near nightfall and I was confident the Paravaci, who greatly outnumbered us, perhaps in the order of ten or twenty to one, would wait until morning before pressing the advantage of their numbers. When, on the whole, the long-term balance of battle would seem to lie with them, there would be little point in their undertaking the risk of darkness.
In the morning, however, they would presumably avoid the herd, find a clear avenue of attack, and strike, perhaps even rid through the wagons, pinning us against our own herd.
That night I met with Harold, whose men had been, fighting among the wagons. He had cleared several areas of Paravaci but they were still, here and there, among the wagons. Taking council with Harold, we dispatched a rider to Kamchak in Turia, informing him of the situation, and that we had little hope of holding out.
“It will make little difference,” said Harold. “It will take the rider, if he gets through, seven Ahn to reach Turia and even if Kamchak rides with his full force the moment the rider comes to the gates of the city, it will be eight Ahn before their vanguard can reach us and by then it will be too late.”
It seemed to me that what Harold said was true, and that there was little point in discussing it much further. I nodded wearily.
Both Harold and I then spoke with our men, each issuing by orders that any man with us who wished might now withdraw from the wagons and rejoin the main forces in Turia.
Not a man of either Thousand moved.
We set pickets and took what rest we could, in the open, the kaiila saddled and tethered at hand.
In the morning, before dawn, we awakened and fed on dried bosk meat, sucking the dew from the prairie grass.
Shortly after dawn we discovered the Paravaci forming in their Thousands away from the herd, preparing to strike the wagons from the north, pressing through, slaying all living things they might encounter, save women, slave or free. The latter would be driven before the warriors through the wagons, both slave girls and free women stripped and bound together in groups, providing shields against arrows and lance charges on kaiilaback for the men advancing behind them.
Harold and I determined to appear to meet the Paravaci in the open before the wagons and then, when they charged, to withdraw among the wagons, and close the wagons on their attacking front, halting the charge, then at almost point blank range hopefully taking heavy toll of their forces by our archers. It would be, of course, only a matter of time before our barricade would be forced or outflanked, perhaps from five pasangs distant, in an undefended sector.
The battle was joined at the seventh Gorean hour and, as planned, as soon as the Paravaci centre was committed, the bulk of our forces wheeled and retreated among the wagons, the rest of our forces then turning and pushing the wagons together. As soon as our men were through the barricade they leaped from their kaiila, bow and quiver in hand, and took up prearranged positions under the wagons, between them, on them, and behind the wagon box planking, taking advantage of the arrow ports therein.
The brunt of the Paravaci charge almost tipped and broke through the wagons, but we had lashed them together and they held. It was like a flood of kaiila and riders, weapons flourishing, that broke and piled against the wagons, the rear ranks pressing forward on those before them. Some of the rear ranks actually climbed fallen and struggling comrades and leaped over the wagons to
the other side, where they were cut down by archers and dragged from their kaiila to be flung beneath the knives of free Tuchuk women.
At a distance of little more than a dozen feet thousands of arrows were poured into the trapped Paravaci and yet they pressed forward, on and over their brethren, and then arrows spent, we met them on the wagons themselves with lances in our hands, thrusting them back and down.
About a pasang distant we could see new forces of the Paravaci forming on the crest of a sweeping gradient.
The sound of their bosk horns was welcome to us, signalling the retreat of those at the wagons.
Bloody, covered with sweat, gasping, we saw the living Paravaci draw back, falling back between the newly forming lines on the gradient above.
I issued orders swiftly and exhausted men poured from beneath and between the wagons to haul as many of the fallen kaiila and riders as possible from the wagons, that there might not be a wall of dying animals and men giving access to the height of our wagons.
Scarcely had we cleared the ground before the wagons when the Paravaci bosk horns sounded again and another wave of kaiila and riders, lances set, raced towards us. Four times they charged thus and four times we held them back.
My men and those of Harold had now been decimated and there were few that had not lost blood. I estimated that there was scarcely a quarter of those living who had ridden with us to the defence of the herds and wagons.
Once again Harold and I issued our orders that any wishing to depart might now do so.
Again no man moved.
“Look,” cried an archer, pointing to the gradient.
There we could see new thousands forming, the standards of Hundreds and Thousands taking up their position.
“It is the Paravaci main body,” said Harold. “It is the end.”
I looked to the left and right over the torn, bloody barricade of wagons, at the remains of my men, wounded and exhausted, many of them lying on the barricade or on the ground behind it, trying to gain but a moment’s respite. Free women, and even some Turian slave girls, went to and fro, bringing water and, here and there, where there was point in it, binding wounds. Some of the Tuchuks began to sing the Blue Sky Song, the refrain of which is that though I die, yet there will be the bosk, the grass and sky.
I stood with Harold on a planked platform fixed across the wagon box of the wagon at our centre, whose domed frame work had been torn away. Together we looked out over the field. We watched the milling of kaiila and riders in the distance, the movement of standards.
“We have done well,” said Harold.
“Yes,” I said, “I think so.”
We heard the bosk horns of the Paravaci signalling to the assembled Thousands.
“I wish you well,” said Harold.
I turned and smiled at him. “I wish you well,” I said.
Then again we heard the bosk horns and the Paravaci, in vast ranks, like sweeping crescents, like steel scythes of men and animals and arms, far extending beyond our own lines, began to move slowly towards us, gaining steadily in momentum and speed with each traversed yard of stained prairie.
Harold and I, and those of our men that remained, stood with the wagons, watching the nearing waves of warriors, observing the moment when the chain face guards of the Paravaci helmets were thrown forward, the moment when the lances, like that of a single man, were levelled. We could now hear the drumming of the paws of the kaiila, growing ever more rapid and intense, the squealing of animals here and there along the line, the rustle of weapons and accoutrements.
“Listen!” cried Harold.
I listened, but seemed to hear only the maddeningly intensifying thunder of the Paravaci kaiila sweeping towards us, but then I heard, from the far left and right, the sound of distant bosk horns.
“Bosk horns!” cried Harold.
“What does it matter?” I asked.
I wondered how many Paravaci there could possibly be.
I watched the nearing warriors, lances ready, the swiftness of the charge hurtling into full career.
“Look!” cried Harold, sweeping his hand to the left and right.
My heart sank. Suddenly rising over the crest of rolling hills, like black floods, from both the left and the right, I saw on racing kaiila what must have been thousands of warriors, thousands upon thousands.
I unsheathed my sword. I supposed it would he the last time I would do so.
“Look!” cried Harold.
“I see,” I said, “what does it matter?”
“Look!” he screamed, leaping up and down.
And I looked and saw suddenly and my heart stopped beating and then I uttered a wild cry for from the left, riding with the Thousands sweeping over the hills, I saw the standard of the Yellow Bow, and on the right, flying forward with the hurtling Thousands, its leather streaming behind its pole, I saw the standard of the Three-Weighted Bola.
“Katain!” screamed Harold, hugging me. “Kassars!”
I stood dumbfounded on the planking and saw the two great wedges of the Kataii and the Kassars close like tongs on the trapped Paravaci, taking them in the unprotected flanks, crushing the ranks before them with the weight of their charge. And even the sky seemed dark for a moment as, from the left and right, thousands upon thousands of arrows fell like dark rain among the startled, stumbling, turning Paravaci.
“We might help,” remarked Harold.
“Yes!” I cried.
“Korobans are slow to think of such matters,” he remarked.
I turned to the men. “Open the wagons!” I cried. “To your animals!”
And in an instant it seemed the wagon lashing kind been cut by quivas and our hundreds of warriors, the pitiful remnant of our two Thousands, swept forth upon the Paravaci, riding as though they had been fresh rested and ready, shouting the wild war cry of the Tuchuks.
It was not until late that afternoon that I met with Hakimba of the Kataii and Conrad of the Kassars. On the field we met and, as comrades in arms, we embraced one another.
“We have our own wagons,” said Hakimba, “but yet we are of the Wagon Peoples.”
“It is so, too, with us,” said Conrad, he of the Kassars.
“I regret only,” I said, “that I sent word to Kamchak and even now he has withdrawn his men from Turia and is returning to the wagons.”
“No,” said Hakimba, “we sent riders to Turia even as we left our own camp. Kamchak knew of our movements long before you.”
“And of ours,” said Conrad, “for we too sent him word thinking it well to keep him informed in these matters.”
“For a Kataii and a Kassar,” said Harold, “you two are not bad fellows.” And then he added. “See that you do not ride off with any of our bosk or women.”
“The Paravaci left their camp largely unguarded,” said Hakimba. “Their strength was brought here.”
I laughed.
“Yes,” said Conrad, “most of the Paravaci bosk are now in the herds of the Kataii and Kassars.”
“Reasonably evenly divided I trust,” remarked Hakimba.
“I think so,” said Conrad. “If not, we can always iron matters out with a bit of bosk raiding.”
“That is true,” granted Hakimba, the yellow and red scars wrinkling into a grin on his lean, black face.
“when the Paravaci those who escaped us return to their wagons,” remarked Conrad, “they will find a surprise in store for them.”
“Oh?” I inquired.
“We burned most of their wagons those we could,” said Hakimba.
“And their goods and women?” inquired Harold.
“Those that pleased us both of goods and women,” remarked Conrad, “we carried off of goods that did not please us, we burned them of women that did not please us, we left them stripped and weeping among the wagons.”
“This will mean war,” I said, “for many years among the Wagon Peoples.”
“No,” said Conrad, “the Paravaci will want back their bosk and women and p
erhaps they may have them for a price.”
“You are wise,” said Harold.
“I do not think they will slay bosk or join with Turians again,” said Hakimba.
I supposed he was right. Later in the afternoon the last of the Paravaci had been cleared from the Tuchuk wagons, wherever they might be found. Harold and I sent a rider back to Kamchak with news of the victory. Following him, in a few hours, would be a Thousand each from the Kataii and the Kassars, to lend him what aid they might in his work in, Turia.
In the morning the warriors remaining of the two Thousands who had ridden with Harold and I would, with the help of other Tuchuks surviving among the wagons, move the wagons and the bosk the field. Already the bosk were growing uneasy at the smell of death and already the grass about the camp was rustling with the movements of the tiny brown prairie arts, scavengers, come to feed. Whether, after we had moved the wagons and bosk some pasangs away, we should remain there, or proceed toward the pastures this side of the Ta-Thassa Mountains, or return toward Turia, was not decided. In the thinking of both Harold and myself, that decision was properly Kamchak’s. The Kataii main force and the Kassar main force camped separately some pasangs from the Tuchuk camp and the field and would, in the morning, return to their own wagons. Each had exchanged riders who, from time to time, would report to their own camp from that of the other. Each had also, as had the Tuchuks, set their own pickets. Neither wished the other to withdraw secretly and do for them what they together had done for the Paravaci, and what the Paravaci had attempted to do to the Tuchuks. It was not that they, on this night, truly distrusted one another so much as the fact that a lifetime of raiding and war had determined each to be, as a simple matter of course, wary of the other.
I myself was anxious to return to Turia as soon as it could be well managed. Harold, willingly enough, volunteered to remain in the camp until the commander of a Thousand could be sent from Turia to relieve him. I appreciated this very much on his part, for I keenly wished to return to Turia as soon as it would be at all practical I had pressing and significant business yet unfinished behind its walls.