You’re being hit from two directions at once, Dzhambul thought towards the Miqačin commander. You don’t know which is important . . . you can’t decide . . . be paralyzed. . . .
Somewhere nearby Gansükh was being quietly, obscenely thankful that the hens had pulled it off.
If Börte is ever the Kha-Khan’s sister, this man is doing his prospects at court no good at all, but at least he’s no lickspittle, Dzhambul thought as he pulled his bow off his back and reached for an arrow from the quiver at his belt. Or he may change his mind tonight, if we aren’t all killed.
The enemy commander in the helmet whirled and swept out his sword, looking northward to where his second sentry had evidently just died. If he wasn’t very stupid, he’d be realizing he was in a situation where he had few choices, all bad, and it was entirely his own fault.
In his shoes, Dzhambul would have had half his force out as sentries, and spent his own time moving between them at unpredictable intervals.
“Mong-go!” the man-eater commander yelped—the Miqačin word for Mongols.
Whichever bad choice he’d picked didn’t matter, because an arrow came whispering out of the night, right from the direction he was looking. They were close enough for Dzhambul to hear the solid crunching thuck sound as the arrow hit him square in the face, penetrated all the way through and went tink on the inside of his helmet at the rear. He wasn’t close enough to see the fletching on the shaft, but he’d have bet his best horse back home that it was Börte’s; she used stork feathers, where he preferred eagle or vulture.
She would be more or less where he’d lain while scouting the enemy camp, and that was only seventy-five or eighty delem from the fire—delem were what they’d called meters in the old days, about one long stride—which was pretty close range. Borte’s bow drew at two-thirds of her body’s weight, much less than his, but she was just as accurate, or better if you listened to her.
The enemy officer fell backward, head and shoulders in the fire; the embers flared up as he twitched and his heels drummed on the frozen ground.
All the enemy were on their feet, even the ones who’d been sleeping off their meal of abominations. Some of them even had arrows on the string, for all the good that would do them, trying to shoot into impenetrable blackness. The right move would have been to draw their swords and charge the direction of the shot; it wouldn’t save them at his point, but they’d inflict far more damage and crucially slow their targets down. Though doing that would be very hard without someone to give the order; his sister had picked her target well.
And probably nobody had told the man-eater troops why they were here. In a Mongol force they’d have been thoroughly briefed on what the high command intended and thought, which made for flexibility.
“Now,” he whispered.
And as if hearing the command another ten bows began to snap along with Börte’s. The arrows were invisible until they caught the firelight near their targets, and then they were the merest flicker. He’d had experience with being shot at in the dark, and it was nerve-wracking, with only the very briefest of whispers to warn you of what was coming in, which made your mind multiply the arrows and think you were being bombarded from everywhere.
Some of the man-eaters drew their own bows and then hesitated, or shot blindly; half a dozen did charge the northern ridge with blade or spear in hand, and died quickly as all the archers concentrated on them, which was why a uniform rush would have been better. A lone hero was nothing but an arrow-riddled corpse in the making.
“The hens . . . the Hawks . . . can shoot, at least,” Gansükh said grudgingly from his position a little farther down the line.
The fall of the last of their men attacking northward was the signal for all the surviving Miqačin to stop cowering, turn and bolt south. They crowded together, an unconscious seeking of reassurance in numbers. That made them better targets and several fell silent or shrieking with arrows in their backs and legs, but some had picked up shields that they wore slung on their backs, square ones that covered them from the back of the head to the calves, and those did provide a fair amount of protection. A new sound rang, the hard thock of shafts punching into wood and leather. For a moment he could see their faces, gaping eyes and mouths, and then they were only silhouettes against the dying fire.
“Sumnuud!” Dzhambul shouted.
He came up on one knee and drew with the full stretch of his arms, for the long heavy war-shaft with the plum-needle head. Sumnuud meant—
“Arrows!”
The man-eaters screamed again as the Mongols shot, more arrows coming from nowhere. Dzhambul drew and loosed four times; at this range and from his bow the heavy pile-headed arrows made nothing of armor. The last one in front of him swung a polearm of some sort at him, a gleam of steel before a flash of eyes and teeth. He reached back and up over his left shoulder, swept out his sword and parried with a shower of sparks as his blade struck the metal wire wrapped around the wooden shaft below the cutting head.
The hard shock jarred his wrist painfully. Before the Miqačin could draw back for another blow something glittered behind him and he toppled backward with a scream. Before he hit the ground Börte struck again, this time with the long thin dagger in her left hand rather than the saber she’d used to slash across his hamstrings.
“You keep bad company, brother,” she said, panting.
“Then let’s be gone, sister,” he replied, sheathing his blade and running the bow back into the case slung across his back.
From across the hollow he heard a high shriek—very hawk-like, in fact, shouting triumphantly:
“The Sky-Blue Wolves are in the fold!”
And a thunder of hooves, as the two Hawks who’d been left with the mounts brought them forward at the gallop despite the darkness and the uncertain footing. The flood of horses poured down the slope opposite, a moving carpet of darkness in the night. They parted around the Miqačin campfire, red catching on tossing manes and rolling eyes, trampling the fallen under-hoof, and as they went smaller figures ran by them and caught the pommels, bouncing into the saddles and lying forward along the horse’s necks.
“What do you say about Börte’s Hens now, hundred-captain Gansükh?” his sister shouted through the darkness and chaos.
“That the Hawks ride like leopards, Princess!” the man called back, and you could hear the grin in his voice.
Dzhambul whistled sharply; his mount veered towards him, stumbled on something—a rock, a man, who knew?—recovered and half-reared above him. He leapt, grabbed the saddle and swung up, clamping it with his knees and then sliding down into the leather embrace, yelling like the boy who’d played this game amid the ruins on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar.
A scatter of man-eaters were ahead of them down the slope, running towards the narrow dirt road that cut into the side of the hill. Dzhambul whistled signals, and the Mongols fell into a column of twos, which was all that the track would take. There wasn’t time to be afraid, but he could feel the loom of the hillside to the right, ever steeper, and the slope to the left was a chasm now that went . . . somewhere, but he couldn’t see it.
That was what he’d been waiting for. He leaned forward, and the horse—who had spent as much of his life being ridden as Dzhambul had spent in the saddle—lengthened its pace, albeit with a snort of disbelief at the risks he was making it take. The man-eater running ahead of him gave a weak breathless scream as he tried to run faster, and then a much louder one as Dzhambul freed his left foot from the stirrup and kicked out. The scream fell as the Miqačin arched out into emptiness for ten delem and then struck the stony slope, presumably bouncing and rolling down it, though it was mainly the clatter of rock that told him so.
Behind him two more of the man-eaters threw themselves down and covered their heads with their arms. They screamed too . . . briefly.
“Thank you, Ataya Tengri, who gives me a hor
se to ride with my thighs, who walls away servants of dark Erlik-Khan who seek to destroy me,” he murmured, as he drew aside where the track flattened out.
The riders weren’t making much noise, it was too dark to really see their faces, no talking, but he could feel their cheerfulness. The little engagement hadn’t taken more than ten minutes, counting knifing the two sentries, and had been a demonstration of how surprise gave each one the strength of twenty.
Börte drew up beside him and so did Gansükh, when they reached a lower spot where the ground opened up.
“My apologies, Princess,” the zuun-commander said. “That worked perfectly! The Ancestor could not have done it better when he was a youngster hunted by his enemies!”
Then he stopped, not seeing their faces but able to tell that their helmeted heads were turned towards him.
“What?” he said. “What?”
“Hundred-commander,” Börte said. “What direction are we moving?”
“Why, south . . . oh.”
“Oh,” Börte said, loading much meaning into the little sound, including but not limited to you idiot.
That’s a little unfair, Dzhambul thought. Gansükh is excellent at tactics. Strategy is not his strong point, though. And we’re all short of sleep and food. That makes your mind stiff, focused on what is right in front of you.
“We’ve been dodging the traps the enemy lay,” he said aloud instead. “But they’re still keeping us from breaking through northward.”
Gansükh had a frown in his voice when he spoke. “Yes, Noyon. That means they are devoting a good deal of manpower to this . . . to us, specifically, not to other bands from our force.”
“Kangshinmu,” Börte said.
Dzhambul and Gansükh both stiffened at the name of the enemy’s sorcerer-lords.
“They can still feel us, I think, even if they are weakened. I do not know why they are concentrating on my brother and me, but they are.”
“We are doing our people a service by distracting this many troops,” Dzhambul said. “Though I wish we had a shaman with us.”
“I wish we had ten shamans and five tümens of the Kha-Khan’s Kheshig guard,” Gansükh said.
“Why not wish for twenty tümens, while you’re at it?” Börte asked.
“Not enough grazing here for the horses of two hundred thousand men,” Gansükh said, his voice matter-of-fact.
They all chuckled at the joke; which would be heartening for their followers.
Dzhambul thought for a moment. “If they’re trying to herd us south, to break contact we should go south—fast, instead of trying to loop back every time they push at us,” he said. “Once we have lost them, we have options. They cannot have big armies everywhere and they cannot put screens across the whole country—or even the parts of it that are not mountains.”
His eyes sought his sister, but it was too dark. . . . Still Gansükh’s head swung towards him as he said, “So, the extra part of our mission . . .”
Börte nodded. “We are heading that way after all, without even trying.”
He called up the map of the territory in his mind. “We will head for this Pusan place.”
CHAPTER TEN
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
(FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JANUARY 22ND
CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD
Órlaith forced herself not to snarl. Being called back was doing that. The fact that Tiphaine d’Ath was smiling at her didn’t help; it was a thin, knowing smile of the type her elders gave her when they were educating her inexperience.
You have to put up with it, she thought. I am . . . or was . . . inexperienced.
It was even more irritating that the Grand Marshal would know that she was thinking that. Being around someone who’d known you from babyhood was like that, especially if they’d spent a lot of time teaching you. Tiphaine d’Ath had been one of her instructors in the sword and the arts of war, from how to sneak through the dark on your own to how to move heavy cavalry units at speed over rough country.
Remember, you like Tiph. She’s not what most people would call likeable, but you do like her—you always have.
“Frustrating not to be able to charge in with the Sword and settle it all with one big decisive battle, isn’t it?” the Grand Marshal said. “Your Highness.”
They were in a tower of the great fort that guarded Astoria and the Columbia mouth, built at the southern end of the pre-Change bridge and incorporated into the outer defensive wall of the city. It had been erected by the first Lord Protector, then mostly handed over to the Chartered City for its militia headquarters after the Protector’s War during Lady Sandra’s reign as Regent for Mathilda, then to the Royal Navy after the founding of Montival. All three forces still used it and others were present on a smaller scale.
This room right under the steep witches-hat tile roof looked out northwest over the tidal estuary of the Columbia, and the docks and shipyards beyond. The wind found crevices, and carried the silt-salt smell of where the river met the sea, a hint of green spice from the forests, and always the woodsmoke and forge-smoke of the town.
It was an unusually clear day for this time of year, with blue sky and fleecy clouds, but chill. The gray-green water of the estuary was beaten into low endless ruffles of whitecaps by the onshore breeze, over which ships beat tediously, tacking back and forth into the wind to make enough westing and run free into the ocean, up and down the coast. The glass windows between the crenellations—they could be quickly removed and replaced by heavy shutters—gave plenty of light, but it was cold enough that she was glad of her tight green Montero coat of fine wool and good drawers under her kilt.
“My father did like that decisive-battle approach, Lady d’Ath,” Órlaith said; there were aids and staff officers present, which imposed a certain degree of formality. “To get things over with as fast as possible.”
“Like shit he did,” Tiphaine said, ignoring a few shocked gasps from her underlings. “The Prophet’s War lasted years, and for a lot of that we were avoiding battle because they’d have beaten the crap out of us. They did, a couple of times.”
Órlaith looked at the tables and map-easels. She’d assimilated the information they contained very quickly . . . but then, she bore the Sword. Having the numbers at your fingertips was no substitute for judgment, though, and she knew she was feeling annoyed, which made considered thought harder.
“I think we’ve covered the logistics and planning?” she said. “It’s not too complex; more troops are better versus how many can we ship, equip and feed?”
“And strategy is need-to-know,” d’Ath agreed, and made a gesture.
Her subordinates gathered up the files they’d been presenting from and filed out down the curving stairwell in obedient silence save for the sound of boots on pavement and the occasional click of a metal sword-chape on stone. There was a rap of glaive-butts as the sentries below saluted the officers, and then a distant murmur of voices as they began discussing what they’d just seen—a castle was as gossipy as a village.
That left Heuradys standing behind Órlaith’s chair with her left hand on the hilt of her longsword and her right resting on her belt, but the Crown Princess more or less had to have an attendant . . . and Heuradys was Lady d’Ath’s adoptive daughter, after all.
When the other subordinates were gone the Grand Marshal went on: “Even the Quest of the Sunrise Lands lasted nearly two years. And while your daddy was off traveling across the continent, getting Iowa on our side and doing derring-do among the moose-eaters of Maine . . . pardon me, Norrheim . . . and fighting Moorish pirates and Bekwa and getting your enchanted snickersnee there, and finally returning . . . the rest of us were fighting all the time, defensive battles, raids, guerilla operations, retreating, standing
sieges, hanging on by our fingernails, so he’d have something to come back to when he arrived to save the day.”
“Which he did, at the big decisive battle of the Horse Heaven Hills.”
D’Ath grinned, always a little shocking. She’d gotten gaunter in the face over the last decade; you’d always been able to see the skull beneath it, and now it was more obvious, though it was a handsome skull.
“By which point the Prophet’s men were within spitting distance of the sea and cutting us in two, after having started east of the Rockies. I was there, Princess, as Grand Constable of the Association, while you were a fetus. I saw Rudi fight an entire campaign over months to set up the Battle of the Horse Heaven Hills, incidentally that was a really nice piece of work . . . and while he and your mother and Sandra and Juniper and Ignatius did the politics and alliances . . . which was just as good, in a field I don’t follow as well . . . and then we had years more effort to root out Corwin and the Church Universal and Triumphant’s diehards hiding in the hills . . . there are still probably a few of them up there, living on camas roots and sleeping with bears. It was only really over about the time you were learning to walk.”
That’s all true, Órlaith thought; now she fought not to sigh.
Heuradys did sigh, very slightly, but then she’d probably been listening to the Wise Strategist even more than Órlaith had over the years.
“By the Lord and Lady, Tiph, all right, it’s going to be a long war. I said so myself, didn’t I? But you’re handling all this”—she gestured to the piles of reports—“perfectly competently on your own. I didn’t have to come back to be told what I already know, or to watch you do staff work I know you’ll handle as well as anyone could. It’s weeks across the Pacific even in a fast lightly-laden ship.”
The Sky-Blue Wolves Page 17