Western Shore ac-3

by Juliet E. McKenna

  'We must give these people a chance to surrender.' Jaw jutting obstinately, Naldeth waved a hand at the cowering cave dwellers. 'These spearmen will have to accept it, when they see that we do.'

  'You'll risk their lives on that?' Kheda didn't hide his scepticism. 'When you've no way of explaining yourself?'

  'Would you rather see their heads smashed in and be done with them?' retorted Naldeth.

  Kheda did his best to curb his anger. 'This is warfare, Naldeth. It's ugly and cruel and relentless.'

  'It doesn't have to be,' the wizard spat back.

  'No, it doesn't, but it generally is in my experience,' snapped Kheda. 'And whatever we're going to do, we had best do it quickly. More on both sides will certainly die if that tree-dwellers' mage gets wind of our attack and whistles up his dragon while you're trying to find some compromise here to salve your conscience.'

  'Kheda, some of these people have broken arms and legs and other wounds you could tend.' Risala spoke up before Naldeth could respond. 'If you want to convince everyone that you don't mean death for the cave dwellers, help them.'

  'While we curb any of our allies who look inclined to dispute the point.' Velindre surveyed the village spearmen. Some were watching the cowering cave dwellers with unnerving intensity, weapons ready in their hands.

  'What do you think will happen if you stop them when they've set their minds to killing these people?' Kheda didn't give either wizard a chance to respond.l No question you could do it, but I very much doubt that any of these spearmen will follow you afterwards.

  Another lesson every warlords learns early is that a leader only commands as long as his men agree to obey. Do you want any spearmen backing you when we reach the tree-dwellers' valley? Or don't you think you need them?'

  'Whether or not they come with us, I won't permit any more deaths than are absolutely unavoidable,' Naldeth said stubbornly.

  Kheda saw the same obstinacy on both mages' faces.

  How gratifying it must be to be master of powers that allow you the luxury of such magnanimity. Don't you understand that the rest of us never have such choices? But you're not going to give way on this and the longer I argue with you, the more time that gives some straggler to get word to that bead-cloaked wizard.

  'I'll do what I can for the injured but only as long as our people are collecting spent arrows,' Kheda said brusquely. 'Then we move on the tree dwellers.'

  Risala was looking at the cave mouths still blocked by the screes of broken stone. She rounded angrily on the youthful mage. 'How long are you going to leave those wretches walled up alive, Naldeth?'

  Kheda saw the village spearmen gathering in knots beneath the trees, their low conversations indecisive, a slow stirring of irritation among some. 'Let your captives loose while I see if any of our allies are wounded. We won't win any friends by tending the enemy first.' He surveyed the wild warriors. To his surprise, while some had been painfully bruised by slingstones and hurled sticks, none had suffered any incapacitating injury.

  / suppose that's something else we can thank Naldeth and Velindre for.

  'Break down your walls, Naldeth, but don't give them room to come out more than one at a time.' Velindre

  smiled dangerously at the closest wild warriors. 'That should discourage anyone feeling overbold. If they don't attack, our allies should be less inclined to fight. I'll keep any hotheads in check.'

  'I can bind broken bones.' Kheda bent to pick up a fallen arrow with brindled fletching and handed it to Risala. 'If I can find trees like those ones we saw back over the river, with the resinous bark.'

  'That'll be better than nothing.' She waved the missile at the closest village spearman with a bow. The man came forward, his face uncertain. Risala thrust the arrow firmly into the quiver at his side and pointed to the ground. The would-be archer nodded obediently and began searching for more arrows.

  'Get on with it, Naldeth.' Kheda drew his dagger and headed for the nearest tree. All around, the newly fledged bowmen joined in scavenging arrows to replenish their quivers. Spearmen went to recover their own thrown weapons, clubs at the ready. More than one sneered belligerently at the cringing cave dwellers, offering threatening gestures.

  We have to get away from here before this whole enterprise dissolves into chaos.

  Kheda kept half an eye on Risala as he stripped long lengths of bark from a dappled tree with his dagger, pleased to feel the stickiness of the sap. In between strokes, he tried to identify those cave dwellers who had obviously broken bones. Some were hugging the discomfort of cracked ribs and many bore cuts and bruises that could be hiding lesser fractures or more insidious injuries. Most sat apathetic, blank-eyed with shock.

  Naldeth gestured towards the choked cave mouths and the rubble began trickling away. The warriors recovering their arrows and spears paused to watch the slithering stones apprehensively. The heads of imprisoned cave

  dwellers appeared as the barrier sank to waist height and then the steady flow of stones stopped.

  'They can't come rushing out if they've got to negotiate that,' Naldeth said with satisfaction.

  Risala straightened up, holding an arrow. 'They don't seem too keen to come out.'

  The village spearmen began shouting, challenging, harsh and peremptory. The first of the cave dwellers climbed warily over the broken rock. The dust and sweat coating them made them much the same colour as their clay-smeared attackers. Their faces betrayed wretched fear, and seeing fallen friends or kinsmen, some began weeping. Injured defenders who'd been lying mute thus far couldn't help but succumb to their own misery and pain.

  'Let's see if anyone can understand that we'd prefer to see mercy for the defeated.' Holding curling swathes of the sticky bark, Kheda headed for a youth sitting hunched over a forearm where both bones were plainly snapped. Kheda looked at Risala and grimaced. 'Of course, they may just think we're torturing him for our own amusement. I've no way of letting him know I mean no harm, nor anything to take the edge off his pain.'

  The youth flinched and hunched down as Risala gripped his narrow shoulders tightly. 'Better this than leaving him in agony and with an arm that'll mend all crooked.'

  Kheda took hold of the boy's upper arm, careful to support his wrist with his other hand. 'Naldeth, I need you too.'

  'You want me to try mending those bones?' The wizard approached, looking unsure of himself. 'I didn't mind trying that dragon's magic to make those needles but I'm not at all sure about experimenting on a living person—'

  'Just take the weight of his arm while I get the edges of the bones back in line,' said Kheda briefly.

  The warlord set the broken limb with practised mercilessness. The boy's raw scream silenced every cave dweller's whimper as well as the belligerence of the village spearmen. Kheda concentrated on winding a length of the sappy bark around the break and up and down the fainting boy's forearm. He drew his dagger once again to slice a thin, fibrous length to serve as a tie and rubbed the back of his hand over his own dry lips. 'Risala, can you tell Velindre he needs some water please?'

  'They've worked that much out for themselves.' She pointed towards the cave-dweller women now emerging from the lowest caverns carrying dripping gourds filled from some underground cistern.

  'Some for the rest of us wouldn't go amiss.' Naldeth had been absently winding a strip of bark around his hands. He looked down, surprised to find he had all but manacled himself as the resin rapidly dried.

  'Pick five more wounded for me to help before we move on.' Kheda noted that the village spearmen had recovered all the weapons still worth having and no intact arrows remained on the ground.

  The mage stared at him. 'Why do I have to choose?'

  'Because you decided this fight would end this way.' Kheda stared at him, unblinking.

  'Then start with her.' Naldeth pointed to a woman huddled beside a fallen boulder, one ankle grotesquely swollen. The youthful mage nodded more resolutely. 'We can come back here once we've recovered the Zaise. You can br
ing your physic chest.'

  'And empty all my pots of salves before I'd treated half these abrasions, with no means of refilling them?' Kheda took no pleasure in rebuking the wizard. 'What do I do if you're injured? Or Risala? Or Velindre?' He knelt to probe the woman's ankle with careful fingers, trying to determine if any bones were broken.

  Hearing a stir among the warriors in the shadows, he looked up to see Velindre hurrying towards them, visibly concerned. 'There's something—'

  Kheda abandoned the woman's foot to stand up and search the trees. 'Is it the tree dwellers? The dragon?'

  The village spearmen were spreading out, turning their backs on the cave dwellers as they raised their bows and clubs. A piercing cry rang through the forest and echoed back from the rock face. The cave dwellers murmured with new dismay.

  'Those murderous birds have caught the scent of fresh blood.' Risala plucked a white-fletched arrow from her quiver.

  Kheda saw the village spearmen disappearing into the trees. 'We have to go after them. If they get away from us, hunting or hunted, we'll never bring them back together to attack the tree-dwellers' valley.'

  'I'm staying here,' Velindre said abruptly. 'There's something else in those woods. I wasn't talking about those birds. There's something wound around with elemental magic and quite close by. You don't want to leave that behind you any more than some enemy force.'

  Risala looked around at the wretched cave dwellers. 'You can make sure none of these people come after us, out for revenge?'

  Kheda looked at Naldeth and then at the magewoman. 'Is he up to defying that mage in the beaded cloak on his own?'

  'What will you do when that dragon appears?' Risala demanded of the young wizard.

  'Everything I did last time and more,' Naldeth snapped.

  'You had better, or we're all dead.' Kheda nodded. 'Stay close to me.'

  They hurried to catch up with the last of the village

  warriors slipping through the trees. Kheda searched for familiar faces. It was more difficult than ever to recognise individuals with the clay-tainted grease obscuring their features. As they left the clearing around the rocky outcrop behind, squawks erupted deeper in the forest. The killer birds' cries soon changed from aggression to panic and the village spearmen's shouts proclaimed successes.

  'Do you suppose there are any tree dwellers hunting in these woods and hearing all this commotion?' Risala muttered savagely.

  'Can their mages scry?' Kheda wondered.

  'I've no idea.' Naldeth's metal foot stumbled on the uneven ground.

  A spearman came hurrying towards them and Kheda recognised the stooped hunter by his twisted back. He grinned widely, waving a bloody blue wing. Kheda smiled back at the same time as pointing urgently in the direction of the tree-dwellers' valley with his sword. The spearman nodded with ready understanding and tossed the bird's wing at Naldeth before using his fingers and mouth somehow to send a piercing whistle through the forest. Similar signals answered him and Kheda's immediate fears receded as the fighting force re-formed. The savages were scooping up handfuls of leaf mould to smear on their arms and legs. Now their skins merged into the forest floor with its dappling of sun and shadow.

  'What am I supposed to do with this?' Naldeth turned the bird's wing over, perplexed.

  'I don't know.' Kheda ground dirt into his grubby tunic. His trousers couldn't be more soiled.

  Risala was doing the same. 'Better not throw it away. We don't want to insult anyone.'

  'I'm not about to stick the feathers in my hair.' Naldeth's attempt at a jest was half-hearted.

  'Come on.' Kheda dismissed the irrelevance, turning all

  his attention to the trees ahead. He caught glimpses of heads, a back, an arm holding a spear aloft to better negotiate a patch of tortuous undergrowth. The village spearmen were moving faster through the dappled grey trees than they had raced over the grassy plains.

  They don't need me to tell them we need every advantage of speed and surprise to stand a chance against the tree dwellers.

  Kheda looked over his shoulder at Naldeth. 'As soon as you see their wizard, do whatever you can to stifle his magic or kill him outright.' He noticed that the wizard's face was a tense mask of determination and discomfort. 'Is your leg—'

  Naldeth cut him off with a gesture. 'I'll manage.'

  'I'll stay close to him.' Risala spared Kheda a brief smile before focusing intently on the forest ahead. She held her bow and quiver close to her body. 'I'll put a shaft into that wizard if I get the chance. The ones we fought with Dev were as vulnerable to an arrow in the belly as anyone else.'

  'I remember.' Kheda didn't waste any more time on talk, pushing on over the undulating ground as fast as he felt Naldeth could manage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Naldeth's best speed was still barely sufficient to keep them from dropping behind the wild men. The village warriors were increasingly avid to join this new battle. Trying to find the sun whenever the meagre canopy of nut-tree branches grew thin over stretches of rocky earth, Kheda judged they were heading very nearly due west. He did his best to gauge their progress through the unfamiliar terrain but was still taken by surprise when the ground rose up and he saw the spearmen slipping over the crest of high ground that marked the eastern side of the tree-dwellers' dry valley. As they crouched to avoid being skylined, the tall trees with their dense, dark leaves barred their way down the slope, obscuring their view of the western bank.

  Does this dry stream bed mark some boundary between the cave dwellers behind us and these people who owe fealty to the cloaked wizard and his black dragon?

  Kheda looked northwards upstream and then down and saw the scarred spearman and the stooped hunter doing the same. Their eyes met and they nodded agreement. The warlord turned to Risala and Naldeth as the scarred spearman gave brisk orders to the village warriors.

  'We'll make for that.' Kheda pointed upstream to a break in the tall buttressed trees. As they drew closer, he saw that some calamity had ripped through the forest, tossing the mighty trunks down the slope like twigs to leave a broad swathe of broken ground running down to the dry stream bed.

  The village warriors gathered in the shade of the forest edging the destruction. On the western bank the tree-dwellers' broad fire pit smoked untended. The dry stream bed was entirely devoid of life. So was the sky. The scarred spearman slid beside Kheda and pointed to movement up among the platforms and shelters that clung to the trees on the far side of the stream and in the shadows around the thick boles.

  'Where's their wizard?' Kheda asked Naldeth, not taking his eyes off the settlement. 'Where's that black beast of a dragon?'

  'They got wind of our approach.' Risala shrugged that off. 'Do you think any of them will be circling around to attack us from behind?'

  Kheda glanced over his shoulder to see the stooped hunter turning a reassuring number of spearmen and a few archers to look for just such a threat. Then he was startled by raucous shouts from their wild allies. A group of village spearmen advanced to stand at the top of the bare, broken slope, waving their spears and yelling defiance. The rest waited hidden, braced and ready. The scarred spearman grinned at Kheda.

  Naldeth frowned. 'Those tree dwellers would be fools to launch any assault up this slope.'

  'And our spearmen can't run into battle from here.' Risala was equally puzzled. 'They'll exhaust themselves crossing the stream bed before they get there.'

  'I've no idea what they're thinking.' Kheda gave voice to his frustration. 'How am I supposed to be a warlord when I can't even talk to the men I'm sending into battle?'

  'Don't worry.' The mage stared intently across the narrow valley. 'This is my battle.'

  Risala carefully drew a white-fletched arrow from her quiver. 'Where is he?'

  Fresh shouts from the village spearmen drowned out

  her words. Their tone turned from hostile to mocking. Some among the tree dwellers weren't proof against such taunting. A handful advanced from the dar
kness beneath the mighty trunks to wave their own spears and yell scathing retorts. This simply spurred the wild men on the ridge to new derision. A flash of colour startled Kheda, then another. The village wild men were hurling the wings they had hacked from the murderous birds down the slope, to lie dulled with dust on the dry stream bed's margin.

  'What does that signify?' Risala was mystified.

  Kheda slowly shook his head. 'They don't like it. Look.'

  More tree dwellers advanced into the open, adding their angry shouts to the commotion echoing back and forth across the dry valley. Those village warriors armed with bows launched a storm of salvaged arrows into the sky. Tree dwellers looked up vacantly, wondering what the hissing rain might be.

  'So they did understand me,' Kheda said with bitter relief.

  Most of the tree dwellers had the wit to scurry backwards for the shelter of the trees. Those too slow fell screaming with wounds to arms and legs. A few thrashed in agony in the sandy stream bed as shafts driven deep into their bodies or faces were the death of them. The village spearmen roared, exultant, and the newly fledged archers launched a second flight of arrows. This time a cloud of dust sprang up from the dry stream bed to stop the missiles, weighing them down with dirt that matted their tousled fletching.

  'Where is he?' Naldeth scoured the far bank for the wizard in the beaded cloak.

  'Is the dragon anywhere close?' Risala was searching the rocks and shadows.

  Kheda took an envenomed arrow and carefully nocked it on his bowstring.

  'Leave their wizard to me.' Naldeth's bloodshot eyes were calm as he gazed over the valley.

  'They are coming out to fight.' Risala readied her own bow as the clouds of sand in the stream bed subsided to show the tree dwellers rapidly advancing, shaking their spears and shouting with new boldness. The wild bowmen launched another cascade of arrows, thinner this time. Too many had already emptied their quivers. A curtain of dust swirled up just ahead of the advancing tree dwellers and the arrows slid down it, their threat blunted. By contrast, the tree-dwellers' slingstones shot straight and true through the haze and struck several village spearmen, prompting cries of pain.