02 The Invaders (19 page)

Her hair and features were the despair of other girls. While they spent hours before their looking glasses, combing, teasing and applying lotions and scented oils, she simply brushed her lustrous black hair and tied it back with a black ribbon. And where they felt the need to apply shading and coloring around their eyes, hers were clear hazel and slightly uptilted. Her grandfather often mused that somewhere in her distant ancestry, a Temujai raider had bequeathed her those eyes. Her cheekbones were high—further indication of that long-ago Temujai—and her skin was unblemished.

In all, she was a strikingly beautiful girl, although she was totally unaware of the fact. Her grandfather, Tomas, often told her so, of course. But she shrugged that aside. All grandfathers thought their granddaughters were beautiful. Or at least, they told them so.

The deer, its fears allayed for the moment, lowered its head to the grass and began to graze in earnest. Moving with infinite care, Lydia fitted the dart she had been carrying into her atlatl, the throwing stick that gave extra force and speed to her casts.

She had chosen the atlatl and its long, arrowlike darts as her hunting weapon after long consideration. Most of the boys in Limmat used bows. But boys tended to be heavier built and more heavily muscled, and Lydia couldn’t match their sheer strength. So a bow with a heavy draw weight was beyond her capabilities. She could, of course, have opted for a lower-powered bow, but somehow the idea of using an inferior weapon didn’t appeal. Instead, she had chosen the atlatl, a weapon that would reinforce her own natural ability to throw a projectile.

Once she had selected the weapon, she had set about mastering it with her usual single-mindedness of purpose, practicing for hour after hour until she could hurl a dart with either hand and with
surprising force and accuracy. The throwing stick was some forty centimeters long. A small, hook-shaped spur at one end fitted into a corresponding notch in the rear of the darts. When she cast the dart, the atlatl acted as a lever, multiplying the force of the throw many times over.

The darts were sixty centimeters in length, with feathered flights at the end like an arrow’s, but slightly offset to make them spin in flight. The tips were razor-sharp iron, again like an arrow’s. She had ten such darts in the quiver on her back, which was padded with sheepskin to hold the darts firmly in place so they wouldn’t rattle and signal her position to her quarry. When hunting, she always carried an eleventh dart in her left hand, avoiding the need for unnecessary movement, with its potential for noise, in drawing a dart from the quiver.

She stepped smoothly out from behind the tree. Speed was essential now, as the deer would probably sense any movement. Sure enough, as her right arm went back, the deer raised its head.

She saw the muscles in its haunches tighten as it prepared to bound away, then she brought the atlatl forward, accelerating smoothly as she threw, and stepping into the cast to put her body weight behind it.

She could hit a rabbit at sixty meters. A half-grown deer at twenty-five was child’s play. The dart flashed across the clearing and, even as the deer began to turn and flee, the projectile thudded into its left-hand side, behind and above the foreleg, and penetrated to its heart, killing it instantly.

The deer’s legs folded up and it collapsed to the grass.

Lydia was already a few paces across the clearing as it fell. She had known when she had cast the dart that it was a good throw.
The deer lay on its side, eyes open but unseeing. One leg trembled violently in a nervous reaction, but she knew it was already dead as she knelt beside it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It was the automatic reaction of the true hunter. She had killed the deer for its meat, not for so-called sport, and not out of any form of sadistic pleasure. She regretted that the deer had to die but, at the same time, recognized the necessity.

She carefully withdrew the dart from the deer’s side. The small amount of blood that flowed from the wound showed the heart had stopped pumping. She wiped the shaft clean with a handful of grass, then placed the dart in her quiver. Laying the atlatl to one side, she reached for the small skinning knife that hung from the right-hand side of her belt. It was balanced on the left side by a long, heavy-bladed dirk. If the animal had not been dead, she would have used this for a swift, merciful slash across the throat.

She rolled the deer onto its back and prepared to make the first careful incision, prior to gutting it.

Then she stopped, sniffing the air.

She could smell smoke. That was never a welcome sensation when one was deep in the forest, among thousands of resin-laden pines that would flare up like so many torches if a fire swept through. Nervously, she scanned the trees around her. She could see no sign of a fire, but the smell was stronger now and the wind was blowing from the direction of Limmat town itself. Frowning, she rose to her feet, slipping the atlatl into its sheath beside the skinning knife, and left the deer carcass where it lay, taking long strides up a small incline to her left, to a ridge that she knew led to clear ground, overlooking the town below.

Now she could see a column of smoke rising beyond the trees.
The fire was definitely coming from the town. And now there was something else. Faint, almost inaudible, but carried to her on the breeze. Voices. Shouting voices.

Well, shouting was logical if there were a fire, she thought. And from the growing density of that smoke column, there was definitely a fire. Then she heard voices raised in a higher note. There were people screaming. Women screaming.

She topped the ridge and looked down. Below the steep drop, the town of Limmat, with its harbor and its palisade, spread out below her. The fire drew her attention first. It focused on the garrison building on the inner end of the quay. The building was burning fiercely, and several smaller buildings close by—houses and shops—had caught fire as well. Smoke and flames poured from them.

But nobody seemed to be trying to bring the fires under control. As she looked, she saw men running along the quay, spreading out into the streets that led to the inner town. She saw sunlight flashing on weapons and her heart jolted with fear. The people of Limmat lived with the worry that the secret of the emerald mine, just outside the palisade, in the face of the ridge that rose steeply behind the town, would one day be discovered. When that day came, invaders and pirates would not be far behind it.

And it seemed that the day had indeed arrived.

Casting her glance wider, she saw a foreign ship in the harbor—a long, lean black ship that was tied to the inner wharf. Looking back to the watchtowers and the boom, she made out a smaller ship, moored at the point where the boom should close. And another warship, this one dark green, was beached at the inland end of the harbor.

“Pirates,” she muttered to herself. Then, suddenly fearful, she looked toward the section of town where her grandfather’s house stood. For a moment, she could see nothing. The narrow streets restricted her view of what was going on. Then she made out figures running and saw weapons rising and falling. The invaders had reached the part of town where she lived. Several smaller fires began to spring up. One of them looked to be ominously close to the street where Tomas’s house stood. But she couldn’t be sure. From this angle, the streets were too narrow and too jumbled together.

One thing she did know. If the attackers had penetrated that far into the town, her grandfather would be one of the first to run into the street to try to drive them back. But he was an older man now, and the speed and power that he’d enjoyed years ago had left him. He’d be no match for a young, fit, blood-crazed pirate.

She had to get down the ridge and help him.

She hesitated. The drop directly before her was too steep to negotiate. There was a path running down to the town, winding back and forth down the steep hill. But it was several hundred meters away, to the east.

There was no time to lose. She set out, running smoothly along the ridge, her long, even strides eating up the distance to the point where the path began its downward route. The beginning of the path was a shadowy entryway between the trees and she barely checked her pace as she plunged into it and began the long, twisting way down.

She stumbled once, barely managing to stop from falling and ending up hard against a pine. She realized that too much speed was counterproductive. If she fell and injured herself on the path,
she’d be no use to her grandfather. She slowed her pace to a jog, chafing at the necessity to do so, but knowing that it must be done.

Branches whipped at her face as she continued down. In places, the path was barely wider than her shoulders and secondary growth and creepers grew across it, clutching at her and trying to slow her descent. But she forced her way through, her mind’s eye picturing the horrifying sight of her grandfather slowly sinking to his knees beneath a pirate’s sword, blood welling from between his fingers as he tried to close a massive wound in his body.

Stop, she said to herself. That kind of thinking won’t help Tomas. She sped up again. Fell, rolled, picked herself up, continued, the image still horribly clear in her mind.

At last, the path was widening and the slope was decreasing. She burst into the clear at the foot of the hill and paused to gain her bearings.

The palisade was directly ahead of her. To her right, about three hundred meters away, was a secondary gate. The main gate, which led out onto the beach, was farther away. But it was in the direction of Tomas’s house. So, after a moment’s hesitation she turned left and began to run again.

The noise of fighting inside the town was much louder now, interspersed with screams that could only have come from women. She lengthened her stride.

Then, behind her, she heard a shout.

She turned. There was a group of half a dozen men running toward her. She had time to register the bandannas around their heads, the heavy boots and the curved swords and small, round metal shields.

Magyarans, she thought. Pirates. And they’d seen her. She started running again, blindly, with no idea where she might go to escape. The pirates were behind her. And there were more of them in the town ahead.

Something hit the ground to one side and she started violently. It was a spear, thrown by one of the men chasing her. They had obviously gained on her when she looked back, slowing her pace. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of stopping and sending three or four atlatl shafts hurtling at them. But three or four darts wouldn’t stop them all. And she’d be overwhelmed and taken.

The shouting redoubled and she increased her pace, trying to draw away from her pursuers. But a quick glance to her right told her they weren’t shouting at her, but to their comrades, on the palisade surrounding the town. She could see heads and shoulders there, and weapons being brandished.

Then something snaked over the wall and dropped to the ground. A rope.

Almost immediately, one of the pirates on the palisade walkway heaved himself over the edge and began to scramble down the rope to the ground outside. A second followed, and a third. They were trained seamen and they moved down the rope skillfully, running toward her to cut her off as soon as their feet touched the ground.

She angled away to the left, her heart pounding, her mind racing. She had no idea where to go, how to escape. All thought of reaching her grandfather’s house had gone now. She was hopelessly cut off from that direction.

She plunged into the trees again and, forcing her mind to function,
realized that she was heading for a narrow creek some fifty meters ahead of her. It would effectively bar her way, leaving her as easy prey for the men pursuing her.

Unless!

She remembered that Benji, a boy with whom she had a nodding acquaintance, sometimes left his fishing skiff drawn upon a tiny beach somewhere along this creek.

But where? Where was she now, and where did the small sandy beach lie in relation to her current position? She wasn’t sure, but her innate sense of direction and hunter’s instinct told her to the right. She angled that way, hoping beyond all hope that the skiff would be there. The creek was suddenly ahead of her, and she went right again, paralleling its banks. Behind her, she heard shouts and the sound of heavy bodies crashing through the undergrowth. Sobbing now with exertion, and doubled over with an agonizing stitch in her side, she blundered along the creek bank, her eyes searching the bushes and trees ahead of her.

There it was!

A small skiff, barely three and a half meters long. But heavily built of pine planking. It was drawn up well clear of the water, above the point where the high tide would reach. Her heart sank as she saw the distance she would have to move it to get it into the water.

She staggered breathlessly onto the beach and hurled herself at the boat, shoving and heaving with all her strength to move it. She might as well have tried to move a tree. The boat remained still.

Then she realized that she should pull it to the water, lifting the blunt stern to clear the sand so that it would move. She ran to
the other end, seized hold, lifted and pulled. The boat slid half a meter before she was forced to let it drop.

Again, she lifted and heaved, this time maintaining the effort until the boat had moved a full meter and a half before she had to drop it once more.

The voices and the sound of running feet were closer now. Terror gave her extra strength. Sobbing with effort and fear, she lifted and heaved, staggering four paces, five, six, with the boat sliding behind her, moving more easily as she reached the firm sand below the tidemark.

Perspiration flowed into her eyes, stinging them and blinding her. She set the boat down. Lifted and heaved again, felt water around her ankles and realized she’d reached the creek. Now the boat began to slide more easily as the water took the weight from her. She slid it out into the creek, into knee-deep water, as the first of the pirates came blundering through the trees, barely ten meters away. He saw her and stopped, turning to shout to his companions.