Bazil Broketail (41 page)

Besita climbed back into the saddle to get a better view. She saw a small group of riders heading up the canyon pursued by about fifty or sixty of the younger Baguti men.

Thrembode had followed her example. He was nervous, casting around them for any threat. The witch was at work here; he could almost feel her presence, a formless threat just beyond immediate perception.

“What are they doing?” said Besita.

Thrembode wasn’t sure.

“They’ve dismounted,” said Rakantz. “There’s some kind of fortification there at the mouth of one of those canyons.”

Thrembode pulled out a spyglass, but he found it hard to keep it trained on the distant scene while he sat astride a horse made skittish by all the chaos. Eventually he got down and scrambled up onto the nearby rocks. From there he could see reasonably well.

Across the mouth of a side canyon the fools had built a wall of rocks. The Baguti were attempting to assault this wall in groups of ten or twenty at a time, rushing in and climbing up to be met by a solid line of men with bright steel in their hands. Thrembode watched seven Baguti braves fall to the Argonath blades.

Then more warriors rode into view. Thrembode pulled the glass aside. A stream of horsemen was heading up the canyon to the site of the small battle.

“Now they’re all going up there,” he exclaimed. “Would you believe it? They’ve no more wit than their horses.”

As Thrembode watched helplessly, the Baguti rode up to the mouth of the side canyon, dismounted and formed up into a huge mob that ringed the wall. Then they rushed the wall, fought their way up it, and went belly to belly with the defenders.

Thrembode was appalled. At least a dozen men died in the first charge, and now he saw blades rising and falling and men staggering and going down.

“They are the most incredible pigs!” he exclaimed. “Look at them going to the slaughter there!”

The whole thing seemed too stupid to be possible. Why were the men of Argonath bringing down the whole Baguti force upon themselves? Why were the Baguti throwing away their lives in this impetuous attack?

Thrembode’s skin crawled. The witch; she was out there somewhere, this was part of some dreadful scheme of hers. The hairs on the nape of his neck were rising. The sense of her presence was hanging like a mist around them.

He examined the surroundings. Horses still milled in dense confusion, penned in by the river’s edge. A solid mass of wagons was grouped in the center with dozens of women at work moving and maneuvering horses, oxen and the long lines of slaves, mostly hapless Teetol villagers. Whips cracked while the harsh voices of the Baguti women began to bring some order out of the chaos.

Still the witch was up to something. Thrembode looked back to the fight at the wall. It was reaching a climax of sorts as the struggling mass fought on at the top of the piled rocks.

And then there was a chorus of shrieks nearby, including one from just behind him that almost made him lose his balance and plunge to his death.

He whirled about. “What in the name of…”He felt the words die in his throat.

Enormous monsters were rising out of the river and splashing ashore. Battledragons, with those terrible long swords gleaming in their hands. He felt his eyes widen.

Then the dragons were ashore, right among the baggage train. The screams of the women were joined by a new sound as huge swords rose and fell.

Thrembode watched in awe as the roof of a wagon was torn up and hurled into the air by one of the huge beasts as it ploughed through the Baguti. He made up his mind in an instant.

“Back! We will cross to the east shore and get away from this.”

A trap! A filthy trap!

The obvious explanation flashed into his brain. The battle in the forest had been a ruse. This was the real trap set by the witch. No wonder it had been so easy to flank her and destroy her force. It had all been part of this elaborate scheme.

He gritted his teeth and urged his horse back into the river. Well, damn her eyes, she had miscalculated.

Unless there was another side to this that he had yet to grasp. He stared across the stream with sudden terror in his heart, but there was nothing to be seen there on the flat shore.

What if there were Talionese cavalry over there, waiting for them? What if the witch had calculated his every move and was now waiting for him just over there?

Thrembode halted, torn by indecision.

By the black gods, there were perils everywhere. Thrembode felt his mind shifting uneasily on its balance. He struggled to keep control.

The dragons were getting closer—no time to waste! He pushed on, seizing Besita’s bridle and pulling her along behind him. The water was just as cold the second time, rushing past in the near dark.

His horse was tentative about the river bottom. Impatiently he urged it on, and it rose on its hind legs and then suddenly lost its footing and fell into the water.

With a curse Thrembode went down, tumbling head over heels, and simultaneously there was a terrific flash of light that lit up the water around him as if it were directly beneath the sun. Clearly, starkly, he saw the muddy bottom, a fish in the distance, crabs and rocks on the mud.

And when he came back up for breath, everyone and everything around him was blind.

It was a desperate fight in a desperate place. Twenty-five men, a few boys and one woman, set against hundreds of Baguti warriors. Their only defense a crude wall of rocks they’d piled there during the morning.

But the Baguti were without leadership and they rushed in armed only with their scimitars. While these were great weapons for fighting on horseback, they were seriously flawed for such tight-pressed work as this.

The first rush was dealt with easily enough. The Marneri men formed into two lines, with swordsmen in the front rank and spearmen behind them. To either side were grouped the Talionese troopers and the dragonboys. Kesepton, Weald, Subadar Yortch and Duxe were ranged behind this line, ready to move in to plug any gap that might appear.

Kesepton and Weald had their short stabbing swords out, as did Duxe, but Yortch held only his cavalry saber, a weapon of limited value in a tight press.

Behind the wall, over a low fire, the witch was crouched, her face taut with concentration. In her lap was a disemboweled rat, for the magic of the enemy was always rooted in the loss of life. In one hand she held a tiny pouch, packed tight with the alien stuff of the Thing-weight retrieved from the well of horror in dead Dugguth. In the other she concentrated the spirit of the dead rat. From her lips ran blood, for the taste of blood was also important in this sorcery.

With these things she wove a harsh spell, a cruel spell that could mean the death of everyone present. She was well-versed in the lore of the Masters, perhaps better than any other Great Witch of her time, but in this case she knew less than she would have liked. In particular she did not know how violent the reaction she would unleash might be. It might simply serve her purpose, or it might equally destroy half the Gan in a fireball that would rock the entire world. Unfortunately, she had no choice but to try this desperate stratagem.

The Marneri men caught the first rush of Baguti, held them off with their shields while the scimitars flailed away and then worked inside with their stabbing swords.

Seven Baguti were down in a matter of moments, arrows from dragonboy crossbows took down two more and the rest, about fifty strong, ran back panicked by the sudden loss.

They regrouped about eighty paces away. The boys held their fire, not wishing to waste their arrows on distant shots. The Baguti resumed their chanting and hoarse battle cries. A few rode back to tell their comrades and enlist more support. Others pulled out their own bows and began loosing arrows into the canyon.

Crouched behind the wall, Relkin watched Lessis as she worked by the fire. He could feel it now, the magical fury. The hair on the back of his neck was raised; there was an eerie energy source growing there, something vast and terrible, unholy and cruel.

Swallowing hard, he looked away and along the line of men. They were afire for battle, their eyes positively glowing. Swords quivered in eager hands. In that first clash they’d barely taken a scratch—they were eager for more.

Sergeant Duxe stood back from the wall a step and started the war chant. “Argonath!” he roared.

“Will not falter!” they shouted back.

“Argonath!”

“Will not fail!”

“Argonath!”

“Will stand in victory!”

“Argonath!”

More arrows sang overhead and ricocheted off the rocks at the far end of the little box canyon.

The Baguti were fighting like the Teetol fought when they had no war chief. The men of the Argonath felt confident enough in such a clash.

“Argonath!” they shouted.

A thunder of horses hooves announced the appearance of more Baguti. With harsh screams they leapt from their horses and ran towards the barrier. As they came they cursed the men who had broken off the attack and called them cowards and slaves.

The fifty or so braves involved in the first attack were galvanized by these insults, and they too ran forward. The scuffle of feet on rocks was the signal to the men of Marneri and they surged back up to the top where they met the Baguti, shield to shield.

Now the numbers involved had changed the game, but for the Baguti it was still not much improved. As fast as they came forward they were killed, and the bodies of those in front were held up in the crush, hampering Baguti arms trying to raise those long scimitars. Baguti shields were wedged awkwardly and even pulled from their wearer’s arms by the dead weight of the men in front of them as they sagged to the ground.

And through it all the Marneri swords and spears stabbed again and again, flicking through the crush of bodies to find exposed necks and bellies and spill their owners’ lives to the ground.

But sheer numbers did begin to tell on the left flank where the Talion troopers were not as adept at this kind of fighting. A couple of them were knocked down in the rush, and Kesepton and Weald moved to the left to plug the gap.

Then another heave from the Baguti broke the right side open. Lessis looked up in alarm; Baguti were breaking through and the spell was not quite done.

Relkin looked back and saw her, followed her urgent head motion and ran to the right side with the other dragonboys. He glimpsed bowlegged men with bare chests gleaming with oil; a scimitar flashed at him and he caught the blow on his shield, almost knocked off his feet by it while his arm went numb. Mono burst onto the man and forced him to defend against a jabbing short sword.

Relkin was already occupied. A screaming face, contorted in rage, rose up in front of him. Relkin ducked a slashing blow and managed to get his shield up in time to stop another.

He brought up his own sword in an instinctive thrust. The Bagut was pressed forward from behind and could not dodge the blow which went home and pinned him against the shields behind him. With a sick groan he went down, dragging Relkin’s sword out of his hand.

Relkin fell back, stunned and horrified. He turned aside a ringing blow from the next Bagut on his left and stumbled over the body of a Talion trooper and almost fell.

Another trooper rocked back with a shriek as a Baguti blade cut deep, and his body toppled and almost crushed Lessis beside her fire. She did not even blink but spat the rat’s blood into the fire and whispered the last words of power. The thing in her hand was jumping and quivering, eager to be born into horrid life.

It was almost done. But the last process was the most tricky, for it took the life of the infant Thingweight and converted it into simpler energies. She concentrated again, fixing the pouch with a gaze so intense it began to smoke.

But now the men of Marneri were now flanked on the right. Relkin was spun aside by a powerful youth, a glancing blow rang off his helmet and he stumbled to his knees.

A swordsman was down, a Baguti knife in his belly. Another Bagut was dying, stabbed through the heart, but more were pressing in behind him.

Then Kesepton was there, and another Marneri man, and Subadar Yortch joined them with a wild yell and their swords flicked out into the onrushing Baguti. Men fell, a pile of bodies began to form and Kesepton led the others, smashing forward and driving the wavering Baguti back and off the top of the wall.

Kesepton was breathing hard, even his strong arm was growing weary from the heavy work. He saw Relkin and bent down and picked up a sword, which he tossed to the dragonboy.

“They come again on the left, sir!” said Weald with a gasp.

Kesepton looked up and sprang to it.

Yortch eyed Lessis. “We will all die in this place, I think,” he said.

“I think not, Subadar,” said Kesepton. “I think not!”

The Baguti came again and once more broke through with their initial push. A trooper was pushed over, and one of the Marneri spearmen was hamstrung from behind and then beheaded as he fell.

Relkin was thrown back by a powerful Bagut wearing armor plate on his shoulders and chest. A scimitar flashed in the next second and met Relkin’s blade to blade. Relkin felt his wrist go heavy with the crunch of the blow.

The scimitar came again; Relkin could not get his shield up in time. He ducked and felt the blade ring a glancing blow off his helmet.

He staggered—the Bagut moved to open his belly, but a spear lanced in and caught the man in the throat.

He put his hands to the spear and pulled it forward. The spearman got a foot up on the Bagut’s thigh and pressed home the spear and toppled the nomad.

Moving by instinct while his head rang, Relkin got his shield up in time to protect the spearman from the man to his left and took another heavy blow that sent shocks through his arm and shoulder. Relkin’s shield arm felt like lead, his head hurt and he could scarcely think. When he tried to swallow his dry throat rasped.

And suddenly there was an uproar away down by the river. Shrill screaming broke out among the Baguti women.