Changer's Moon (39 page)

The commotion began to settle. Nekaz Kole rode back and forth along the line, his guard flying behind him, quelling confusion and reorganizing the shattered army, sending a delegation under a white flag to arrange for the collection of the dead and wounded, got the cooks working, preparing meals back in the hills under guard of the norits; the raiders still alive were almost cleared away; the demon beasts were trotting back to their masters, most of them, one or two still nosing out knots of attackers gone to ground when they saw the result of the flight of the rest.

Tuli froze. Two shadows were moving through the brush below her. She saw a clawed hand reaching, twisted and brown like ancient tree roots, clumps of yellow-white hair escaping from under a dark kerchief tied about the man's head, dark worn shirt baggy about a narrow body, slightly bowed legs in leather trousers, strong square feet in soft shapeless boots. A gnarled, tough old man moving with taut silence across the small cleared area, making no sound at all on the treacherous scree and bits of dead brush.

And behind him, one she knew almost as well as she knew herself, who for a while had been another self. Teras. Hars and Teras, both still alive. She wanted to call to them. She wanted desperately to call to them, but she didn't. They were getting away clear, would soon enough be beyond the reach of the demon beasts, reined in as they were by the Four below. She watched Teras as long as she could see any bit of him, weak with the joy of finding him still alive, not one of the corpses abandoned by the side of the Highroad. She wanted to whoop and dance her joy but could not. It seemed intolerable that she had to lay still as the stone around her or betray both of them, but she managed it. All too soon, slow as he was moving, he was out of sight, creeping on up the mountain toward some rendezvous she knew nothing of, perhaps with more of the outcasts from Haven. She lay in an agony of stillness, her forehead on her crossed arms, breathing in the dry red dust of the mountain, grinning like a fool, weak as a new-hatched oadat.

Ildas nudged at her, nipped gently at her rib when he couldn't get her attention; as she started to move, he yipped a warning. Slowly and carefully she raised her head, trying not to gasp in dismay. A demon chini stood in the clear space below, sniffing at the scree where Hars and Teras had passed. As if he sensed her watching, he lifted his head and stared toward her. Helplessly she lay where she was, watching him take two steps on the spoor of Hars and Teras, then lift his head again and look toward her as if he weighed whether to take her first or continue after the raiders. Ildas trembled and wailed his terror, silent cries that tore along her spine and bounced about her head. The demon chini shook his black head as if his floppy ears hurt, then started up the slope toward her.

Not her, she realized suddenly. Two more chihin burst from the brush to her left and bounded down toward the demon, dark russet beasts with pointed black ears and black masks over blunt muzzles, amber eyes that shone like molten gold, a sturdy bitch and a slightly smaller male. Rushing to their death, Tuli thought. Again she had to change her mind. Shifting almost as fast as the demon, they dodged his first careless swipe, splitting to attack him on two sides, the male distracting him while the bitch threw her body solidly against him, knocking him off his feet. Then they switched roles. Dependent so long on his terrible strength, he didn't seem to learn but repeated his mistakes over and over, while the other two handled him almost at will, keeping him confused and ruining his timing. But the chini pair were tiring; gallant as their attack was, they could not hurt the thing, their own teeth and claws won no purchase in the slick hide while the demon seemed to draw strength in with the air he breathed. Tuli dug her fingers into the dirt and tried to think. Strength alone wasn't going to win this; the advantage belonged to the demon. Wits and knowledge—watching the chinin fight their impossible battle, she thought of Coperic and the band, all of them still alive in spite of the dangers they'd faced. Courage and strength wasn't enough, guile was needed also and was more important than the other two. Guile—she frowned at the two chinin moving round and round the demon, avoiding his rushes, pinning him to the clearing with his lust to kill them; he could have brushed by them easily enough, gone on and left them behind, but the will to escape was not in him. And time was short. She could see the strain in the gait of the chinin, fatigue in the slowing of their escapes. She tore eyes from the contest and stared at the sky, trying to think—and saw the faint spirals of smoke rising from the fires on the wall. Fire. Traxim on fire and screeching with the pain, traxim on fire and plunging dead into the army, traxim fleeing this world to escape the fire. Another sort of demon, but still a demon. She watched the sturdy young male knock the demon rolling and dart away, bleeding from his rump where the demon's claw had caught him.
Ildas,
she whispered,
remember the traxim, the burning demons.
He whined and wriggled, tried to deny he heard her, but quieted as she cupped a hand about his buttocks and held him close.
Burn that beast, you can do it, remember the burning traxim. Next time the chinin knock him down, burn him, while he's going down he won't be able to defend himself, he'll be depending on his iron skin and his iron strength, concentrating on getting his balance back. Burn him.
Without waiting for an answer, she scooped him up and thrust herself recklessly through the brush too excited to notice the pain from the gouging of broken branches. When she emerged, the chinin took advantage of the distraction she provided to knock the demon off his feet again. As he fell, she flung the fireborn at him.

Ildas flattened and whipped around him, a skin of fire over the black body. The demon howled and went end over end in a torment greater than any he'd inflicted on his own victims, a torment that somehow split him into two parts, the skin and skeleton of an ordinary though rather large chini and a black cloud that held for a moment the chini shape then melted like smoke into the air. Then Ildas was tumbling away from him, away from skin and bones smoldering with a sullen stench, more smoke than fire. The fireborn sat on his haunches grinning at the mess, but after a moment he went over to it, lifted a leg and urinated a stream of his own fire into it. With a sudden whoosh, the skin and bones seared to ash. The two chinin limped over to Tuli and stood panting beside her, giving small yips of pleasure while the demon died, a twinned howl of triumph at that last sudden flash of destruction. Ildas trotted back to Tuli, sleek with pride and complacency. When she opened her arms, he leaped into them and lay against her chest vibrating his triumph into her bones.

“Yes,” she crooned to him. “You're a wonder and a warrior, my Didi.” Stroking him still she looked at the two chinin, saw them watching, knew they saw Ildas as clearly as she did—all she needed to recognize the bitch. “I know you,” she said. “One of you. Time we left here. Any ideas? Right.” Weary and filled with wonder, she started trudging up the slope, following the chini bitch, the young male following her.

4

Their engineers hidden by heavy plank barriers, the Ogogehian catapults hurled roughly shaped stones at the wall, stone thudding against stone with a steady malevolence, hammering at the same spots day and night. But even the thinner merlons were holding. As far as Julia could tell, the pounding could go on forever with much the same result. Praise whatever gods there be, she thought, no explosives here. She grimaced. Not until we make them. As several shafts came humming through the slit, she dodged behind the merlon, then she knelt and began picking off as many of the Plaz Guards as she could find in the ranks of the black-clad men massing for another go at scaling the wall, then started on the front ranks of the attack force, shooting quickly but deliberately, piling up the dead. Behind her she heard the clatter of hooves. Angel slid off his mount the next embrasure over, his youths spreading out to other crenels, sinking onto their knees, starting to shoot as soon as they were balanced, sharing each of the embrasures with the meien as she shared hers with the ex-meie Rane. She closed off all thought and concentrated on her targets.

Norim and Plaz Guards drove the black tide forward in spite of the confusion and disruption she'd started in them; fighters and leaders alike were getting used to the rifles and no longer panicking at the first crackles as they had earlier. As the wave came on and reached bow range, she backed out of the embrasure and let Rane take over. The meie had a pair of crossbows loaded and ready, a bundle of quarrels she tossed to Julia. She fired, flipped the bow back to Julia, fired the second, exchanged that for the reloaded bow. Julia clawed the string back, dropped in a new bolt, caught the emptied bow and passed the other over, a steady automatic movement so familiar now she didn't have to think what she was doing.

Behind and below she heard the roaring of motorcycles. Someone wounded, she thought. The motorcycles were carrying the young trainee healwomen (Julia thought of them as medics) to the wounded as helicopters had done on her own world. Dom Hern in his tower dispatching reinforcements, then the medics. Up there with his binoculars and teletalk, running his little war with those alien instruments as if he'd been born to them. And right now, managing to hold off the hordes coming at him. Five hundred and a wall holding off thousands, five hundred kept intact by those healwomen and the exile doctors, Lou and what was her name? the surgeon they fished out of the introg. Doesn't matter. She switched bows with Rane, clawed back the bowstring, slapped in a new bolt, switched again. Defenders fell on either side. An arrow whispered past Rane's shoulder. Julia jerked away, felt the flutter of its passage, heard it crash against the low guardwall behind her. Rane ignored it, reached back for the bow Julia held, locked the aim and fired, flipped it back, took the loaded bow and fired. And so on and on. The medics bent over the wounded, stopped bloodflows, did a little rough surgery. If they could walk, the wounded were sent down the backramps; if they couldn't, they were carried down on stretchers, all of them were loaded into the back of a pickup and carried to the field hospital set up in a tent straddling the rutted road leading from the great gates to the main Biserica buildings where it would be equally accessible to both wings of the wall.

“'Ware fat.” The yell was loud and close.

Julia scrambled away from the embrasure, Rane tumbling to the other side. Two well-grown girls came up, the poles of the fatpot on their shoulders, a third used a clawed lever to tilt the bubbling stinking fat along the grotesquely elongated lip and out the embrasure, spilling the fat on the men below until the pot was empty. Screams and curses, groans and shouts rose to her with the stink of the oil, the sounds of men scrambling away. When the pot was empty the girls went trotting back to the big kettle for another load.

Rane leaped to her feet, sword out, and ran down the walkway.

Several ladders projected above the merlons and men were coming off them onto the walkway. Meien and other defenders ran at them from all around, but dropped to their knees as Angel and his youths leaped up and began shooting, cutting the men down as they stuck their heads up. Several Stenda men were using their longer reach to get at the ladders, but were driven back again and again by the clumsy thrusts of the invaders' pikes. Julia caught up her rifle, checked the clip, but stood where she was, watching with a frown as enough of the men got over in spite of Angel to make further shooting a danger to the defenders.

A lanky half-grown Stenda boy swung up on a merlon, ignoring the shafts aimed at him, and leaped from one to the next until he was close enough to use his lance on a ladder. He reversed it, swung it back and slammed the butt into that ladder, sending it sliding along the smooth stone face of the wall, knocking into the next ladder over, shoving that into the third that also slid away. As the ladders and the men on them tumbled away, he started a whooping dance where he was, a mountain boy with no fear of heights. Julia swore and dived into the embrasure, began sweeping the hills where the bulk of the army had found shelter, shooting at anyone who stuck his head up, intent on distracting longbowmen and everyone else out there until someone with a bit of sense could yank that young idiot off the wall.

A hand touched her shoulder. She sat back on her heels, cradled the rifle on her thighs, looked around. Rane, back from the mélée. “Did someone get that idiot down?”

“After he took a shaft in the shoulder.”

“Teach him anything?”

“Doubt it.” Rane chuckled. “Didn't stop grinning even when Dina was sawing at the shaft and pulling it out of him.”

Julia shook her head. “Him and Angel's bunch. Seems that kids are the same wherever they grow up.”

Rane chuckled again, and began wiping her sword carefully with a bit of soft leather.

Farther down the wall Angel was cursing as he cut an arrow from a horse's flank. There was a girl in healerwhite holding the beast's head and soothing it while he worked. Another horse was down, dead. Stenda men and mijlockers were using pikes and ropes to pry it up over the knee-high guard wall. More of the white-clad girl medics were helping the wounded down the ramp, a slightly older medic was kneeling beside one of the mijlockers, working on a wound in his leg. As the wounded were helped away, reinforcements came up to take their places. Five hundred against five thousand. But they were holding the wall, a precarious hold maintained by Hern's careful use of his fighters, by the quick medical treatment, by the tireless efforts of Serroi. They were holding, but Kole hadn't sent his trained fighters against them yet, he was using the conscripts to wear them down, use up their ammunition, tire them out, whittle away at their numbers. Julia got to her feet, unclipped the canteen from her belt, unscrewed the lid and took a drink. The tepid, metal-tainted water went down fast and easy, cut the dust in her throat and washed away some of the sourness that came into her mouth when she thought of all the killing. She used her rifle with skill and coolness, concentrating on doing it well while she was in the midst of the skirmishes, concentrating on swallowing her loathing for the whole business when it was over. She passed the canteen to Rane. “How close was this one?” She took the canteen back, clipped it onto her belt. “I was too busy to watch.”