Demontech: Gulf Run (3 page)

“Bandage them,” Haft said of the three who had a chance. “Gather all weapons and any horses that haven’t run off.”

He looked up at the sound of men and horses screaming in the distance. “Hurry up!” He didn’t know why men and horses were screaming on their back trail—might there be bandits attacking the Jokapcul survivors? If there were, he didn’t want his small band caught in the open were the bandits to come this way.

Haft looked up and down the road and saw that his men had collected weapons and six horses along with other supplies. Someone brought him the demon spitter used against them. Its tube was split along most of its length and the signaling mechanism was badly bent. The demon’s door was missing and the demon itself was nowhere to be found. He tossed the broken tube aside.

“Let’s move out,” he ordered, pointing his right arm up then swinging it forward in their direction of march.

Even though they now had horses, they went on foot. They left the wounded and dying in place. They’d barely made it through the cut before Wolf broke out of the trees beside the road to walk next to Haft. He looked up at the man.

“Ulgh!”
Wolf’s muzzle and chest were bloody.

“Did you get all of them?” Haft asked, not believing the wolf could actually understand his question.

“Ulgh!”
Wolf nodded vigorously twice and gnashed his jaws together with each nod.

Haft shuddered.

CHAPTER

TWO

Wheels rumbled on the road. Overladen wagons and carts creaked and groaned as they dipped and yawed over the rutted, uneven surface. Weary feet tramped and thudded alongside and between the wagons and carts. Curses and shouts came as people urged recalcitrant draft animals to haul when they wanted to stop, or dealt with dangerously shifting cargoes. Children shouted in play, or sobbed in fear and were hushed by fearful, tired, or exasperated parents. Babes cried until given breast. An infrequent echo reverberated, shocking in the confines of the forest that muffled and dulled most sounds. Sunlight splashed here and there, wherever it could break through the overarching foliage of trees that grew to the road’s verge and made a tunnel of it. Flying insects buzzed about the human and animal banquet that moved through their territory; people waved and swatted at them, and horses and oxen twitched their ears and whisked their tails. Unmindful of its casualties, the insect horde continued to dine. Only the occasional eddy that made its way down to the surface from the breeze that ruffled the high leaves disturbed the massed fliers.

Spinner endlessly rode the two miles from the head of the column to its tail and back again, offering words of encouragement and an occasional helping hand, urging laggards to close growing gaps.

They’d started out from Eikby with more than two thousand people under his and Haft’s protection. Most of them were the remnants of the town’s once-thriving population. Close to two hundred others were refugees from elsewhere in the Princedons, Zobra, Skragland, Bostia, or other countries in the conquered lands. Few more than one hundred were trained soldiers from a variety of armies, and a few hundred more were hastily trained soldiers who, a couple of weeks earlier, had been farmers, apprentices, tradesmen, or craftsmen. These disparate people all had two things in common: they were refugees, fleeing the invading Jokapcul, with nowhere to go, and they would go wherever Spinner and Haft led them.

Many of the trained soldiers were deserters, men who had run from the field of battle or fled the approach of the Jokapcul. Others had moved purposefully in small units in search of their own armies, their own command, to continue the fight or flight, or to surrender, as ordered by their generals. Whether they had fled ignominiously, remained cohesive, or were newly trained and still uncertain about themselves as soldiers, they had fought and defeated two Jokapcul forces that outnumbered them just days earlier, and they would follow Spinner and Haft into whatever battle came.

A couple hundred more refugees had joined them during the march northward, nearly eighty of whom were soldiers or former soldiers. A score of the soldiers were Conquestors from Penston under the command of a lieutenant. The officer of the Conquestors—a grandiose name for a military that was little more than a local militia—and his men as well, had been so demoralized by the ease with which the Jokapcul had invaded and conquered Penston on the ocean side of the Princedon Peninsula that he gratefully accepted Spinner and Haft’s command—even though he knew they were low-ranking enlisted men. Spinner and Haft seemed to know what they were doing. And the soldiers already with the two Frangerians told him that they’d never lost a battle against the Jokapcul.

Spinner, however, if not Haft, didn’t see all of their encounters with the enemy as victories.

They were three days gone from the charred ruins of Eikby, traveling north across the Princedon Peninsula, headed for the city state of Dartmutt. There, the people hoped for refuge. For Spinner and Haft, the salvation they sought was shipping that would take them down the length of Princedon Gulf, across the Inner Ocean, and around the southeast corner of the eastern continent, Arpalonia, to the archipelago nation of Frangeria, where they would report to Headquarters Marine Corps for debriefing and reassignment.

“Debriefing.” Yes, Spinner was sure he and Haft would be quizzed at length about how they escaped the Jokapcul invasion of New Bally, and their transcontinental trek across Nunimar to the Inner Ocean. Headquarters would want to know everything they knew about the Jokapcul, and probably ask for everything they thought or could guess. He was sure that under the circumstances they wouldn’t be court-martialed for desertion in the face of the enemy.

Fairly sure. After all, they were the only Frangerians not killed or captured when the Jokapcul surprise attack swarmed over New Bally.

As for the refugees, Alyline, the Golden Girl, would go with them, of course. Silent, the giant nomad from the steppes, had said he’d like to cross the ocean to see a new land. Maybe Haft would take Maid Marigold with him, the young woman he’d hooked up with in Eikby. The others? Perhaps they could find safety in Dartmutt. Not that Spinner thought Dartmutt was strong enough to resist the Jokapcul. He’d never visited the Gulfside city states of the Princedons, but from all he’d heard, they were smaller and weaker than those on the shore of the Southern Ocean. His hope was that Dartmutt, at the head of Princedon Gulf and abutted against the bottom of the Low Desert, was too insignificant for the Jokapcul to bother with.

That was something he didn’t want to think about too hard.

He knew other refugees were streaming in large numbers toward Dartmutt, and many of them were soldiers. With the influx of new people and soldiers, the city state should be stronger than it had ever hoped to be. If there was room to hold everyone. If there was food enough to feed them. If there was enough potable water. If—

Spinner cut off those thoughts. He and Haft were just very junior Frangerian Marines. How could they possibly be responsible for so many people? They had to get the refugees to Dartmutt and let the earl there take care of them. That’s what princes and earls are for, isn’t it? he thought.

Three days gone on a journey over and around the foot of a mountain range, a journey that wagons should be able to cover in a week or not much longer. But that was only a few wagons with an armed escort to protect them from bandits, not a caravan of nearly two and a half thousand people, most of them walking, many of them children or elders unable to maintain the pace for an entire day. And they were pursued by the Jokapcul—and likely flanked by bandits biding their time to strike, rob, and run. Did they even stand a chance of reaching Dartmutt without suffering serious losses?

He was three-quarters of the way to the rear of the column, headed to its end. He stopped and looked at the people plodding by. Some looked frightened, some too numb or defeated to do anything more than put one foot in front of another until someone told them to stop—or they fell from exhaustion. Yet others were warily aware of their surroundings. Only a few looked alert and determined. He vaguely recognized one of the latter and edged his gelding toward the man.

“Lord Spinner,” the man greeted him.

“I’m not a lord,” Spinner muttered with a grimace. But so many of the refugees insisted on calling him and Haft “lord” that he no longer objected as strongly as he once did. “I know you,” he said in a normal voice.

“Yes, lord. I’m Postelmuz, I was an attendant at the inn where you and Lord Haft stayed the night after you defeated the bandits in their lair.”

“Yes, Postelmuz, I remember you. And I’m just Spinner, I’m not ’Lord’ anybody.”

“Yes, of course, lord. How can I be of service?” Postelmuz’s eyes sparkled with eagerness.

Spinner swallowed his groan. Postelmuz was obviously one of those who believed the Jokapcul would have killed all the people of Eikby if he and Haft hadn’t led the town’s defense. Spinner himself wasn’t convinced the Jokapcul would have done any worse than enslave some of them if they hadn’t been there to organize them to fight. Instead, more than half of Eikby’s population died in the battles. “I’m leaving the road,” he said. “If anyone comes looking for me, tell them I’m inspecting the left flank.”

“You’re inspecting the left flank. I’ll tell them, lord.”

Spinner swung his leg over the gelding’s hindquarters and dismounted. “Will you hold my horse for my return?”

“I’d be most honored, lord,” Postelmuz said, reaching for the reins.

“Thank you.” Spinner spun about and headed into the trees before Postelmuz could “lord” him again.

There hadn’t been much direct sun on the road; the trees to its side were tall and lush and threw boughs and branches across it, casting most of the road into shade.

There was no sunlight away from the road; except where an aged or lightning-wounded tree had fallen, the trees were too lushly foliated to allow the sun to see the ground. In the dimness, few weeds or bushes dotted the ground, and those were pale things that needed little sun. They were sickly looking, unappetizing, as though they held no nourishment for man or beast—yet most of them were nibbled or chomped, and nearly all were home to crawling insects that lived and survived on them. Despite the presence of numerous tracks, there were few animal sounds other than the
squees
and chitterings of treetop dwellers and the caws of forest birds. A short distance from the road, even the sound of the refugee parade was almost completely absorbed. The ground was soft and damp underfoot, coated with a layer of rotting leaves that gave uncertain footing.

In all, it reminded Spinner of the forest where Bostia came against Skragland, the forest where he and Haft were attacked by a gray tabur, a very large cat that had been imported for unknown reasons from his homeland of Apianghia.

The scar on his calf, the result of a swipe from the gray tabur’s paw, twitched at the memory, and he limped for a few steps. His skin crawled at the thought of encountering another big cat. He looked closely at the ground but saw no pug marks, nor were any tree trunks marked by cats sharpening their claws; he forced himself to relax. The trees were closer together here than in the Bostia forest, and there were fewer treetop dwellers, and none of them threw slops down at him. Neither did anything slither through the mulch on which he trod.
This isn’t like that forest at all
, he assured himself. He came close enough to believing his assurance that after a time the remembered pain in his leg faded away.

Distances were difficult to judge in the forest’s half-light. He had to count paces to estimate when he was a hundred yards from the road—the flankers were supposed to be that distance out. Then he turned toward the head of the column and began walking parallel to the road. There were four flank patrols to each side of the road, each six-man patrol a mix of soldiers and Eikby hunters or woodsmen. The hunters and woodsmen had insisted to Spinner that they would easily be able to maintain the proper distance from the road and not get lost. The road disappeared from view completely at less than a hundred yards into the trees. If necessary, a six-man patrol was large enough to spread out on line, so one man could be in sight of the road, the next man out in sight of him, and so on until the final two or three were a hundred yards out.

Spinner suddenly realized he had only the most tenuous grasp of direction in this forest. Was he paralleling the road? Angling toward it? Angling away? Was he even walking in a straight line?

He froze and listened carefully for a long moment. But he heard no sound of people or horses. He was alone in a strange forest and didn’t know if he was facing in the right direction or in a direction that would take him far away from anywhere he wanted to go. And danger might lurk just out of sight and sound.

No, there was at least one known danger: there were bandits in the forest. And there were Jokapcul behind.

Got any other bright ideas, Grace? he asked himself. That was one of the peculiar expressions Lord Gunny had brought with him from—from—from wherever he had come.

Lord Gunny. Yes. What did
Lord Gunny Says
say about navigation in deep forest?

He didn’t know. He was a Frangerian Marine—a
sea
soldier. Yes, he’d been trained to fight in all kinds of terrain, including dense forest, but he’d never expected to be
alone
in a trackless forest. He’d certainly never been alone in a forest and so far from sight or sound of a road. He looked in the direction he thought was parallel to the road. If he angled slightly to the right of that direction, he told himself, he should be all right. Shouldn’t he? He knew enough about land navigation to be able to find his way—most of the time. Pick a point and walk to it. But the trees grew just close enough that he couldn’t see any point to pick that was farther than, what? Fifty yards? And mostly less than that.
If
he was judging distance right in the dim light. Fifty yards wasn’t far enough for an aiming point.