Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (28 page)

The Jokapcul archers had fled before the swords and lances of Eikby’s defenders and reached the forest edge before their sergeant barked a command to halt and turn. They looked at him uncertainly; he wasn’t an officer to be giving them orders. But they launched one volley of arrows at the horsemen, bringing down three of them and four horses screamed from fresh wounds. The remaining Jokapcul swordsmen and cavalry reached the archers and the archers ran into the trees with them.

“To the trees!” Silent bellowed, and heeled his huge horse toward the Jokapcul. Sword swinging, he crashed into the fleeing enemy. The great horse bit out and kicked at the enemy, and suddenly there was a gaping hole in the mass of running enemy soldiers. The other horsemen followed him into the thick, and hewed the archers and swordsmen like woodsmen clearing brush. In moments, the archers’ sergeant was dead. The remaining Jokapcul fled faster into the trees. The guards chased after them.

“Hold!”
Spinner shouted from the back of the horse he’d mounted. “Let them go.” Haft, Fletcher, and Captain Stonearm echoed his order, but the guardsmen who had been so reluctant to follow the bandits into the forest just a few days earlier were wild with bloodlust and none of them stopped. A few armed farmers followed, yelling and screaming, though most of the farmers and tradesmen stopped and stood about, wondering what to do next. Spinner swore, then shouted for the company’s squads to assemble. He wasn’t going to madly pursue the fleeing enemy; his forces must be organized so the Jokapcul couldn’t turn on them.

“Fletcher, take charge of farmers who are still here. See to our wounded and check the Jokapcul casualties. And get those demon spitters!”

By the time he finished giving Fletcher his orders, the soldiers were organized in their squads.

“Move fast,” Spinner ordered, “Stay in squads. Move out!” He thrust forward with his quarterstaff and went into the trees at a trot.

Fletcher immediately began to organize the farmers. They dealt with the casualties first, litter teams bore the wounded to the hospital pavilion to be cared for by Nightbird and the other healers. Other farmers moved the dead into rows, Eikby Guards in a neat row with the company’s slain, Jokapcul in two haphazard rows. Then they began gleaning the battlefield, piling up weapons, armor, equipment, and other oddities.

Ahead, Spinner heard the muffled shouts and screams of men in battle and the clang of weapons. He looked to his sides and saw other mounted men pacing him.

“Faster!” he shouted, and heeled his horse into a canter. The other horsemen maintained pace with him. He looked behind and saw Haft racing with the footmen to keep up. The din of battle came louder, with more anguished screams than challenging or victorious shouts in Zobran—the victorious shouts were far more guttural. His brow furrowed with worry. The Jokapcul must have reorganized and counterattacked the pursuing guards. Could the Eikby Guards hold until he reached them?

“Faster!” He heeled his gelding into a gallop.

In seconds he was startled to see Eikby Guardsmen running toward him in full, terrified, flight—most of them had already dropped their weapons and some were even shedding their armor so they could run faster. Jokapcul were chasing them—not the surviving infantrymen who’d been defeated at the southern barricades, but fresh troops—the cavalry that had headed north at high speed after the messenger bees had reported the company’s location.

Xundoe scampered as fast as he could from the west defenses to the south in response to Fletcher’s summons. In addition to five demon spitters, the Jokapcul corpses carried numerous items he didn’t recognize. Some of those things might be magical tools or weapons but fearing to make a deadly mistake, which could cost lives, neither Fletcher nor the farmers helping were willing to handle them. He needed the mage to identify them and determine what he could use and what could be safely discarded.

“Demon food, wonderful!” Xundoe exclaimed as he lifted a container from next to one of the fallen demon spitters. “Everyone, look!” he shouted. He held the container for everyone to see. “If you find something that looks like this, bring it to me. It’s safe to handle; there’s no magic in it.” A couple of the farmers gleaning the battlefield flinched and others looked away. “Really, it’s demon food; there’s nothing in it that can hurt you.” None of the farmers looked relieved to hear that.

Xundoe hardly noticed as he went back to his search. The first demon spitter he examined had its demon; he fed the demon to keep it from wandering off. He took the tube with him when he ran to the next. Two containers of demon food lay next to the second demon spitter, but its demon was missing. He collected three more food containers from near the remaining two tubes, both of which had their demons. He fed them as well. Two farmers brought him more demon food while he collected the demon spitters, but most of the farmers merely told him where they found things. Then he went to root through a pile of objects Fletcher had assembled. To his delight, he found four phoenix eggs, badly needed replacements for those he’d used in the attack on Rockhold. And another small demon spitter like the one he already had. Its demon eagerly ate the food Xundoe gave it. Mostly there was food. Where there was so much food, he thought, there must be more demons. He searched more diligently. A nearby, unopened backpack caught his eye when it seemed to move on its own as though an animal was trapped inside. He strode to the pack and squatted to open and look inside it. He fell back onto his rump when he saw the incredible figure the pack held concealed.

“Veedmee,”
a piteous voice said from inside the pack. A small figure crawled into the light.
“Veedmee,”
she cried again. The figure was very much a she, even though she was no more than a foot tall; she was exceedingly, even excessively, voluptuous. A great mass of hair covered the upper part of her flowing, diaphanous gown.

“A Lalla Mkouma,” Xundoe gasped. “I’ve never seen a Lalla Mkouma before. You
are
a Lalla Mkouma, aren’t you?” The Lalla Mkouma were a powerful magic, one most magicians dreamed of but few ever controlled. If he could report to the Zobran army with this Lalla Mkouma, he’d be sure to get a promotion! Except there was no more Zobran army for him to report to.

“Veedmee!”
the Lalla Mkouma demanded.

“What? Oh yes, feed you. Oh yes indeedie, feed you. I’ll be delighted to feed you,” he gabbled, and grabbed the nearest container to fumble its lid off. He plucked a grape-size pellet from the container and held it out to the Lalla Mkouma. The tiny woman-creature squealed then pounced at it. She grabbed Xundoe’s fingers in her tiny hands and ravenously nibbled the pellet directly from between them. When it was gone she daintily licked the residue from his fingertips, then smiled brightly at him and merrily chimed,
“Veedmee!”

Xundoe smiled like a child who had gotten exactly what he wanted for his birthday and held out another of the grape-size pellets.

When she’d finished her second serving, the Lalla Mkouma smiled enchantingly at the mage and trilled,
“Ee likuu, oo nizzum!”
She grasped his forefinger with both hands and tugged very forcefully.
“Komm’ee.”
He had no choice but to roll to his feet and follow, bent uncomfortably low.

“Ere,”
she said, stopping at a mound of captured equipment no one had yet gone through.
“Ere, opup!”
She let go of his finger and patted a pack that leaned against the pile. The pack moved under her hand and muffled squeaks sounded from inside it.

Could it be?
If reporting with
one
Lalla Mkouma could get him a promotion, what might he get for reporting with
two
? Xundoe’s hands trembled as he reached for the pack and undid its ties. He gasped, his eyes bulged, and he forgot to breathe when not one, but
three
more of the tiny female figures tumbled out, squealing and trilling in joy.
Four
Lalla Mkouma were almost beyond his capacity to believe.

“Lalla Mkouma,”
the first Lalla Mkouma trilled.
“Lalla Mkouma. Veed’um!”

Xundoe shook himself. “Feed them, yes indeedie, feed them. Oh, my, feed them. Yes indeedie!” he babbled when he got his breath back. “Feed them indeed.” Xundoe fumbled at the lid of a food canister and quickly had it open. He poured three of the pellets into the palm of his hand and extended it to the three Lalla Mkouma.

“Vood!”
the three trilled and rushed to his hand. He watched in amazement as they ate. They stuck their faces directly onto the pellets and ate without using their hands—even so they managed to eat with the delicacy of high born ladies at a royal feast. Or how he imagined high born ladies would eat at a royal feast—he’d never been at a royal feast or seen high born ladies dine, or even been closer then a longbow shot from a high born lady. But he could imagine. When they finished the pellets they licked his palm clean. It tickled. He giggled. Then, remembering how the first one wanted more after he’d fed her, he rolled three more pellets into his palm.

“Naw, naw. Vool,”
they chimed, and brushed their hands over their bellies like women protesting they were full and needed to watch their figures. That
was
something he’d seen. The first Lalla Mkouma, the one who had eaten a second pellet, put her hands on her cocked hips and flounced her hair. He’d seen women do
that
too.
My
figure’s just
fine
, she seemed to say.
My
figure doesn’t
need
to be watched.

“What do you have there?” Fletcher asked, coming over to see what was making the high-pitched noises. “By the gods,” softly, “what are they?”

“Lalla Mkouma.” Xundoe sat mesmerized by the voluptuous creatures as they chimed and trilled at one another and scrambled over the mound of equipment, fondling whatever bauble caught their interest—and there was a great deal for them to be interested in. They gleefully and noisily admired their reflections in the shiny rectangles on the cavalrymen’s armor. Then one of them squealed at the sight of her reflection in the even shinier rectangles on the commander’s armor. The others skittered to join her and, with a minimum of jostling, each found a rectangle in which she could primp. Their delight was obvious.

“Spinner and Haft had some of them at The Burnt Man!” Fletcher said, but Xundoe was too entranced watching the Lalla Mkouma to hear. Fletcher cautiously backed away—he remembered the Marines’ Lalla Mkouma as being benign, but with a temper. They were demons, and he wasn’t about to trust demons. He returned to supervising the farmers gathering the battlefield booty.

One of the miniature women spotted something in the equipment pile and grubbed for it. She squealed in delight, pulled it out, and trotted to him with a swaying grace that would have had him in a swoon had she been a full-size woman. She held the object out for him to take and he almost did swoon. It was a burnished metal box with scarlet and yellow flames enameled on it, little more than the length of a man’s knuckle and not quite as high. A salamander house! Did it contain a salamander? Had the salamander been fed recently? Trembling, though with fear this time, he pressed the lever that opened the door of the salamander house—if there was a salamander and it hadn’t been fed recently, it would clamber out and attack him with hell fire.

A salamander’s head popped through its door, crackling and hissing in fury at its incarceration, but struggle as it might, it was too well fed to squeeze through the narrow door. Even though the hand that held the box by its bottom was nowhere closer than a good inch to the fiery demon, Xundoe felt the creature’s heat and knew he couldn’t hold the door open for long. He let it snap shut, returning the protesting salamander to its prison to await a time when it was needed to start a fire. He dropped the house into a pack along with the phoenix eggs, small demon spitter, and the containers of demon food.

The other Lalla Mkouma saw the first with the salamander house and, squealing, gave off admiring themselves in the makeshift mirrors of the officer’s armor. They skipped and spun and danced gaily about the battlefield, trilling at each other, poking into all the piles of equipment, searching the fallen for anything the men had missed. And they found things that they brought to the amazed mage. Two more salamander houses. Another small demon spitter. And food, so much food that Xundoe thought there must be many more demons yet to find—either that or these Jokapcul had expected to be away from fresh supplies for a long time.

Away from supplies for a long time? Xundoe looked hurriedly at the surrounding bodies but didn’t see the one he was looking for.

“Has anyone seen a Jokapcul magician?” he called out. Nobody had.

What are they doing with all these demons without a magician?
he wondered. Then he stopped wondering about the lack of a magician in favor of wondering over all the demons the Lalla Mkouma brought to him.

The miniature-woman demons found ten more phoenix eggs and a few more demons. It wasn’t long at all before he was filling more packs. Xundoe whooped with joy when they brought him two aralez. He wanted to clutch them to his chest, but contented himself with lightly petting the small, doglike healing demons. Now he could do more to help Nightbird heal their injured. He was less enthusiastic when they turned up an imp house. Imps were invaluable as defensive demons but nearly worthless on offensive. But under any circumstances, they were dangerous even to the mage who controlled them. Gingerly, he held the imp house to his ear. He heard a quiet buzz from within; it was filled with imps. He became excited again when the Lalla Mkouma turned up a mezzullas. If he could figure out how to get her to work her magic, the company could have some control over its weather.

There was one demon they didn’t bring to him, they took him to it: a hodekin. As tall as a man’s hip, the hodekin was too big for the tiny women-creatures to carry. It sat grumpily enclosed in a cage of wire tightly enough meshed to keep its fingers inside. He puzzled over why the Jokapcul had brought along a demon that dug mines and tunnels, but was yanked back from his musing when the Lalla Mkouma brought him another imp house—his skin crawled at sight of it. He quickly recovered when they found the most exciting demon—a yarikh. He had trained with a yarikh in Introductory Wayfinding a couple of years earlier when he was studying for his most recent promotion. With the yarikh, he could infallibly navigate for the company at night. He was pretty sure he could. What was it the instructor had said about the trick of working with yarikhs?