Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (4 page)

The children of the caravan had watched and listened for a time as Nightbird and the strangers exchanged their stories. Finally, bored by the adult conversation and convinced there was no danger, they slipped out of their hiding places and sneaked into the forest to explore the rest of the strangers. They found the company’s children and, after a few moments of uncertainty on both sides, began to play.

Everyone relaxed. If the children became friends so easily, the adults should follow their example.

The company had fresh meat brought down by its hunters, and fruits and vegetables foraged by its women. The caravan had bread, wheat, and sugar. The two groups pooled their foods and feasted that night. Baecker, a villager who actually had been a baker, used some the caravan’s wheat and sugar and the company’s fruit to bake a few cakes and pies in a makeshift oven. They weren’t as good as what he’d made at home, but were nonetheless a major treat for the refugees.

They decided to join forces and set out together in the morning. A few bees curlicued behind them for a time, then turned about and buzzed away.

Haft, with Birdwhistle, Hunter, and Archer, was scouting ahead. Haft wore his double-reversible, four-sided cloak green side out. The other three wore the mottled green camouflage surcoats of Zobran Border Warders. They were on foot so they could move more quietly through the thin forest. The narrowness and ruts of the track forced the wagons to move so slowly that the scouts had no trouble staying ahead of them. Wolf ranged ahead.

The three Zobrans had been poachers before their induction into the Zobran Border Warder elite. Birdwhistle, Hunter, and Archer were men who could move through the forest very stealthily. Each had also shown courage and skill fighting the Jokapcul before their units’ defeats. Which was why Haft wanted them to scout with him.

The land was fairly flat. Not so flat it would look like an endless tabletop if the trees were all cut away, but it wasn’t cut with ravines or valleys, and few hills humped above it. Its movements were gentle, the rises and dips weren’t very close to each other, and the difference between the top of a rise and bottom of the next dip was seldom more than half the height of a man. If the land was cleared and farmed, it would take not much more than a generation of plowing to level it. The trees weren’t exactly stunted, their relatively thin foliage made them look more like they were more interested in growing tall than in growing full, like gangly adolescents. They were just close enough to one another that the accumulated mass of trunks, boughs, and leaves kept sight lines short. Bushes grew between the trees, and weeds sprouted where they could find room between the bushes. Game trails tatted the undergrowth into a fine lacework web.

Sound and smell are more important than sight to a man moving stealthily through such a landscape. Haft remembered that when Wolf appeared in front of him and made a show of sniffing the air. Haft sniffed and his nose caught something he didn’t like: Jokapcul field rations. He turned his head toward Birdwhistle, a few yards to his left, and tapped the side of his nose. Birdwhistle sniffed, and nodded. Haft pointed to a large tree at the limit of sight, then made hand signals that told Birdwhistle he was going to the other side of the road to alert Archer and Hunter. Birdwhistle nodded again, he’d wait for Haft at the foot of the large tree. In moments, Haft was back with the other two scouts. They came close at Birdwhistle’s signal.

“I heard them,” Birdwhistle said in the soft voice used by men who move quietly through dangerous territory. “There are at least three. They’re trying to be quiet, I heard one hush the other two.”

“What language did they use?”

“Jokapcul.”

“That’s what I thought,” Haft said grimly. As quickly as they could move without making noise, he led them through the brush parallel to the rutted track. Wolf left them behind.

The Jokapcul moved quietly as well, but weren’t as intent on silence or as skilled as the four scouts tracking them. They were easy to follow. It didn’t take long for the scouts to discover there were a good deal more than three Jokapcul on the roadway. A short distance ahead a narrow track crossed the rutted road; the Jokapcul must have come from it.

Haft was pleased with his choice of scouts, they moved through the brush more quietly and faster than the Jokapcul on the road. They were soon parallel with the trio in front of them, and heard more ahead of those. They kept going. A mile farther Wolf was waiting for them; they had reached a place where there weren’t any Jokapcul still ahead. They hadn’t passed any scouts guarding the flanks of the column on the road.

Haft gave the wolf a suspicious look. He neither liked nor trusted the animal, but Wolf seemed to have a far greater understanding of human speech than any beast should and, so far as Haft knew, had never been unfaithful to them. He forced down the feeling he was being ridiculous and spoke to Wolf.

“Do they have flankers?”

Wolf shook his shaggy head in an obvious “no.”

Haft stared at him, wondering if the wolf really understood his words and told him the truth. But he and the scouts had seen no sign of Jokapcul scouts in the trees to the sides of the road; he decided he had no choice but to accept Wolf’s head shake as verification that the Jokapcul had no flankers out. They stopped and hunkered down to count the enemy soldiers as they passed by. There was a score plus three of them.

As soon as they were past, Haft tapped Hunter’s shoulder. “Go back and tell Spinner. Come back with men.”

Hunter nodded, rose to a crouch, and melted into the forest, back the way they’d come.

“Stay here and wait for them,” he told Birdwhistle. “Come with me,” to Archer.

Half an hour later the Jokapcul found a small clearing at the side of the road and stopped. Haft smelled the smoke from their fire. He sent Archer back to guide the fighters.

He placed his crossbow at the foot of a tree, and lowered himself to the ground. Moving slowly and carefully, he crawled to a place where he could observe the Jokapcul without being seen himself. They were small men, saffron skinned with almond eyes. They wore leather leggings and jerkins, and leather sleeves covered their arms. Metal rectangles studded their jerkins. All of them had removed their helmets, also leather studded with metal rectangles, and some had loosened the laces on the sides of their jerkins to let fresh air get inside and cool their bodies. A pair of leather gloves studded with metal rosettes lay near each man, scabbarded swords lay near to hand. Two officers relaxed, helmets and upper armor off, on campstools. Four men were working at two cook fires, two at each, preparing food. Haft counted, twenty-three. These Jokapcul must be very sure there was no danger in this land—they didn’t have any security out! He watched for a while longer, then slithered slowly, silently, backward and retrieved his crossbow. His three scouts were waiting for him.

“Spinner wants you,” Birdwhistle said softly.

Spinner, Silent, Xundoe, and twenty Skraglander and Zobran soldiers were a hundred yards back. Spinner, Silent, and Xundoe crowded close to Haft when he reached them.

“Tell me,” Spinner said.

Haft grinned. “There are twenty-three of them. They’re resting in a clearing for a meal break. They have their armor half off and aren’t alert at all—I was almost close enough to reach out and touch one of them, and they didn’t know I was there.”

“It could be a trap.”

“If it is, it’s a very good one. They have no security out and we didn’t detect anyone else in the area. Their officers even have their armor off! You and I can get in close and kill them with our crossbows. You know the Jokapcul, without their officers they don’t know what to do.”

Spinner didn’t say anything; he was looking into the trees in the direction of the Jokapcul.

“Come on, we can do it easily. We have complete surprise. Their officers will be down and we can have swords and axes on them before any of them can drop their dinners and pick up weapons.”

“Spinner,” Silent spoke up, “Most of our men have never won a fight against the Jokapcul. We should do this to prove to them that they can beat this enemy.”

Xundoe added, “You shoot the officers, and then I crack a phoenix egg on them. They’ll panic.”

Spinner nodded briskly. “All right, we’ll do this. But we have to do it fast, before they finish their meal.”

Spinner and Haft spent a few minutes deciding exactly what to do, then gathered their men close and told them the plan. They got in a column and filed quietly to where the Zobran Border Warders waited. Haft told them what he wanted them to do, then he, Spinner, and the three Border Warders melted into the trees. Xundoe followed close behind with Wolf next to him. Silent began positioning the soldiers.

The Jokapcul were nearly through with their meal. The officers, who had been served first, were already finished eating and one was reaching for his armor to put it back on.

Spinner and Haft were close enough to see each other. They exchanged a glance and nodded. They raised their crossbows to their shoulders, aimed, and fired. As the bolts plunged into their chests, the two officers gasped then fell. A couple of the soldiers happened to be looking in their direction at the time and were the only ones who saw them fall. Before either could shout an alarm, broadhead arrows plunged into them. A third Jokapcul soldier also toppled with a broadhead arrow through his neck.

“Now!” Spinner shouted.

Xundoe rushed forward with a phoenix egg in his hand. He twisted the egg’s top as he ran then flung it toward the clearing. The egg struck a branch at the edge of the clearing and cracked open before it reached the ground. The phoenix was just beginning to unfold its fiery wings when it landed on its left shoulder. It cawed out in pain as it unfolded the right wing and tried to open the left, as it did so the right wing flapped side to side, igniting everything it touched. The left wing moved more slowly to unfurl. Even so, its heat was enough to start fires in the branches on the side of the clearing. Then with a final
snap!
the wing opened fully and the fiery bird launched itself into the air. It began a slow upward spiral and was soon above the opening in the branches above.

As flames crackled in the branches over Haft’s head, he shouted “Charge!” and sped into the clearing with his axe in his hand.

“Charge!” Silent roared, and ran at the head of the twenty soldiers.

They ignored the five charred corpses of Jokapcul who had been struck by the phoenix’s wings and raced at those remaining, who were just reaching for their weapons.

It was too one-sided to be called a battle. All of the Jokapcul were dead in moments. Only four members of the company had wounds, none of them serious.

His hands clasped over his face, Xundoe the mage sat under a charred tree. Horrified eyes stared from between his fingers. He’d almost made a terrible mistake—if that egg had bounced backward when it hit that branch, instead of deflecting down . . .

He didn’t want to think of the consequences, but was powerless to stem his thoughts. The phoenix would have emerged from its egg trapped among the trees. It wouldn’t have struck many of the Jokapcul. Instead its wings would have incinerated him! And Spinner and Haft as well, and probably some of the others. The fiery bird’s wings would have set the forest ablaze to clear a skyward path for itself. The entire company would have been in jeopardy! The thought that most of the Jokapcul would have survived and fallen on the rest of the company made him feel even worse. He closed his eyes and his fingers over them and keened thinly.

Yards away from where Xundoe sat in anguish over what might have been, the victorious soldiers searched the dead men for valuables, but came up with little of use—they didn’t even want the strange food the Jokapcul ate. The officers had parchments in leather pouches carried on their belts, but no one in the company knew how to decipher the strange hieroglyphs of Jokapcul writing. They stripped the bodies of their weapons, but left their armor—none wanted to wear the armor of the conquerors. Haft led the axe men as they gathered the armor then chopped it up. The understrength platoon had no demon weapons.

By the time they finished searching and stripping the bodies, the rest of the company had moved up and joined them in the clearing. Nightbird tended the wounded. Fletcher organized and supervised the men who hadn’t been involved in the fight in removing the bodies and digging graves to bury them in. Alyline set some of the women to work covering over the bloodstains and removing the charred remains of bodies. Doli helped Zweepee lead the other women and older children in readying their own cook fires and meals. Everyone ignored the bees that investigated the foodstuffs and bodily fluids in the clearing and then buzzed away.

As soon as the fight was over Silent and Wolf had taken off to check the back trail—the platoon might have been the van of a larger force moving toward the head of Princedon Gulf. Spinner and Haft put out security, two soldiers a hundred yards up the trail in each direction, four pairs an equal distance into the trees away from the road. The soldiers on watch all felt confident—for the first time since the Jokapcul invasion began, they’d all been on the winning side of a battle.

When everything else was under control, Spinner and Haft went to deal with the mage’s misery.

“What happened?” Spinner asked. The two of them squatted in front of Xundoe.

“I almost killed us all!” the mage wailed.

“Almost doesn’t count in combat,” Haft said sternly. “You either do it or you don’t.”

“He’s right,” Spinner said. “You didn’t kill us. But something went wrong with the phoenix egg. Why did it break open before it hit the ground?”

Xundoe’s head sunk down between his knees. “Because I threw it and it hit a branch. It cracked when it hit the branch.” His shoulders shook with sobs.

Spinner patted the mage’s shoulder. “Stop crying. None of us got hurt. Why did it hit the branch?”

Xundoe raised his head and looked at Spinner, his face was drawn into deep lines, his eyes were red lined, his nose ran. “I don’t know! I saw a big gap between the trees, I could see all the way into the clearing. I ran up and threw the phoenix egg. It wasn’t supposed to hit a branch!” His voice keened again and more tears flowed. He hid his face once more.