Imperial Fire (47 page)

Lucas didn’t falter. Gaze locked on his target, he drove the Ferghana on, calculating how and where to strike. The enemy came at him headlong until it seemed inevitable that they would collide.

The bandit’s mount lost its nerve at the last instant and sheered away. At full gallop and full stretch Lucas struck its rider in the throat and when he looked back he saw the bandit galloping away with two fountains of blood gushing from his neck and his head bobbling over the ground.

Lucas faced forward. The other bandit threw Aiken off the horse, unslung a bow, drew an arrow and concentrated on his aim. Lucas drove at him and saw the bow spring open, felt the wind of the arrow sting his cheek. The bandit was still fumbling for his sword when Lucas fell on him, swinging his sword in a shallow sweep that caught him at waist height. Momentum carried Lucas past and when he wheeled, the bandit still sat his saddle, a gory stain spreading on his side and bright red flowers blossoming on the snow beneath him. Lucas drew breath and moved in for the kill. Before he closed, the bandit slid out of his saddle and toppled to the ground. Lucas didn’t waste time on him. He caught the horse and led it back to where Aiken stood shocked and speechless.

‘You all right?’ Lucas said in a thick voice.

Aiken raised a trembling finger.

What Lucas hadn’t seen was the main bandit force drawn up on a ridge and now sweeping down like a wave.

‘Mount up and ride like hell!’

Aiken made two efforts before getting into the saddle. Lucas slapped the horse’s rump with the flat of his sword.

‘Faster! They’re catching us.’

The leading edge of the wave was a hundred yards behind them when a score of Outlanders burst out of the fogbank ahead. The bandits divided, spilling away on each side, baying like a pack of hounds.

Vallon hauled up his horse in front of Aiken. ‘Thank God you’re safe.’

Aiken gave a strangled laugh. ‘Lucas had more to do with it than the Almighty.’

Vallon turned his gaze on Lucas. He pulled his horse around. ‘Return and secure the camp. That was only the first thrust.’

On the ride back, Gorka approached Lucas and addressed him in an uncharacteristically tentative manner. ‘How many did you kill?’

‘Four, I think. One of them was running away and doesn’t count.’

Gorka planted a wet kiss on Lucas’s cheek. ‘They all count, lad. One more and you get to wear that fancy Greek armour.’

The Outlanders and Vikings advanced in close order across a dazzling snowscape, the lake about three miles to their left, low hills to the south and beyond them mountains smothered in cloud.

They’d covered perhaps four miles, the caravan trailing back another mile, when one of the Turkmen shouted and pointed. All eyes turned south. On a bluff about half a mile away sat a solitary horseman wearing scarlet armour and a horned helmet.

‘That must be Two-Swords Lu,’ Vallon said.

The lone rider raised his hand, as if preparing to orchestrate events only he could foresee.

‘What’s he doing?’ Otia said.

‘I think he’s trying to intimidate us into abandoning the caravans,’ Josselin said.

‘He doesn’t have to wait for us to leave,’ said Vallon. ‘He can fall on them any time he chooses. They’re too scattered and we’re too few to stop him.’

Wailing and weeping, the caravanners drove their beasts towards the Outlanders’ position.

Vallon cast a malign look at Hauk. ‘You took their gold and silver under false pretences.’

Hauk slapped his saddlebag. ‘I’ve got it and that’s all that matters.’ He raised a hand. ‘Ride on, men.’

‘Then you ride alone,’ Vallon said. He stood in his stirrups. ‘Outlanders. We stand our ground. Form a tight square.’

‘Leave the caravans,’ Hauk said. ‘You said yourself that in other circumstances the traders would abandon us without a qualm.’

‘You pledged to protect them. As commander of the expedition, I’m the guarantor of your word. If you won’t keep it, I will. Now run away and leave the fighting to proper soldiers.’

Flushed with anger, Hauk capered on his horse. ‘I’ll make a stand with you, but I won’t forget your insults.’

The Outlanders waited on the plain. The figure on the bluff brought his hand down and somewhere a whistle shrilled. The troopers glanced around uneasily.

‘Sir,’ someone shouted at the rear of the square.

Vallon and Otia rode back. Out on the salt flats around the lake a tremble of movement had appeared, shaping into horsemen strung out in a frieze, the figures stretched thin by the warping light, the horses apparently treading on air.

‘At least forty,’ Vallon said.

By now many of the merchants and camel drivers had deserted their cargos and were besieging the Outlanders’ position, begging to be granted sanctuary. The soldiers ignored them or beat away the more importunate. Vallon saw a mother with two children kneeling in front of the troopers, shrieking and rending her clothes.

‘Open ranks and admit them,’ Vallon said.

Otia winced. ‘They’ll get in the way.’

‘They’re in the way now.’

The formation enlarged to accommodate the terrified civilians. Some of the men were armed and Vallon’s officers posted them to plug gaps in the perimeter. The bandits attacking from the lake were metamorphosing from phantoms to flesh.

‘Take charge of the rear,’ Vallon told Otia.

He returned to the front and had just taken up position when Two-Swords Lu swung his hand down a second time. The rest of his force poured out of the gulleys on each side of the bluff, fifty to the left, fifty to the right.

‘Hold your lines,’ Vallon said. ‘They’ll sack the caravans before tackling us.’

The horse archers at front and rear fanned out around the Outlanders’ position and fell on the abandoned animals and loads. Some merchants hadn’t been able to part with their goods and died as their belongings were ransacked before their eyes. Vallon averted his gaze from the sight of a group of bandits gang-raping a woman while one of their colleagues sodomised her husband before cutting his throat.

Presented with such bounty, the brigands didn’t know which way to turn. They ran about, slashing saddlebags, kicking over the contents before darting to the next animal. A group of them fell to fighting over a pack of choice goods.

‘They’ve lost all discipline,’ Josselin said. ‘Let me lead a sortie.’

Vallon looked at Two-Swords Lu on the bluff. ‘It’s a ruse. He’s trying to make us break ranks. The moment we do, his men will recover good order.’

A whistle blew and the bandits left off their looting and coalesced in a single force in front of the Outlanders. Another blast and they peeled off right and left, riding rings around the square, lofting arrows flighted to produce an eerie whistling sound.

‘Don’t shoot back,’ Vallon shouted. ‘Let them think we have no teeth.’

Growing bolder, the bandits drew closer with each circuit, riding within fifty yards before loosing.

‘Kill them,’ Vallon said.

At such close range the bandits made easy targets for the Turkmen archers. Twenty arrows hissed in a nearly flat trajectory and half a dozen riders tumbled to the ground.

‘More of the same,’ Vallon said.

Another volley killed three brigands and brought down two horses.

‘Keep shooting.’

Badly stung, the horde drew back out of range. Two-Swords Lu lashed his horse down from the bluff in puffs of snow. He reached his force and Vallon heard him haranguing the bandits. They formed up in three lines of fifty facing the Outlanders. Silence strained between the two positions.

With tremendous screams the bandits attacked, throwing all their weight against the Outlanders’ front. Archers in the rear dropped several of the attackers during their charge, and a volley of javelins killed several more before they struck.

The bandits had no idea of the quality of soldiers they were up against. Well-armed, -armoured and -mounted, veterans of a dozen battles and a hundred skirmishes, the Outlanders absorbed the first shock, held their ground and chopped the bandits’ first rank to pieces while the brigands behind them pranced and wheeled, unable to bear on the action.

The Outlanders must have slain twenty of the enemy before the bandits broke and withdrew.

‘Follow up,’ Vallon shouted. ‘Smash them.’

He led the charge, Josselin galloping at his side. ‘It could be a feint,’ the centurion shouted. ‘They still outnumber us.’

‘That’s why we have to destroy them now. If we don’t, Two-Swords will keep biting at us all the way to China.’

Vallon had already selected the bandit chief as his target. Lu rode in front of a screen of horsemen and judging by the way he hurled orders left and right, he still imagined that he could organise a counter.

Vallon closed on him. His Ferghana horse was everything he’d hoped for. Strong, brave and swift, it cleaved through the enemy. Forty pounds of mail armour made him almost invulnerable to the bandits’ shoddy swords. He swept through the foe, scything left and right.

The enemy flared away in front of him. Only half a dozen bandits stood between him and Lu. Ten Turkmen archers shot them down like jackals and then it was just Vallon and Two-Swords Lu.

And Otia. Somehow the centurion had outstripped his general and was only fifty yards behind Lu. Vallon swore. Calling on Otia to give way would be a waste of breath. Slow to wrath, Otia was implacable when roused.

Lu rode into one of the gulleys under the bluff, closely followed by Otia. By the time Vallon entered the defile, both men had disappeared around a bend. Broken ground slowed Vallon. The gulley twisted upwards and around each turn he expected to find Otia engaged with Lu. Vallon rode round another bend and saw the centurion, but he was alone and lurching back down the trail, a javelin sticking out of his belly.

Vallon reined in and knew from one glance that the wound was mortal. Otia gave a rueful smile.

‘I hit his horse. He hit me.’

Two more troopers pounded up the gulley. ‘Take care of Otia,’ Vallon shouted.

He drove his horse onwards, following Lu’s blood-spotted trail. The gulley narrowed and steepened, running into a dead end. Before the cliffs closed in, Lu had urged his horse up a spill of loose rock, making a traverse to the crest. Vallon could only follow at a plod, and before he reached the top he had to dismount and lead his horse.

He emerged onto a plateau cut away on three sides by canyons, the mountains to the south rearing up in a serrated wall. Lu’s horse stood at a distance, legs straddled, head down, its neck and chest glossy with blood. Vallon searched around for the bandit chief, wondering how he could have disappeared on that bald summit. When he looked back at the horse, Lu was standing beside it, a squat figure planted on the ground with legs set wide apart.

Vallon waited, gathering his breath. He rejected the idea of riding into the attack. Snow and rocks made the going treacherous, and he knew from experience that a skilful warrior on foot could evade a mounted charge and use the momentum of his opponent to his own advantage.

Lu hadn’t moved. There was something uncanny about his stillness. Vallon began his advance, moving like a man heading towards an urgent appointment – not hurrying, but composed and direct. Approach your enemy as if you were walking in the street, his swordmaster had taught him all those years ago. Neither fast nor slow, neither floating nor heavy-footed.

His teacher had taught him many other things that he’d tried to master. Keep a clear mind. Don’t plan how you’re going to fight the enemy. If he’s any good, he’ll read your thoughts. The only thing that should be in your mind is the determination to kill, to cut through your enemy as if he isn’t there. He’ll read that thought too and will be unnerved. Kill with one move if you can. The warrior who jumps about displaying fancy footwork and neat thrusts and fucking taradiddles would be better off taking up dancing.

Lu still hadn’t moved. Cheek pieces on his helmet fell in lappets protecting his face and neck. For body armour he wore a shirt of lacquered red leather and a short skirt of the same. Two curved swords hung from his left hip. He carried no shield.

Vallon was close enough to make out Lu’s eyes, black slits fixed in an unblinking gaze. Still walking, Vallon adjusted his grip on sword and shield.

Fifteen feet away Lu charged. From a standing start he seemed to shoot forwards at an astonishing pace, at the same time drawing both swords to present their single edges. Vallon had only time to notice that the sword in Lu’s left hand was shorter than the other before the bandit was on him.

Lu trapped Vallon’s parry in the angle of a cross made by both his blades. Before Vallon could disengage, he registered that Lu had somehow managed to reverse his swords to present the unsharpened thick edge. A lesser sword than Vallon’s might have bent or broken with the force of the impact.

A whir, a flurry and Lu’s right-hand sword hit Vallon’s right ribs a slashing blow. He knew immediately that the cut had broken at least one rib.

From that moment he was on the back foot, parrying with sword and shield strokes almost too fast to see, Lu somehow managing to change the direction of his blows in mid-delivery, so that the right-hand sword struck where Vallon expected the left sword to land and vice versa. It was like fighting a fast and fanged spider, and if he hadn’t been wearing such high-quality armour over a wadded cotton
kavadion
, Lu would have killed him in less than a minute. That was the time it took Two-Swords to make two more potentially lethal attacks – a reverse slice that cut through Vallon’s nose guard as if it were tin, and a thrust to the heart that pierced the mail above his sternum and penetrated padding and flesh.

Vallon managed to block the next half-seen slash with the edge of his shield. It was made of linden wood, soft and light, constructed without a reinforcing metal rim. Lu’s long sword caught just long enough in the fibres for Vallon to make his first threatening counter, a downswinging blow that glanced off Lu’s armoured shoulder.

Vallon used the fleeting respite to take stock. He was letting Lu dictate the contest. He was trying to fight him on his terms and he wasn’t a match. Vallon had to play to his own strengths, and they weren’t negligible. He outstripped his opponent by half a head in height, reach and blade length. He wore superior armour that had already resisted blows that would have killed if delivered by his straight-edged longsword. The curved blades wielded by Lu were designed to slash more weakly armoured opponents. There were only eight basic moves in swordplay, and Lu’s single-edged blades gave him sixteen lines of attack. But that was no more than Vallon’s double-edged sword could deliver, and its straight edges made it a more versatile weapon than the curved blade, better suited for hacking and thrusting, giving better penetration at longer range. Plus he had a shield that could be used both defensively and offensively. What he couldn’t match was Lu’s speed and stamina. Vallon wasn’t the man he’d been ten years before, and during the journey he’d had little time to practise his sword skills.

The contest had settled into an asymmetrical rhythm, Lu wielding his swords in quick-flowing arcs, much of the impetus coming from his hips, his feet sometimes gliding, sometimes moving with short, quick, stuttering steps. By contrast, Vallon delivered his counters primarily from the elbow and shoulder and moved with wide passing steps. It was as uneven a contest as a fight between a leopard and a bear.

Lu’s curved blades delivered more fluent slashing cuts than the less oblique cuts Vallon could manage with his longsword. He countered with fast-jabbing thrusts aimed at head and chest, the straight edge and tapered point making it hard to see and the longer blade holding Lu out of effective killing range. If you face a lion, his swordmaster had told him, become a castle.

Little things can determine the outcome of great clashes. A slip or stumble and the greatest swordsman can die at the hands of a peasant armed with a billhook. What swung the contest in Vallon’s favour was his cruciform sword hilt. Lu made a two-pronged crossing attack at Vallon’s head and Vallon managed to trap both blades under his hilt. Only for a split second. In that instant Vallon brought his shield round with all his weight behind it, jarring Lu off balance. In the next instant, he unlocked his sword, cocked his wrist back to reverse the blade, then rammed the pommel into Lu’s face. The bandit staggered back and Vallon followed, swinging shield and sword, imposing his weight to batter his opponent. Even giving ground Lu managed to land more blows than Vallon dealt. None of them penetrated. None of them deflected Vallon’s bullish charge. Ignoring the stroke he could see Lu preparing to deliver, he drew back his sword and drove through the attack, plunging his sword into his opponent’s chest.