IronStar (22 page)

Kirrah keyed her helmet closed and
watched the melee. Twice she was struck by the vicious short crossbow quarrels
fired from below, feeling like a child’s punch through her protective suit.
Two, three of the defenders were down, but scores of Wrth lay twitching and
bleeding in the dust. Striking from behind cover atop the
vai’atho
roofs, her archers rained feathered death on the lightly armored riders trapped
in the street south of the closed gate, many of whom were too tightly packed to
maneuver at all. On the road outside the gate, the far north end of the column
was only now reacting to the ambush. A few riders raced south up the sides of
the column outside the walls, no doubt officers coming to investigate.

Behind her in the street, the
trapped and frustrated Wrth surged back and forth in the killing zone. A few
had the presence of mind to attempt to scale the three-meter eaves, which they
could reach from horseback. Several tried attacking one of the private doors in
the sides of the
vai’atho
walls. These ambitious individuals promptly
sprouted a feathered shaft or two and fell back into the carnage. Three blocks
to the south, a pile of dead horses over a meter high marked the Wrth’s
introduction to ranked pikemen. The ground-level squad of archers at that end
precluded any possible breakout.

From the north, the approaching
outriders reached as close as they could to the gates, held back by the press
of riders. They began shouting orders. Kirrah pointed them out to Irshe, and
the defending archers began to focus on the officers. After the third one fell,
the attack broke off. Another forty or fifty raiders perished in the retreat
under the sleet of iron tips. To the south, Falling Ash Road had become a
charnel house. Fallen riders and horses lay twitching and bleeding on top of
one another, and wherever Wrth drew together to attempt a stand, the archers’
fire converged.
No place to hide, no way to flee, no defense. Just like
Akaray’s family!
Kirrah thought, with a naked, predatory satisfaction.

“Irshe! I want prisoners!” she
called. Another whistle and hand signal, and the rain of death broke off. “You
speak a little Wrth, do you not?” When he nodded, she said, “Tell them to
surrender.”

“Kirrah Warmaster, they have no
word
for surrender.” Baffled, the two stared at one another a moment.

“Tell them to throw down their
weapons and live, then.”
Fools
. Irshe waved his bow over the wall’s
defensive stone barrier and shouted down into the street. Crossbow bolts
spattered around him. He jerked back, blood trickling from a cut in his ear.
Enough,
that is quite enough
, she thought clearly, and stepped to the parapet.

“Tell them
Kirrah Warmaster
demands their lives,” she said, standing between two crenelations over the
bloody street. More shouts from Irshe down to the trapped Wrth. One of the
riders raised his crossbow and fired deliberately, striking Kirrah’s suit in
the belly. Her sidearm already in her hands, she carefully aimed at the man.

“Tell them again!” she demanded.
Irshe repeated his shouted words. The first man was busy reloading. Another
rider raised her crossbow. Kirrah took the hit, high on her chest, and pressed
the firing stud.

Crack
! The
searing yellow light flared back from the stone walls. The rider’s head
disappeared in an explosion of superheated steam and blood, scattering gobbets
of pink and red on the nearby Wrth, who stood stunned. The smoking body bounced
lifelessly to the pavement as the horse reared.

“Tell them again!” Another shout
down. One of the Wrth farther down the street shouted something and rode
towards them, raised his crossbow.
Crack
! His chest and back blew
outward, pieces of scorched leather armor dangling from one side. Like a wave,
the shock swept along the remaining Wrth.

“Again!” Kirrah switched the beamer
to continuous beam, cutting mode, one quarter power. A thin line of flame
sprouted from the crossbow of the first man, slid down his saddle and across
one ankle. The next one in line jerked in surprise as her leather chest armor
parted into two smoking pieces. The man behind her shrieked as a white-hot spot
crossed his bare leg and set his horse’s mane smoking furiously. The beam swept
down the crowded street, scorching flesh and starting half a dozen small fires.
Eighty meters down the road, a rider pulled himself up onto the roof on the
west side of the street. Taking careful aim, Kirrah fired again, full power.
The
Snap!
-flash brought every eye to focus on her or her target, who
tottered, staring stupidly at the shattered stump of his forearm, and toppled
back into the street.

Shocked silence. No one moved.

“Tell them, Kirrah Warmaster
demands their lives, either as her warriors or as practice-targets for her
archers.” Irshe shouted her words into the street. “Tell them, the old ways are
dead. They must choose now! Signal the archers to make ready!”
Dammit,
people, figure it out…
Two blocks away, one horseman began to move. Slowly,
picking its way carefully among the red ruin littering the street, the horse
approached. A young woman, (
not quite the age of Ensign Sara Roe, is she?
),
short brown-and-gold hair, a fierce red wound on her forehead, blood trickling
from low on her right thigh where an arrow pinned her leg to the saddle. She
called up in an oddly accented version of the Talamae language:

“Who offers warrior-service to the
Sath
-clan?”
Her voice was high and clear and steady. “Who brings fire to my
fire
?”

“Kirrah Warmaster holds all the
lives in this street. Your puny weapons are an offense to me. Cast them down,
and live.”

“Wrth live by the bow and the
sacred blade. We…”

“Hold up your
sacred
blade,”
Kirrah interrupted, the external speaker-patches on her suit drowning out the
other’s voice. The girl drew a curved steel blade and held it high over her
head. “Not one stroke has your
sacred blade
made today upon your
enemies. I have defeated your blade.”
Nice timing,
she thought, as her
beamer, set to invisible infrared, melted through the upraised sword ten
centimeters beyond its hilt. The severed seventy-centimeter end fell with a
clatter, loud in the silence. The girl’s eyes flicked wildly from the melted
steel stump sticking out of her hand to Kirrah, and back.

“Your bow, also. You alone, I
command you to shoot me. All others, you die if you move! Watch, and learn your
first lesson.” Slowly, the girl reached out to another rider next to her, who
had just reloaded. Eyes on Kirrah, she took the crossbow from his unresisting
fingers and rode slowly to a point just under where the suited figure stood on
the wall.
Ooof! Right in the solar plexus, good shot!
The girl’s eyes
widened in disbelief as Kirrah stood unmoving, the short bolt falling away.
“Give me an arrow,” she hissed to Irshe, who put one of the new meter-long
shafts into her hand.

“You are the first to listen.
This
will be your weapon in my service,” Kirrah said, tossing down the missile.
The girl leaned sideways in the saddle and caught it, the other arrow through
her thigh bending a little as she leaned forward.
Damn, these people are
tough
, Kirrah thought.
Now to close the deal…

“This will be the least of your
weapons, for those who follow me. Cast down your useless bows and your cursed
blades. Or die, here, now, with no mark on your enemies.
Choose
!” Three
heartbeats passed, six… the girl turned in her saddle and whistled sharply,
shouted an order. Men and women began to dismount. A Wrth twenty meters away
raised a crossbow and swung it towards the girl…
Crack
! Kirrah’s shot
whiplashed across the bloody street, blowing a ragged head-sized hole out of
his upper chest. He fell to the red pavement with a wet, meaty splat.

“I was told the Wrth do not break
oath. I was told the Wrth follow orders. Are there any more
not-Wrth
here?”
Careful, let’s not overdo this cultural stuff, you’ve been lucky so far…
Behind her, Kirrah could hear distant shouts and the clatter of hooves on the
stone pavement outside the walls. “Mastha’cha-
dakka'tachk
!” she called.
The leader of her personal bodyguard materialized at her side. “I require your
service. It is dangerous.”

“My life to command, Warmaster”
Wrth
were not the only tough ones,
she was reminded.

“What is your name, woman?” she
called down into the street.

“Peetha!” the girl said, turning
her triangular face upward.

“Peetha, tell my new
student-warriors this. This man,” she gestured to the Corporal, “will walk down
this street. You will all throw every bow and blade and weapon to
that
side,
and you will stand on
this
side. When he reaches the far end, he will
pass you through the pikemen, one at a time, bound. You will be fed and cared
for, until I am ready to begin your training as my warriors. Disobedience is
death.” As the girl began translating her orders, Kirrah said to her wide-eyed
bodyguard:

“Do you understand? Take them to
the practice-grounds where the pikemen trained, in the military sector. See to
their wounds. Do not allow them to speak to one another. Guard them well. See
they are fed tonight. Command whatever assistance you need, in my name. Show no
fear, none at all.” The man saluted, the ladder was lowered inside the tower,
and he stepped out into the gore-filled street.

Why is the girl still mounted? Oh
yeah, she’s pinned to the saddle…
As Kirrah watched, the girl took
the shaft of the arrow in her two hands and snapped it cleanly, a handsbreadth
above the wound. She lifted her leg in a sudden jerk, raising it clear of the
broken end. The bodkin point was visible under her knee, embedded eight
centimeters deep in the heavy leather at the edge of the saddle, gleaming dark
red with blood. More blood flowed freely from the freshly-opened leg wound, but
did not pulse or spurt. More shouts and a heavy rumble sounded from the wall
behind them, and Kirrah could hear the heavy
whazzz!
as arrows were
loosed against attackers outside the walls.
Just a minute, I’m coming
,
she thought.
First, this girl
…

“Peetha!” The girl looked up, ready
to dismount. “You were first to follow. You will be my left hand today. Stay in
the saddle, follow my man to the other end, and be sure my other new warriors
understand what is required. No more problems, you hear?” The girl nodded
understanding. “When the last one is moved, go with him. When you arrive at
your …temporary camp, seek aid from my man, for your wound. You will take good
care of all my warriors, including yourself.” This time the young woman
saluted, fist-to-throat. When no more commands came, she turned and made her
horse walk slowly past the row of standing warriors, drawing up behind and to
one side of Corporal Mastha’cha, who was walking like a man in a dream.

“Irshe!” she whispered. “Can you
follow along the rooftops and new walls, make sure the longbowmen understand?
Send twenty of them to help transferring the prisoners, and keep the pikemen
here. The day is still young. And if you see the Royal Cavalry, tell them to
escort my, my new students - no trouble, no harm - on my word.”

“My life to command, Warmaster,” he
said with a grin. Lowering a rope over the inner edge of the city wall, he
scrambled down to the top of the new wall blocking the first cross-street, then
across that and onto the roof of the first
vai’atho
-block.

Next
, thought
Kirrah, turning with something between a groan and a growl towards the growing
din outside the walls behind her. Two hundred fifty meters up the road, the
mass of Wrth boiled restlessly. The road itself was a near-mirror of the road
inside the gates, horses and men strewn in bloody heaps everywhere. Sixty
meters up the road, the two wheeled, covered rams bumped towards them over the
gruesome obstacles, pulled or pushed by men under the heavy roof planks.
Armsmaster Opeth stood with a half dozen men with clay jars, about two liters
each, and several more with lit torches.
Oh good, the oil’s here
. And
just in time… bristling with forty or fifty arrows, the two covered rams came
ponderously rolling down the road.

“How much oil is here?” she asked
one of the archers. He pointed down into the first side street, directly under
the city wall east of Ash Gate, now dead-ended at her new wall that cut off
access to Falling Ash Road. There was a cart bearing at least another forty or
fifty of the containers, which were being passed up by ropes.
That will do
nicely
, she thought.
These people seem to have things under control.
Perhaps another bit of low-tech from the history of warfare on Terra…

“Excuse me,” she said to the man
next to her. “Could someone find a bit of cloth for me?” He pulled up the hem
of his cape and tore off a five centimeter strip.

“Will this do?”

“
Lord Tsano!
My apologies!
Uhhh
, yes, I thank you.” Kirrah accepted
the offered cloth. “Here, open one of the jars, yes, soak the strip, stuff it
into the opening, leave an end free. Before you throw it, fire the end of the
cloth.” Opeth stepped to their side.