Island in the Sea of Time (74 page)

“Prepare to fire.” The front rank of crossbows knelt.
Three hundred and fifty yards
. A bugle call. “Fire!”

Alston swung down off her horse, and Swindapa followed. The standard-bearers and their guards and the twelve sword-and-buckler troops formed up behind them. The easterners were at a full run now, horses galloping, pulling the chariots ahead of the footmen. The long shadows of the spears seemed to reach out toward them.

WHUNNNG.
Seventy-five crossbow bolts flickered across the space between the two forces, moving in long shallow arcs blurred by their speed. Men fell; the short heavy arrows would punch right through the light hide-and-wicker shields, through the arm holding the shield and then the breastbone, and crunch into the spine. A chariot went over in a tumbling, splintering whirl as both its horses were struck by several bolts apiece and collapsed in mid-stride.
WHUNNNG.
The second volley brought another two chariots down, and a dozen men; the range was closing fast. A slight ripple through the spearpoints as the troops braced themselves.
WHUNNNG. WHUNNNG.
The ratcheting click of the mechanisms as the crossbows’ cocking levers were pumped. A chariot veering and going off on a wild tangent, a bolt standing in the rump of the off-lead horse and the animal plunging and bucking with its eyes bulged out, squealing piteously.
WHUNNNG.
More men down, but not as many as with the Olmecs—the easterners had a better formation than that, irregular but strung out so that men could support each other without crowding. So had their ancestors conquered, spreading out from the steppes of inner Asia, west to the Atlantic and east to the borderlands of China.

WHUNNNG.
More chariots out of action, the man in chain mail dismounting and running forward, screaming hatred at those who’d wounded his precious horses. The remaining war-cars edged away from the sleeting death of the crossbows, heading toward the massed spearpoints at the bottom of the American formation. Then still farther to the right, as the Fiernan archers and slingers in the circled wagons opened up, ragged but enthusiastic. Arrows whistled, and slingstones cracked on shields, whunked into flesh.
WHUNNNG.
Very close now, a hundred yards, and the bowmen among the Zarthani were shooting as they ran. Shafts arched up into the sky, slammed down. Bronze and flint sparked and bent and shattered on steel armor and pattered on metal-faced shields. Here and there one slipped through to find vulnerable flesh, and a few Americans were dragged backward by the stretcher-bearers; their comrades closed the ranks.

Half the Zarthani were left on their feet, many of them wounded. One chariot came on, its horses streaming blood and foam, bolting, but bolting in the direction their driver wanted them to go. Alston could see snarling grins, shouting faces, axes whirling overhead in blurring circles.

“
Bows down!
” barked the officers. Trumpets reinforced the orders. A last spatter of bolts, and the crossbows went over their users’ shoulders. The round bucklers slung across their backs went forward, and hands slapped down to the hilts at their right hips.
“Draw!”

Long months of practice made the motion a single flicker of light as the leaf-shaped stabbing swords came free of their wood-and-leather sheaths.

“Give ’em the Ginsu!” someone shouted. Alston’s teeth showed in a not-quite-smile. Ian Arnstein had wanted the short sword called a
gladius,
after the Roman blades it was modeled on. Public opinion had proved stronger. Ginsu it was.

Alston reached over her shoulder and drew her own sword, head moving back and forth as she kept the whole action in sight through the intervening ranks. A long rattle of thrown spears came from the Zarthani, in the moment before impact. An American not far ahead dropped on his back kicking; a spear had bounced off the rim of his shield and up into the unprotected underside of his jaw. The driver of the last chariot was leaning back, hauling on the reins to try to skim along the line while his warrior shot arrows. He almost made the quick turn, but the horses were too far gone in hysteria to respond as they’d been trained. Their too-tight curve put their legs into the thicket of spearpoints, and they collapsed. The chariot cartwheeled sideways; its crew were thrown out straight onto the waiting points, but the wood-and-wickerwork vehicle followed right behind.

“Oh,
shit
,” Alston said.

It was the worst possible thing that could have happened; the line of spears disintegrated just where it formed a junction with the right-wing crossbows as the chariot’s flying body bowled into them. You couldn’t have gotten any horses ever foaled to do that voluntarily, or most men, but the accident had sent a kamikaze into her formation.

“ ’Dapa, tell Maltonr to face about and bring his spearmen,
now
. The rest of you, follow me!”

She ran for the spot where the war-car had crashed into the American line just as the howling clansmen leaped to follow the chariot into the gap it had made.

 

B
ill Cuddy listened to the panting messenger. His Iraiina was pretty good now, more than enough for this.

“Keyaltwar for certain,” the messenger gasped. “Hundreds of them, maybe others of the northeast tribes—burning, killing, looting. They came from the coast.”

Somebody had to have given them a lift. Not hard to do—there was plenty of deserted beach along the south shore. “The Guard got smart,” he muttered to himself, looking around.

Everyone was looking at
him
. He thought of what the boss would say if he came back and found Walkerburg burned . . . and without Walker, there was no place at all for him in this world now.

Okay,
he thought.
Let’s see what we can do.
“How’s the
rahax’s
place holding out?”

“The stockade holds, but they ravage among the holdings outside. A strong band is coming this way—they must know where you are.”

“We’ll deal with them first, then,” he said. “All right, get the
ergastula
filled. The rest of you, get your weapons and fall in.”

There were twenty free men left here, half and half Iraiina and Americans. The slaves had learned their lesson, though, the ones left alive after the past year; they turned and shuffled toward the low-set building at the sound of the settlement bell rung three times and then three times again. Nervous hands shoved and prodded them down into the odorous darkness.

The women were running out of their houses, or from the workshops. “Fuck this,” Cuddy muttered, then shouted: “All of you, back to your houses!”

Ekhnonpa appeared beside him. “I will deal with them, and see that a meal is prepared for the warriors, and the
first aid equipment”
—that was in English—“is made ready.”

“Thank you, lady,” he said in Iraiina. In his mother tongue: “Charlie, John, Sam, c’mon. We’ve got to get the Mule ready.”

They slung their shotguns and dragged open the doors of the carpenter’s shed where the catapult rested. The men he’d named ran to hitch the four-horse team. That reminded him.

“Shaurshix, Llankwir, you get your horses and scout down the track to Daurthunnicar’s place.” He pulled out a key and unlocked the door of a new storehouse, a small stoutly timbered one standing some distance off by itself. Inside were shelves with rows of small ten-pound kegs. He grabbed one under each arm and ran toward the Mule with them. “Get over to the smithy and get me some scrap iron. And I want some bigger barrels, about twice this size—doesn’t matter what’s in them as long as it’s dry—dump it and bring them. Fast!”

 

Swindapa ran to deliver the message to her waiting countrymen, her feet jolting on the hard sheep-cropped grass. The forty pounds of jointed steel she was wearing did not hinder her much, not after nearly a year of practice almost every day. It was the sight of the Zarthani that squeezed at her chest, the leather kilts and long tomahawks and the yelling snarling faces so close on her left. Sweat poured down her face and flanks, and memories opened and bled. When she reached the waiting band of her people she could scarcely gasp out the command.

The wheeze was enough. Only conviction that strong magic was involved had kept them still. They trembled too, and sweat dripped from them, but it was eagerness. With a single long, savage scream they leaped up and swarmed past her, the bright metal of their weapons gleaming in the light of noon.

She followed, feeling her feet weighed down as if with heavy stones. The enemy had lapped around the right end of the Eagle People’s line; the ones there were fighting back to back. Convinced that they each carried the
mana
of two, the Fiernans struck into the backs of the Zarthani and pushed them back, and now the Sun People were squeezed in turn. It all seemed curiously remote, something happening far away. All she could remember was the flexing, pounding feeling of fists hitting her, the world whirling away, herself strengthless as they threw her down.

Trotting past bodies writhing or still; Fiernan, Sun People, a few of the Eagle People as well. No lines now. A figure turning on her, a young Zarthani warrior snarling past a sparse brown beard clotted with blood from a light slash along his jaw. He had a shield painted with a bull’s head, the sun between its horns, and a long one-handed ax with a bronze head that drooped like a falcon’s beak. He nearly ran onto the point of her
katana,
bounced back, and came at her again. Her sword came up but the movement seemed dreamlike. Invisible hands twisted inside her stomach, shooting pain, and she tasted sour vomitus at the back of her throat. Parry, parry, wrists crossed on the long cord-bound hilt; the steel rang under the fast savage blows of the ax. Her heel caught on a clump of grass, and she staggered. The tomahawk rang off the curved surface of her breastplate, leaving a line of bright steel where it scored through the enamel. Again, again, three times in five seconds the armor saved her life. The shield slammed into her and she was over backward, down, hitting with a thump that knocked the wind out of her and drove the edges of the armor into her skin. The sword flew spinning.

Everything was still very slow, except the Zarthani warrior. He alone moved quickly, leaping forward to stamp a bare foot down and hold her in place while the ax went up for a looping chop at her neck. The muscles of his chest and arm knotted as the weapon went up; she could smell him, sweat and greased leather and smoke.

No. Her left arm came off the ground and slammed into the back of the Zarthani’s knee.
I won’t leave you alone.

The man heaved backward with a yell. She surged half upright and hammered a gloved right fist up under his kilt. The yell turned to a high yelp of agony. Swindapa kicked her legs free and shoulder-rolled, sweeping the
katana
up from where it lay. The Zarthani was up too, gray-faced and sweating but still fast. She lunged forward, and the point jammed through wicker and into the warrior’s arm. He croaked rage and swung the ax. Her hands pushed up and her wrists crossed, presenting the blade at a precise forty-five-degree angle, the point near her own shoulder blade. Tough ashwood, the shaft of the ax slid down the metal and the force of the blow turned the Zarthani half around. She planted her feet and lashed the sword back at him; a frantic leap and twist still left him with a gash leaking red along the outside of his right arm, a flap of skin and flesh dangling. She moved in,
jodan no kame,
sword up over her head.

Cut, and a section of the wicker shield spun away. Strike up from the follow-through, and her blade met the descending arm, already weakened by the first cut. This time the edge jarred solidly into meat, and she pivoted from the hips, a snapping twist that grated the blade into bone and past it. The follow-through sent a fan of red drops across the grass, and the sword seemed to fly of itself back into the high-stroke position for the killing blow.

“Quarter!” the Zarthani yelled, falling back and putting up a hand against it in a futile warding gesture. “I yield!”

For a long moment Swindapa stood, feeling fire torrenting through her blood.

“I won’t let you down,” she whispered, in her lover’s tongue.

 

The Zarthani swarmed into the breach howling, striking at Americans still dazed on the ground, or still cumbered by their long spears. The bang and clatter and crash of hand-to-hand combat sounded all around them, like a load of scrap metal dropping on a concrete floor.

“Follow me,” Alston said firmly, as Swindapa dashed off to bring the Fiernan reserve into action.

The standard-bearers fell back a little as the command party moved forward, and the dozen sword-and-shield guards closed up in a blunt wedge behind her.

“Rally!” she shouted. “Rally, there!”

The American line was starting to reform, yielding flexibly without breaking ranks, rallying about the flag. But too many of the barbarians were through; a knot of them hacked and trampled their way to the rear of the formation. Alston led her band directly at them, forcing them to turn and meet her. At their head was the chieftain with the chain-mail hauberk; he carried a small shield painted with paired thunderbolts and a long steel-shod spear whose head was surrounded by a collar of white heron feathers. Armored, he still moved lightly, a lithe fast knot of bone and gristle and tough muscle.

The spear punched at her. Worry fell away; you couldn’t think, not in a fight. You
reacted.
He leaped backward frantically as her katana slammed down in a blurring arc, but the tip still burst links; without the armor it would have gashed his shoulder to the bone. Pale eyes went wide . . . and he’d gotten his first real look at her face.

“Night One!” he said in his own tongue.

Beside her one of his followers struck, and the ax boomed off an American shield. That trooper stepped in, stabbing and punching the shield forward. The whole wedge of guards was pushing forward, stepping into place and sealing the breach in the line.