Kingmaker (26 page)

That argument eventually convinced Ellie to go along. A guerilla army needs to swim in the sea of popular support and they didn't have it. Yet.

Now, though, she put aside any thoughts of strategy, of long-term goals, or of popular resistance. She needed to stay alive through that night. And it wasn't going to be easy. As she tossed her grappling hook up the wooden palisade to the Rissel fortress, she wondered if they'd made a mistake that would be fatal to their cause.

The soft thunk of iron hooks muffled with scraps of cloth cut through her rumination. A martial artist knows when the time to think is over and the time to do has begun. She yanked on the line, embedding the metal into the wood of the palisade, then swarmed up the knotted rope.

She and her semi-trained ninja had waited until after the moon had set, taking advantage of a darkness lit by stars far brighter than Los Angeles had ever seen. Stars or not, if she'd calculated correctly, their black clothing would blend with the night and they'd be able to penetrate deeply into the camp before any warning sounded.

If she'd calculated wrong, they were dead. Because her band was no more ready to face professional soldiers than was the Girl Scout troop she'd briefly belonged to back on Earth.

The palisade was only about fifteen feet tall and it took her bare seconds to reach the top, ensure no sentries were nearby, and flip herself over onto the walkway inside the fortress.

She signaled the closest ninja, using the hand signals they'd all adopted from the mute beggar Micael and headed for the guardhouse.

One guard reached for his sword. Ellie thrust through him before he could grasp it.

The short, straight-edged sword the ninja had adopted was nothing like her lost katana. Its steel was uneven, unfolded, inferior. Its edge, despite honing, sawed more than it sliced. But it was something any smith could produce.

From the look of astonishment in the guard's face when she thrust through him, it was enough.

She and the other proto-ninja had brought thin lengths of silk with them. When the other guards threw abandoned their weapons and surrendered, they gagged them, hog-tied them, and left them. With a lot of luck, these guards would live to spread the word that surrender is safer than fighting. It was the kind of edge that Ellie's guerilla army would desperately need.

They left two ninja to secure the guardhouse and moved on. Into more danger.

The two sentries should have been taken out by one of the other ninja squads but somehow they'd been missed.

But the guards weren't expecting an attack. They were at peace with Sergius and they were completely confident that scattered bandits would never attack a fortified outpost. Their confidence was their downfall.

The torch they carried might keep them from stumbling over drunken soldiers or uneven steps, but it blinded them to the anything outside of its small circle of illumination. Ellie, along with the three ninja remaining in her squad spotted the guards first.

She drew the blow-tube she'd fashioned from a reed and tucked in a dart. She knew she was being fancy. Drugged darts were uncertain and didn't have the finality that a sword in the gut offers. But the more she killed, the more it sickened her. These men were not that different from the people they were fighting to free. They'd been lucky enough, or skillful enough, to escape the numbing poverty of the farm into the military, but they were of the same stock. Besides, she wasn't just looking for a victory, she wanted to create a legend about her ninja—something new recruits would want to live up to.

The four soft hisses sounded almost simultaneously.

"What the—” the guard collapsed before he could do more to raise the warning. The drug, magically enhanced by a pattern Ellie had found scratched on a tanned skin in Old Elmwood's tent, acted quickly.

"The gate,” she signaled.

Three quick nods were enough. They yanked the sleeping guards into a shadowy area, stamped out the sparks from the torch, and continued.

She'd hoped that the gate would be undefended. Like most of her hopes since she'd arrived in this dimension, that one was doomed. Some overly ambitious junior officer must have decided on an early morning patrol because perhaps twenty soldiers were walking their horses near the gate.

In minutes, the sun would peek over the horizon and they'd ride out the gates—smashing into the remainder of Ellie's pathetic army.

Two hundred armed men she should be able to handle twenty, but the twenty were hard-trained and experienced fighters. They would be used to fighting together, used to taking advantage of the weight of their animals to crush lightly armed peasants beneath them.

Even so, her soldiers might win, should win. Even if they did, though, they'd pay a high price. If they lost too many fighters, this wouldn't just be the beginning of their insurgency, it would signal an abrupt and permanent end.

She signaled her ninja to a halt. The other squads should be converging here and she needed help.

Except for a squad of ten assigned to monitor the barracks and a few scattered to watch their captives, they
should
all have been here by then.

That would have given her a group of fifteen, which, with the element of surprise, should have allowed them to handle the soldiers easily.

Instead, she had three. Counting herself. Something had gone wrong.

When the officer appeared, she knew she had to move.

She signaled to her ninja and stood. “This fortress is now under the command of the Lubica Free Army. Surrender and you'll be treated well."

"A woman."

"I am the Witch Princess.” She spoke as imperiously as she knew how. “The Rissel are no longer welcome in Lubica."

"Kill her, men.” She had to give the young officer credit. He was a go-getter. Unfortunately for him, his soldiers weren't Rissel patriots. Many had been soldiers since before the officer had been born. If they'd responded instantly to his command, they would have swarmed over her. As it was, she could concentrate on him alone.

She lunged, relying on the sharp point of the cheap ninja steel rather than the blade as she would have if she'd had her katana.

Most horsemen use the sword's edge rather than the point. When they stab, their horse's momentum can rip the weapon from their hands and leave them defenseless. Ellie had counted on this, hoping her use of the point would give her an advantage.

Her young officer smiled. He seemed perfectly comfortable to fence, blocking, then riposting her blow.

She ducked under his counter, blocked up, and spear-handed him in the groin, the sharpened spikes in her ninja-style gloves adding weight and damage to her blow.

Or they would have, but instead, she ran into armor. Her hand bounced off.

He smashed a sword strike straight down at her.

She blocked, of course, but the cheap steel of her sword shattered.

This time, the officer's grin was deadly.

She rolled away, barely managing to clip him with a kick, and reached for a knife.

But one of the soldiers was faster. His already-drawn sword stopped her before she could draw her weapon.

"You might need this.” He reversed his sword, handing the hilt to her.

Several of the soldiers looked horrified, but most simply backed away, clearing a path for their officer but not trying to help him.

The soldier's sword was nothing compared to the antique samurai blade she'd taken from her father's corpse, but it was a big step up from the dull ninja weapon.

She met the officer's thrust, turned her wrist over, and tried a disarm.

He must have seen that trick before. She twisted his sword to the point where he almost dropped it, but he cranked down on his grip and yanked away.

In a swordfight, a tight grip is dangerous. The tension drains energy, slows responses, and makes the small manipulations of wrist and finger impossible. It gave her the advantage she needed.

Ellie feinted high, feinted low, feinted high again, then cut.

Her earlier reliance on the thrust had lulled the officer. He saw that the point would miss him and didn't bother to parry.

Her replacement sword blade sliced deep into his arm before his own strike was properly launched.

"But—"

"Surrender,” she repeated.

The officer stared at her, then dropped his sword, letting it clatter to the ground as the pain overcame his need to protect himself. With his free hand, he tried to staunch the flow of blood while he reeled away from her.

"Open the gate,” she commanded to anyone who might listen.

The soldier who'd given Ellie his sword moved to obey and one of her ninja helped him. The other two proto-ninja kept their blow pipes close to their mouths, watching for any move, any urge to fight by the remaining soldiers.

Two minutes later, it was over. Her tiny army swarmed into the Rissel encampment, disarmed the remaining soldiers, and replaced the ninja guards.

Ellie made sure Lart understood that the soldiers who surrendered weren't to be harmed and went looking for her missing ninja.

An enemy more insidious than any Rissel had taken them out of the fight.

Fifteen black-clad warriors sprawled on the floor. Around them, red liquid stained the ground.

"Get up, idiots."

One of the ninja managed to prop himself up on an elbow, vomited, then collapsed again.

She slashed her sword into the half-empty barrel of brandy.

"Fools. Your gluttony could have gotten all of us killed."

"Don't waste the wine,” one of them protested.

The Lubica, she reminded herself, drank alcohol with almost every meal—even breakfast. But they were used to weak beer or watered wine. From the alcoholic fumes coming from the brandy barrel, this was high-proof stuff. It had simply caught them off-guard.

Which didn't make it any better. Everyone here had agreed to the plan, knew their assignments. If they'd done their job, she wouldn't have had to rely on luck and a secret patriot to survive the fight at the gates.

"When you sleep off your drink, bring me your ninja uniforms,” she commanded. “You're out of the squad. You've disgraced yourselves and endangered the entire Free Lubica Army.

Her order was met by a drunken giggle.

She'd see who was giggling when she saw them next, stripped of their uniforms and hung over with too much drinking.

She gestured to the four ninja who had followed her. “You two, stay here and guard them. Don't let them get into any fights and don't let them drink anything more. The rest of you, come with me. We're going to find this camp's commandant.

Leaving the beautiful cannon behind hurt more than anything.

She'd seen the damage that even light swivel cannon can do to the tightly packed ranks of pikemen or charging knights. Heavier guns like those in the Rissel fortified camp they'd captured could tear the heart from an enemy who outnumbered them badly.

They'd need those cannon.

But they couldn't carry them and it was way too soon to think about a stand-up battle.

For three days after they'd overrun the Rissel camp, she'd urged her bandits to speed, making them pack food and wine rather than swill it.

Now, though, they were leaving the camp, heading deeper into the mountains.

Everything they couldn't carry, they'd either destroyed or shared with the local townspeople. They blew holes in the palisade walls and exploded the munitions room with the dozens of barrels of gunpowder left after they'd already taken all they could carry.

They were still a rag-tag bunch, but many of them had muskets now, in addition to their staves or nunchaku. And they had the confidence of a victory against regular troops.

They'd even gained some converts from the mercenaries they'd captured and from young townspeople anxious to see more of the world.

Ellie waited until the last of her tiny army headed out, then mounted the small horse she'd adopted, the first less than giant horse she'd found since arriving here.

She gave the ruins of the former Rissel fortress one last look-around to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, and then nodded. It had been a small enough effort, but they had struck their first blow for freedom. As long as Ellie didn't let her think about the one ninja who'd fallen in the climb or the thirteen sentries they'd killed, she could take a bit of pride in it.

And it had served triple purposes. They'd made their stand, letting both Rissel and Sergius know they intended to fight for the freedoms they so desperately needed; they'd gained supplies and weapons that would let them survive, train, and continue the fight; and they'd successfully added some recruits and some trained soldiers to the bandit force they'd been.

A hint of motion down the road caught her eye just as she started to turn after her army.

She loosened her sword—the one she'd confiscated from the officer she'd fought inside the gate—and waited. If it was a Rissel force, they were in trouble. It would take more night victories, more arms raids, and a lot of recruiting before her small force was ready to face an enemy in the field.

Lart and Micael reined in next to her. “Small group,” Micael signed. “No army."

"Wish I had your eyes,” Lart told Micael. “Course, there might be more behind them."

"Something about them looks familiar,” Ellie admitted. She squinted hard thankful she'd talked her parents into laser eye surgery before her senior year in high school. Otherwise, she'd be blind now.

As they waited, the blur of motion resolved to two figures—both riding uncomfortably.

Micael made a grunting noise to attract their attention, and then signed, “one's a priest."

Ellie's uneasy feeling grew.

Her instincts recognized them before her mind did.

She nudged her horse forward to meet two of the men who had once been her friends—before they'd abandoned her to the Rissel.

"You abandoned me, said you had nothing to do with me.” She attired not to scream at Mark, but knew her voice came off a bit shrill. “You threw your lot in with the nobility. Why are you groveling to me now?"