Sword Masters (16 page)

"Go to sleep you rogue. You only make me miss her more," Tarius said.

* * *

Harris fell to sleep almost the moment he relaxed, but sleep did not come as easily to Tarius. She tossed and turned and was still awake when Tragon came back to the tent hours later. He smelled like bad rum and smoke, and from the way he fell into his bedroll she guessed he was drunk. He more passed out than fell to sleep. Doubtless, the villagers had treated the soldiers to some of their liquor stores. She supposed as captain she should have ordered them to sleep at a decent hour and rationed or even disallowed the alcohol all together. However then they'd all hate her even more. So let them drink themselves into a coma and stay up all night. She decided to start out at a quick pace in the morning and taper off towards midday.

She fell asleep thinking of Jena and woke in the morning with a deep longing that she couldn't shake. As expected, half the camp had a hangover, and it took them a little longer to get on the road. This was her excuse for double pacing the horses. Every once in awhile you could hear one of them retching, and she was glad to be riding in front. Tragon was a delightful shade of green, and after the first hour he succumbed. He reined his horse to a stop, jumped down, ran into the woods and started retching. The king's carriage called for the procession to stop, and Tarius was called back to the carriage.

"We're moving a bit slowly aren't we?" Persius asked.

"I . . . I'm trying to keep us at a medium pace, but several of the men—including my own partner—have fallen very ill," Tarius said.

Persius smiled knowingly. "Too much drink?"

"Aye, Sire," Tarius said.

"You should have ordered them to be moderate and to turn in early," Persius said disapprovingly. "It's your job to keep them in line, Tarius. Don't be afraid to give them orders."

"I thought perhaps that if they lived through this, there would be no need for any orders concerning drinking or long nights," Tarius said. "If I'm wrong, I will make it an order."

Persius nodded approvingly.

They rode on.

"You're a Kartik bastard," Tragon said to Tarius when he had endured yet another hour at a double time.

"Aye, but I'm a sober Kartik bastard," Tarius laughed.

"Serves you right for snubbing us," Harris added.

"Don't you start in on me, you insolent child!" Tragon groaned and leaned into his horse's neck.

"You'll get no sympathy from me. You have done this to yourself," Tarius said. "Perhaps you and your boyfriends will use a little more temperance in the future."

Tragon realized something then. "You don't drink, do you, you awful bastard?"
"No," Tarius said. "If you were me, would you drink?"

Tragon thought about it and decided that, no, he would not. If you were Tarius, and you got drunk, you might accidentally say or do something that would tell the world that you were a girl. Worse yet, you might get mad, turn into a beast, and rip some poor drunk's face off.

"No, I suppose I wouldn't," Tragon said.

Harris silently wondered why.

It took them the better part of two months to get to the front, mostly because they kept running into troops of Amalites. None of their scouts had reported activity so far in, so they'd had no idea how close the country was to being entirely overrun by the Amalites.

Persius was appalled. They had told him it was bad on the front, but they hadn't said a damn thing about the bastards being spread throughout the countryside. By the time they got to the front they had killed over a thousand Amalites, and had lost over one hundred of their own men. Tarius had replaced them with men from the villages they passed through, taking men who wanted to fight and were big enough and strong enough to handle themselves in battle. Tarius assigned one of the newcomers to one of the better swordsmen in the company to train. He outfitted them with the armor and weapons of the men they were replacing. At first there had been a great outcry from the men. It was customary to bury these things with the fallen soldier.

Persius himself had called Tarius to one side when he had first tried to implement this practice and explained the tradition to him.

"Sire, with all due respect, the Amalites are over-running your country," Tarius said. "My own sword was built by the hand of my dead father. In its handle is a finger which once graced my very hand. Yet should I fall in battle, I would not want my blade to be retired with me. Dead men can't swing steel, and they have no need for armor. Surely my brothers who have fallen would have felt the same way as I do. We are in danger of losing to the Amalites, in which case the whole world will likely be wiped out by them. Let us not let silly customs stop us from wining this war."

Persius then gave the exact same speech, using his own sword—also left to him by his father—as an example. From then on, the men had no problem stripping a dead comrade of his armor and giving it to the first willing man who could wear it.

They handed the spoils gleaned from the Amalites they killed out to the villages they encountered, thus arming still more men. Tarius gave each village a quick lesson in how to use a sword, how to use a club, how to use an ax, how to use a staff. She gave them instructions on how to keep watches, and what to watch for. Then they went on till they came to the next village. It slowed them down, but not too much, and meant that they left an armed and battle-ready countryside behind them and none of the enemy at their backs. Since it was Tarius's own way to come in from behind her opponent as well as in front, she expected the Amalites to try to do the same and she didn't want to find herself walled between two groups of Amalites with no way to retreat.

Persius noticed that the attacks came closer together with every day that they got closer to the front. More and more the attacks were not launched against hapless villages, but were aimed against the king and his entourage. No doubt word had gotten back to the Amalites that the King of Jethrik himself was coming to join the battle with over a thousand well-trained men.

Nothing could have prepared Persius for the actuality of the front. The heavy spring rains had turned everything to mud, and then a long dry spell had baked it dry. Where his men were camped and all across no-man's land, not a blade of grass stood. Even the trees seemed to be in distress. Trenches in the open served as latrines, and the flies and the stench were unbearable. Far in the distance he could see the smoke from the Amalites' campfires.

He got out of his carriage against the advice of council and immediately stepped in a big pile of horseshit. He shook it off his boot and walked up to meet Tarius. All around him the men who had been holding the king's ground set up a great roar, applauding his arrival and bowing to his presence. Persius nodded and waved as he walked up to Tarius who dismounted as he approached.

The stench of death wafted up towards them, and even Tarius was unable to conceal his disgust.

"Well, Sir Tarius, you have not steered me wrong yet. What by the gods do we do now?" Persius asked in a whispered panic.

Tarius looked around surveying all at once the condition of the camp, the condition of the men, and their strategic location to the enemy. He took in a deep breath and shrugged.

"The men are tired and weak from hunger and disease. We are completely in the open here without any cover. The smell is hideous, and in itself would kill morale. I say we wait for cover of darkness and retreat."

"Retreat!" Persius screamed. "Are you mad! To give up more land to . . ."

"Hear me out. We won't go far—just up to where we can't be seen—back into the woods where it is cleaner. We dig proper latrines and put a good meal in these men's bellies. Then before light we snuff out all our fires. When the Amalites awake in the morning, it will look like we have run off, but we'll be on horseback waiting for them. They will send in scouts of course, and we will quietly kill them and wait. Soon they will believe they have us on the run and come after us with every available man. We will meet them there in the woods with everything we have," Tarius said. "By nightfall we will be able to make camp where they are now."

Persius nodded with a smile. After a moment's thought, he nodded again and patted Tarius on the shoulder. Then he climbed up on top of his wagon, called the troops near and told them of the plan. The men cheered, delighted with such a bright leader.

"Do you ever tire of him taking credit for your ideas?" Harris asked in a whisper.

Tarius smiled. "Not at all. If the plan fails miserably they'll only have one person to blame."

* * *

As soon as it was dark they started the task of moving camp. Tarius delegated authority, gave a bunch of orders, and got everyone moving. In the resulting turmoil, she and Tragon disappeared into the night.

"Do you want to tell me what we are doing?" Tragon asked riding up behind Tarius. When Tarius turned to face him, she was the Katabull, and Tragon almost fell off his horse. "Damn it, Tarius! You scared all hell out of me."

"We go to the enemy's camp. I will make a diversion." She smiled at him then, her long canines shining in the moonlight.

Tragon had forgotten how different she looked and sounded in this state.

"Yeah, I'll just bet you will," Tragon half mumbled. "So, what the hell am I here for?"

"Someone has to watch the horses," Tarius said.

"Why aren't the horses afraid of you? I'm afraid of you, and I'm not a stupid animal," Tragon said.

"Animals aren't stupid; they're simple. They have instincts that you humans have lost. I am the Katabull, as such I am more of their world than I am of yours. They know instinctively that I mean them no harm." She smiled again, and it made the hair rise on the back of Tragon's head. "Believe me, whatever I'm hunting gets plenty scared."

"So, where do I wait with the horses?" Tragon asked. "Because, quite frankly, I think this would be as good a place as any. Right here away from all those big, hairy-assed Amalites."

"Come on," Tarius ordered, and Tragon followed reluctantly. The closer they got to the Amalite camp the more it stank, and the more apparent it became that they weren't in much better shape than the Jethrik camp had been. Death, shit and decay. They were way too close for Tragon's comfort when Tarius finally stopped and dismounted. Tragon followed suit, and Tarius handed him the reins to her horse.

"What are you going to do?" Tragon asked.

She smiled—a look that literally turned Tragon's stomach. "Like I said. Create a diversion."

"A diversion from what?" Tragon asked in a whisper.

"From the fact that we are moving our entire encampment," Tarius hissed. She put the hood on her cloak up and walked towards the camp as if she belonged there. She was almost on the camp when a man keeping guard approached and stopped her spitting out a guttural sentence that no doubt asked her to give her name rank and purpose.

Tarius looked up at him and smiled. He almost had a chance to scream before she grabbed him by the hair of his head and dragged a dagger across his throat. She moved the rest of the way into camp unmolested, not really too big a surprise considering that the cloak she was wearing had been stripped from a dead Amalite. She walked right up to the fire where several men were warming themselves, her head down. She listened to them talk, not understanding a word they spoke, but understanding the emotion behind the words. Suddenly a man touched her arm, shaking it. She realized that one of them must have asked her a question. She removed the cloak in one smooth gesture and raised her head. The Amalites screamed. There were few things they feared as much as the Katabull. This was why they had tried to hunt them to the last child.

They ran away from her rather than at her, so she drew her blade and dove on them, chasing them through the camp, killing anyone she touched. She was the Katabull now, more animal than human, and an unbeatable force. She could see better than them, hear better than them, run faster, jump higher, and was ten times as strong. She grabbed a log from a fire on the unburned end and started igniting anything that would burn.

A man charged her with a glaive, and she threw the burning stick at him, catching his shirt on fire. He dropped the glaive and ran away screaming. Tarius sheathed her sword and grabbed the huge glaive. Then she started taking apart the rest of the camp with it, killing anyone who got close enough. When she tired of this, she dropped the weapon and tore through the camp grabbing screaming men and snapping their necks and slinging them aside like so much cordwood.

Then the first of the crossbow bolts whizzed past her, and she knew it was time to retreat.

* * *

From where he stood with the horses, Tragon could see the fires and hear the terrified scream of "Katabull!" as it was yelled throughout the camp. He could hear the sound of men dying. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of Tarius running amuck through the camp. Then suddenly she was at his side, covered with blood. She took the reins from his hand, mounted and was gone before he was even on his horse.

* * *

"By the gods! What is happening at the Amalite camp?" one of the captains asked.

"Tarius said he and his partner would create a diversion," Persius said with a smile. "It would appear that they have done so. Tell the men to work faster. We must be entirely moved by daybreak."

The captain moved away to do the king's business, and old Hellibolt took the captain's place at the king's side. "So, how do you suppose young Tarius is creating this . . . diversion?"

"What have I told you, old man? I'll hear none of your lies concerning Tarius. Besides which I don't care how he's doing it as long as it is effective."

* * *

If Tarius had been in her human form the night before, she would have awakened with stiffness in her joints. But she hadn't been human last night, and the only after effect of all that physical activity was the metallic taste of fresh blood still lingering in her mouth. She got up and took a long drink of water the minute she stepped out of the tent. Her leather was tight from the soaking she had given it last night washing off the blood, so she found some oil and rubbed it on her leather wherever she could reach.