The Starfollowers of Coramonde (37 page)

Some fortune
had offset the tragedy of the Gauntlet. A strong simoon had come up to swirl
sand and dust, obscuring the telltale cloud the army raised. It had made riding
hard, driving grit into mail-links, eyes, ears and clothes, but Springbuck had
greeted it with grudging pleasure.

Gabrielle lay
on a litter in one of the few baggage wagons they had. She’d regained her
senses, but was exhausted by the siphoning of her energies. She’d also entered
a depression brought on by her mother’s death, of which she refused to speak.
Andre’s singular demand on the deCourteneys’ mystic bond had lapsed, and the
sorceress was slowly recuperating. The simoon had died down a few hours before,
and now, at late sunset, the air was eerily calm.

Condor’s
Roost was an impressive feat of construction in inhospitable wastes. The late
caravaner had said it possessed capacious cisterns, fed by both springlets in
the mountains around it and the infrequent rainfall. Springbuck, beginning to
appreciate how pivotal water was in the Southwastelands, considered the need of
water the major reason to begin against the fortress now, rather than waiting.
His scouts had found no other source of it, and men and horses were using what
they had at an alarming rate. Too, there was the deadline proclaimed by the
Trailingsword.

But as
intimidating as Condor’s Roost was, it didn’t quite span the pass from side to
side. The land to Springbuck’s left was fissured, textured from quirks of
upheaval, defying fortification.

“An assault
on those walls will cost us dearly,” predicted Hightower, himself a master of entrenchments.
“We cannot mount the frontal assault that will carry that pile by storm at the
outset.”

“Our scouts
report no other way south,” Springbuck replied.

The Warlord’s
brows knit. “And what will transpire, should the defenders duck out their back door
and bring aid?”

“Disaster,
maybe. It cannot be permitted.”

“More lightly
described than delivered,
Ku-Mor-Mai.”

Springbuck
squinted, eyesight badly hampered by the distance, at those crevasses to the
left.

“Bring me a
man with the eagle’s gaze. There may be a way.”

A sharp-eyed
archer from Rugor confirmed what Springbuck had thought. Those wrinkles in the
earth’s mantle might hold a way past, if men went carefully and on foot. They
could take the pass behind the fortress. Holding it would be another question
entirely.

“It would be
a desperate position to man,” Hightower said doubtfully, then shrugged off
misgivings. “It can be accomplished though, I trow. Hah! Whosoever holds there
will have a siege of his own to fight.”

“I concede
that, my Lord, but I think some resupply could be done by traversing the back
hills and ridge lines. What other way is there?”

The Warlord’s
iron gloves slammed knuckle to knuckle in a decisive clang. “There is none,” he
said.

Let the gods avenge themselves.

Roman legal maxim

THERE was the subdued rattle of
manacles. Four field marshals of the Southwastelanders were ushered into the
tent of their captor, the King of Freegate, Lord of the Just and Sudden Reach.

They were
attired more as kings than conquered. Their armor, covered with the skins of
the huge snakes and lizards of the deserts, shined with gems and gilt-work.
They were Occhlon, a cruel race fit to prosecute the wars of Shardishku-Salamá,
and they waited with elaborate indifference. After the victory of the
Dream-drowse, Reacher had taken their force unprepared.

There was
disdain in the captives’ manner for this rabble of mongrels who’d dared enter
these sacrosanct lands. The Occhlon had ridden out against invaders, thousands
of spears catching the sun, scorpion banners in rippling life. There had been a
collision in arms lasting a day and part of the next before going the way of
the invaders.

The field
marshals studied their enemies covertly. None of them knew just which was this
monarch of Freegate. No single figure had been identified as commander. Alert,
impatient in the brittle way of jungle beasts, they anticipated humiliation.
Subordinate officers and aides were coming and going, and men of the
Horseblooded, those amazing riders.

There’d been
a shock of recognition between Occhlon and Horseblooded. Born to the saddle,
the two races had fought encounters of incredible savagery, with feats of
horsemanship and daring approaching insanity.

Senior among
the Occhlon prisoners was a burly general named Aranan. He quickly sorted out
the functionaries and lower echelons, and scrutinized the remainder. He thought
he knew who his opposite number must be, that tall one, whose thick mustachios
spread across his face like wings. The northerner took reports and gave terse
orders, his forehead furrowing often in thought.

Besides those
who might be this Lord of the Just and Sudden Reach and his subalterns, there
was a strangely matched trio speaking softly together to one side. One was a
sour-faced man, skinny, and not looking the part of a warrior. Moreover, he had
an odd metal framework hung from his ears, which held circles of glass before
his eyes. Doubtless a warlock.

The second
was plainly a savage of some type, wearing only a cincture and gloves, a heavy
cestus on his left hand and a gauntlet with long, curving claws on his right.
The third was more noteworthy, a woman decked out in armor, with knives
strapped to her hips and a sword slung at her back. Her blond hair, bleached
nearly white by the desert sun, fell to her waist. A woman, thought Aranan,
allowed to go about as if she were a man? Really, the perversions of these
outlanders! He hid his shame and fury, that a lowly female should witness the
disgrace of an Occhlon general.

In anger, he squared
off before the tall warrior he assumed to be King. From habit, Aranan set his
left hand on his empty scabbard. “We stand as your prisoners today, my Lord of
the Just and Sudden Reach, but you would do well to remember balances; there is
symmetry to war, as to the Wheel of Fate.”

The man of
Freegate looked him over carefully. “What would that mean, pray?”

“That your
grasp has overextended itself, and will be lopped off in due course. You have
come too far.”

“So? Never
would we have raised the banner of war to you, but that you did so to us.”

The
Southwastelander’s face reddened under sun-browned skin. “My sword would answer
you, were we on the field. We are Occhlon, a warrior race, premier in duty to
our Masters!”

“Among
others, you mean?” the outlander asked with honest interest.

“Lions among
warriors!” the desert man barked. “There are the Baidii, but they are ancient,
decadent and unworthy. And there are the Odezat, who fight more for pay than
pride, but before all others there are the Occhlon.”

“Your race
lives for war, then?”

Aranan’s
chest puffed with pride. “Inspired to arms, we rose as the new champions of
Salamá.”

The mustache
moved, a smile showing beneath it. “The field is ours today.”

“Your
reversal is forthcoming.”

The
northerner caught his lip between thumb and forefinger. “Our full strengths are
yet to be matched.”

Aranan spat
on the carpet. “Strengths? Match yours against mine then, dung-eater!” He held
his right hand out, daring the Freegater to try wrists. The northerner looked
the hand over speculatively, but restrained himself.

Another came
forward, the savage whom Aranan had noticed. He watched the Southwastelander
for a moment, then threw his left hand up and took the challenge. His fingers,
in their cestus, interlaced with Aranan’s. “If you would try your might and
main with the King of Freegate, your wish is now come as fact.”

The Occhlon’s
eyebrows shot up. “You?”

Reacher saw
no need to repeat it. Hands bore down and wrists flexed. There was a slight
quivering as they stepped up their efforts. The southerner was shocked at the
absolute resistance he met. Aranan, ever a winner at the wrist-duel, huffed and
strove, but never gained a hairsbreadth.

Reacher
exerted himself. A sudden yielding, and their hands flip-flopped. It was the
field marshal’s hand bent up and under, and he who cried in pain. Reacher let
go and turned from him at once. Guards moved to take the prisoners away, but
the general resisted, addressing Reacher’s back.

“Go into
Mother Desert then,” he invited, “go find your end. We are many, and we are
ready. And forget it not, that you are rousing older, more terrible wrath. Do
you think we fly the banner of Ibn-al-Yed idly, or that all his magic died with
him? Mother Desert, and the Five who rule her, have many, many secrets to bring
out in their good time. The Scorpion Flag is not thrown down so rudely.”

Reacher, back
still turned, gestured. The guards hustled the prisoner away. The officer who’d
refused Aranan’s challenge said, “Will there be aught else, sire?” The King shook
his head. They bowed, though he didn’t face them.

His
second-in-command, Katya, came to him. “Surely you pay that blusterer no mind?”
she pressed. “We have broken them; they have no men left in this land to send
at us.”

“Which, I
believe, is what your brother’s fretting about,” interjected Van Duyn. “The
Masters have sent the majority of their manpower elsewhere, it seems, and
you’ve dealt with what was left. Still, I’d say it’s obvious that they’re
determined to buy time. Now, with no mundane resources left, to what will they
resort, d’you suppose? Reacher’s wondering what else they might have in, um,
reserve, just as I am.”

The King
confirmed it. The Snow Leopardess shook her head, white-gold shimmering.
“Borrow no trouble, brother.” She took her casque up. “I will make the rounds.”

Van Duyn said
he’d come, and she accepted cheerily. She wanted to hear more of the tales he’d
been telling her from medieval Japanese history. She thought highly of that
culture.

When they’d
left, Reacher went to the flaps of his tent. The sun was setting on the
Southwastelands. He wished he were back with his lupine foster brothers,
running the High Ranges. What, indeed, would the Five send against him, now
that their armed resistance had been thrown back?

The King,
stretching his fingers in their cestus and clawed glove, was plagued by that.

Making his
uneventful circuit of the camp, the guard swayed now and then in the saddle.
Protracted battle had sapped the strength of every man in the army of Freegate,
and the Horseblooded as well.

His mount
stopped, sniffing the slow breeze. He could see nothing there, but became more
alert. It might be some jackal or other scavenger from the battlefield below,
but again it might be an enemy. He clucked and advanced beyond the torchlight
ring to investigate.

His death,
punctuated by his screams, roused that end of the camp. Two more guards came,
shields up, lances ready, to see what had happened to their comrade. From the darkness
came a rasping, like the uneven release of some immense, ratcheted wheel. Red
points of light gleamed. One sentinel veered toward those, lance-head going
before.

His weapon
was seized and snapped like a splinter, he and his horse flung aside with absolute
force. The second rider bore in on the intruder’s side, though he couldn’t make
out clearly what it was. His lancehead was stopped as if he’d ridden into a
boulder, lifting him from his saddle; his horse foundered for a moment, was
grasped and raised in the air. There was a sound like rusty, grinding metal,
and the animal’s sides and neck were crushed.

Horns blew,
raising the alarm. Relief sentries grabbed torches and rode out behind their
watch commanders. In Van Duyn’s tent, the Snow Leopardess and the American
awoke. They slipped on clothes, took up weapons, and threw back the
door-hangings. From there, they gaped out at the cause of the furor.

Some Power
had dispatched a servant against the invading army, an old and dreaded guardian
of Mother Desert. While men rode in circles around it, waving firebrands and
yelling half in provocation, half in terror, the enormous scorpion moved with
purpose toward the slope leading to the King’s pavilion. This servant of Salamá
had been set to slay the King of Freegate, removing the motivating force of the
invasion. Katya saw that the thing didn’t swerve from its course when archers
swooped in to loose their shafts at close range, nor did it stop to rend the
fallen with its chelicerae and feed on soft tissues and juices. Its pharynx
pumped, anticipating food, and its mouth frothed, but there was only one man in
the camp who would sate its hunger.

Arrows
bounced off it; spears did no better, and sword cuts rebounded unnoticed.
Strident raspings of its pedipalps against its walking legs announced its
anger, but it wouldn’t be turned aside. A horseman came too close; the monster
picked up his vibrations through its pectines, pivoted with amazing agility and
trapped him in its claw, snipping him neatly in two. His companions fell back
in horror. The scorpion dropped the pieces and scuttled on quickly.

“He’s seen
it,” the Snow Leopardess said. At the summit of the hill, Reacher had appeared,
staring down tight-faced at the monster. Katya wasn’t so contemplative; she took
the first horse she came to, sword in hand. Van Duyn, looking around, could
find no other mount. Shouldering the Garand, he went off after her at a trot.

The camp was
fully aroused, and more coherent defense took shape. A line of pikemen grounded
their weapons’ butts and formed their hedge. The emissary of the Masters
crunched in among them like a machine though, and the polearms were turned
aside or snapped off by its thick chitin. Several of the heavily armored
horsemen had been stung, and now the envenomed tail darted in among the
infantrymen, everywhere at once, passing through their mail. Soldiers heaved in
convulsions, their autonomic systems paralyzed. The blue of cyanosis was in
some faces already, from the massive doses of poison meted out. Death was
nearly immediate.