Demontech: Gulf Run (28 page)

“It could be worse,” Haft ironically said to the shaken Spinner. “Slice and Hatchet”—the senior of the pairs of Border Warders watching the Jokapcul—“haven’t shown up.”

“They have farther to run,” Spinner said glumly.

“There are about a thousand of them,” Fletcher muttered, “and we have fewer than eight hundred soldiers and fighting men, plus Rammer’s recruit company. They’re attacking, we’re defending. I was always told attackers need to outnumber defenders by at least three to one in order to win.”

Rammer shook his head. “That’s with the defenders in fortified positions. We’re behind circled wagons, not fortifications.” He looked into the distance. “We need a Manila John Basilone, or a Dan Daily.”

Haft remembered the legendary heroes Lord Gunny had taught about. They didn’t have the magical weapons those men had:
machine guns
. But, “We have these,” he said, hefting his demon spitter. “They don’t. Xundoe?” He looked at the mage.

“We have a dozen men who know how to use them,” Xundoe said. “But I don’t have time to set booby traps.”

Rammer looked at Spinner and Haft for a beat or two. When they didn’t start issuing orders, he did.

“Captain Geatwe, get your men ready to defend the circles from the west side to the northeast. I’ll send most of Company C to reinforce you. Captain Phard, cover the approaches from southwest to east with Company A. I’ll hold Company D in the middle to reinforce where needed. Magician Xundoe, see to the distribution of whatever magical weapons you can to the men who have been trained to use them. Questions?”

The only question went unspoken. Haft wanted to ask,
Who put you in command?
But he didn’t say it. He knew his and Spinner’s indecision had forced Rammer to give the orders.

“Do it,” Rammer said, then to Spinner and Haft, “By your leave, sirs?”

“Do it,” Spinner said.

With a nod, Rammer ran off, shouting for the men of Company C and D to assemble.

“I’ll get Nightbird to assemble the healing witches and magicians,” Zweepee said. “Doli and Maid Marigold, come with me, I’ll need your help organizing litter-bearers. You too, Alyline.”

The Golden Girl sniffed, but shook her hair and went along.

The night, which had been more quiet than most nights since the original band of refugees set out from Eikby weeks earlier, was suddenly filled with the cries of men preparing for battle. To the west they heard the drumming of comite feet as Desert Men galloped north to join in the coming battle. The ululations of Desert Men war cries pierced the cacophony in the caravan.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

The Zobran Royal Lancers were still forming up inside the circle of wagons astride the road on the northeast of the great circle when a flight of arrows rattled into it, thunking into wagons and the ground. There was a scream of agony, but only one person was hit. Then a hundred Desert Men swarmed in, those whose comites could squeeze between wagons or hop over wagon tongues, riding into the circle. A few of the beasts misjudged the jump and tripped, throwing their riders. Most of the thrown Desert Men quickly regained their feet, but a few stayed down, too badly injured to rise or trapped beneath their mounts. The rest scrambled through the circle of wagons on foot, their scimitars flashing in the moonlight.

“On them!” Lieutenant Guma roared over the screams of frightened women and terrified children. He thrust his lance at a dimly seen, screaming mounted Desert Man charging at him with raised scimitar. He twisted violently to dodge the man’s chopping blade. Pierced through by the lance and unable to change the direction of his swing, the Desert Man was already dying. His falling body threw his aim off and the razor-sharp blade missed both Guma and his horse. Guma yanked and twisted his lance to free it, then spun about.

Despite the fierceness of the attack, his men were forming into teams. Here, a line of five horsemen lunged forward and crashed into a mass of dismounted Desert Men, bowling them over. One lost his lance, unable to wrest it from the body of the man he’d speared. Three others managed to free their weapons. The fifth lancer had missed. Their horses lashed out with flailing hooves, knocking Desert Men down, trampling downed men unable to roll out of their way.

Four lancers charged side by side into a knot of mounted Desert Men who were hacking away at two of their comrades. The Desert Men were caught by surprise and crumpled under the counterattack. Five of them and three comites died abruptly. The rest fled.

A Desert Man was briefly distracted by the screaming, clawing, kicking woman he’d just plucked out of a wagon and thrown over the front of his saddle. The distraction was enough that he never saw the lancer whose weapon pierced his neck. His fate was quickly shared by other Desert Men who were distracted by booty and captives.

But not all were distracted.

A screaming Desert Man, scimitar held high and back for a decapitating stroke, galloped at Guma. Guma saw him in time to kick his horse into jumping across the path of the oncoming comite. The two animals collided, Guma’s horse thrown off its feet to land heavily on its side. Tripped, the comite flipped over it and crashed to the ground with the loud
snap!
of breaking bones. But Guma had been ready and threw himself out of the saddle just as the animals met. He landed away from the slashing hooves of his horse as it fought to right itself. The Desert Man who’d meant to unhead him wasn’t ready and was flung forward like a stone from a catapult, landing on his own blade. He didn’t regain consciousness before he bled out.

At the pounding of heavy feet, Guma spun again, lance ready to thrust or parry. He dropped to the ground, ducking under a flashing scimitar, and thrust upward. His lance went so deep into the comite’s belly that it was yanked from his hands. The beast reared, screaming as its entrails spilled, and the rider struggled to maintain his seating.

Guma wasted no time in bounding to his feet and leaping at the beast and rider. He grappled the scimitar wielder around the waist, pulled him from his saddle and flung him to the ground. The man hit with a loud
whoomph!
of air being forced from his lungs. Guma, still on his feet, lifted a foot and slammed it down hard on the man’s neck. The man’s eyes popped and he let go of his scimitar to clutch at his throat. His chest struggled to draw air into his empty lungs, but his throat was crushed and his efforts failed. Guma swept up the dropped scimitar and turned about. The comite, with the lance still slicing through its guts, was on its knees, keening piteously. Guma stepped toward it and swung the scimitar into its throat, almost decapitating it. The animal’s long neck and head flopped down from the cut and its body swayed for a moment before it toppled and shuddered one last time. Guma dropped the sword and gripped the lance. With a foot against the beast’s side for leverage, he yanked his weapon free.

His horse was now back on its feet, but it was staggering, dazed from the collision with the comite. Guma looked about for another, but saw none standing free and sound. Instead he saw something more remarkable—the Desert Men were fleeing the circle of wagons, headed back into the darkness from which they’d come. Not nearly as many left as had come in the attack. The ground inside the circle was covered with dead, dying, and wounded. There were more comites down than Royal Lancers, and more Desert Men than their beasts.

Just then a platoon from Company C arrived to reinforce the Royal Lancers. In addition to swords, most of them carried bows and full quivers. Guma immediately lined the bowmen up on the outside of the circle and had them fire a few volleys after the fleeing Desert Men. Even though the fleeing enemy were almost impossible to see in the predawn light, screams told of arrows that found their mark.

It took long minutes for the wounded men and animals to stop their moaning and screaming. Only then could the frightened women get over their fear and screaming, to soothe away the children’s crying.

Things didn’t go so smoothly everywhere. Two circles around to the left, the Zobran Light Horse managed to get into formation before the Desert Men struck, but there were twice as many attackers than the Royal Lancers had faced. The Light Horse were at the inner arc of the circle when the Desert Men began storming through the outer arc.

“CHARGE!” roared Lieutenant Haes, sword held high.

The horsemen kicked their heels into their horses’ flanks and bolted forward. The Desert Men who first broke into the circle were met by kicking, biting, war horses whose momentum slammed them back and threw them off balance so they couldn’t swing their scimitars to full effect. The horsemen were prepared and had better control over their weapons. They swung and stabbed with their swords, and in a moment nearly every Desert Man in the first wave was down, clutching at red-gushing wounds—or lying still in death.

Then the second wave of mixed mounted and dismounted Desert Men reached the horsemen and a wild melee broke out. The force of the attack drove the Light Horse back into the center of the circle, where they were quickly surrounded by superior numbers.

Not all the Desert Men surrounded the Light Horse, however. A score or more rampaged through the wagons, flinging chests and baskets and storage bottles from them in search of coins and gems. They ignored the cowering children and oldsters they found, but shrieked when their questing hands fell on comely women. They threw the women from the wagons and roughly herded them into a guarded group to take away after they’d won this battle.

But not all the children and oldsters cowered, and not all the women allowed themselves to be taken easily. A Desert Man died ignominiously when an ignored boy of ten plunged a whittling knife into his throat and the child’s aged grandma crashed a cast-iron cooking pot on his head. Another met his match when the woman he attempted to rape clawed his eyes out, then wrested a knife from his belt and plunged it into his lower jaw, through his pallet, and into his brain. Those and a couple of others were exceptions—most of the rampaging Desert Men festooned themselves with tawdry jewels, bulged their pouches with copper coins, and successfully herded women into a group that they gleefully jeered with taunts of what was to happen to them—and more than one woman, child, and oldster died attempting to fight back.

Perhaps it was a good thing for the Desert Men that the captured women didn’t understand their language, for the women might have attacked had they known what their captors had planned for them.

The fight in the middle of the circle was a stalemate. The Desert Men had the advantage of numbers and greater freedom of movement. They were wild and fought fiercely, but their battle tactic was individual combat, where the Light Horse were disciplined soldiers who fought as teams. It wasn’t until some of the Desert Men broke contact and withdrew to where they could use their recurved bows and begin bringing horsemen down with arrows—a few of which hit their own men in the dark—that the tide of battle began to turn their way.

But it didn’t stay their way for long. The former sailors who’d escaped New Bally with Rammer arrived to reinforce the Light Horse. They used their cutlasses to hew down the archers, then attacked the rear of the Desert Men who had surrounded the horsemen. With the circle surrounding them broken, the Light Horse were able to wheel out of their defensive posture and attack. The Desert Men broke and ran. One of them tried to drag a woman onto his saddle before he fled and was skewered by a sword in the hand of a horseman.

A platoon of veterans who’d managed to scrape off a little of their rust since being placed in Company C reached the circle to the right of the road on the northeast just before the Desert Men swarmed into it and reinforced the Zobran Pikers, who stood alternating pikemen and archers in a line. The pikers met the Desert Men head on. Half of the lead comites impaled themselves on the waiting pikes, which were firmly butted in the ground. The archers who stood between the pikemen made swift work of the riders. The Desert Men who avoided the axe-headed spears and broke through the line found themselves faced by veterans desperate to prove to themselves that they still knew how to fight, and more desperate to save themselves and the other refugees.

The entire first wave went down. The second wave’s numbers were severely depleted by the archers before they reached the questing spear points and axe heads of the waiting pikes. The veterans moved forward to stand side by side with the archers between the pikemen, protecting the bowmen, freeing them to keep shooting their ranged weapons when Desert Men made it through the deadly screen of pikes and flying arrows. The Desert Men’s charge broke apart at the circle’s edge and the survivors fled. The few who had gone around to enter the circle from other directions were met and cut down by veterans who hadn’t moved into the line to protect the archers.

The many troops of Desert Men, who outnumbered the defending Zobrans and their reinforcements, fought the same way they fought within the groups—as individuals. They had made no provision for any group of them to reinforce another in order to exploit a breakthrough. Twenty minutes after the first group hit the not-yet-prepared Royal Lancers, the last of them was beaten off and pursued by arrows and jeers.

Nor did they coordinate their attacks well. It wasn’t until several minutes after the last of the attackers from the north and east were thrown back that Desert Men attacked the Skraglanders who manned the west defenses.

Heartened by the victories of the Zobrans and determined not to be outdone by them, the Skraglanders fought with a ferocity that exceeded that of the Desert Men. The battles on the west side didn’t last quite as long as those on the north and northeast before the survivors fled after their tribesmen.

In the center of the circle of circles, the recruits of Company D, who hadn’t been needed in the battle, heard the battles and knew all were victories for their side. Every man of Company D had seen close-up the effects of war, all of them had lost friends, relatives, or property to war. They were all refugees from war. Yet rather than feeling grateful that they hadn’t had to fight, they felt left out. Their comrades—they already mistakenly thought of themselves as soldiers—had achieved victory while they had done nothing to contribute to it. Instead they were huddled away from the fighting like sheep.