The leading enemy was still ten feet short of the protea when Corylus shouted, “Ears for Nerthus!” and launched himself toward the enemy. He didn’t want to wear himself out—and wear out his “troops”—before the fight even started, but there was a point at which the cost of watching danger amble closer outweighed the physical exertion of a few extra strides.
Tassk was the only one of the Singiri who spoke Latin, but that didn’t matter much in the current situation. They were warriors. When their leader charged, they were going to charge right along with him—even if they thought he was shouting, “Run for your lives!”
And in truth, few regular legionaries would have understood the particular words that Corylus had shouted. The 3d Batavian Cavalry, his father’s command on the Danube, were Germans. Individual soldiers each had his own favorite deity, but the squadron’s scout section as a unit worshiped Nerthus. Their camp was at a little distance from the main squadron fort at Carnuntum, because they generally operated in darkness and needed to avoid noise and bother when they set off for the river and boats that would carry them to the Sarmatian side.
In the center of the Scouts’ camp was a thick oaken pole—a length of trunk, stripped of bark but not smoothed: it was the shrine of Nerthus. To it were nailed the right ears of enemies whom the Scouts had killed across the river.
Corylus was ten when his father took command. He had tried to count the trophies when he first saw the pole, but he had given up before long: there were over a thousand ears.
By the time Corylus was fourteen, he was accompanying the Scouts on raids, without his father’s knowledge, at least at first. Their war cry was a promise, not a boast.
If I were already in the army, I’d be a junior tribune on the commander’s staff, carrying messages to and from the centurions who led the troops into the fighting,
Corylus thought. His experience with the Scouts would have been unimportant. Here, however—
I know what to do because I’ve done it. Thank Nerthus, or Father Jove, or Good Fortune
.
He had been running parallel to the course of the Ethiope column, a little to the right. Ethiopes who had spread to the sides were moving back inward at a heavy lope. One of those turned and raised her spear overhead like a harpoon. She didn’t carry a shield.
Corylus hunched down and stopped in a spray of sand, bracing his right foot against a block of crystal sticking up from the ground. His cleats sparked on the stone. If he’d tried to remain upright, he would have pitched forward on his face.
The Ethiope stabbed downward like a battering ram. Her spearhead shattered into flint needles: she must have struck another fragment of ruin just under the surface. Even without a point, the shaft would have crushed through a human body in its path.
Corylus rose, thrusting past the quivering spear and through the Ethiope’s diaphragm. She doubled up and slid slowly down the spear shaft, which she still held in both hands.
Two more Ethiopes were approaching from twenty feet away to Corylus’ right, but he ignored them and ducked toward the main column. An Ethiope with his shield raised was facing in the opposite direction. Corylus stabbed him through the kidneys. The Ethiope’s huge body followed his spear. He had been jabbing toward a Singiri warrior who easily avoided it.
The next Ethiope was turning toward Corylus when the Singiri lopped through his knee. The warriors’ bronze swords must be extremely sharp. The joints were cartilaginous, but a quick cut at an angle like that must have clipped solid bone both above and below.
And the Singiri must be extremely strong despite their slender limbs. That wouldn’t change the outcome of a battle at odds of fifty to one—and rising every time another Ethiope stepped into the Waking World—but it would help humanity survive longer, if only by a matter of minutes.
Ignoring the falling Ethiope—he would bleed out before he could crawl to the Daughters on three limbs—Corylus thrust for the ankle of the next. His sword crunched home, but the Ethiope’s axe was already swinging down. Corylus lifted his borrowed shield to meet it, knowing the Ethiopes’ strength and wincing mentally before the physical shock.
The axe only
ticked
the rim of his shield and sailed off into the sand. Even so, Corylus’ left hand quivered on the handles—it was a buckler, not a larger target supported by loops for his left forearm. Alphena had slashed through the Ethiope’s wrist so that only inertia guided the climax of the stroke.
“Behind you!” she said. The flanking Ethiopes whom Corylus had bypassed in the initial rush were closing like bulls charging in the arena.
Farther down the line, half a dozen Ethiopes were on the sand. Some thrashed, some merely bled, and some had already bled out: the Singiri warriors knew their business. None of the enemy was close enough to be a threat as Corylus turned to meet the flankers.
Alphena shifted left, away from Corylus. The nearer Ethiope angled to follow her, crossing the path of his fellow. Corylus was on his left side, but the Ethiope held his shield low and Corylus’ long sword licked over it.
The high, pointed ear flew into the air in a spray of blood. The Ethiope bellowed, twisting as he fell sideways. The stroke had cut deeply enough into the skull to stun, but it wasn’t immediately fatal.
The following Ethiope jumped his sprawling fellow. Alphena lunged, stabbing him through the groin while he was still extended in the air. The idol in her left hand blocked the flint knife with which the Ethiope on the sand tried to stab her.
Corylus chopped through the base of the fallen Ethiope’s spine, as high as he could reach while he was off-balance. The Ethiope’s legs went limp, but his arms and torso spasmed, throwing Alphena clear.
Hercules!
Alphena’s ugly carved idol hadn’t
blocked
the knife thrust, it was gripping the flint blade. It cackled with high-pitched laughter as it threw the knife aside. Its iron tongue was licking off the blood that had spewed from Alphena’s disemboweling stroke.
I’m the commander.
Corylus glanced across the battlefield. His vision blurred and he thought for a moment that he might vomit. His stomach and eyes settled.
The Ethiopes were now charging toward the fight, throwing up plumes of dust. Because of their great weight, they plunged deep into the sand when they ran, making their advance much more tiring than their previous stolid walk had been.
Every little bit helps.
But it was time now to fall back. The Scouts used whistle signals—they didn’t usually have a trumpeter with them across the river. Corylus didn’t have a whistle, and they hadn’t set up calls ahead of time anyway.
“Recover!” Corylus shouted. His throat was as dry as if he’d been trying to swallow sand instead of just fighting on it. What in Hades’ name was the Singiri signal to fall back?
“Recover!” he repeated, waving his sword overhead. The tip slung drops of blood.
One of the warriors glanced over his shoulder. Corylus pointed toward the rear with his sword, then started jogging back.
The Singiri clicked something in his own language, and the others turned also. One was limping.
“We’ll wait for them back where we started,” Corylus muttered to Alphena through panting breaths. “Then we’ll do it again.”
And probably a third time. But it wouldn’t be very long before he and his companions were too exhausted even to raise their weapons. Then they would die and the world would end.
But until then the Horseheads would be in a fight.
CHAPTER
XVII
The sky had turned a color like unmixed wine viewed through a glass tumbler. Hedia gave it a glance of haughty dislike.
The shade ought to cool this niche in the hills. Instead the clouds overhead were a swirling purple-black lid that cut off the sea breeze and the atmosphere was sweltering. Hedia didn’t suppose it really mattered, but it was as irritating as being groped by a dinner guest who she knew was too drunk to perform if she
did
give him an opportunity.
She walked at a measured pace, watching her footing more intently than she did what was going on around her. There were soft patches in this sand; she’d almost fallen sideways once already.
Loose sand rasped between her soles and the sandals despite her having tried to shake it out. Well, she’d compromised her fashion sense as far as she was going to by wearing heavy sandals when she visited Melino. There had been no possibility that she would wear cavalry boots against the possibility of having to cross deep sand.
When Hedia set out on her personal mission, she had been afraid that an Ethiope would leave the main column to dispose of her. The half men were capable of running, whereas she was not, certainly not on these dunes.
In fact, the Ethiopes had paid no attention to her. She supposed that one of them would have knocked her head in if she stumbled into its path, but they barely looked at her as she angled off well to the side of their line.
Corylus and the lizardmen had drawn the flanking Ethiopes inward as Hedia had expected, so there was nothing in her way. She suspected that the half men would ignore all the others in the basin, human and Singiri alike, if they simply moved away from the little Nubian girls.
The Ethiopes were as mindless as ants; but also like ants, they were inexorable. They were carrying out the orders they had been given. Death would stop an individual, but there were too many individuals for that to be a practical answer.
Disposing of Paris, the wretched Etruscan
farmer,
who was responsible for the whole trouble, probably wasn’t an answer, either. Things had gone too far by now.
The Daughters of the Mind, as somebody had called them, were sprawled on the sand. Nearby the air around their Egg was rippling. A mirage? That, or something else was going on, which seemed likely enough in this place and this time.
Through the distortion Hedia could see Varus and a lizardman on either side of the Egg, but the images were smeared as though she were looking through a thick sheet of mica. She couldn’t identify the lizardman. Tassk was talking with Pandareus. The three warriors who had come with Tassk were fighting alongside Corylus, but she looked again to be sure.
Alongside Corylus and Alphena. The thought made Hedia cringe mentally, but nothing showed on her face. No doubt Alphena was making herself useful, as indeed the girl generally did, now that she was being herself instead of reacting against others.
Here, though, it would make no difference to the final result, and Hedia had a mother’s natural desire that Alphena would die a lady.
Hedia smiled wryly. Alphena would at least die a virgin. Hedia found that she didn’t take as much satisfaction from that fact as a more proper mother would. A girl’s purity was important for a good marriage, but marriage seemed as unlikely now as Hedia herself becoming a Vestal Virgin.
Paris had been kneeling before symbols he had drawn in the sand before him, tapping his wand over them while he chanted. As Hedia approached, he rose to his feet and stretched both arms toward the dark sky.
Hedia had assumed the wand was ivory or pale wood. She saw now that it was a shinbone, probably human, though perhaps from a deer.
Paris shouted to the heavens. In Etruscan, most likely, but Hedia had never learned the language. She could carry on a conversation in Oscan if she needed to, since one of her nurses had been from the Samnite backcountry.
A crash louder than lightning snapped Hedia out of her reverie. The purple sky cracked open to north and south. Sunlight reached through, but beyond the sunlight and crawling closer were the glittering immensities of the Worms of the Earth. She could see their backs above the black rocks, and the rocks themselves were being ground into their maws.
Paris lowered his arms. “You are too late, woman!” he said. “The Worms are loose on the Waking World! They will scrape all human foulness from the Earth!”
He waggled the wand toward Hedia. She was only ten feet away.
“Do you know what this is?” he said. “It’s a bone from Romulus. I have used the founder of Carce to destroy the race of Carce and all life with it!”
“My husband would be fascinated,” Hedia said, walking forward. “And I daresay that Varus might be interested also. Men have to be younger and in better condition before I pay much attention to them.”
She swung her block of stone at the priest’s face. He threw a hand up to parry it. Hedia’s arm was stronger, and the crystal’s own weight gave force to the blow.
Paris fell sideways. He had saved his skull for the moment, though his broken hand crumpled when he tried to support himself on it.
“It won’t help!” he shouted. “You’re doomed! Your whole race is doomed!”
“That,” said Hedia, “is a problem for another time.”
She struck at the priest’s face again. This time bone crunched.
Paris sprawled. Hedia toed his head so that she could see his face. His eyes were open. She hit him again in a spray of blood.
Hedia would have struck a fourth blow, but she had lost her grip on the stone. She was trembling from reaction.
She was afraid that if she bent over to pick up the stone she would fall. Besides, it was filthy with blood; and anyway, there was no need.
The Worms were devouring a path through the hills. The grinding roar of destruction made her think of surf driven by an impossibly huge storm.
Hedia, wife of Gaius Alphenus Saxa and a noblewoman of Carce, walked regally back toward her son and their friends. Her face was calm. She clenched and unclenched the stiffness out of her right hand.
* * *
A
LPHENA WAS BREATHING
through her open mouth. She’d never before in her life been so tired.
I’ve thought that before
, she realized. Well, perhaps she’d been right before also.
She and Corylus were fighting as a pair. An Ethiope charged them, snorting through flared nostrils; a second was not far behind. Alphena shifted left as usual.