"So, Tarius, do you ever take your clothes off?" It was Gudgin who asked the question. He wasn't trying to make her angry, in fact she and Gudgin had become rather close. He was a good leader and took her orders without question. Gudgin was ribbing her because he liked Tarius, it was his way of showing his acceptance of the foreigner.
"Not even to make love," Tarius answered, and Gudgin laughed.
"Quite some diversion you made for us last night. Care to tell me just what you and your partner did?"
"Just snuck in and started some tents on fire. Easy enough done. We were in and out before they were even aware of what was happening," Tarius said.
"So, do you think the king's plan will work?" Gudgin asked.
Tarius nodded. "Oh, aye, it seems a fine plan."
Tragon pulled himself out of the tent just as Harris ran over with a plate full of food for Tarius. Tarius thanked him and sat on a nearby rock. Tragon looked expectantly at Harris who in turn gave him a 'you've got to be kidding' look.
Tarius had almost finished eating when a page came running up as if a demon were on his tail.
"Sir Tarius! Amalite scouting teams approach. What are your orders?"
Tarius didn't look up from her food. "Tell the crossbow men to wait. Hold their fire until the scouts come into the cover of the woods. As soon as they're under cover, the crossbows are to open fire. Make sure none of them make it back out. Capture the horses if possible, but kill them if you have to. Nothing of the Amalites that comes into these woods is to leave to go back to their camp," Tarius ordered, and finished eating her breakfast as the page ran off. She put down her bowl and rose to her feet. She drew her blade and started to sharpen it with a whet stone. When she had run the length of the blade just three times on each side, she put the stone back in her pocket, sheathed her sword and put her helmet on her head.
Tragon took one look at her and swallowed hard. He knew this day there would be a hell of a battle. He knew it because he saw it in the way she sniffed the air, in the way her every muscle seemed to tense up ready to spring. She wasn't worried about the consequences right now, wasn't wondering whether she'd live through the fight, or whether they'd win or lose. In fact, Tragon doubted Tarius ever even considered that she could lose in battle. No, she had none of the nagging fears that the rest of them had. She lived to fight, and in battle none could equal her. She was truly in her element.
Tragon, on the other hand, was one bare nerve. He knew death could be waiting, and that his own indecision would likely bring about his doom. His lack of skill could get him killed. He had no blood lust; he didn't hate the Amalites, and he didn't even understand the reason for the war. So they wanted to take over. Was one king or one religion any worse than another? Tragon didn't think so. Tragon was here for one reason and one reason only. His father and his brothers had been Swordmasters, and he couldn't bring shame on the family name, not and hope to inherit. His father had never respected him, and he badly needed to gain his father's respect even if he gained it falsely, riding on the coattails of the she beast, hiding always in Tarius's shadow, hoping to avoid being hit or killed. Being pulled along in her wake, letting others believe that he was as brave and as powerful as Tarius.
It was only now when he stood poised on the brink of death that he doubted his plan. He might die, and what good was glory or respect or inheritance to a dead man?
"Are you ever afraid?" Tragon asked in a whisper.
"Only of losing Jena. I was afraid of bees until I was stung. I was afraid of snakes until I was bitten, and I was afraid of death until I had killed a man. Now I am not afraid of anything, only cautious. I certainly don't fear the Amalites. I don't fear them at all. My father says a brave warrior knows the day of his death. He told me that the day he died. I will not die this day," she said with the confidence of someone who truly knows their fate and knows that they have not yet finished their required task.
Tragon didn't know that. He didn't feel like he had any duty to perform. This was scary, and he wished with everything in his heart that he possessed even the courage to turn tail and run. At least that would be the truth. The real him. Tarius, he realized, was not the only one who had secrets.
* * *
They sat there for an hour, silent and ready. A second Amalite scouting party was sent out and then a third. Both times they dealt with them the same way they had dealt with the first.
Soon the entire Amalite army rode into the clearing, but not at a dead run. Slowly and steadily.
The royal page ran over, and before he could open his mouth to speak Tarius rode towards where the king sat astride his horse in full plate, probably even more uncomfortable than the rest of them. The king was to take the center unit in after Tarius had taken the right flank in. The left flank was to circle around and try to get behind the Amalites. To Tarius, who wished to utterly obliterate her opponent, it was always important that their retreat be blocked.
The page ran along beside Tarius. "The king wants to know when . . ."
"It's all right, boy. I'll talk to the king myself. Many thanks to you."
Tarius rode up to the king.
"Should we rush them now?" the king asked. "They seem in no hurry to charge us."
"Our archers have been instructed. Let our enemy come into range, we will call on the archers, and many of the Amalites will fall. They will become less sure of themselves. When I ride out, wait till we have engaged, and then bring your men in. When you have engaged the enemy force, Ramses will bring his men around and try to encircle them. The plan is working; why change it now?"
"Exactly right. Return to your place," Persius said with a rough salute. He wasn't used to the armor, and it showed.
"Take good care, Sire. It will do nothing for the men's moral if their king falls in battle."
Persius nodded his head.
Tarius rode back up beside Tragon.
"Why do they . . ." Tragon swallowed hard. At this point, he just wanted to have it done with. "Why do they not charge? Why do they approach with such caution?"
Tarius moved closer to Tragon; further away from Harris. "Katabull history is handed down verbally from one generation to the next," Tarius said in a whisper that Tragon had to fight to hear. "It is done so meticulously and with such care that very little has been lost. See, the Katabull come not from Kartik but from Amalite." She saw the shocked look on Tragon's face and smiled. "It's true, or at least it is what our history claims. We lived there in peace with the Amalites. Outcasts, we weren't allowed to live in amongst the natives, but we weren't hunted and killed, either. We lived by our laws, we lived on our own, and they left us alone. Much in the way the Katabull are treated today in your own kingdom. Not mistreated really, but not with the same rights and privileges of the common man. Such was our life in Amalite. Then the new religion came to the land. It promised things that people wanted, and it didn't seem to matter to them that everything the priests of this religion said sounded incredible. They wanted the things the religion promised.
"The followers were pests, but no one regarded them as a threat until the king clutched this new religion to his bosom. He made it the religion of the kingdom and ordered all the citizens to obey its oppressive laws. Those that would not were punished or killed. However the Katabull had never had the same religion as the Amalites, and had never been considered part of the people. The king and the priests were hard pressed to find a reason for the Katabull to be forced into conversion. None of them truly believed that we could be part of their religion any way, as we were not, and never had been quite as good as they were. We were also stronger and more powerful than normal men. It would take an army to bring down the smallest Katabull village. The king knew that he did not have the support he needed to raid the Katabull villages. They had never been part of the general populace, so why make them part of it now? They didn't want us to be part of their religion, and yet the fact that we wouldn't bow down to their gods angered them. The fact that we did things that they could not do, things that they wanted to do, made them still madder. The cunning king knew it wouldn't take much to stir the people into war against the Katabull because they already distrusted us.
"One night the king sent a company of men out to steal six children of noble families. They then killed the children, dismembered them, and spread their parts through the streets of a Katabull village. When the noble men found their children's mangled bodies, one of them "recalled" that he had seen a Katabull that night outside his home, and the rest—as they say—is history. The priests announced that their gods had ordered that all Katabull were to be killed. The Amalites descended on the Katabull villages in such numbers that even the Katabull could not fight them and had to flee their land. But they failed their gods when they failed to kill us out. We were forced to live in small packs in every corner of the world, but we were still very much alive.
"From that time till this, the Amalites have believed that if you see a Katabull at night, death will follow in the morning." Tarius smiled at the look of understanding that crossed Tragon's face. "They are afraid because they believe their own lie. They believe that the Katabull brings bad luck for them. Bad luck and death, and this one does. You always hate most that which you fear the most."
Tarius moved again, this time closer to Harris. She pulled her sword, held it above her head, and the archers perched in the trees above them nocked their arrows. She let the blade fall, and the arrows started to fly. The barrage of feathered death seemed to go on forever, but really only lasted a few minutes.
"Now!" Tarius screamed and started out of the tree line at a full gallop, her unit following close behind her, Tragon pulled along in their wake.
* * *
The Amalites were bewildered and terrified. They had been winning easily against their battered opponents, but these were not the same timid men they had been fighting. These were beasts. Beasts who hacked through them with a vengeance and surrounded them on all sides.
The first attack brought death from above as arrows rained down on them from archers hidden in the treetops. The first targets struck were the Amalite archers, making it impossible to shoot the crossbowmen from their perches. Then they started to take out their horsemen—especially any that appeared to hold rank. The second attack came suddenly. Mounted horsemen ran at them, hitting their right flank hard and heavy. Then, even as they sent their left flank in to save the right, shield men ran out hitting them in the middle. The shield men were followed by men with pikes and spears, and behind them were the horsemen waiting till their footmen made a hole in the Amalites' shield wall. Then their own shield men opened like a wave and this new batch of horsemen descended on them like locust. When they tried to retreat, they found that another troop of horsemen had come in behind them, and still the enemy's arrows rained down.
They had seen the Katabull at night, and death had followed the next day. As it was written, so mote it be.
* * *
Persius' sword and armor were nearly as bloody as that of his chief warlord. Many good men had fallen, but for each one that they had lost, a dozen Amalites lay dead by the sword, the arrow, or the battle-ax. Persius held his sword high above his head and let out a triumphant scream.
Tarius did the same, as did all the men.
Tragon did it, but didn't feel it. He had a nick on his left leg, and he felt sick to his stomach. He looked at his blade; it was bloody, for this time he had truly fought. He'd had to fight just to survive. He'd nearly been killed a dozen times, and he was badly shaken. He got off his horse because he was afraid he was going to vomit. Just as he felt the bile rising in his throat, he saw Harris and Tarius jump off their horses and run to embrace each other. They were real warriors. This carnage was what they lived for. They made him even sicker, and he threw up.
Tarius took three quarters of the able-bodied men and rode on to the Amalites' camp, making sure there was no one to follow them. They couldn't afford to leave the enemy at their back. They spent the remainder of the day caring for the injured, burying their dead, and stripping the Amalites' bodies. The next day they rose early and rode on till almost dark, trying to reclaim as much ground as possible.
On Tarius's instructions their badly wounded were sent to the nearest village to recuperate.
"Why carry the wounded with us?" Tarius had asked Persius. "It does them no good; they can not heal on the battlefield. Load them into wagons with the spoils stripped from our enemies, the weapons, and the armor. Send them to the nearest village to heal. Hand the weapons and armor out to the villagers as payment to nurse our men. Then choose from the villages enough men to make up for those lost in the battle and have them come back to base camp. We will leave a quarter of our men here to deal with the remaining dead, train the new men, and prepare to defend this area should we be pressed back. Meanwhile, let us move on to push the Amalites back. When we have won the next battle, we will pull this detachment of men up behind us to hold our ground. If we need them, they will never be more than a day behind us. We will send pages out four times a day, and they will likewise send them out four times a day. In this way we will always know what is going on there, and they will always know what is going on here. If we feel we need part or all of this force for reinforcements, then we call on them. In the meantime they can be training the new recruits and refining their own skills since we will leave the poorest of our fighting men behind at base camp. Only take care not to let them know that we have chosen them to stay behind because of their lack of skill. Point out to them that it is because they are such grand fighters that we have left them—a much smaller group—to guard our retreat. In this way they will try hard to be worthy of your respect."