Terrible Swift Sword (23 page)

Jack tried to force a weak smile, but he knew that he was certainly not cut out to be a hero of the air.

It had almost been too easy. They had waited in the forest for nearly a month, having long since abandoned their mounts, moving stealthily through the woods, finding the places where the wire ran as they had been told they would by those who rode in the sky.

Once the wire had been found, all that was needed was to wait until a cloud-flyer passed overhead flying a blue pennant, and that would be the signal to move at night.

They surprised the small outpost with almost shocking ease. The slaughter had been sharp and quick, the meal afterward a welcome reward after endless days of living without fire on tedious and dull rations of curded milk and dried flesh.

The clicking machine chattered into life without warning, and the Tuger turned, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and motioned for the wide-eyed cap-live to do his task.

"I have learned the clicking words too," the Tugar growled in barely understandable Rus. "Answer wrongly, and you'll end like this." Laughing gruffly, he held up the broiled leg of a cattle.

The wide-eyed prisoner, captured at the Kennebec station in last year's war, nodded weakly. There had been a time when he thought he might resist, that in a brief flash of signal he might send the warning, telling the army that the watch station on the far right flank was in enemy hands. Now he could only look blankly into the leering grin of the Tugar, his hands trembling.

He tapped out the signal for "all clear," and with a heart knotted in anguish he leaned back, sobbing softly while the Tugars around him laughed.

"Fist seemed strange."

The messenger looked over at the telegrapher, stilling a yawn.

"How so?"

"Didn't seem like Eugene."

"It's late, Stanislav, he's tired," the messenger said, stirring and pulling the pot of tea off the stove, motioning to ask whether the operator wanted his cup refilled.

Stanislav held his tin cup out, and with his drink refilled he leaned back in his chair.

"Seemed like someone else."

"Who?"

"Can't remember now," Stanislav said, blowing on the edge of the cup to cool it down.

"Think you should signal back?"

Stanislav sat for a moment, looking at the dark rafters of the ceiling, listening to the gentle ticking of the clock.

"Care for some honey in your tea?"

Stanislav looked over at the messenger, who was reaching into his haversack and producing a small earthen jar.

"Haven't had any in months."

The boy poured some into Stanislav's tea, and the telegrapher smiled his thanks.

He put his feet up on the desk as he sipped his tea, then drowsily listened to the ticking of the clock Ever so gradually he nodded into sleep.

Chapter 5

In the early morning light Tamuka rode up to the encampment, marked by a flickering fire. Cresting a small rise, he looked back to the west. For as far as the eye could see the steppe was covered with the vast column—twenty-five umens, a quarter of a million warriors, the advance a half-mile wide and over twenty miles deep, the thunder of their passage like a storm as they splashed through the shallows of a broad, low stream.

Vuka, grinning with enthusiasm, leaped from his saddle, going up to join his father, who was leaning against a tree, watching the host in its passage.

Tamuka, bowing his acknowledgment, went over to join Hulagar.

"Going well?" Tamuka asked, taking off his helmet to run his hands through his mane.

"The raid hit as planned. It appears that we got this far undetected."

"They've surprised us before," Tamuka said cautiously.

Hulagar nodded.

"I think though we Just might have them this time," the shield-bearer of the Qar Qarth replied. "Their river defense is well built up to where the river forks. They built along the branch that turns north. They only have watch posts out on this branch a day's ride further out."

Tamuka nodded and reached around to his hip, where he found and uncorked a water bottle. Ho took a long swallow, wiping his lips with the back of his sleeve.

"The Vushka Hush?"

"In position."

Tamuka looked over to where Jubadi sat, squatting on the ground over a map laid out before him.

Tamuka gave thanks inwardly that Jubadi had not agreed to the Zan Qarth's request to go with the Vushka. The Vushka, accompanied by a regiment of Tugars, had ridden more than two hundred miles farther to the west, departing ten days before the main column. Leaving their mounts, they had entered the forest four days ago, following a trail in the wilderness that had been blazed out in secret during the winter. It was an undignified act for one of the blood to go into battle on foot and the eleven thousand warriors had marched at a killing pace. But once the flank had been turned, their mounts would be brought up.

Hulagar went over to join his Qar Qarth, Tamuka following. Jubadi looked up, nodding a greeting to Tamuka, and he felt himself breathe easier. They had not spoken since the moon feast, and this was the first sign that whatever displeasure had been felt had dissipated. Tamuka saw Muzta standing to one side, and the Qar Qarth of the Tugars motioned for him to come over.

"I hear your warriors did well," Tamuka said politely, after bowing low.

Muzta chuckled lowly.

"Of course. The great forest might be strange to you, but it is the northern border of our realm."

Tamuka nodded in agreement. He found the looming woods to be dark and disquieting, as if carrying a vague threat in their sinister stillness. They seemed to hem in the world, and he looked into them with displeasure.

"My path-chanters can tell you every hill, every river crossing, every mountain pass, across this entire world for an entire circling, but a quarter-mile into those woods is a mystery. It is only here, and at Kyhmer on the other side of the world, that we must ride into them to avoid the seas."

Muzta paused, looking out across the steppe. Three winters back he had ridden this same land, coming forward at the head of his umens, ready to sweep up the Rus in what he thought would be a war of not more than a day—a minor diversion or sport. Only Qubata had thought differently; and now Qubata was dead.

What a world of change! Shading his eyes against the morning sun, he looked eastward. On the far horizon he could barely discern the sausage-like blur of a cloud-flyer, hovering in the sky, marking the outer line of skirmishers, pushed far forward to mask the advance. A battery of six guns clattered past, their crews lashing the sweating mounts, with a fresh team trotting alongside, ready to be hooked in if a horse should collapse and be consigned to the master of food.

Two horses a day, to feed a regiment of a thousand. Now they were slaughtering their own mounts to keep the army alive, until the hoped for hordes of prisoners had been garnered in.

How it had all changed! He kept his features fixed, revealing nothing.

"Still thinking of doom?" Muzta asked quietly.

Tamuka looked over at the Tugar and said nothing.

A clattering tapped through the glade, and Tamuka turned to where a circle of Tugars stood next to a wire-talking machine. A cattle sat on th ground, looking around in wide-eyed terror.

One of the Tugars said something to Rus, prodding the cattle with his boot. The cattle looked over at
Tamuka
for a moment, and he could sense the hatred boiling up.

Their gaze locked but for a second, and then the cattle placed his hand on the machine, the key starting to click a message back.

An instant later the cattle's head was on the ground, its legs kicking spasmodically.

"He betrayed us!" a Tugar snarled. "He sent the word 'trap.'"

Jubadi looked up from the map.

"Can you fix it?" he snapped.

Hesitantly the Tugar knelt down by the body, placing his fist on the key. He tapped out a message and waited.

There was no response. He looked back at Jubadi nervously.

"They must know," he whispered.

Cursing, Jubadi came to his feet.

"We can't wait. Signal the Vushka to attack. We move!"

A signaler, standing next to Jubadi, rushed out of the glade, shouting orders. Within seconds a mounted warrior held up a high pole, atop which was a bright red flag a dozen feet square, slashed with a white strip. Several miles to the east another flag shot up, and beyond that another, and then yet another. The command of Qar Qarth was racing eastward through the forest, to where the Vushka, long-concealed, waited for their orders to go in.

"So what do you think?" Andrew asked.

The hooded form drew closer, the thin trace of a smile on his features.

"It is as I expected. Remember, I suggested this might be their method," Yuri replied.

Andrew nodded almost imperceptibly.

"It's good to be out in the open again," Yuri said, "to smell the wind of the steppe, the scent of the blooming Kargak."

Andrew looked at the man.
Kargak
must be a Merki word. He didn't ask. This man was as much Merki as he was human.

"What you call protection is for me hell," Yuri said.

Andrew did not reply. Yuri was an outcast from his own people. He had ridden with the Merki, and even though it had been as a captive, he had been one of them nevertheless. He was an eater of human flesh, an untouchable.

He struggled with his own revulsion. He liked to think that if he were a prisoner he would die rather than submit. But the spark of life was strong. He tried not to think of the possibility.

Two days after Yuri had returned someone tried to stab him. Since then he had lived comfortably out in the countryside, but guarded and confined.

And now Andrew needed him.

"The steppe—it's home now, isn't it?"

"Twenty years, Keane. I've ridden around the entire world. I have seen Barkth Nom, the roof of the world, snow-clad, lightning dancing between its peaks. I have seen the vast plains of the Ur, where one rides for twenty days and the world is as flat as if it were spread out upon a table.

"When the Horde crossed up over the hills of Constan I stood atop the highest peak, and as far as the eye could see I gazed upon them in their multitude. I have ridden in grass so high that it crested above my head—an ocean of green wavering in the breeze, dotted with the heads of a hundred thousand warriors. I have seen the twisting storms, the green flashes of sunset, the world encased in ice, and fields of Kargak so red that the world seemed to be a carpet of scarlet.

"I've seen more than you who live in one place can imagine. I have lived like a Merki."

"And you found it to your liking," Andrew said. I

Yuri smiled again.

"If not for certain requirements for survival, who could not love it? Keane, every day that you awake you know what you will see when you step out your door. Days into months into years, always the same. I have forgotten more than you will ever see."

"And you have seen the feasts."

Yuri looked straight into his eyes.

"Yes, I have seen the feasts."

Andrew looked into his eyes. What had they really seen? As usual, Yuri's expression was emotionless, and Andrew had a flash memory of the contraband, the runaway slaves coming through the lines. They had had that same expression. The blank stare, not showing emotion in the presence of a white man,
a
man who could control them. That is how this one survived as a pet, a slave. He had conquered all feelings, all hates, all loves, standing with blank eyes to the horrors, remembering instead only the moments that had struck some inner chord of his heart. Yet nearly all the contraband held a deep and abiding hatred for their masters. Nearly all. There were some who, in that strange perverse relationship of slave and master, had come to love their owners.

He looked closely at Yuri. Was he one of those, after twenty years still loyal to those who ate the flesh of his fellow humans? Was he a plant, as Hans and Kal believed? Or was he now some poor tor-merited soul, cursed by his sins to be outcast from both the worlds he had known?

"There are times when you loathe me," Yuri said with a smile.

Andrew did not reply.

"I understand. Most of the time I loathe myself as well."

Andrew looked away from him, back toward the enemy lines.

"Tell me what will happen," he finally said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

"Do you see that standard, the red pole with the cross tree?"

"Almost like a cross," Andrew said, swinging his field glasses toward where Yuri pointed.

"It's the standard of the Qar Qarth Jubadi. Twenty horsetails hang from the pole, one for each of the sub-clans of the Merki Horde. That means he is there."

Andrew nodded.

"Or at least, it means that he wants you to think he is there."

Andrew looked over at Yuri, noticing from the corner of his eye his own guidon-bearer, holding the standard of blue cloth with the eagle of a colonel's rank emblazoned on it. The standard hung limp, and he suddenly wondered if letting his own people know his position had been such a good idea after all.

"What can we expect next?"

"Even when he is fighting a losing war," Yuri said, "the craftiness of Jubadi is legendary amongst his people. When he is not present they affectionately call him 'Vag Oge,' 'the Wily Fox.' I told you how two years ago he trapped the elite umen of the Ban-tag and annihilated it."

Andrew nodded.

"That's his style—he likes to be at the front. If it wasn't for his shield-bearer, he most likely would have been killed by now."

"Shield-bearer?"

Yuri chuckled.

" 'Pak qar numradg,' is more the term."

"What is it?"

"The Merki are ruled by Jubadi, the Qarth of Qarths, or Qar Qarth, leader of the Qarths or clans. The shield-bearer, a curious combination. He is part bodyguard, thus he carries the bronze shield and rides by his side in battle. But he is also part shaman and part advisor. He is the only one capable of speaking to Jubadi without fear. If the Qar Qarth proves to be completely incompetent he can even remove him."