Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (19 page)

What had happened to the Eblis-possessed fools he’d had watching their camp? There was no time to invoke the djinn of sloth now, but part of Jiaan’s mind was still swearing as he added his voice to those shouting alarm. He bent his bow against his foot and strung it.

All his men were crawling out of their hutches now, most of them dressed at least, since the nights were cold enough that men slept in their clothes. But even those who owned some form of armor weren’t wearing it, any more than Jiaan was wearing his—and like Jiaan, most had neglected to put on their boots.

They all held weapons, though, and Jiaan knew they outnumbered
the Hrum—they must, for he’d kept more men here than the total force the Hrum had brought to the desert.

But they were the ones who were outmatched, as the Hrum swept into the Farsalan camp and began to fight.

“To me!” Jiaan heard Fasal shouting. “Swordsmen, rally on me!”

Jiaan couldn’t locate the young deghan’s black hair in the chaotic darkness, but he did see a Hrum archer taking aim at that firm voice.

Jiaan sent an arrow into the man’s side, and the Hrum’s shot flew awry. Dangerous as it was to draw attention, he knew that Fasal had the right idea—they had to bring some organization out of this mess, or his men would all be slaughtered.

“Archers to me!” Jiaan cried. One of the perimeter guards, engaged in a desperate, defensive duel with a Hrum soldier, tripped over something and fell. Jiaan’s arrow pinged off the Hrum’s breastplate, but at this short range that was enough to knock the man off balance, distracting him long enough for his victim to stumble to his feet and run—forgetting his sword, Jiaan noted, though he found it hard to blame the man. At least he had tried. Quite a few men were simply running, running into the narrow, dark mouth of the canyon where the stream emerged, where the Hrum would have to break ranks to follow … where Jiaan’s soldiers might gain an advantage, if their idiot commander could get them organized!

“Archers, rally on me; swordsmen on Fasal. Archers on me; swordsmen on Fasal!”

Fasal had already gained a sufficient force to take the fight to the Hrum. He shouted a battle cry and ran forward, barefoot, the swordsmen he had trained running with him. Jiaan shot another Hrum archer who was aiming at Fasal, in the throat this time, but he couldn’t even spare a second to watch his victim fall, for the other archers were gathering around him.

“Shoot any Hrum who gets past our line,” he told them. Fasal’s embattled men had formed a ragged line. “Shoot any who seem—”

Before Jiaan could even finish, an arrow sped from another man’s bow, raking the face of a Hrum soldier who’d been about to cut off the arm of one of Fasal’s swordsmen. Other arrows flew as well, at the Hrum archers, at men who seemed to be in command, at any Hrum who was threatening a Farsalan swordsman.

Jiaan’s archers understood their job, and it looked like Fasal’s training with the swordsmen was paying off as well, for the Hrum’s advance came to a halt. The Farsalan army was holding its own.

Jiaan knew that couldn’t last. The Hrum fielded the finest infantry in the world, and the Farsalan camp had been taken by surprise. They had to fall back into the canyon, gain the high ground.

“Noncombatants, evacuate the camp!” Jiaan bellowed. “Fall back into the canyon. Archers to the canyon mouth. Cover the retreat.”

Those who hadn’t fled were already obeying his orders—the grooms had untethered the horses and were slapping their rumps, driving them into the dark, narrow passage. Under the direction of the middle-aged innkeeper Jiaan had appointed to run the camp kitchen, a handful of cooks gathered up bundles of food and hurried to follow the horses—except for one man, a one-handed man, who left the dark fire pits and moved against the stream of fleeing men, running toward … toward the prisoners!

Jiaan’s gaze flashed to the sheltered undercut that some long-past shift of the stream had carved in the canyon’s wall. He hadn’t given the prisoners a hutch, fearing that a guard in that confined space would be vulnerable to attack, but he’d allotted them the shallow cleft. It was deep enough to keep the rain off, and the hutches were only barely warmer than the out-of-doors, so with sufficient blankets the prisoners had fared no worse than his own men did.

Only one frightened-looking guard had lingered, but he’d kept the prisoners under control. They lay on their bedrolls, face down, their hands spread wide on the ground except for Tactimian Patrius—someone had taken the time to bind his hands behind his back before fleeing.

Aram ran up, grabbed Patrius’ hair in his only hand, and yanked the Hrum commander to his knees. Then Aram drew a kitchen knife from his belt, braced the Hrum commander’s head
against his body, and laid his knife against the prisoner’s exposed throat.

“Stop,” he shouted in clumsy Hrum. “Stop fighting, or I kill man.”

For a moment Jiaan would have sworn that the clangor of battle lessened, that the Hrum hesitated.

Then Patrius shouted, also in Hrum, “Do not stop! Do not obey him. Fight and go on fighting, whatever he does. That’s an order! Do not stop!”

The sounds of battle rolled on. Aram’s lips moved, and then, even as Jiaan opened his mouth to forbid it, he drew the knife across Patrius’ throat.

Jiaan stared in astonished horror as streaks of blood, black in the moonlight, flowed down from the knife. But only streaks, not the spurting flood of severed arteries. And though Patrius flinched back against Aram’s thighs as far as he could, he never stopped shouting.

Aram, seeing his bluff fail, swore again—or at least Jiaan assumed he was swearing. He might have been giving orders instead, for the remaining guard seized Patrius’ shoulder and dragged him to his feet, herding him toward the canyon with blows from the flat of his sword.

Aram turned toward the other prisoners, but Jiaan knew he’d have no luck getting them on their feet—the two who’d been shot
in the leg still couldn’t walk, and the man with the wounded arm had developed an infection and looked to die despite all Jiaan’s healer could do for him.

Something jarred Jiaan’s head, and a burning pain shot from his scalp. Even as he ducked and swore, clutching his head, Jiaan knew that the injury wasn’t serious—for all that he felt as if someone had rapped his skull with a hot poker, he wasn’t even stunned—but scalp wounds bled. Heat flowed through his hair, around his left ear, and over his throat and face.

Jiaan straightened, wiping his eye clear, and smiled in spite of the pain at the horrified expressions on the faces around him. “I’m all right,” he told them. “But I think it’s time we were going. Has everyone cleared the camp?”

“Yes sir,” said one of the men. “All but the prisoners. Aram saw they couldn’t move, so he just left them there. Didn’t even cut their throats.” He sounded disappointed.

“We’ll leave them,” said Jiaan. “They’ll be more hindrance than help to the Hrum anyway.” He could see for himself that everyone else had gone. The Farsalan camp was deserted, except for his archers and Fasal’s embattled force. Despite the archers’ support, more than a dozen swordsmen had fallen. Jiaan, suppressing a pang of grief, knew they were failing.

“Half of you down the canyon and up that narrow path that leads up to the top,” he ordered crisply. “When the Hrum come into
the canyon, slaughter them. The rest form up just inside the canyon, against the walls. We’re going to have to shoot everyone in the Hrum’s front line to get the swordsmen out, but the range will be close enough.”

Close enough, in the confines of the canyon, for even a mediocre archer to put arrows into the throats and faces of armored men. Close enough for his archers to force the Hrum back while the beleaguered swordsmen made their escape.

The best climbers among his men were already sprinting for the canyon. The path up to the top was little more than a wrinkle on the rock face that would have made a sensible goat think twice, but it might be less dangerous than facing down the Hrum army, at that. Jiaan turned toward the swordsmen.

“Retreat!” he shouted. He wiped away the blood that still flowed into his left eye, and nocked another arrow. “Retreat, Fasal. Into the canyon!”

Fasal, for all his hot deghan blood, wasn’t really a fool. His swordsmen were already inching back, step by step, over the cluttered maze of the abandoned camp, while the Hrum struggled furiously to hack through their lines.

Jiaan saw a sword, one that hadn’t been replaced by Mazad’s steel, shatter under a Hrum’s. His arrow took the Hrum in the thigh before he could step forward and slay the man whose sword he’d broken. Although another Hrum did slice open the man’s chest and
arm with a raking slash, the disarmed man was able to stagger back and flee, while his comrades closed ranks and took his place.

Jiaan, firing as rapidly as his blood-blurred eyes could find targets, realized that he hadn’t given Fasal enough credit. The swordsmen, whose line was narrowing as the canyon narrowed, were holding back the best infantry in the world. They took grievous losses as they did, but by Azura they were holding them back!

Fasal and two others were the last into the narrow canyon mouth, where Jiaan and his small army of archers waited for them.

As the canyon narrowed, only three Hrum could enter at a time.

“Fire,” Jiaan ordered, and his own arrow sprang from the bow to bury itself in a Hrum soldier’s throat. The moment his string snapped, he and all the archers in the front row fell to their knees to give the archers behind them a clear shot.

Fasal and his soldiers backed up a step, and then another, as the Hrum in the lead hesitated.

Jiaan didn’t hesitate. “Fire.”

More Hrum fell. The swordsmen turned and ran past him, through the massed archers, Fasal the last of them. His golden-brown skin was pale with exhaustion.

Jiaan heard the archers behind him thud down. “Fire,” he ordered, and more arrows raced out. He had another arrow nocked himself, but when he looked for a target there was no one in the
mouth of the canyon. Looking farther, he could see the Hrum retreating toward the wider valley, their shields raised to protect themselves from the arrows that rained down from the canyon’s rim.

But looking over the bodies that lay on the blood-soaked ground between them—far more Farsalan bodies than Hrum—Jiaan knew that the Farsalans hadn’t won. They had been lucky to survive.

J
IAAN DIDN’T LET THEM
stop until they reached the hilltop he remembered—big enough for his whole force to camp, yet steep-sided enough that the Hrum would be at a significant disadvantage charging up. If they had to carry every drop of water they needed up that hill, then so be it.

“We were careless,” he told Fasal, dropping down to sit beside the weary deghan. They’d had to mount the swordsmen, double, on the chargers just to get them this far, for they were too weary to walk. In some ways the swordsmen were now better off than the many who’d been forced to march through the dark rocks and prickly plants without their boots. Jiaan thought his feet hurt worse than his head, but his heart hurt worst of all, aching with the poisonous grief of guilt. “Careless, and lazy, and worst of all
arrogant
. What happened to the men who were watching the Hrum camp?”

“Dead or prisoners,” said Fasal. “I thought about that too. It
was foolish of us to assume the Suud were the only ones who could sneak through the desert. The Hrum will have scouts too. They probably waited until the clouds covered the moon, then crept through the open ground. After so many nights when nothing happened, the guards would have been bored, and sleepy. I just hope they haven’t paid too high a price for it.”

“I almost hope they have,” said Jiaan bitterly. “Azura knows we have. Where’s Aram? I need a count of the missing.”

Aram would have it, Jiaan knew. Even in the middle of an unplanned march after a battle, both of them in the dark. He had come to rely so deeply on the one-handed man who had feared he wouldn’t be of any use.

Fasal was silent. Jiaan looked around. “Where is Aram? I don’t see him.”

Fasal’s closed eyelids tightened. “He fell. After he tried his trick with the prisoners, he came to tell us to retreat to the canyon when you called for it. That’s why we were ready to move. Some of the Hrum … I guess they were angry. I don’t know.” Tears streaked the grime on his face.

A cold fist gripped Jiaan’s heart, but he took a deep breath, struggling against it.

“So he’s a prisoner. That’s too bad, but the Hrum will just make him a slave, after all. Even one-handed, he’s a useful man. He’ll come back with the others after we win.”

Fasal turned, anger blazing in his tear-bright eyes. “Don’t be such a wretched coward! He’s
dead
. The Hrum broke though our line, and he was a one-handed man armed with a kitchen knife. They hacked him to bits. He killed one of them while they were doing it, but Aram is dead.”

He buried his face in his arms.

Jiaan laid his hand on Fasal’s shoulder—it shook with silent sobs. He sat beside Fasal, staring dry-eyed into the darkness.

N
EXT MORNING, WITH
the few men who’d snatched up their boots scouting ahead for any sign of ambush, Jiaan led a party of soldiers back to their old camp to retrieve their gear. Most of the food was gone, of course. Jiaan could replace it from the supplies at their base camp, but what they had lost would add several weeks to the time the Hrum could hold out. Somewhat to his surprise, the Hrum hadn’t lingered to burn the rest of the Farsalan equipment. Perhaps they were too busy licking their own wounds. Jiaan hoped so.

Fasal, grim-faced, silent except for the low-voiced orders he gave, organized the gathering of bodies and the cutting of wood for their pyre. Jiaan left the task to him. Almost a third of Fasal’s swordsmen had fallen last night, dead or so badly wounded that it would be months before they fought again, if ever.

Farsalan deghans believed that the spirit, freed by the dissolution of the flesh, rose to Azura’s realm with the smoke of the
burning. Farsalan peasants burned a body to symbolize the Flame of Destruction that takes all things when Time’s Wheel turns, and then turns again so the Tree of Life can grow in the ashes. It was also, as Jiaan’s peasant mother once said when she thought he wasn’t listening, a practical and cleanly way to dispose of a corpse, which was a practical peasant attitude. Watching the smoke rise, Jiaan didn’t care who was right. It gave men a chance to remember and grieve—the last offering they could make to Aram, to all the dead, before gritting their teeth and getting on with the job.