IronStar (17 page)

The north quadrant looked to be
mostly middle and upper class residential, including almost all of the (rather
modest, by Regnum standards) civil service, and the three schools, one of which
was currently Kirrah’s home. Besides formal schooling, many children were
apprenticed by various tradesmen, often within their own home block. The east
quadrant was older, consisting of middle class, merchant and laborer dwellings,
and included the site of what had been the palace before the latest expansion,
a building which was now serving as Guild headquarters. South of that, in the
oldest part of the city and extending on a vee-shaped piece of land between a
river and the small lake, was a concentration of docks, shipping, warehousing
and manufacturing, that is, blacksmiths, shipwrights, armorers and masons.

The fifth and final section of the
city ran in a narrow strip south from the palace, down to the lake. In that
section, enclosed by more of those internal walls, were the military barracks,
cavalry stables, training and storage facilities, and various armories.

The city had grown from a few docks
and an inn at the point where the river Geera was formed from the union of
three major tributaries: the Upper Geera flowing in from the northeast, down
which she had first approached the city; the Geeratha - ‘mother of Geera’ -
flowing from due east across the plains; and the South Geera, from due south.
All three tributaries flowed into the east end of an eight-hundred meter long
crescent-shaped lake scoured out of the plains by erosion and turbulence where
their currents met. The city had grown and wrapped itself around the north
curve of this lake. The combined currents made up a good-sized river, perhaps a
hundred meters wide, flowing west to …whatever Sea of the Sun was.

Trade down the river had been
better in the past, several merchants complained to Kirrah, but the O’dai, a
larger and comparably advanced nation to the west, had become much more
aggressive in the past few years. Now an honest merchant ship could hardly find
cargo. Not that he’d want to risk his ship and livelihood to the mercies of a
larger and better-armed O’dai ‘excise squadron’. One man had spat on the ground
and called them simply pirates with a king’s banner. Kirrah’s years in the Regnum
merchant fleet made her a sympathetic audience.

Her visit to the small military
zone had turned up other information. The city’s population of about twenty
thousand was protected by a total fighting force of approximately thirteen
hundred men. Unlike other trades, military service was exclusively male. This
included a palace guard of about one hundred, another two hundred on active
city patrol including wall security, these stiffened by ready reserves of four
hundred militia. There were also four hundred mounted men serving as border
patrol, Irshe’s orange-and-greens, responsible for everything outside the
city’s walls. Kirrah gathered there was not a lot of call for police duties.
Everyone she met seemed so …polite. Not slow or passive, no one could accuse
Slaetra or her students of being anything less than fully absorbed by life, but
consideration for others seemed almost culturally ingrained. Even in the
poorest or most industrialized sections, there was nothing that could properly
be classed as slums.

The city also maintained about two
hundred mounted men, a force Kirrah could only consider as cavalry. They rode
specially trained war horses and wore the only metal armor she had seen. Each
man carried one of those thick shields which had been the subject of her
sidearm demonstration, and a heavy double-handed sword that could probably cut
an opponent in half. For the first time, she also met someone who was less than
eager to answer all her questions. As far as she could glean with Irshe filling
in a few blanks, although the cavalry wore orange-and-blue they considered
themselves an elite force, answerable to no one but the King, and well able to
deal with any enemy who dared show themselves within sight of the city walls.

Their commander, a Major Doi’tam
shu’Gamalar, saw no reason to take questions or advice from anyone, with or
without a letter of introduction from the Guildmaster. The cavalry had a proud
tradition of service, and the thought of a Wrth horseman with his crossbow and
light curved sword meeting one of his cavalry was a laughable mismatch.
You’re
probably right about that, one on one
, Kirrah had thought to herself,
but
just counting the arrows in Akaray’s village, I seriously doubt the Wrth attack
one on one
. (Bolts
, she corrected herself, crossbows shoot
bolts
,
or
quarrels
, not arrows
.)

The final military presence in the
city was its navy. Kirrah was almost reluctant to use that term for the
half-dozen vessels tied up at the docks at the foot of the military zone, or
for their bored-but-anxious looking crews. It looked as though some small cargo
ships about ten or twelve meters long had been outfitted with wooden planks
over the gunwales as shield against arrows. They carried an inefficient-looking
square sail, a dozen oars, and a boarding plank. Their mission seemed to be to
carry troops to enemy ships coming up the river, board and capture them. In a
match with skilled sailors, Kirrah would reluctantly have to place her bet with
the attackers.
Thank God,
she thought,
all this military effort will
be obsolete in a few more months
.

Twice during her days of touring
the city, Kirrah had wakened to see fading columns of smoke to the north and
west. The evening of the second of these days, Irshe had returned to the
school, grimfaced, with the news that another village had been burned out, and
almost all of its inhabitants killed or missing. Some had already joined the
steadily growing trickle of villagers arriving from the north, finding shelter
among the farming homes outside the city walls or within the city itself.

“Those who live by the sword, get
shot by those who don't.” – ancient maxim, source unknown, first recorded in
late 20
^th
century TerraNet.

Three days later, the city’s alarm
bells were ringing before breakfast. Irshe, Kirrah and her six palace guards
quickly made their way north from the school building, three blocks to where
their street ended at the outer wall and a watchtower. After some haggling with
the duty officer, Irshe managed to get all of them into the tower’s cramped
interior, up the wooden ladder and out onto the top of the wall, giving them a
good view for several kilometers up the north road.

Already Kirrah could see a wave of
panicked farming families riding and running south down this road and across
the adjacent fields, making as quickly as they could for the gate in the city’s
north wall, located three city blocks west of their tower. At the gate, these
refugees were crowding around in a growing pool of humanity, and Kirrah
realized at the same moment that they were not being allowed in, and the reason
why. Out from the gate rode forty of the impressive Royal Cavalry, large
armored men atop snorting, stamping war horses, fierce, beribboned, and
colorful.
Perfect for a period 3V show
, Kirrah thought uneasily,
but
I hope they know what they’re up against
.

As though on cue, along the north
road came into view a long line of horsemen. A long,
long
line. They
spread out across the fields a kilometer or so to the north, and began torching
the abandoned dwellings and outbuildings. Kirrah estimated well over a hundred
riders. The cavalry pulled up in a neat row, and waited. The civilians had
begun to filter through the city gates, although some of the men and not a few
of the women waited to see what would happen. Occasional angry shouts or wails
gave commentary on one or another building’s flaming demise as the raiders
moved closer. The line of cavalry waited, steady.

“Now would be a good time for a
tso’ckhai
to strike from the
not-grass
,” Kirrah mused, mostly to herself.

“Hmmm?” Irshe replied, his eyes on
the line of raiders. “A
tso’ckhai
? The farmers keep them cleared from
near the city. Dangerous nuisances. Not as dangerous as a band of Wrth,
though…”

After about twenty minutes, the
raiders simply ran out of outlying buildings to burn, and turned toward the
cluster of shops and dwellings strung out for half a kilometer along both sides
of the north road. As they did, a second column of cavalry flowed out through
the gates and joined the first.
Oho, at least someone had the sense to send
for reinforcements,
Kirrah thought.
That Major Doi’tam may be a bit
pompous, but he has some idea of odds. There must be a good hundred men in the
troop now. Let’s see how good he is with tactics. And let’s get the rank right,
that’s Doi’tam-fira'tachk, ‘leader of braid-of-groups’
.

At the sound of a chime, the
cavalry began to pour up the north road, five abreast across the ten-meter-wide
hard-packed earthen surface. The raiders spotted the movement and began to form
into a loose circular grouping about fifty meters across, centered at the point
where the thoroughfare broke free of the roadside buildings.
Oh-ohhh
,
thought Kirrah,
that looks exactly like a swarm of missiles getting set to
englobe the lead elements of a convoy
.

Apparently whoever was at the head
of the cavalry column had some tactical sense of the situation as well. About
fifty meters back from the last building, the column split in two, three of the
five lines turning abruptly right and two turning left between the last few
buildings, in an obvious attempt to attack both flank ends of the semicircle of
raiders. The raiders in turn split their semicircle into two groups, each
forming a V with its wide end open toward the approaching cavalry, which by now
was at full gallop.

Kirrah groaned.
They’re not
going to charge into…
yes, that was exactly what they were doing. Shields
in place, the two cavalry columns rode straight into the open ends of the
facing V’s, which turned to keep them centered. From this distance, Kirrah
could only imagine the hail of crossbow bolts at short range, but the effect
was obvious as the lead five or six horses in each rank stumbled and fell
almost simultaneously. The rest of the columns plunged on, straight into a
second volley.
They’re not reloading
, she thought,
there’s no time -
they’re just using their weapons to best advantage, firing by squads
.

By this time, the remaining cavalry
was among the raiders. Screams reached the walls, delayed and attenuated by
distance, screams of horses, she realized. They must have been deliberately
targeting the horses. In the pitched battle that followed, two patterns began
to emerge. The two cavalry columns did their best to keep organized as units,
making devastating slashing attacks with their heavy swords and armor against
the lighter-armed and armored Wrth horsemen. The raiders on the right skirmish
worked in loose groups of ten or so to surround any Talamae they could isolate,
some focusing especially on the dismounted men, others on individual cavalry or
the last riders in a column.

The results of the different
strategies began to show up in the casualty counts, as the riderless Wrth
ponies and dismounted but active Talamae cavalry began to clutter the field. On
the right, where about sixty cavalry had engaged seventy or eighty raiders, the
heavier armor and weapons of the Talamae was showing its value. About three
dozen cavalry remained mounted in a coherent line, which now swept man-abreast
through the thinning ranks of Wrth. Every pass left two or three fewer cavalry,
but twelve or fifteen more riderless Wrth ponies.

On the left, where some forty
cavalry had clashed with a similar number of Wrth, it was a different story.
Almost half the column had fallen to the initial crossbow salvoes, and the
dozen or so dismounted men still on their feet tried to form up into a
defensive circle. The remaining cavalry attempted a charge through the
almost-intact Wrth force, which folded before them at first, then wrapped around
them like a hungry
irwua
nest. The twenty or so cavalry simply lacked
the momentum to get farther than halfway through the packed mass of Wrth. From
this distance, Kirrah could see men falling from their horses, some without
apparent injury. Then she was able to make out an individual Wrth horseman
swinging an arm overhead, and realized they were using ropes somehow to
dismount the cavalry from behind. The circle of Wrth began to tighten and
shrink around the remaining cavalry. Those raiders on the outside simply could
not reach the enemy, and some turned to reloading their crossbows. By ones and
twos, the dismounted cavalry began to fall, with no chance to come within
sword’s length of their mounted attackers.

Suddenly a shrill whistle came from
among the Wrth. On the right, the Talamae cavalry had completed a fourth pass
through the tattered remains of the raiders, and only a handful stood to face
the next charge. At the note, the entire Wrth force broke off, and drove
headlong straight for the city gates. With the thirty or so cavalry in full
pursuit, the fifty-plus remaining Wrth rode straight down the road, reloading
as they came. The handful of villagers scrambled through the gates, which swung
shut with a double thudding reverberation that could be felt even this far down
the wall. The Wrth kept ahead of the heavier Talamae mounts, and rode up to the
gates, turning at the last moment to ride west along the wall, firing at the
defenders atop the battlement and throwing smoking brands into the stalls and
shops huddled against it. Before the cavalry could reach the gate, the
attackers were back in the open plains and heading away from the city at a
gallop.