IronStar (19 page)

“I will also need full and
immediate cooperation from sufficient armorers and blacksmiths, to make the
implements I have described. And a field to practice in. And one other thing.”

“I think I may have a few friends
in the smithies who will still heed me,” said the King, perhaps a little
warily. “And?”

“And all Talam will need Doi’tam
-fira'tachk
’s
cavalry at full strength, to defend our walls against the siege engines which,
if I were Wrth, I would be dragging even now towards our City. Because one
thing my
pike
and
longbowmen
cannot do, my Lord, is stop a siege
engine from battering these walls to rubble. That is a job that only brave and
disciplined
heavy cavalry can do. If my suspicion is correct, all our lives will soon
depend on them
doing
it.” All eyes swiveled to Major Doi’tam.
Like a
deer caught in the headlights
, Kirrah recalled the ancient Terran image,
looking at the startled cavalry officer.

“I… of course, my Lord, the Royal
Cavalry will do everything it can, to protect the City…”

“Even if it means
not
meeting the Wrth on the field, but saving his men like a treasure held back, to
win a crucial bid-at-auction?” asked Issthe’s silken contralto. Somehow her
voice found just the right tone - not challenging, not mocking, but pinning the
hapless Major to his duty and honor, as neatly as a fly to a specimen board.
When he drew his dagger and saluted the King, and said, “As the King wills”,
and his lieutenants did likewise, Kirrah knew her victory was complete.

The next day, the Deathnaming songs
were sung for the fallen.

“If we are marked to die, we are
enough, to do our country loss;

And if to live, the fewer men, the
greater share of honor.”

– “King Henry V”, Shakespeare;
ancient Terran author.

“No, no!” Kirrah declared, for the
umpteenth time that morning. “You must put the tough
yag’la
wood on the
front, and the springy
pa’wai
wood on the
back
! This bow will
break when it is drawn fully.” At the look of dismay on the woodworker’s face,
she instantly regretted her abrupt tone.

“This is easily remedied,” she
said. “And your shop’s arrows are exactly what is needed. Your brother the
blacksmith got the bodkin points exactly right.”

“They are so
heavy
,
Warmaster. I fear they will fall short…” the man said. His two apprentices
nodded, large-eyed.
When exactly did the Cavalry Major’s sarcastic jibe get
to be my official title
, Kirrah wondered,
and by what lips did it escape
the meeting?
In the corner of her eye, Irshe lounged, back to a rough
squared ceiling post, scuffing one toe innocently in the wood shavings
littering the carpenter’s loft, one hand covering his lower face.

“Indeed they are heavy, Do’thablu.
Those bodkin points,” she indicated the narrow, fifteen centimeter iron spike
at each arrow’s tip, “…will penetrate the heaviest leather armor, and these clever
teeth,” Kirrah stroked the two offset three-centimeter wire barbs, “…will bite
deep, and hold. But the strength of this arrow is in its
length
.”

“But, it’s the length that makes
them so
heavy
…” Indeed it did, the hundred-centimeter shaft weighed almost
double the narrower, sixty to seventy centimeter standard Talamae arrow.

“Ah yes, Do’thablu
’jasa
, but
the longer the shaft, the deeper the bow can be drawn, and the longer the
string pushes on it, so it will fly faster than the old arrows. And faster means
farther. And when it hits, its extra weight and speed will drive it through
even steel armor. As you will see, when I have my bow. With the
pa’wai
wood
on the
back
!”

“I know nothing of this, Warmaster,
but I will make the bow as you require. The glue will be dry tomorrow, begging
your pardon, on the correct bow.” With a small sigh, Kirrah thanked the man,
bowed and they took their leave.

“What did you say?” asked Irshe as
they thudded down the wooden steps outside the shop.

“Sorry, I was muttering. I said, ‘I
hope he gets it right before the Wrth return’.”

“Our scouts are watching closely
now. The Wrth are raiding to the northwest, as far as our border with the
Pavatta nation at the end of the Realm, where the northern woods meet the Sea
of the Sun. It will be another five days at least.”

“You knew, didn’t you?” Kirrah
stopped, and turned to look up at the calm gray eyes, one eyebrow rising
quizzically.

“You knew, when you saw the Wrth’s
work at Malame’thsha, that they would be here. And you knew, all along, that
your City was not ready.”

“I suspected,” he replied after a
thoughtful pause. “The Wrth cannot feed their growing numbers. They need more
land to hunt and graze their
sha’pluuth
herds.” These wooly native
herbivores, about the size of a sheep, were one of the few species like the
mu’uthn
that could digest the native
not-grass
.

“Must we destroy them all, or be
destroyed?” Another thoughtful pause.

“For generations,” Irshe replied,
“the Wrth lived in the valleys of the WhiteCap Mountains to the east. My
father’s father’s father traded with them,
sha’pluuth
wool and hides for
dried fruit from his farm. They have always been fierce and wild, but never so
destructive, or so many, as now. If we could drive them back to their
mountains, we would all be at peace again. If we could hurt them enough here,
often enough, we could at least force them to bother other peoples. Then we
might get an alliance with our neighbors to the south and the Pavattans to the
northwest, and return to peace.”

“Hurt them,” said Kirrah, as they
continued down the steps to their horses. “I will show you how to hurt them.
But it is not only the Wrth, you have the O’dai biting at your trade ships. I
have not met an O’dai, but I think they come out of greed, which can be just as
powerful as need. And they will not be stopped by a few arrows and pikemen. Do
you suppose the training pikes will be delivered yet?”

“Let us find out,” the tall man
said, leaning down from his saddle to offer her a hand up into hers. Irshe had
insisted that Kirrah learn to ride, to her initial dismay. Her horse, a light
brown mare she had dubbed ‘Whoopsie’, seemed gentle enough, and responsive to
the reins once you learned what the signals were. Kirrah suspected she’d never
achieve that one-with-the-mount ease that Irshe expressed so naturally. He’d
shown her the knee and heel pressures he used to guide his big black gelding,
but it seemed to confuse both her and her horse when she tried it. And it just
didn’t seem …natural, or something, to use another creature to carry one
around. Not respectful, to treat a critter like a machine. Not that ‘Whoopsie’
was just a
critter
, she was obviously a very well-mannered lady, who
never bit the fingers that held her treats. And never laughed at Kirrah’s
…unique ways of mounting. Or dismounting.

After a
pleasant ride through the twisty streets of the old part of the city, through
the inner gates and across town to the military compound, they learned that the
practice pikes were indeed ready and drill was scheduled for after lunch.
Kirrah spoke to the forty or so trainees when they were ready to start:

“Each
pikeman will have two of these,” she said, hefting one of the heavy five-meter
hardwood poles. “The padded ends will be replaced by
these.
” Kirrah held
up one of the forged iron pike heads ready for installation. It looked like a
forty-centimeter tall iron cross. The short end was a ferrule to slip over the
end of the wooden staff. The long end was a twenty-five centimeter blade,
gleaming sharp on both edges, and twelve centimeters broad at its widest. Set
between the two, at right angles to the shaft’s length, was a forty-centimeter
iron crosspiece as thick as a man’s thumb, each end sharpened into a piercing
spike.

“This
point,” she touched the long, broad blade, “will impale any horse that tries to
ride into your ranks. Or any swordsman on foot.
These
points,” the
fifteen-centimeter spikes crossing the main blade at right angles at its base,
“will let the
second
row strike from above, while your enemy is still
ten or twelve
hab’la
 
in front,
dealing with your first stroke.

“Your
short swords are
not
to be used to attack. They are only for defense. If
the enemy breaks through, you are already in big trouble. That is why you have
two
rows of pikemen. No one should try to throw his pike like a spear. It is too
heavy and too long. When those nice men,” indicating the bored-looking nine
mounted cavalry at the other end of the sixty-meter field, “ride this way, you
will each set the butt of your pike into a small hole in the ground, so, and
lower it so, and hold it steady.” Kirrah crouched, left knee bent deeply, right
leg extended behind her, right foot holding the end of the shaft into a small
depression. The shaft extended forward with its padded end chest-high for a
horse.

“Move,
you snath!” growled the squad leader.
Prax’soua! Irshe’s corporal, his…
dakka'tachk was here!
Kirrah felt warmed by the big tough’s obvious
enthusiasm for her novel warmaking. As nine men fell into position around her
and another ten behind, Irshe stood to one side and gave a sharp whistle. The
‘nice men’ on their
very big
horses, looked up and formed a line.
Without the slightest insincerity, Kirrah shouted:

“Ready!
Your lives are in your pikes, hold steady!” The line of horsemen built up
speed.
Not a full gallop, just a trot really,
gawd
they were moving
fast…
thirty meters, twenty, ten, five… with a loud neigh, two of the
animals skidded to a stop, almost throwing their riders to the ground. Another
balked at the line of padded ends waving under their eyes, those at the ends of
the line turned aside. Three made it into the line, and several pikes converged
to bring them to a crashing stop. Two of the pike shafts snapped, riders and
horses tumbled into a thrashing mass.

“Second
rank, now!” shouted Kirrah, and the second row of men stepped forward,
gleefully pummeling the downed riders with their four-kilo padded tips.

“Hold!”
she shouted, and everyone paused in position, more or less. “Now think; what
will happen with a rank or two of archers behind, firing between you, into
these poor Wrth!” Several of the downed cavalry scowled and blushed red. “And
look,” she added for emphasis, “Not one, mounted or on foot, has come within
swords’ length of any of you.
That
is how the Wrth invaders will be
broken.”
That’s one way, anyway
.

“Carry
on, Prax’soua-
dakka'tachk
.
 
I want each man here to practice receiving a
charge, at least six times exactly right, until he does it perfectly without
thinking. And I want the men to trade places, to see what this wall of death
looks like, from horseback.” Kirrah exchanged salutes with the corporal, whose
dangerous-looking face was split by a broad grin. Irshe was waiting for her at
the edge of the practice field. What was that she saw glowing in his gray eyes?
Was it hope?

“Now,” she said “Could
you please introduce me to the master stone mason, the man who builds your
walls? If we truly have five more days, I have another surprise in mind for the
poor Wrth.”
Irshe’s eyebrows rose, and
his head shook in wonder as he mounted up.
So much death lives in such a
small woman,
he thought.
What must her friends be like? What would it
take, to be her friend?

Good as his word, the next day
woodmaster Do’thablu presented Kirrah with a dozen of the new bows. Five
hab’la
or two hundred fifteen centimeters long, the length of the bow was a
gracefully recurved section of the tough, resilient
yag’la
wood that was
used for the standard Talamae bow. But laminated to the back were layers of the
lighter, spongy
pa’wai
wood, which although easily broken would,
according to Kirrah’s careful experiments, compress and bounce back to its
original shape. She had tried to explain the concepts of ‘dynamic energy
storage’ and ‘coefficient of restitution’ to Lieutenant Rash’koi, Irshe’s
commander and the best archer among her volunteers.

She had finally given up on the
physics theory and said simply that the soft wood backing was not to make the
bow stronger, but to make it push harder. That plus its ninety centimeter long,
forty kilogram draw, Kirrah hoped, would do the job.
As we are about to
learn
, she thought, as their small party stepped out into the late
afternoon sunlight at the north gate of the city. Four men including Irshe,
Rash’koi and Ana’the, one of the archers from her first encounter with the
Talamae, carried the new bows, and four more Border Patrol armsmen carried the
standard Talamae bows. Another four of the green-and-orange troopers remained
mounted, and bore a number of wooden planks with white ‘X’s painted on them.
These were quickly arrayed in pairs at downrange distances of about nine,
thirty and fifty meters. Standing in the soft earth, the two-centimeter thick
softwood planks made targets as tall as a man and about half as wide. Akaray,
who somehow had no classes today, had begged a ride with Irshe and now bounced,
fidgeted and generally exuded excess energy.