IronStar (20 page)

“Tell them, farther out,” said
Kirrah. Irshe signaled the riders to carry another set of targets deeper into
the farmer’s field they had appropriated for the balance of the day. The riders
trotted out to seventy meters.

“Yet farther out,” she said.
I
wonder just how high his eyebrows
can
go
, she wondered with a
chuckle, as Irshe sent the disbelieving riders another twenty meters into the
weeds. “That will do …for now,” she allowed judiciously.
Good, hardly any
wind, beautiful clear day
. The four archers with her new bows wrestled
briefly setting the strings in place, unfamiliar with the forward-curving tips.

“At your will, good men. The second
range first, I think, to get a feel for the difference.” With a quick lunge,
she captured Akaray’s left arm and hugged him safely in front of her. On her
right, four trained and experienced bowmen lifted, aimed and loosed in one
fluid motion. Whthhh…thhh…whthh…thh…tok! t-tok,tok! Four clean hits, within a
handspan of the X on the thirty-meter target. On her left, Rash’koi pulled and
loosed the first of her new toys. Whazzzz… a deeper, more authoritative
sound
from his longer bow. A clean miss, a good meter and a half over the top of the
target. Irshe stepped up next, and cleared the top by a half a meter. Poorly
suppressed sniggers could be heard coming from Kirrah’s right. Then Ana’the,
grunting a little at the unexpected strain of the pull… whazzz…
Crack!
The sound of a hit, but… where was the arrow? They all went running out to the
target. An obvious mark, about halfway between the X and the top, half a span
to the left… but no arrow. Ana’the reached the target first, looked around the
back, and stuck his little finger through the hole. No arrow… because it had
completely penetrated the two-centimeter plank, and was some unknown distance
down range!
No sniggers now, boys?
A thoughtful crew loped back to the
shooting line and set up for another round. Except for Akaray, who fairly
floated all the way.

“Would one of these riders do us
the service of borrowing a shield and a set of steel cavalry armor?” asked
Kirrah. “Just the breastplate and back, I think… an old set, if they have one…”
Two of the mounted men saluted her, exchanged glances. One went galloping back
to the gate on his errand.

“I think we can skip the closest
target,” she said. “Let’s try for accuracy on the second set.”

By sunset, the increasingly elated
squad had learned to perform as accurately with the new
longbow
as they
could with their standard bows. They had also learned that the heavy
bodkin-pointed arrow was not stopped by one of the wood planks, or by front
and
back plates of a cavalry’s chest armor, at the second target distance. Or
at the third, fifty-meter range. Although at the longer ranges the arrow would
not pass clear through the cavalry shield, it would put eight or ten
centimeters of iron point through it. By the fourth, Kirrah’s ninety-meter
target, the arrows had been airborne for just over a second, slowing their
speed so that not every hit would penetrate clear through the steel body armor.
But every hit will kill
, Kirrah thought, as their mounted armsman rode
back with the much-perforated metal breastplate showing twenty centimeters of
shaft and feathers still visible on the uprange side, and fifty centimeters of
wood shaft and deadly iron point hanging out the back.

She was a little amazed at the
men’s accuracy: after an hour’s practice, every one of them could hit that
torso-sized target about once in three tries at ninety meters, and the best of
them, a tanned young man who had started out with the standard bow, scored over
three in four. Every one of them, including the mounted messengers, had
insisted on trying the new weapon, and every one was impressed.

“It shoots so …straight!”
Lieutenant Rash’koi exclaimed. “At the farthest target, I doubt it curves over
twelve
hab’la
high in mid-flight! How far will it carry?” At that, they
all had to experiment, loosing half a dozen more shafts about forty degrees
high, as far as they could loft them downrange. Kirrah watched, not the arrows
in flight, but the men’s faces as they loosed in unison.
Whazzz
… and a
rapidly departing hiss of feathers through the air. The men stood rapt, their
gazes tracking up, and up, and
up
, like so many radar antennae at a
pre-space rocket launch… and by a slow count of seven, back to earth. She could
see the glow starting to spread over each man's face - a mix of awe and joy and
dawning hope, and a fierce predator-gleam that would mean more to their
effectiveness than any weapon she could put in their hands.

After a good deal of diligent
searching, their shots were discovered in a loose cluster. Some careful
pacing-off, and muttered exclamations, and a full set of raised eyebrows later,
it was concluded that the farthest shot of the day was a full eight hundred
hab’la
,
about double their best range with the old arrows.
Not bad,
thought
Kirrah –
that’s almost three hundred fifty meters. We have a
surprise
for you…
Checking covertly with her wristcomp for the correct equivalent to
Lieutenant Rash’koi’s rank, she said:

“
Sana'tachk
, good men,
listen carefully to me, for you will be training the others. It is not enough
to shoot a Wrth out of his saddle at a hundred hab’la, or two hundred. Or four
hundred. You have seen only part of the strength of your bow. The other part,
you already know.”
Twelve soldiers, their intent eyes hungry for their
Warmaster’s next lesson - good.

“Your bow can loose
three
of
these,” Kirrah held up one of the new arrows in two hands, cradling it like a
delicate model spaceship, “in the time it takes a Wrth rider to load and fire
his crossbow
once
. That is the other half of your new strength, and
never give it away.”
It sure pissed off the French chivalry at Agincourt,
anyway
, Kirrah mentally thanked her 3
^rd
year history teacher.

“This is your assignment, my most
excellent students, which you must complete during the next three days. You
must teach
all
of our men to hit a charging line of riders, at any
distance you can reach, at any speed. To learn this, you will shoot at a
wagonload of straw, which will be pulled down this road by four horses and a
very long rope, at least three hundred
hab’la
. When ten men can put
thirty of
these
into that wagon before it reaches them, they are ready
to surprise the Wrth. Of course, they should also be able to hit the board
within the X…” With a sly grin at Rash’koi: “We can make exceptions for those
who command, if we must. I suppose a loud voice is really more important…”

On the brief ride back to her
quarters at the school, Irshe said to her:

“Five squads is not enough. Lord
Tsano had
no idea
. Tonight, with your permission, I and Rash’koi
-sana'tachk
will petition him for more men. The Wrth are so many.”

“Thank you, Irshe. You are saving
your people.” Akaray rode, straight and proud and tiny, behind the tall pale
sergeant.

“As are you, Kirrah shu’Roehl. You
are well named for the plains raptor. I bless the wind that blew you to - to
us.”

I wonder whether you’ll be saying
that a year from now, with Regnum trade turning your life upside down
, mused
Kirrah to herself as they rode through the city in the deepening evening.
And
I wonder what you edited out, at the end of that sentence, my friend
.

“Field experience is something you
get just after you need it.” - military maxim found in many cultures and
species; on Terra, attributed to mythical demon ‘Murphy’, 20
^th
century AD.

Wyrakka was not pleased.
Two in
three
. That was not the rate at which he expected his new soldiers to be
tested
in combat. Yet the
hand
of youthful commanders had returned from the
walls of Talam with but one rider for every three they had taken. Not the full
hand
,
only
two
commanders had returned, he corrected himself.
The Talamae rob
me of my judgement
, he thought sourly, regarding those two unfortunate
individuals with a disparaging look. They were both currently suspended, naked,
between two poles, one ankle lashed to the top and one wrist to the bottom of
each pole, spread-eagled, head-down. Fifty of his commanders and lieutenants
stood in a circle around them, awaiting his lesson. In the warm noon sun, the
smoke from the small fire rose and dispersed swiftly. He turned to the
audience, gestured for attention-to-authority, spoke:

“You all know how the Talamae
horse-soldiers hide behind metal. You all know how their heavier swords will
break our sacred blades. It is for this reason that IceWrth Herself has given
us the crossbow. Even these,” his curved, arm’s-length blade gestured towards
the hapless commanders, “…have heard, should know, to avoid embracing the
metal-clad
,
sword to sword.” Wyrakka turned to the two, began pacing around them, addressed
them:

“Into your eyes we trusted a
fire
of riders each. Their service to the Wrth was carried in your wisdom. You
have failed your first test. Now IceWrth grant that you pass your second.”
Wyrakka stopped behind the older of the two commanders, the young man. He
placed the tip of his blade between the man’s inverted legs, resting the cool
metal tip on the man’s perineum.
I give him this moment’s warning, lest he
shame himself
, he thought. Then, in total silence, Wyrakka drove the blade
steadily down into the man’s abdomen, its tip exiting at the navel. No sound.
He drew the blade back out with a twist that was leveraged against the bones of
the sacrum, the arc of the sword’s tip slicing the man open from mid-belly to
pubis. Not a sound.

Good. I may light his pyre myself
, Wyrakka
thought, wiping foulness from his blade on the man’s rigid thigh. He surveyed
his work a moment. Satisfied at the relatively slow blood loss, he stepped
around to the other commander, a woman a few months junior.

“What was your name?” he asked
softly.

“Elagai,” she said promptly, her
voice sounding strange from her inverted position.

“Elagai, Elagai,” he muttered,
pacing. Two steps took him to the fire, where
testing-instruments
were
ready. He picked one of the blunt irons, its end’s dull red glow barely visible
in the sunlight. Two paces back. He knelt at her head, gripped her hair tightly
in one hand, and lifted.

“Elagai, give me your eyes,” he
commanded, locking his gaze with the young woman’s. When she settled her eyes
on his, he brought the hot iron over her chin, a centimeter from the skin, down
past her inverted mouth, down the bridge of her nose, and pressed it firmly
into the skin of her forehead. Her neck muscles twitched a short, sharp jerk,
but her eyes never left his. Her skin hissed as it quenched the heat of the
iron. A trickle of clear fluid ran down into her hairline. No other sound. He
pulled the brand away, and stood so all could hear his judgement.

“You have failed like the others.
Because you led the warriors up to the Talamae gate, even to drawing blood from
their walls, you have also saved your
fire
and our Nation from further
shame. Therefore I judge that you die as Elagai, here, by this brand, and live
as
Peetha
, the small rodent of our home valley. By this brand your shame
and honor shall be known to all. For when we take the city, you shall be first.
You shall command every one who went with you to the gates. Rith-clan has
spoken.

“Cut this one down, when the other
yields his last breath.”
Which may be some time
, Wyrakka judged, noting
the steady trickle and dripping out of the other’s massive belly wound. He had
hoped to miss any major blood flows; the man was a fool and deserved some time
to consider his mistakes before departing.

The siege engines were already
ashore at the landing place down the river Geera. They would be in place in two
days. Time to gather the
fires
.

“You can't say civilization
isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.” - Will Rogers, early
20
^th
century A.D. philosopher and entertainer; United States of
America, Terra.

Where are they?
Kirrah
wondered impatiently.
We’re all ready for a party, and the guest of honor is
out there playing with horses. Get over here where I can kill you!
The
western sky was cooperating with her mood, putting on a show of brooding gray,
lined with scarlet and orange and deep, rich blood-reds as the sun set behind a
cloud bank.

At least we get some extra training
time
, she consoled herself.
And the stone masons did a great
job
. There were now four hundred archers with two or more days’ training
with the longbows, some with eight full days. Half of these, plus another two
hundred, were also trained with the pike. Her original targets, both the wooden
board and the well-ventilated armor still impaled on the arrow, sat on a shelf
in the octagonal conference room at the palace, mute testimony that ended any
arguments against her novel warmaking styles. She paced around the two-by-two
meter space at the top of one of the pair of towers guarding the north gate.
I
wish we had more scouts out there, she thought irritably. Or some satellite
imagery. The trouble with fighting on a planet’s surface is, you’re so close to
it you can’t see diddly. And besides, it
curves
the wrong way
.

Abruptly fed up with her own
complaining, the Regnum Navy Lieutenant spun on her heel and scrambled down the
ladder inside the tower. At the base of the tower, Whoopsie waited patiently.
Too distracted to notice her increasing ease around horses, she stepped into
the stirrup and mounted. She rode three blocks south along Falling Ash Road,
the main north-south concourse, riding past the first three cross-streets with
their entrances blocked at her orders by new stone walls. Then three blocks
east along Scholar’s Road brought her to the corner of the Stone in a River
school. With apologies to the beast for not currying her herself, Kirrah turned
her horse over to the duty groom, sitting in the small stable built into the
side of the school’s entryway.

She walked into the central
courtyard, deserted except for a few students sitting in the northeast corner
around one of the scattered torches. Feeling too tired to take on any new job,
but too irritable to sleep, Kirrah paced among the benches, statues and
delicately scented flowering trees, finally settling precariously on the edge
of a bench.

“What troubles you?” a soft voice
asked from the darkness nearby. Kirrah started, then relaxed as Issthe stood
quietly.

“Nothing. Oh, I don’t know.
Nothing, and everything.”

“I came to ask if you needed
anything. I see I was not mistaken.”

“No, I’m fine. Really.” Issthe
stepped forward and knelt gracefully in front of Kirrah, holding out her slim
pale hands together between them, palms up, as though she were presenting a
small gift.

“Would you place your hands over
mine, just for a moment?” Startled by the unexpected action and request, Kirrah
asked:

“What are you going to do?”

“My job. Please, I am very good,
and there is no harm to you.” Half curious, yet trusting this strange, calm
woman, Kirrah held her hands out over the other’s. Nothing happened. She could
just feel the warmth of Issthe’s hands, two or three centimeters under her
hands. The gentle, supporting, reassuring human warmth, slowly spreading across
her palms, soaking into her tired bones, sliding like a balm up her wrists and
forearms… oh, she hadn’t noticed how tight her shoulders were. Kirrah looked
down at the woman’s beautiful face in front of her, tilted up, so calm, eyes
half-lidded, staring somewhere into the distance past Kirrah, no,
through
her… no, she decided,
into
her. The back of her throat seemed tight, and
her eyes watered. A tear slid down her face and fell into her lap. Another.
Why
am I crying?
some distant observer wondered. Issthe watched her, no
question, no judgement, just watched and held the space under her hands, as
calm and solid as a…
as a stone, in a river
. Gradually the tears eased.

Issthe’s robe made a hushed whisper
as she moved to Kirrah’s left side and stood, left hand in front of Kirrah’s
chest, right hand behind her back. Kirrah felt again that tiny warmth, fainter
than before.
Fainter because you’re wearing hullmetal cloth, silly…
on
impulse, Kirrah keyed the controls and as the suit parted down the front, she
shrugged out of it to her waist.

“Thank you, that is better.” Issthe
stepped closer, her hands reassuming their front-and-back position. The warmth
seemed more …available now, spreading gently across her chest, into her back.
Kirrah could feel muscles unknotting, tension unwinding. Her head began to nod.

Issthe knelt at her side, moving
her right hand to supply a gentle almost-pressure at the base of Kirrah’s
spine, her left hand making slow, sweeping passes down the front of her body.

“You bring transformation to our
Realm,” Issthe spoke so softly, like the sound of wind in a tree. “…to our
world. Do you forget, that to transform is also to be transformed? It is for
this reason, that you are here. I will help remember, if you wish. May I touch
your feet?”

The question seemed so - mundane,
compared to the warmth and ease seeping into her stiff body, that Kirrah simply
slipped the rest of the way out of her survival suit and sat there in the dark
in her undersuit. Issthe moved -
so graceful! -
and sat cross-legged in
front of Kirrah. One hand wrapped gently around the inside of each of Kirrah’s
feet, and long, expert fingers probed her soles until they found the same
points, just at the base of each big toe. A gentle, rhythmic circular pressure
seemed to induce waves of… of
not-tense
, up Kirrah’s back, across her
shoulders, into her neck and scalp. Suddenly, like a breaking wave, all the
day’s, the week’s tensions seemed to sag out of her, and slump like a wet towel
to her feet. She drew a long, deep, shuddering breath. Issthe reacted by
stroking the tops of her feet,
almost as though planting me in the ground
,
Kirrah thought.

The priestess rose to stand beside
her. “
Come, my dear
karadoi
, it is best
 
if you rest
now… shall I bring your armor for you?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Kirrah replied, from
some distance. Issthe smiled, scooped up the wondrous garment and led the other
woman to her room, where she tucked her in and laid the suit across the foot of
the bed.

“Is she well?” asked Slaetra a few
moments later, as Issthe left Kirrah’s apartment and came back into the
courtyard.

“Why would I think anything escapes
your notice, here in your own heart?” asked the younger woman, as they embraced
briefly but warmly. “She seems tired, but well. She carries much, and does not
remember to set down her burden at the end of the day. I hope she sleeps well
tonight. The Realm’s future may use her hard.”

“There is nothing more
exhilarating than to be shot at without result.” – Sir Winston Churchill
,
op.cit.

The next day dawned with a high
thin overcast, a good deal cooler. Kirrah woke to the sound of alarm bells
ringing across the city.
Mmph, where was her suit… not locked in its usual
place around the heavy bedpost… oh, there, someone had left it across the foot
of the bed, when she’d gone to bed after Issthe had done …whatever that had
been. Yes, I hear you in there, Paranoia Central; that was indeed a significant
security breach, nodding off with the suit unsecured like that… Dang! she felt
better this morning, though – both more relaxed and more energized
.

While she and Irshe grabbed a
handful of fruit and half a loaf of bread for a walking breakfast, Kirrah
verified with him the watchtower’s coded bell-message, two low tones and one
high: ‘Enemy In Sight’. After extracting a promise from Akaray that he would
not set foot, hand, hoof, or wheel outside the school, or allow himself to be
transported outside by someone else, or in any way whatsoever depart from
within its walls, Kirrah, Irshe and their …
her
, actually, her personal
guard, set out.
That kid will make a fine lawyer when he grows up
, she
thought wryly as they trotted west along Scholar’s Road. At Falling Ash Road,
they turned north toward the gate in the city’s north wall, the one called Gate
of Ashes.
If he grows up… well, that’s what this is about, isn’t it?