Snowbrother (27 page)

The squad of Kommanza reacted swiftly. It was no part of their mission to waste their lives against impossible odds. Their squadleader shrilled out an order on his whistle, and they raced their horses forward toward the head of the column. All except one, whose horse was lapped by a wave of prisoners gone mad with the sudden hope. They pressed in regardless of hooves, a many-handed grasping monster terrible in its clumsy power.

The saber rose, its edge glittering even in the dull cloudy light, fell, rose again stained where the curved cutting edge had landed with a drawing slash. The horse sounded, loud as the rider's shrilling, lashing out with teeth and battering feet, rearing and plunging. It pulled free before bound hands had a chance to haul the steppe killer from her saddle, but by then the free Minztans had arrived.

Maihu saw who led them and leaned back against the sled, suddenly weak as her heart seemed to lurch under the confining breastbone. Most were Garnetseat villagers, but at their head ran two in light armor and helmets, armed with shortsword and billhook, their smocks of gray and off-white making them almost impossible to see against the snow. They swarmed around the Kommanza as she spurred to escape, brought her to bay near enough for Maihu to see the taut grin on her face as she realized her death. The two rangers spread, darted in. One of them engaged the westerner with a clang and clatter of metal on metal, parrying and striking with the long polearm. The other dodged in, reckless, and swung two-handed to hamstring the mount. He succeeded; cavalry are most vulnerable when they lose momentum. A human on foot is more nimble than a standing horse.

"The Seeker's people," Maihu thought, breathless. They came in time. And
It
must have come as well, for them to be this bold.
That
was what took the Kommanza in the woods.

The volunteers moved in as the Kommanza leaped from the saddle. She landed rolling and bounced erect. In that moment a tall hunter threw a cord around her neck from behind and closed strangling hands—but he had forgotten the gorget that guarded her throat. A spurred boot snapped up and back, ripped down, left him yammering anguish at his mutilated groin. Her hands went up and gripped, leaving the sword to dangle by its wrist thong. The armored body twisted and heaved, and the wounded Minztan flew over her head to land with breath knocked loose on his back before her.

"
Zaik
!" she screamed
. "Zaik with me
!" A single chopping motion of the shield stove in the man's larynx, leaving him to strangle slowly.

Leaping the body, she sprang into the midst of the enemy, forcing her way into the center of the crowd where their own numbers would hamper them, where they could not strike freely for fear of striking their own folk. No such limits hindered her. Lacking any hope except to make an honorable death, she had gone
ahrappan
. Her face twisted into a gorgon's mask that startled her foes into panic by its sheer hideousness. Froth dripped from her wide-stretched mouth, and she fought with sword and shield and feet, whirling and striking and slashing like a dust devil
edged with knives. Armor protected her, and what blows did land she seemed not to feel.

Driven two-handed, the spike on the tip of a bilk hook drove through the side buckles of her gorget-She turned, wrenching the point free with a twist that brought blood gouting out in throbbing red pulses. And even then she did not fall; the curved sword flicked out, took off half the hand gripping the shaft of the weapon that had killed her. The wielder screamed and spasmed, sending it flying to land at Maihu's feet. With a last thrust the Kommanza stabbed her slayer through the throat and collapsed. And died, still struggling mindlessly to rise as the last of her blood pumped out on the trampled snow.

Not in vain. Distracted, the Minztans had no time to free their landsfolk. Now around the corner of the river bend came the shivering thunder of hooves. The Minztans were about to learn why the armored lancer and horse archer ruled the steppe lands.

"
Into the woods
!" screamed the wounded Minztan. Most of the freed slaves followed him, but others burst east in panic, down the open road of the river.

The space between the sleds and the north bank of the west-trending river was just wide enough for ten riders abreast to deploy comfortably in line. A full Banner rounded the bend at a pounding gallop, and checked the barest fraction of a second to dress ranks before plunging forward. The front rank leveled lances; the second kept theirs at rest and fired over their comrades' heads, arching shots that fell among the forest folk in whistling sheets. Then the charge struck. Watching in fascinated horror, Maihu half expected to hear a crash of impact. Instead the Kommanz ranks passed straight through the loose Minztan formation without slowing. The loudest sound under the Kommanz wailing and the screams of the wounded was the heavy massive thudding of lanceheads striking home with hundreds of kilos of swift-moving horse and rider behind them. Few survived such impact.

Then the riders were through, turning, sheathing bows. The lancers let the long ashwood shafts pivot free about the balance point of the grip, or shook their arms out of the elbow loops of broken weapons; and now the sabers came out, bright and long. Those of the Minztans near to the forest edge had some chance if they survived the first passage; a few scrambled back into the sheltering trees. Most broke in panic fleeing downriver, and the Kommanza followed them whooping with delight. Seven thousand years of history had shown that it was death to run from a lance; the principle had received another demonstration.

Maihu heard Taimi beside her, cursing and sobbing with frustration. Not far away on the ice a Garnetseat villager was crawling, dragging herself along on her hands; the bright-dyed Serening of an arrow lodged in her lower spine showed why, bobbing and jerking with the movement. A man sat and stared at the stump where a hand had been.

With painful slowness he began to fumble at his belt, for a loop to twist around the wound, then he fell soddenly into the stain spreading around him through the packed layers of snow. The first swift flakes melted as they struck it, then began to draw a merciful curtain of white over the redness.

Maihu shook herself out of her daze. Taimi snatched up the billhook and began hacking frantically at the tether that held him, driving two-handed blows that might have done more good had he been calm enough to land two on the same spot.

"Come
on
, kinmother," he gasped. "Help me, oh, help me!"

She hesitated, looked up at the sound of a rider
approaching. "Quick, quick," her kinchild groaned. He was driven, oblivious. But Maihu looked up, into cold gray eyes under a plumed helmet. The bow was drawn to the ear, the point of the arrowhead trained unwaveringly on Taimi's stomach; at that range it would nail him to the sled to die like a shrike's prey on a thorn.

With a convulsive movement the Minztan woman grabbed the bill. They wrestled for it, before smith-strong arms wrenched it away. She threw it whirling end over end, out beyond the reach they could follow on their tethers. She gathered Taimi to her, cradled his head on her breast in the crook of one arm, stared over it into Shkai'ra's eyes.

The arrowhead sank; Maihu could hear the relaxing string scritch on the bone ring the steppe-dwellers used for the thumb-locked-under-forefinger draw of their horn-stiffened bows. Their eyes stayed locked.

Then the Kommanza leaned to the right. Sensitive to every shift of balance, the horse pirouetted, turning in place. Shkai'ra drew and loosed without seeming to aim
;
the arrow was only a flicker of head and fletching streaking in a dead-flat line to the north bank of the river. A Minztan was nearly to the trees, dragging a stiffened leg; he slapped forward as if a giant hand had struck between his shoulderblades, fell facedown and slithered back to the surface of the river ice. Ten meters beyond him the arrow sank a handspan deep into a tree and stood quivering. Then Shkai'ra slid the bow back into its case and drew her saber, heeling her mount into a canter to join the chase. Maihu saw a stumbling Minztan throw herself down to lie out of reach of the meter of killing steel in the Chiefkin's fist; the Kommanza guided the dancing steps of her horse over the prone body and trotted back toward the head of the column. Her horse left red hoofprints in the snow.

Maihu sank down. Taimi was too stunned to move; she knelt clutching him, sobbing with soundless harshness and swallowing against the sour taste of bile in her throat.

Bannerleader Kh'ait heard the alarm floating through the relays, from the contact points where the scout-mesh linked into the column. That gave him the position: not far from his own at the head of the trek. Two Banners were here at the point, one back a little, screening the bend in the river, and his own Fang-Banner on guard in the lead; a chokepoint like this narrowing curve was always dangerous when a force was strung out without room to maneuver. And to see it was to think of possible patterns of attack and defense, alternatives and force ratios. The signal tripped the automatic process off, factors smoothly meshing with terrain and tactics to produce answers. His whistle sounded:

[Identity code]: FangBanner, HighKestrelBanner
—
out bows, left flank, prepare for massed
fire on command or sighting
.

Straight on the heels of the alarm came shouts and the hum of bowstrings from the woods. The inner link of scouts came crashing through the shrubby undergrowth, retreating toward the main force and trilling out their information. An attack in Banner strength or more, twenty fighters at least in the first wave. That decided him; the attackers would try for an exchange of fire from the bank, where the cover would favor them and their crossbows would be in effective range.

The last of the scouts paused, his mount poised on the lip of the riverbank; he turned and shot from the saddle. He waved the bow triumphantly over his head as the horse slipped and scrambled down to the surface of the ice.

"Shoot!" Kh'ait bellowed.

The two Banners responded with tiger precision, relieved to have an enemy they could fight openly. The arrowstorm raked into the trees, forty wheelbows loosing as fast as the warriors could draw and fire. One crossbow bolt whipped out of the scrub and slammed into armor with a hard
tock
and a trooper fell, shoulder pierced. But the plains wheelbow shot with equal force, and these were archers trained from infancy; they could deliver six times the rate of fire of the clumsy Minztan weapon. There were probably few hits, the Bannerleader decided; not enough targets were visible. But there was nothing the Minztans could do but hug the earth. To stand and fire up there was certain death.

That would only last as long as the contents of their quivers. Thirty shafts was the standard battle reserve, and a few had five-shaft quick-draw magazines clipped onto the side of their bows. Enough for two minutes of concentrated fire, no more; then they would have to wait for bundles to be brought up, and by then the forest folk would have established firing positions along the verge. And crossbows could be fired lying prone. At ordinary battle ranges the wheelbow had much the same firepower as a bolt-action rifle, except for the penalty of bulky ammunition. Kh'ait knew little of firearms, save as distorted legend, but he had an exact understanding of the limitations of his own people's armaments.

Yessss
… he thought: they would have to go in and take them. And that knowledge woke the carnivore glee that had been building under the calm analytical surface of his waking mind. He slid from the saddle and shifted his shield to his arm. Sword? he asked.

No, better the warhammer for this. It was his favorite weapon; you could feel the crunch and shatter of bone along the haft as well as hear it. Even more thrilling than feeling a human dying on your blade.

"FangBanner, up!" he shouted. "Zaik-uz wemit'chi!
Zaik with us
! In and take them—

kiMllttleeeee-eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
."

The squads formed around him and they rushed the slope, toiling up under the continuous thupping whisper of the arrowstorm, chopping their shield rims into the snow to give put-chase. He could hear the panting on either side of him, the riding boots scrabbling on the slick surface. Heels dug through with a crunch, snapping the reeds and scrub that stuck up pale and brown and dead through the snow in the shadow of the trees. And as they climbed, fresh snow was flung at them by a wind smelling of damp and pine.

Crossbow bolts flipped by, but few and ill-aimed. Excitement hammered in his temples; now they would see how the woodsrats did when it came to hand-strokes. Just below the lip of the bank there was a final sheer rise of a meter height; as they reached it the Sailing wind of shafts ceased, the archers below holding their last shafts on the string, scanning for a good target and waiting for the unblooded youths to come up with the spare shafts, fixed in their circular holders of hard leather. The attackers formed a shieldwall and surged through the screen of frozen undergrowth, into the comparatively open spaces under tall timber. They broke into the cathedral gloom and stillness like a horde of grotesque metallic wolves, their warcries rising to the insane trilling of the blood squeal.

Kh'ait saw that he had been right; there were only a few bodies lying about, still or pulling at shafts anchored in flesh; the trees were thickly studded. The bulk of the Minztans were hanging back, below the angle that high-velocity arrowfire from below could reach, protected from dropping shots by the branches
overhead. Some fled at the approach of the Kommanz; in ones and twos others tried to make a stand.

It made little difference. Those who ran died quickly; no one can flee and fight, but a pursuer can still kill. And for those who stood and fought, unarmored, untrained in group combat, death came nearly as swiftly. The Kommanz wasted no time in individual dueling; drilled teams moved in, one using shield or blade to pin an opponent's weapon, the other sending home a short economical thrust. Little ripples of deadliness broke up and down the line; gaudy enameled black armor closing around fur and wool, a flicker of metal and then another sprawled corpse on the trodden floor of snow and pine needles.