The Starfollowers of Coramonde (34 page)

The way
station was indefensible by two hundred men against a thousand or more, but
that same thousand might hold it against many times their number. The Lord of the
Just and Sudden Reach dismissed the idea of trying a useless holding action.
That only left it to come back with his whole army and dig the desert men out,
using precious time and costing a toll of men.

“We leave
now,” he told the soldiers who waited tensely. They relaxed a bit, hearing it.
“Have all buildings been searched?” he added.

“It is being
done, my Lord,” said the captain in charge of scouts. “There are some
outbuildings left; it is nigh accomplished.”

“Where is the
Lord Van Duyn?” The American had been eager for a look at the Southwastelands,
asking to come in the advance party as a favor Reacher could hardly deny.

“He is gone
up onto the roof of the way station,” one said, “to see the lay of the land.”

Edward Van
Duyn eased the hauburgeon that always seemed to drag at his shoulders, rubbed
dust from his gold-rimmed glasses and rechecked his estimate of the enemy’s
rate of travel. The prevailing wind blew down the slope, out of the highlands
behind him, toward the plains. Distances were difficult to judge with the
brazen sun directly overhead.

Van Duyn
might easily have remained back in Freegate, or returned there when Reacher had
made his decision under the Trailingsword to go south. In the capital, he would
have had the contiguity device close to hand, ready for escape from this
Reality if the Masters should prevail. But Katya was accompanying her brother,
not to be kept from his side in time of danger even by her feelings for the
American. Threatened by prolonged separation from her, Van Duyn found himself
unwilling to accept it.

There was
another reason for his going, less subject to analysis. He’d found himself
recalling Coramonde’s Highlands Province and how, at the end of a day’s toil at
the model farm or surveying for the new dam, he and the Snow Leopardess and
many others would gather in the community bath and sauna they’d built. There
they’d baked out the chill, laughing, joking, buffing themselves lobster-red in
the heat. They’d spun a hundred plans and dreams, more than their tomorrows
might bring, but no less worth conceiving.

He’d had
something then, challenges and ideas, accomplishments and hopes. He’d been
accorded the friendship of the Highlanders, seldom given to outsiders, a thing
of bedrock palpability, irrevocable. He’d thought of that often since the
Province had been swallowed up by the polar magic of the Druids. To be sure,
there were incalculable other Realities to which he could withdraw by
Contiguity; he was frank enough with himself to own up that, in doing so, he’d
sever a part of himself. In this line of thought, he’d been drawn more and more
into the effort to cast down the influence of the Masters.

Reacher was
suddenly standing beside him, having come up without the slightest sound. Van
Duyn stifled his surprise. The King never meant discourtesy; it was just that,
peerless hunter and tracker, he went with an unlabored, unthinking stealth.
Standing just over five feet, lean and broad-shouldered, Reacher, it was said,
could cross a field without disturbing any blade of grass. His wild, simple
upbringing left him uneasy in the company of most people. His preference for
passing among them inconspicuously had given him a rumored talent for
invisibility.

Besides that
there was, Van Duyn suspected, the matter of the King’s reflexes. The American
had never been able to measure Reacher’s response time, but it was vanishing
small. What attitudes and outlooks would he have developed, moving through a
world of comparative sluggards with something like instantaneity? Anyway,
nothing to make him outgoing.

“How soon?”
asked the King forthrightly.

“I should say
less than half an hour. They can catch us on open ground if we withdraw, can
they not?”

“Unimportant;
they will not pursue. They will occupy this ground.” He tugged at his high, ring-mail
collar. Reacher disliked panoply, being used to the brief hunting gear of the
Howlebeau who’d raised him, and whose foster brothers were the huge wolves of
the steppes. The King had often run with the packs, a member among them. For
that he was sometimes called “Wolf-Brother.”

After the
conference at Earthfast, Reacher had led his armies far down the Southern
Tangent, to the edge of Freegate’s boundaries. The Horseblooded had come,
keeping their compacts with the men of the Free City and the strong bonds their
hetmen had with the King. Southwastelanders had been raiding and sacking far
into Freegate’s territory, and retribution had been overdue.

The King’s
scouts had ferreted out the southerners’ advance base, hidden in the heart of
the wastes. Reacher had made a long march and taken the place by surprise. On
the same night, the Trailingsword had burned in the sky for the first time.

The Masters
were using a young and warlike race, the Occhlon. Though prisoners had been
reticent to the point of fanaticism, it had become clear that the Five weren’t
simply fostering border troubles. This was some major effort, wherein they were
fielding every man-at-arms they had. Andre deCourteney’s warnings in Earthfast
stayed prominent in the King’s mind.

Though communication
with Coramonde had been lost, Reacher had heeded military imperatives, decrees
of legend, and his own wilderness instincts, letting the Omen lead him toward
Salamá. The Freegaters and Wild Riders had sent the desert men flying, unable
to match the northerners’ numbers. This way station marked the end of lands to
which neither side had any claim, and the beginning of the Southwastelands.

“If they
reoccupy this place they’ll hold us back, won’t they?” Van Duyn more stated
than asked.

“For a time.
We here are too few to repel them.” He pulled the mailed coif up over his blond
hair. Van Duyn picked up his Garand and they went back down the cylindrical
stairway.

Departure was
interrupted. From the last building to be searched, two warriors emerged with a
struggling man braced between them. The captive, sobbing and pleading, was
thrust on his knees before the King.

“This one was
bound, gagged and hung by his sash,” explained the captain, his longsword
drawn. “There was a pair of laden donkeys also, which he says to be his.” The
captive waited like a mouse among snakes.

Reacher
examined the Southwastelander curiously. The man was no soldier, and hardly a
spy. He was dressed in overused robes, his conical hat battered and dusty, his
beard matted and dirty. Around his neck hung a medallion stamped of brass.

“What else is
there?”

“In the
stable, my Lord? Nothing more.” The captain’s gaze went south, where the
enemy’s dust was nearer.

Reacher
pointed to the medallion. “What emblem is that?”

The southerner’s
eyes slid away. “Only my employer’s.”

“A minor
official’s medal, Lord,” supplied the captain, who knew something of
Southwastelanders. “This man would be an area newsgiver, and collector of
tribute.”

“And what
news did you give the sentinels here?” Van Duyn asked. The King was pleased his
question had been anticipated. The prisoner hesitated.

The captain’s
edge flicked up under the newsgiver’s chin. The prisoner squeaked and gabbled,
“That all is well, and our armies in firm control of the wastelands. Th-that
victory is assured.”

Van Duyn
grinned. “Only, as you passed that encouraging dispatch, we were seen riding
down; made you a liar, didn’t we? So the angry sentinels left you for us,
apropos of your falsehood?”

The
collector-newsgiver admitted it. The American chortled. “You poor sucker. Your
employers never told you what happens to propagandists when reality catches up,
did they?”

“I did
believe it to be the truth, I swear upon my father’s eyes! Why else would I
have stopped up here before turning south? Eee, spare me my life, I beg; I can
make good recompense.”

“What payment
is that?” pounced the captain.

“Do you but
bring my donkeys, and I will show.” When the animals were fetched, he unpacked
a long, thin sack. He opened one end, and spilled out a thin stream of red
powder.

“Earnai,” the
captain said, “Dreamdrowse.” He rattled the newsgiver by gathered lapels. “Why
did the sentinels not take it?”

“Have mercy!
Am I a madman, to risk my life by telling those provincial scum I was
transporting the product of a season? And later, before I could buy back my
freedom, I was gagged unspeaking.”

Reacher
turned to go. The discovery had no tactical significance. Maybe, he thought,
the Southwastelanders would find it and make themselves stuporous, but he
doubted that. The collector-newsgiver, released, slumped in astonishment. They
had no time to go slowly, with a prisoner, and it wasn’t the King’s way to slay
offhandedly.

But Van Duyn
was stirring the red powder with his boot. He called the Wolf-Brother back. “We
could put this to work, you know.” Getting no response, he continued, “This is
the form they call ‘mahonn’, am I correct?”

“It looks to
be,” the captain agreed. “It is from the Old Tongue, meaning ‘rescue.’”

“Very
concentrated,” Van Duyn went on, “quite flammable. Suppose we burned it upwind,
when the Southwastelanders came?”

They all
struggled to absorb the idea, except the King. Arms folded across his chest, he
strolled over to look down the slope to the south. “Would they not avoid it?”

The American
frowned. “Very well then, scatter it among the grass and fire it. Or better
yet, egg them into charging upslope, and fire the mahonn as they pass through
it.”

The captain
spoke up, “If it does no more than afford us time it will be much, my Lord King.”

Reacher
turned back to them. “We have only some minutes,” he warned; “therefore, let us
do this thing with all speed.”

Prepared in
the form of mahonn, the Dreamdrowse wasn’t effective until burned. Still, Van
Duyn and the others tore strips of cloth and masked themselves against the dust
they would raise sowing their bizarre seed. It was stored in long, thin tubes
of canvas. Holding one end of a sack, they slit a corner at the opposite end
and cantered along, shaking Earnai in among the tufts of grass, losing little
to the wind. There were a dozen sacks in all, the area’s entire refined product
of “rescue” for this growing season. The captive couldn’t bear to watch; he sat
rocking and wailing with the hem of his robe to his eyes. At the bottom of the
slope, sheltered by rocks, Reacher and fifty men waited to bait the trap.

Van Duyn
finished, gave the command and sped back up the hill. The American and
Reacher’s captain crouched and marked time.

They’d barely
made it. The Southwastelanders’ formation, less disciplined than was the
northern habit, appeared. It had extended itself in the course of a hard ride;
Reacher had counted on that. He slammed down his visor, dropped his lance and
charged, leading the way, but left it to his men to take up the war cry. The
Wolf-Brother and his little wedge of armored men hewed into the southerners’
left flank, throwing dozens of them down with their first strikes. Then they
fell in among the surprised desert men with swords, maces and cavalry picks.
There was the wild, random exchange of blows. From the crest of the hill Van
Duyn watched sunlight flicker on metal and heard the screams of the wounded and
dying. The Freegaters had gotten to close quarters before the Occhlon could use
their maneuverability, and Reacher’s strongly armored men prevailed.

But more
Southwastelanders came up quickly behind the first. The King gave his trumpeter
a yell. Retreat blew, and Reacher raced from the fray, his standard-bearer and
trumpeter close after. They swept up the hill, their horses still fresh. Only a
handful of desert men gave immediate chase; few really knew what had happened.

When they
topped the hill, the men of Freegate turned and gave battle again. The captain
spurred up in support, with the other northerners. While a milling skirmish
broke out beside the way station, the rest of the Occhlon regrouped at the foot
of the hill, and followed. Van Duyn noticed the southern banner for the first
time, a black scorpion on a crimson field, the device carried by Ibn-al-Yed,
the sorcerer who’d died during the battle of the Hightower.

Reacher slid
from his saddle and took the bow and fire-arrows that had been readied. He took
his first arrow, with its collar of oil-soaked straw tied by wetted gut, and
lit it from a fire-pot. He nocked, drew until the nock lay under his right eye,
sighted and released in smooth series. There were three more arrows prepared,
burning. Before the first had landed, he’d fired them all. Downslope, they
thudded in among the clumps of sun-browned grass, scattering embers.

Smoke
appeared, the wind nurturing it, as Reacher completed his pattern with three
more shafts. The Southwastelanders, pouring up the slope, ignored the burning
grass as being too low and dispersed to stop them.

Van Duyn
unslung his Garand, holding it at high port, watching the charging cavalry
worriedly. The King held up his hand though, to keep him from shooting. “That
might deter their charge,” he said. “Few enough more will make it through.”

Prevailing
winds rushed the fires down toward the enemy. The smoke took a reddish tinge as
the Dream-drowse was consumed. First wisps of it blew into the body of the
Occhlon. Van Duyn prayed the breeze wouldn’t shift.

The charge
wavered; some desert men actually drew rein. Then insanity broke out in what had
been a determined, competent attack. Horses threw their riders; men fell or
jumped from the saddle, colliding with one another. They ran screaming from
imaginary terrors or sat weeping. They cringed from each other or lunged
together with murder in mind, or sprawled out in a drugged stupor, depending on
their turn of mind, tolerance, and exposure to the mahonn. Some in the rear
weren’t affected and, divining that the smoke was more than it appeared,
retreated. But the major part of the force was engulfed.