And it came to pass . . . that the Lord cast
down great stones from heaven upon them unto Aze-kah, and they
died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the
children of Israel slew with the sword.
HOLY BIBLE, Joshua 10:10.
There was no longer even a semblance of a road, and on the high
plain they needed none. Their formation was a great oblong
checkerboard of cavalry units several hours into the
morning’s ride, with the dew now dried by the sun.
A scout trotted his horse toward them, riding smoothly, proudly
erect, sunlight glinting on plumed and polished helmet and black
mail, upright lance tilted a correct ten degrees forward. Another
orc detached himself from the small lead formation and galloped to
meet him.
Kamal had been experiencing misgivings; something seemed to have
gone wrong, perhaps seriously. Draco had not contacted him all of
yesterday, either directly or by radio, which was disturbing in
itself. As a consequence he’d had no information of the enemy
in that time. Judging from the last report, he’d expected to
meet the Northmen before noon today, and in fact before now.
He’d even made camp early the day before, to help ensure
they’d not meet in the evening.
Having decided the preceding evening that he could not rely on
aerial reconnaissance, he’d sent scouts out before dawn to
fan widely through the countryside ahead. With one of them
returning now, his concern was replaced by hard-eyed attentiveness.
His aide-de-camp rode back with the scout at heel.
“They’ve found where the Northmen were.”
“Were? So they learned about us and turned back!
We’ll have to catch them then!”
The aide-de-camp turned to the scout and gestured for him to
speak.
“They don’t seem to have turned back, my
Lord,” the man said. “They split into two forces, one
turning north, the other south. Yesterday, by the signs. We have
riders following both groups.”
“Yesterday! How far ahead was this?”
“About seven kilometers.”
“How large a force? Their entire army?”
“I don’t know, my Lord. A large one, surely; the
grass was widely trampled.”
So! And where was the high-flying Draco, the eye of the army? He
wished now that Dov, in command of the City garrison, had been left
a radio, but there were only three for the entire field army. He
also wished for a few squads of horse barbarians, for scouts.
They’d have told him how many Northmen had been there and
when. It should have been fairly late in the day, for them to have
gotten so far east, but one couldn’t be sure, especially
with Northmen. If they’d broken camp before dawn yesterday,
or forced the march . . . But why would they
force their march? They were too smart to wear out their horses
without good reason.
Now he had to decide in ignorance. He had the nasty feeling that
the Northmen were in charge of the situation, maneuvering him into
doing what they wanted; he’d had too much experience of them
in the Ukraine. But how could they even know he was out here on the
march? The sky chariot should have seen and killed any far-ranging
Northman scouts or patrols.
And the sky chariot should have contacted him the evening before
and again this morning.
He looked up as a rider approached at a canter, calling to him.
“My Lord! Another scout is returning!”
Kamal squinted westward at the scout, still distant, and ordered
out his aide-de-camp to meet him, while a trumpeter halted the
army. Minutes later his aide galloped back hard, with something on
his lance tip.
“My Lord!” he snapped, and held out a stinking
severed head to his commander. “One of the scouts found the
bodies of our Lord Draco and others near the place where the
Northman army divided. He brought this as proof because the bodies
had been stripped and there were no insignia.”
“And the sky chariot?”
“Not there.”
“Any sign of it?”
“He didn’t say.”
That was an answer of sorts. Had it been there, the scout would
have told of it. But how else could Draco have gotten there? And
yet, how could the Northmen have moved it? Surely they couldn’t fly it; it
had taken training by the star men to enable Ahmed’s men to
fly them, and the Northmen were barbarians.
The scout was trotting up to them. “Man!” Kamal
shouted at him, “don’t you know anything except that
they’re dead?”
“Yes, my Lord. Their bodies bore no wounds. They had no
marks of arrow, sword, or knife, and they had not been
scalped.”
Kamal swore, looking again at Draco’s discolored face. The
hair was still there, and the Northmen always scalped anyone they
killed. “How many bodies?”
“Four, my Lord.”
All four! “And no sign of the sky chariot?”
“None, my Lord.”
Too many questions were unanswered; there were too many
unknowns. But this he did know: he had to deal with the Northmen
without help from the air.
“The army will turn back toward the City,” he said
finally. “Apparently the Northmen know about us and
out-flanked us in the night. And there are only five cohorts left
in the City in case they attack it.”
It struck him then. Five cohorts—1,500 men. Draco had
rough-counted the Northmen from the sky. Five cohorts were almost
as many as the whole Northman army, and they were
orcs—trained, disciplined, fighting orcs!
The neoviking mystique, their reputation for supernatural
cunning and invincibility, had been overblown, he told himself. And
Kamal had no respect for a commander whose automatic response to an
enemy was caution, defense. Out here the Northmen had no forests to
hide in or attack from, and they bled and died like other men.
He’d killed one himself—skinned him and watched him die.
Another he’d crucified, to groan to death beneath the
Ukrainian sun.
He changed his decision, in part.
“We’re between the Northmen and their people now, so
the Third Legion won’t go back with us. They’ll
continue to the mountains, to where the Northman army left its
people, and wipe them out. They will take no prisoners except girl
children and young women.”
Kamal began to expand and glow as he continued. “Couriers
to each legion. Inform the commanders. Have each of them signal
when he’s been informed. I will then signal the First,
Second, and Fourth to begin the return. The Third will stand, and
its commander will ride here to me for instructions. I’ll
catch up with the rest on their first break.
“Is that clear?”
It was, and the mnemonically trained couriers galloped off to
repeat his instructions exactly. Within ten minutes the army was
moving.
The men of the Third Legion considered themselves privileged.
Instead of riding like the others to battle, they were riding to
sport. When they stopped that evening, sentries were posted, and
patrols circled the camp, but this was Standard Operating
Procedure, not a response to possible danger. And rather than each
man sleeping by his picketed horse, the animals were hobbled and
picketed within a single large rope corral around which the men
camped.
To the Alpha’s infrared scanner,the paddock was
conspicuous in the night.
For the Northmen, archery was more than a lifelong sport and
sometime tool of war. It had also been an important means of
feeding themselves, and its use had developed in them a fine sense
of general marksmanship. They knew and used without questioning the
basic principle that the way to hit something was to have a target
and intend to hit it, not questioning your ability.
Charles had explained the automatic rifles to the four men
assigned to him, through the bilingual skill of Sten Vannaren, had
demonstrated and given them some dry firing. Finally each had fired
several short bursts, and their targets were quickly rags.
Afterward, waiting, they’d dry-fired from the door of the
grounded pinnace at imaginary orcs, shouting
“da-da-da-da-da-da!” like little boys. Charles had
grinned at the sound as he worked beneath the nose of the
craft.
The targets beneath them now were live, but the barbarians felt
no qualms. A floodlight from above startled the sentries; then
automatic rifles roused the camp. Slowly the pinnace circled the
paddock as two riflemen fired into the horse herd. When one had
emptied his magazine he threw an H.E. grenade from the door while
another man seated a new magazine in the rifle and took his place.
Hobbled horses pulled their pickets, milling madly or crowhopping
through the confused camp and into the open prairie.
The well-spaced orc patrols, circling two to three kilometers
away, stopped in the darkness to stare at the distant light,
listening to the strange and somehow dangerous sounds. In a general
way they realized that the camp was being attacked, and fearful and
isolated though each squad felt, they did not ride toward the
disturbance.
The distant floodlight blinked out, the explosions stopped, and
they felt their aloneness even more in the silent and unrelieved
darkness.
The darkness did not hide them. To the Alpha they were
bright clusters of oblong lights. The pinnace settled undetected
above one patrol and two grenades were tossed out, one H.E. and one
fragmentation. Then it moved silently on to the second. The patrols
were victimized by their separation; only three of the ten realized
what the occasional scattered blasts meant and whipped their horses
at last toward the crowded anonymity of camp.
Nearly 3,000 orcs huddled in the night, too disciplined to
panic, too shocked and bewildered to plan, afraid to go out and
hunt their horses. Not until dawn did they round up their animals
and count them. Nearly a hundred had been killed or disabled by the
Northmen from the air. Hundreds more, wounded or dangerous with
panic, had been killed by the orcs to still their frantic hooves.
Many, in the open prairie, had been felled with swords by
night-covered Northmen riders.
The legion could not seek help or advice; there had been neither
radio nor psi-tuner to send with them, nor apparent need. The
commander and his staff agreed; they could reach the shelter of
foothill forests with two days of steady riding—with only one more
night beneath the open sky. Then perhaps they still might carry out
their mission.
The eight hundred on foot might make it in four days of hard
marching, but they’d be on their own. The men on horseback
would not stay with them.
As the climbing sun began to heat the day, the orcs started
westward again, heavy with foreboding. The prairie now seemed huge
and hostile, with no help to be had, and home almost a four-day
ride behind them. To go west, as they were, might be logical, but
psychologically it was devastating. Especially to the men on foot
as they saw the cavalry move farther and farther ahead and out of
sight.
That same night the First, Second, and Fourth Legions had camped
on the last extensive dry ground west of the Danube’s old
west channel. They numbered 7,300 instead of 9,000; the five
cohorts guarding the City had been assigned from the Fourth Legion
and were half of its roster.
The old west channel had long been merely a marsh, with a series
of lakes and sloughs connected by flood channels. Between it and
the river the country was mostly more marshes and wet meadows.
Across the marshes the orcs had built a military road to the
Danube, of squared stone slabs laid on gravel. It crossed flood
channels and creeks on low causeways. On the east side of the river
it continued again to the City. The river itself was not bridged;
men customarily swam their horses across.
The Northmen had not taken this road, and again Kamal was
puzzled and mistrusting. They had followed instead an old road
southeastward. This second route was really a cattle trail located
to take advantage of what firm ground there was, filled with broken
rock in the worst places, with a rough causeway over the main flood
channel. It reached the river about six kilometers upstream of the
military road, at rough stone docks. The dock location took
advantage of the current in barging cattle to the City via the
ancient ship canal.
It was disturbing when a shrewd and deadly enemy did the
illogical for an unknown reason. It smelled of trickery. The best
explanation Kamal could think of was that the Northmen feared
meeting a strong orc force on the military road—feared being caught
between armies where the marshes would frustrate their freedom of
movement. They would have to abandon their horses in order to
flee.
That was probably it, Kamal decided, and felt better. The
Northmen were always wary of traps and couldn’t know there
wasn’t another orc army. Kamal sent a light scouting patrol
pounding down the Northmen’s trail while his army rested
their mounts. Three hours later they returned on lathered horses.
The Northmen, they reported, had followed the route to the river
and entered it below the docks.
Kamal still wasn’t sure, but now this was beginning to
smell like the overdue stroke of luck that could ensure success.
For where the Northmen had crossed would put them on the
south side of the ship canal, and the City was on the
north side. When they discovered this they’d have another
crossing to make, an impossible crossing. The bridge above the City
was easily defended, and its center section could be raised. As for
fording, the canal’s smooth current was strong, and except
for easily defended boat landings, its sides were too steep for
horses.
He had his trumpeter signal a speed march. Thousands of horses
began an easy trot, taking the military, not the cattle, road.
Within an hour Kamal was at the river, its dark water nearly a
kilometer wide. Nagged again by misgivings, the grim-faced
orc stared across for a bit. But he had to cross somewhere, and
this was the logical time and place. Trumpets blew and the lead
cohorts spread to form ranks along the shore. With the next signal,
the first rank urged its mounts carefully down the rip-rapped bank
and began swimming.
Hovering an oblique six kilometers away, Ivan Yoshida switched
the visual pickup from the waiting Northmen to the orcs swimming
their horses toward the ambush. When the first rank of their tiring
horses had no more than fifty meters farther to swim, arrows began
to sleet into it.
After a moment’s confusion the line of orcs straightened,
still moving forward, the second rank advancing steadily behind
them. Three thousand orcs were in the water now. Trumpets blew, and
in less than a minute Kamal knew about the ambush. He realized at
once what had happened. The Northmen must know the country after
all. They had baited him by taking the cattle road, then had swum
their horses downstream as they crossed, to land on the north side
of the canal after all. He snapped a command. His trumpeter
signalled a flanking movement and certain cohorts began letting
themselves be carried farther downstream. Alpha slid through the sky, quartering gravitic
vectors, braked, and flew down the fourth rank of orcs at twenty
meters, about eighty meters out from the east bank. Charles
alternated short bursts from the two automatic rifles he’d
mounted beneath the hull. His Northmen leveled oblique fire from
the doors.
The run was completed in seconds, chopping up the third, fourth
and fifth ranks. Many of the survivors continued their advance, but
some milled in confusion and many others turned their horses
downstream. Alpha banked and circled for another run. The
first two ranks had taken heavier losses to neoviking archery and a
few were fighting on the bank. Kniv had platoons of mounted
warriors in reserve to hit any bridgehead the orcs might
establish.
Meanwhile Beta had also entered the action, flying a
deadly first run near the west bank. The orcs swimming there broke
and turned back, as much because of a screaming siren mounted on
the pinnace as the streams of deadly bullets. Troops not yet in the
water held back their horses, looking nervously toward their
trumpeters.
Ram himself flew the Beta. His second run was down the
river’s midline, siren shrieking again, but he withheld the
fire from his mounted guns although his door gunners took their
toll. He would be content to break the crossing without maximum
kill.
All the swimming ranks began breaking up now in turmoil, trying
to get back to the west bank or escape downstream. After his third
run, Ram flew to hover seventy meters above the junction of road
and river. His voice boomed from the partly raised commast.
“Orcs! Do you surrender? Do you surrender? Dismount, stack
your weapons, and line up unarmed, and I will spare your
lives.” He paused. “Shout your answer! I will hear
it!”
There was no immediate answer. Ram glared across at the
Alpha still moving busily up and down the river killing
orcs.
Kamal’s aide-de-camp looked worriedly at his
commander.
“No!”
“But my Lord, we have no choice! We have no way to fight
back!”
“Orcs have never surrendered. Never! I will die
first.”
As if in answer, Alpha skimmed across the water toward
them, spewing bullets. The command staff threw themselves from
their saddles and embraced the ground among stamping hooves and
falling horses. When they got up, those who did, Kamal raised his
fist to shake it at the banking Alpha, then pitched
forward with a dagger between his shoulder blades.
“We surrender!” bellowed his aide-de-camp. “We
surrender!”
“Stack your weapons beside the river in big piles,”
commanded the voice from the sky, “then line up on the road
and picket your horses.” Beta floated watchfully as trumpets blew and couriers
galloped. Alpha was downriver again, killing orcs. Along
the banks grew piles of lances, swords and bows. A sluggish stream
of mounted orcs flowed onto the road, still disciplined but without
their arrogance, finally picketing their horses along the shoulders
and forming ranks on foot.
Downstream the short bursts of gunfire from the Alpha
retreated to the edge of hearing. Suddenly she was back, strafing
the long and unarmed ranks upon the road while fragmentation
grenades tumbled from her doors. She made but one run; the orcs
scattered into the marsh grass to flee or hide. Ram was screaming
invective into the radio, spitting with rage, then shot forward and
banked toward Alpha.
Nils shouted in warning; “Alphal Ta flykk!”
Alpha shot into an accelerating climb, and after a moment
Ram halted, turned to Nils and poured obscenities on him. When his
surge of rage had passed, he stood panting, face red, eyes
bulging.
“You didn’t ask my people whether they were willing
to let the orcs surrender,” Nils responded bluntly.
“You made your peace with them, but you do not speak
for my people. You presumed too much. To the tribes and many other
people, the orcs are a deadly enemy who would destroy them if they
could and enslave the survivors.
“And how had you intended to deal with your thousands of
prisoners? You have no place to take them, nothing to feed them,
and you could not control them for long. Your action was without
thought.”
Ram glared. “And Ivan!” he said hoarsely,
“that treasonous bastard! He could see what I was doing, and
still he strafed them.”
“Why Ivan?” Nils asked. “Sten Vannaren can fly
her and probably did. I told him to make sure he
learned.”
“I’ll bet you did.” Ram fixed him with his
eyes. “I’ll bet you were behind the whole rotten
treacherous thing. Well, that’s it, you barbarian filth! Hostages or no hostages, you’ll get no more support from
me; no air support and no more ammunition. Absolutely
none!”
“Then I’d better explain to Kniv Listi.”
The response had been completely matter of fact. Ram hesitated
briefly, then reached for the transmitter switch. The exchange in
Scandinavian took several minutes, then Nils turned to Ram.
“Listi asks no more help from the Beta, and will
kill no unarmed prisoners in your control as long as they
are in your control. He retains the right to kill any
others. Meanwhile you must bring more ammunition and grenades or he
will keep your people.”
“But I have your vow!” Ram snapped. “And your woman
and brat! You think I won’t do anything to you. Don’t
be too sure.”
Nils’s mind stared mildly into Ram’s, and although
the captain usually kept outside thoughts from his consciousness,
he felt it opening now to the Northman.
(Ram, Ram, you have become dangerous to yourself. A minute ago
you were willing to kill two of your own people; in your rage you
didn’t care. If you’d killed them, you would have
destroyed yourself as well.
(The tribes are not your enemy. They withhold your people
because they see your help as the fastest and least costly method
of driving the orcs away. Without it, many of my people will die,
and, many others in other lands.
(So go back to your ship before you do something you will not
forgive yourself.)
Ram shivered, feeling physically ill. The word-thoughts flowed
on with sure calmness. (The land of the orcs is not the place for
you. Ugly things happen here—evil things. Perhaps Chandra and Anne
Marie will tell you a little of that someday. Perhaps.
(You are Ram Uithoudt, master artisan, maker of wonders, who
sails between the stars. You are not prepared to live with war. Let
Matthew Kumalo lead your people down here beneath the sky. He is
not as smart as you, but he is wiser, and he has a stronger
stomach.)
While the two had faced each other in pregnant silence, the crew
had looked on soberly. They had not needed to hear speech to know
that something decisive was happening or who was prevailing.
Their captain turned now to the co-pilot.
“Take us back up, Lee,” he said quietly, “back
to the ship.”
When the Beta had disappeared, Sten made a run along
the bank, spraying the orcs who had crept out of the reeds and tall
grass and were rearming themselves from the piles. It was time, he
decided, to see if the incendiary grenades could really set the
heaps aflame, as Charles had told them.
And it came to pass . . . that the Lord cast
down great stones from heaven upon them unto Aze-kah, and they
died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the
children of Israel slew with the sword.
HOLY BIBLE, Joshua 10:10.
There was no longer even a semblance of a road, and on the high
plain they needed none. Their formation was a great oblong
checkerboard of cavalry units several hours into the
morning’s ride, with the dew now dried by the sun.
A scout trotted his horse toward them, riding smoothly, proudly
erect, sunlight glinting on plumed and polished helmet and black
mail, upright lance tilted a correct ten degrees forward. Another
orc detached himself from the small lead formation and galloped to
meet him.
Kamal had been experiencing misgivings; something seemed to have
gone wrong, perhaps seriously. Draco had not contacted him all of
yesterday, either directly or by radio, which was disturbing in
itself. As a consequence he’d had no information of the enemy
in that time. Judging from the last report, he’d expected to
meet the Northmen before noon today, and in fact before now.
He’d even made camp early the day before, to help ensure
they’d not meet in the evening.
Having decided the preceding evening that he could not rely on
aerial reconnaissance, he’d sent scouts out before dawn to
fan widely through the countryside ahead. With one of them
returning now, his concern was replaced by hard-eyed attentiveness.
His aide-de-camp rode back with the scout at heel.
“They’ve found where the Northmen were.”
“Were? So they learned about us and turned back!
We’ll have to catch them then!”
The aide-de-camp turned to the scout and gestured for him to
speak.
“They don’t seem to have turned back, my
Lord,” the man said. “They split into two forces, one
turning north, the other south. Yesterday, by the signs. We have
riders following both groups.”
“Yesterday! How far ahead was this?”
“About seven kilometers.”
“How large a force? Their entire army?”
“I don’t know, my Lord. A large one, surely; the
grass was widely trampled.”
So! And where was the high-flying Draco, the eye of the army? He
wished now that Dov, in command of the City garrison, had been left
a radio, but there were only three for the entire field army. He
also wished for a few squads of horse barbarians, for scouts.
They’d have told him how many Northmen had been there and
when. It should have been fairly late in the day, for them to have
gotten so far east, but one couldn’t be sure, especially
with Northmen. If they’d broken camp before dawn yesterday,
or forced the march . . . But why would they
force their march? They were too smart to wear out their horses
without good reason.
Now he had to decide in ignorance. He had the nasty feeling that
the Northmen were in charge of the situation, maneuvering him into
doing what they wanted; he’d had too much experience of them
in the Ukraine. But how could they even know he was out here on the
march? The sky chariot should have seen and killed any far-ranging
Northman scouts or patrols.
And the sky chariot should have contacted him the evening before
and again this morning.
He looked up as a rider approached at a canter, calling to him.
“My Lord! Another scout is returning!”
Kamal squinted westward at the scout, still distant, and ordered
out his aide-de-camp to meet him, while a trumpeter halted the
army. Minutes later his aide galloped back hard, with something on
his lance tip.
“My Lord!” he snapped, and held out a stinking
severed head to his commander. “One of the scouts found the
bodies of our Lord Draco and others near the place where the
Northman army divided. He brought this as proof because the bodies
had been stripped and there were no insignia.”
“And the sky chariot?”
“Not there.”
“Any sign of it?”
“He didn’t say.”
That was an answer of sorts. Had it been there, the scout would
have told of it. But how else could Draco have gotten there? And
yet, how could the Northmen have moved it? Surely they couldn’t fly it; it
had taken training by the star men to enable Ahmed’s men to
fly them, and the Northmen were barbarians.
The scout was trotting up to them. “Man!” Kamal
shouted at him, “don’t you know anything except that
they’re dead?”
“Yes, my Lord. Their bodies bore no wounds. They had no
marks of arrow, sword, or knife, and they had not been
scalped.”
Kamal swore, looking again at Draco’s discolored face. The
hair was still there, and the Northmen always scalped anyone they
killed. “How many bodies?”
“Four, my Lord.”
All four! “And no sign of the sky chariot?”
“None, my Lord.”
Too many questions were unanswered; there were too many
unknowns. But this he did know: he had to deal with the Northmen
without help from the air.
“The army will turn back toward the City,” he said
finally. “Apparently the Northmen know about us and
out-flanked us in the night. And there are only five cohorts left
in the City in case they attack it.”
It struck him then. Five cohorts—1,500 men. Draco had
rough-counted the Northmen from the sky. Five cohorts were almost
as many as the whole Northman army, and they were
orcs—trained, disciplined, fighting orcs!
The neoviking mystique, their reputation for supernatural
cunning and invincibility, had been overblown, he told himself. And
Kamal had no respect for a commander whose automatic response to an
enemy was caution, defense. Out here the Northmen had no forests to
hide in or attack from, and they bled and died like other men.
He’d killed one himself—skinned him and watched him die.
Another he’d crucified, to groan to death beneath the
Ukrainian sun.
He changed his decision, in part.
“We’re between the Northmen and their people now, so
the Third Legion won’t go back with us. They’ll
continue to the mountains, to where the Northman army left its
people, and wipe them out. They will take no prisoners except girl
children and young women.”
Kamal began to expand and glow as he continued. “Couriers
to each legion. Inform the commanders. Have each of them signal
when he’s been informed. I will then signal the First,
Second, and Fourth to begin the return. The Third will stand, and
its commander will ride here to me for instructions. I’ll
catch up with the rest on their first break.
“Is that clear?”
It was, and the mnemonically trained couriers galloped off to
repeat his instructions exactly. Within ten minutes the army was
moving.
The men of the Third Legion considered themselves privileged.
Instead of riding like the others to battle, they were riding to
sport. When they stopped that evening, sentries were posted, and
patrols circled the camp, but this was Standard Operating
Procedure, not a response to possible danger. And rather than each
man sleeping by his picketed horse, the animals were hobbled and
picketed within a single large rope corral around which the men
camped.
To the Alpha’s infrared scanner,the paddock was
conspicuous in the night.
For the Northmen, archery was more than a lifelong sport and
sometime tool of war. It had also been an important means of
feeding themselves, and its use had developed in them a fine sense
of general marksmanship. They knew and used without questioning the
basic principle that the way to hit something was to have a target
and intend to hit it, not questioning your ability.
Charles had explained the automatic rifles to the four men
assigned to him, through the bilingual skill of Sten Vannaren, had
demonstrated and given them some dry firing. Finally each had fired
several short bursts, and their targets were quickly rags.
Afterward, waiting, they’d dry-fired from the door of the
grounded pinnace at imaginary orcs, shouting
“da-da-da-da-da-da!” like little boys. Charles had
grinned at the sound as he worked beneath the nose of the
craft.
The targets beneath them now were live, but the barbarians felt
no qualms. A floodlight from above startled the sentries; then
automatic rifles roused the camp. Slowly the pinnace circled the
paddock as two riflemen fired into the horse herd. When one had
emptied his magazine he threw an H.E. grenade from the door while
another man seated a new magazine in the rifle and took his place.
Hobbled horses pulled their pickets, milling madly or crowhopping
through the confused camp and into the open prairie.
The well-spaced orc patrols, circling two to three kilometers
away, stopped in the darkness to stare at the distant light,
listening to the strange and somehow dangerous sounds. In a general
way they realized that the camp was being attacked, and fearful and
isolated though each squad felt, they did not ride toward the
disturbance.
The distant floodlight blinked out, the explosions stopped, and
they felt their aloneness even more in the silent and unrelieved
darkness.
The darkness did not hide them. To the Alpha they were
bright clusters of oblong lights. The pinnace settled undetected
above one patrol and two grenades were tossed out, one H.E. and one
fragmentation. Then it moved silently on to the second. The patrols
were victimized by their separation; only three of the ten realized
what the occasional scattered blasts meant and whipped their horses
at last toward the crowded anonymity of camp.
Nearly 3,000 orcs huddled in the night, too disciplined to
panic, too shocked and bewildered to plan, afraid to go out and
hunt their horses. Not until dawn did they round up their animals
and count them. Nearly a hundred had been killed or disabled by the
Northmen from the air. Hundreds more, wounded or dangerous with
panic, had been killed by the orcs to still their frantic hooves.
Many, in the open prairie, had been felled with swords by
night-covered Northmen riders.
The legion could not seek help or advice; there had been neither
radio nor psi-tuner to send with them, nor apparent need. The
commander and his staff agreed; they could reach the shelter of
foothill forests with two days of steady riding—with only one more
night beneath the open sky. Then perhaps they still might carry out
their mission.
The eight hundred on foot might make it in four days of hard
marching, but they’d be on their own. The men on horseback
would not stay with them.
As the climbing sun began to heat the day, the orcs started
westward again, heavy with foreboding. The prairie now seemed huge
and hostile, with no help to be had, and home almost a four-day
ride behind them. To go west, as they were, might be logical, but
psychologically it was devastating. Especially to the men on foot
as they saw the cavalry move farther and farther ahead and out of
sight.
That same night the First, Second, and Fourth Legions had camped
on the last extensive dry ground west of the Danube’s old
west channel. They numbered 7,300 instead of 9,000; the five
cohorts guarding the City had been assigned from the Fourth Legion
and were half of its roster.
The old west channel had long been merely a marsh, with a series
of lakes and sloughs connected by flood channels. Between it and
the river the country was mostly more marshes and wet meadows.
Across the marshes the orcs had built a military road to the
Danube, of squared stone slabs laid on gravel. It crossed flood
channels and creeks on low causeways. On the east side of the river
it continued again to the City. The river itself was not bridged;
men customarily swam their horses across.
The Northmen had not taken this road, and again Kamal was
puzzled and mistrusting. They had followed instead an old road
southeastward. This second route was really a cattle trail located
to take advantage of what firm ground there was, filled with broken
rock in the worst places, with a rough causeway over the main flood
channel. It reached the river about six kilometers upstream of the
military road, at rough stone docks. The dock location took
advantage of the current in barging cattle to the City via the
ancient ship canal.
It was disturbing when a shrewd and deadly enemy did the
illogical for an unknown reason. It smelled of trickery. The best
explanation Kamal could think of was that the Northmen feared
meeting a strong orc force on the military road—feared being caught
between armies where the marshes would frustrate their freedom of
movement. They would have to abandon their horses in order to
flee.
That was probably it, Kamal decided, and felt better. The
Northmen were always wary of traps and couldn’t know there
wasn’t another orc army. Kamal sent a light scouting patrol
pounding down the Northmen’s trail while his army rested
their mounts. Three hours later they returned on lathered horses.
The Northmen, they reported, had followed the route to the river
and entered it below the docks.
Kamal still wasn’t sure, but now this was beginning to
smell like the overdue stroke of luck that could ensure success.
For where the Northmen had crossed would put them on the
south side of the ship canal, and the City was on the
north side. When they discovered this they’d have another
crossing to make, an impossible crossing. The bridge above the City
was easily defended, and its center section could be raised. As for
fording, the canal’s smooth current was strong, and except
for easily defended boat landings, its sides were too steep for
horses.
He had his trumpeter signal a speed march. Thousands of horses
began an easy trot, taking the military, not the cattle, road.
Within an hour Kamal was at the river, its dark water nearly a
kilometer wide. Nagged again by misgivings, the grim-faced
orc stared across for a bit. But he had to cross somewhere, and
this was the logical time and place. Trumpets blew and the lead
cohorts spread to form ranks along the shore. With the next signal,
the first rank urged its mounts carefully down the rip-rapped bank
and began swimming.
Hovering an oblique six kilometers away, Ivan Yoshida switched
the visual pickup from the waiting Northmen to the orcs swimming
their horses toward the ambush. When the first rank of their tiring
horses had no more than fifty meters farther to swim, arrows began
to sleet into it.
After a moment’s confusion the line of orcs straightened,
still moving forward, the second rank advancing steadily behind
them. Three thousand orcs were in the water now. Trumpets blew, and
in less than a minute Kamal knew about the ambush. He realized at
once what had happened. The Northmen must know the country after
all. They had baited him by taking the cattle road, then had swum
their horses downstream as they crossed, to land on the north side
of the canal after all. He snapped a command. His trumpeter
signalled a flanking movement and certain cohorts began letting
themselves be carried farther downstream. Alpha slid through the sky, quartering gravitic
vectors, braked, and flew down the fourth rank of orcs at twenty
meters, about eighty meters out from the east bank. Charles
alternated short bursts from the two automatic rifles he’d
mounted beneath the hull. His Northmen leveled oblique fire from
the doors.
The run was completed in seconds, chopping up the third, fourth
and fifth ranks. Many of the survivors continued their advance, but
some milled in confusion and many others turned their horses
downstream. Alpha banked and circled for another run. The
first two ranks had taken heavier losses to neoviking archery and a
few were fighting on the bank. Kniv had platoons of mounted
warriors in reserve to hit any bridgehead the orcs might
establish.
Meanwhile Beta had also entered the action, flying a
deadly first run near the west bank. The orcs swimming there broke
and turned back, as much because of a screaming siren mounted on
the pinnace as the streams of deadly bullets. Troops not yet in the
water held back their horses, looking nervously toward their
trumpeters.
Ram himself flew the Beta. His second run was down the
river’s midline, siren shrieking again, but he withheld the
fire from his mounted guns although his door gunners took their
toll. He would be content to break the crossing without maximum
kill.
All the swimming ranks began breaking up now in turmoil, trying
to get back to the west bank or escape downstream. After his third
run, Ram flew to hover seventy meters above the junction of road
and river. His voice boomed from the partly raised commast.
“Orcs! Do you surrender? Do you surrender? Dismount, stack
your weapons, and line up unarmed, and I will spare your
lives.” He paused. “Shout your answer! I will hear
it!”
There was no immediate answer. Ram glared across at the
Alpha still moving busily up and down the river killing
orcs.
Kamal’s aide-de-camp looked worriedly at his
commander.
“No!”
“But my Lord, we have no choice! We have no way to fight
back!”
“Orcs have never surrendered. Never! I will die
first.”
As if in answer, Alpha skimmed across the water toward
them, spewing bullets. The command staff threw themselves from
their saddles and embraced the ground among stamping hooves and
falling horses. When they got up, those who did, Kamal raised his
fist to shake it at the banking Alpha, then pitched
forward with a dagger between his shoulder blades.
“We surrender!” bellowed his aide-de-camp. “We
surrender!”
“Stack your weapons beside the river in big piles,”
commanded the voice from the sky, “then line up on the road
and picket your horses.” Beta floated watchfully as trumpets blew and couriers
galloped. Alpha was downriver again, killing orcs. Along
the banks grew piles of lances, swords and bows. A sluggish stream
of mounted orcs flowed onto the road, still disciplined but without
their arrogance, finally picketing their horses along the shoulders
and forming ranks on foot.
Downstream the short bursts of gunfire from the Alpha
retreated to the edge of hearing. Suddenly she was back, strafing
the long and unarmed ranks upon the road while fragmentation
grenades tumbled from her doors. She made but one run; the orcs
scattered into the marsh grass to flee or hide. Ram was screaming
invective into the radio, spitting with rage, then shot forward and
banked toward Alpha.
Nils shouted in warning; “Alphal Ta flykk!”
Alpha shot into an accelerating climb, and after a moment
Ram halted, turned to Nils and poured obscenities on him. When his
surge of rage had passed, he stood panting, face red, eyes
bulging.
“You didn’t ask my people whether they were willing
to let the orcs surrender,” Nils responded bluntly.
“You made your peace with them, but you do not speak
for my people. You presumed too much. To the tribes and many other
people, the orcs are a deadly enemy who would destroy them if they
could and enslave the survivors.
“And how had you intended to deal with your thousands of
prisoners? You have no place to take them, nothing to feed them,
and you could not control them for long. Your action was without
thought.”
Ram glared. “And Ivan!” he said hoarsely,
“that treasonous bastard! He could see what I was doing, and
still he strafed them.”
“Why Ivan?” Nils asked. “Sten Vannaren can fly
her and probably did. I told him to make sure he
learned.”
“I’ll bet you did.” Ram fixed him with his
eyes. “I’ll bet you were behind the whole rotten
treacherous thing. Well, that’s it, you barbarian filth! Hostages or no hostages, you’ll get no more support from
me; no air support and no more ammunition. Absolutely
none!”
“Then I’d better explain to Kniv Listi.”
The response had been completely matter of fact. Ram hesitated
briefly, then reached for the transmitter switch. The exchange in
Scandinavian took several minutes, then Nils turned to Ram.
“Listi asks no more help from the Beta, and will
kill no unarmed prisoners in your control as long as they
are in your control. He retains the right to kill any
others. Meanwhile you must bring more ammunition and grenades or he
will keep your people.”
“But I have your vow!” Ram snapped. “And your woman
and brat! You think I won’t do anything to you. Don’t
be too sure.”
Nils’s mind stared mildly into Ram’s, and although
the captain usually kept outside thoughts from his consciousness,
he felt it opening now to the Northman.
(Ram, Ram, you have become dangerous to yourself. A minute ago
you were willing to kill two of your own people; in your rage you
didn’t care. If you’d killed them, you would have
destroyed yourself as well.
(The tribes are not your enemy. They withhold your people
because they see your help as the fastest and least costly method
of driving the orcs away. Without it, many of my people will die,
and, many others in other lands.
(So go back to your ship before you do something you will not
forgive yourself.)
Ram shivered, feeling physically ill. The word-thoughts flowed
on with sure calmness. (The land of the orcs is not the place for
you. Ugly things happen here—evil things. Perhaps Chandra and Anne
Marie will tell you a little of that someday. Perhaps.
(You are Ram Uithoudt, master artisan, maker of wonders, who
sails between the stars. You are not prepared to live with war. Let
Matthew Kumalo lead your people down here beneath the sky. He is
not as smart as you, but he is wiser, and he has a stronger
stomach.)
While the two had faced each other in pregnant silence, the crew
had looked on soberly. They had not needed to hear speech to know
that something decisive was happening or who was prevailing.
Their captain turned now to the co-pilot.
“Take us back up, Lee,” he said quietly, “back
to the ship.”
When the Beta had disappeared, Sten made a run along
the bank, spraying the orcs who had crept out of the reeds and tall
grass and were rearming themselves from the piles. It was time, he
decided, to see if the incendiary grenades could really set the
heaps aflame, as Charles had told them.