Tooth and Blade Page 17

  There was no light inside, which had probably saved the hostages; their killer had to pause and find a lantern, or let his eyes adjust. That man lay spread-eagled at Keltos’ feet, the javelin still protruding from his back. It had been a solid throw, right between the shoulder-blades.

  Makos came in behind Keltos bearing one of the standing torches from outside, broken off to shorten it. By the firelight they saw six staring women huddled around a central tent pole. Their hands were all bound at the wrists, tying them to the pole and to each other.

  Keltos held out his free hand in a gesture of friendliness, and lowered his sword. “We’ve come to set you free. Do not worry.”

  Makos stepped forward, and after a bit of sawing they soon had the six girls loosed. Most crouched low in the tent corners, unsure what was about to happen, but one spoke up as she massaged her bleeding wrists. She had shockingly pale hair and features, but her teal-green eyes blazed with desperation in the torchlight.

  “Did the people of Dura send you? My sister, Ireth—”

  Makos put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. The pitying look in his eyes said it all, and the woman clenched her jaw in fear.

  “Come with us. There is fighting in the camp. We’ll try to get you out the back way, to safety. But you must hurry.”

  The tall woman Keltos knew had to be Rafe Lantia, Ireth’s sister, pulled the others up and away from the back of the tent. One of them, a bony girl that was only sixteen or so, brought up the rear and helped to hurry the others along. She pulled the javelin from the dead guard as she went, brandishing it tightly.

  Outside, Rafe fell down beside her sister and sobbed.

  “Ireth. Ireth, it’s me. I’m here. You found us! You came!”

  But the gray-haired Duran lay still and cold, unable to hear the voice she’d hoped and fought to hear.

  Keltos offered the fallen traitor’s blade to the woman, bidding her stand. “We cannot linger. At any moment more of these bandits could come and surround us. We will return for her body when the fight is won. Come!”

  Rafe leaped to her feet and took the saber from Keltos with a firm grip. Her hair was now streaked with red and orange, reflecting the flickering firelight. She turned to the other rescued captives and waved them on.

  “Follow quickly! We are leaving this place.”

  The outlaws at the log barricade on the south were softening up. Damicos could sense it.

  So far the men had pushed hard, but there just wasn’t a good opening to press up and over the logs. Now there was a notable reluctance to stand and trade blows on the far side of the barricade, as if the men were leaderless. Damicos could see, through chinks in the logs, a large man shouting at his fellow bandits and waving an ax. But the outlaw fighters didn’t respond with any kind of discipline, and many seemed to be shrinking away from the punching spears.

  It was now or never. The bandits could rally against them if he let the opportunity pass.

  “Onward, over these logs!” he shouted. “We go now. Telion!”

  “Telion!” boomed the phalanx, and many spears thrust as one, pushing the outlaws back, forcing them to crouch and duck en masse. Damicos pushed through his ranks, choosing a place where a twisted trunk made a slight dip in the top of the wall. Dropping his shield, he used his short sword and free hand to climb. Men to the right and left of him did the same.

  Standing atop the barricade for a split second, he saw bandits grouped in tight clusters near the strong points of the log wall, avoiding the open places where spears could get at them. These looked up and saw him silhouetted against the sky when another lightning bolt crashed overhead, but he leaped down before they could react. Howling his success along with the soldiers who had come with him, Damicos laid about him with his cutting blade, sending bandits running in fear.

  The huge lieutenant that had been haranguing the men at the front took a giant stride toward Damicos and hammered his back with the ax. But that was where Damicos’ infantry armor was strongest, and though the blow nearly knocked the breath from him, he was still able to whirl and deliver a sweeping cut that would have taken off the man’s arms if he’d not backed off.

  The captain heard the piercing voice of his sergeant, Leon, on the other side of the wall. The man was apparently beating hoplites with the flat of his short sword in his zeal to drive them over the barricade. “The captain’s breached the wall! Get in there, you dogs of war!”

  Another soldier’s head came into view, and suddenly he was hoisted up and over by someone below, rolling across the top and down into the defenders’ side. The stocky sergeant was next over, snarling like a beast as he landed on his feet with spear ready. He screamed with savage joy when he saw Damicos and the few others soldiers still standing and holding the bandits at bay. He launched himself outwards from the wall, plowing into a knot of attackers and sending them down in a glorious pile.

  The tall man with the ax came in again, and Damicos found himself shoulder to shoulder with the hoplite who’d been heaved across the barricade bodily by his sergeant. They were hard-pressed to block the forceful blows the outlaw gave, and a chant arose from some of the bandits fighting nearby.

  “Bovog! Bovog! Bovog!”

  Damicos parried one sideways sweep of the ax, but Bovog shifted his grip on its haft and suddenly reversed the swing with powerfully-flexing arms. The blade cut right and buried itself in the shoulder of the young hoplite next to Damicos. Before the captain could get a sword-stroke in, the hulking lieutenant planted a foot on his chest and sent him stumbling backward.

  Bovog laughed and raised his ax high, eyes red with murder lust, leaping forward and aiming another blow down at the hoplite, who’d sunk to his knees. But Sergeant Leon pivoted, rising to one knee and thrusting savagely with his spear. Bovog took the bronze spearhead in the gut, running into it so violently that it punched out his back. He sank to his knees with a grunt, and the chanting quieted.

  The battle wasn’t letting up, though. More of the company’s infantry were coming over the wall, but still less than half of the force was fighting inside the camp. Bandits were converging on the tight cluster of men, using their greater numbers to deadly effect. One hoplite went down on his face, hamstrung, and then another cried out as an arrow found his flesh through a gap in the armor between breastplate and helmet.

  As infantrymen climb into the compound, they didn’t bother re-forming but fought in small groups, each man as suited him best. This put them on roughly even footing with the bandit fighters, who could skirmish and scrap in small bunches as well as the spearmen. Damicos could see that he needed to re-form the phalanx, and quickly.

  “Fall in!” he bellowed, gesturing to his right and left with his sword. “Form up!”

  The formation was pitiful at first, a ragged handful of troopers on each side. But as one here and there finished their individual duels and ran to join the line, it grew in strength. Damicos felt a surge of pride as he saw more men fighting their way over the barricade to join him.

  “To me! We’ll sweep them off this bluff! To me!”

  Then a man dressed in black leather, with a bloody sword in one hand, ran up to the edge of the battle, and his men turned in deference to him.

  “Gather to me!” Black Tur shouted. “Every man of you, at my side now! There are but twenty of them. We can chop these soldier boys into butter, and then we’ll have all the bronze we could ever want. Get ready!”

  There wasn’t time to wait for the rest of his men. Sergeant Leon and another sergeant who’d joined him were screaming at the men to reform, beating them into ranks with the flats of their swords. But the outlaws were rushing to their leader faster than the hoplites could get over the wall and take their places in the phalanx. Damicos set his feet and raised his sword.

  “Troops, at the double. Charge them!”

  “Advance, you curs, you motherless dogs! Advance!”

  Spears lowered toward the tents and cook-fires, and the meager phalanx dashed forward.
Damicos briefly wondered how the rescue team had fared, whether they lay dead already or had found the hostages. It didn’t matter; what mattered now was killing as many of these outlaw rabble as he could.

  The battle was joined in earnest, on level ground in the middle of the camp. By torchlight, soaked with rain, the hoplites heaved and stabbed at their foes, while the cutthroat band arrayed against them fought back viciously to preserve their lives and their stronghold. Men fell by the dozen over the next several minutes in a combat so brutal and swift, blood pooled with the rain in great sheets across the open ground.

  Time seemed to slow, or to stutter, as Damicos’ mind focused solely on the work of slaying. His sword-arm ached, but he gave it no respite. Next to him, men with spears shouted and thrust forward, taking blows and missiles on their shields and armor and giving back sharpened bronze in return.

  At one point Damicos came face to face with Cormoran and Fieron, who fought back to back and dispatched two bandits each in the space of a few seconds. The veteran’s spear was broken, but this seemed to make him even more deadly in the close combat, shifting the weapon from hand to hand and twirling it about him to keep the outlaws at bay. The captain realized this could either mean that the rescuers had failed and come to join the melee, or that they’d been split up. Either way, he could only strive to make each moment count as he battled against Black Tur’s forces atop the bluff. To break them and send them running into the arms of the cavalry.

  This was what infantry did. It was what Damicos had been born to. And he reveled in it.

  Black Tur fought like a cornered panther, slashing at the faces of Damicos’ men and sweeping their legs out from under them so his men could leap on them. His terrible blade snaked in and out, around from every angle. The infantry, used to fighting at spear’s length, found themselves overwhelmed by the flashing sword and the blinding projectiles of the bandit chief’s close cadre. The outlaws knew as well as the soldiers that they were minutes from a rout; one side or the other had to break soon. Men were getting exhausted, and the losses on both sides were heavy. The question was, which force would break first?

  Damicos pointed his sword at Black Tur, and the bandit chieftain grinned and raised his own in reply. But Damicos wasn’t sending a message to the enemy.

  “Cormoran! Leon! We must take their leader, now!”

  The two veterans nodded, and while Fieron fought off the two outlaws who’d been menacing the older hoplite, Cormoran began to run through the chaos toward Black Tur. Leon closed in with Damicos and the other spearman as they reached the out ranks of a personal guard that had formed around Tur, and the way seemed to open before the three men as busy fighters got out of the way for whatever was coming.

  Leon’s spear punched into the tight group around Black Tur, and Damicos launched an attack on the man to his left, opening a slit in the guard that had surrounded their leader. Cormoran would never have made it through the remaining men, however, not without taking mortal wounds and likely dying at the feet of the feared sword-wielding chieftain. So he did the only thing he could, the thing infantrymen hated most to do because it left them bare-handed for the rest of the fight.

  He hurled his half-length spear through the crowd with all the force left in his tired body. Powerful muscles, aching with fatigue but conditioned by a life of marching and raw combat, sent the bronze weapon hurtling through the air with deadly momentum. It shaved past the head of one bandit, clipped the neck of another, and then its wide bronze blade buried itself six inches deep into the shoulder of the outlaw chief, nearly shearing the man’s arm from his side.

  The aim was off, due to the balance of the broken weapon, and the rain, and the dark, and the press of men all around. Otherwise Black Tur would have fallen where he stood, dead before reaching the earth. As it was, the man screamed and twisted, letting fall his sword and eliciting a gasp from the bandits all around him.

  He shot a look of pure hatred at the spearmen facing him, and spat on the ground. “Kill them!” he hoarsely cried, clutching at the rapidly spreading stain of red under his arm.

  But there was a change in the rain-streaked air now, a breath of something new hovering over the carnage. The band of cutthroats realized they were never going to beat these mercenary spearmen to a standstill; if they’d had the numbers to do it at first, they certainly didn’t anymore. Their lieutenant had been impaled in front of them at the barricade, and now their swashbuckling chief was sinking to his knees. None thought his own chances at winning any greater than Black Tur’s, the man who had just sustained a devastating wound.

  They could either die here on the hilltop after a prolonged and painful fight through the tents and into the trees beyond… or they could flee now while a chance at surviving this night yet remained open to them.

  First one man dropped his javelin and backed away toward the ravine path, and then another. Soon bandits on all sides of the muddy battleground were milling about in a rush to avoid being caught in the rear of the exodus toward the only route off the bluff.

  A shout swelled among the spearmen, unbidden by their captain. Damicos grinned from ear to ear as he heard it, realizing what was happening.

  “Quel! Quel! And Yillitha!”

  No longer were the men calling on Telion, the God of War. Now their battle-prayers were to Quel, Goddess of the Hunt, and to Yillitha the queen of the dead and dying.

  “After them!” he bellowed. “Sweep the camp! Drive them off the cliff!”

  The hoplites broke into a run, losing formation but speeding forward with spears bobbing ahead of them. They pursued the fleeing bandits like beaters in the field coursing after a boar or a lion, flushing and driving it toward the waiting arrows of the hunters. Here and there an outlaw fell, gored from behind, or turned to fight desperately and fell anyway.

  The tide had turned, and the battle was almost over.

  In the ravine below, Keltos was slithering through the mud ahead of the rest, racing down the steep trail on his thighs and elbows. None of them, neither the escaping hostage women nor the soldiers rescuing them, had managed to keep their footing once they went over the edge of the bluff. Rainwater washed down the path like a small river, and the slick clay and gravel was like a slide that shot them straight downward. It was all he could do to keep enough control to stay roughly on the path and avoid going over one of the steeper edges that led down to rocks below.

  Clinging to a bush to slow his descent, Keltos turned and looked back to check on the others’ progress. Makos and the two stronger women were helping the other hostages down in stages, and Ica the scout slowly brought up the rear. His head was hanging low, and Keltos doubted he’d make it much farther. The man had lost too much blood. Yet he was still doing what he could to protect the women they’d rescued.

  Getting off the bluff was an adventure in itself; they’d run into more than one bandit leaving the fight and had to stop and deal with them. Rafe Lantia had turned out to be a surprisingly strong ally in those swift and brutal fights, channeling even more grim fury than her fallen sister. But one of the other women had stepped on a fallen javelin in the dark and cut her foot open, and another froze up and Rafe had to physically drag the girl away.

  Finally they reached the edge and started down; if they all reached the bottom in one piece, Keltos swore he’d burn incense to Khoris.

  His muddy feet finally found the bottom, and he stood. He’d managed to keep hold of his saber throughout the wild descent, and now he waved it.

  “Hurry! We’re almost to safety!”

  When he looked back up the steep path, however, his heart skipped a beat. Four men had thrown themselves over the rim and down the trail after the rescuers, and three more bandits clustered at the top, preparing to go as well.

  “Move!” he shouted at Makos and Ica. “You have to get down, now! They’re coming after us!”

  This sped the women in a tumbling slide down the hillside, barely arrested by grasping at the grass and roots along t
he way. Meldus was nowhere to be seen; Keltos hoped he’d made it off the trail without succumbing to the arrow he’d been hit by earlier.

  Suddenly the bluff top was full of running men, panicked, desperate bandits striving to be first to descend the little trail to the stream. This couldn’t be a vengeful, pursuing force; they were too wild and uncontrolled in their descent, Keltos thought. That must mean…

  Atop the bluff came the sound of tramping feet and shouts of infantrymen on the rampage. Fires flared up, and there was tearing and crashing as the men ripped through tents and trampled over the outlaws’ camp. The outlaws jammed into each other at the top now, spilling over the edge and hurtling down in droves.

  Keltos grinned. The fleeing bandits were cursing, lashing out at each other in their desperation to get away. It was chaos. Some threw themselves bodily over the low parapet at the bluff top, landing with bruising impact on the clay slope and rolling down. The hillside was full of thrashing men as lightning again split the sky.

  Finally Makos and the last of the women passed Keltos’ position, and he reached a hand to help Ica Mistshaper down onto the cold streambed. “Let’s go! Into the trees. Let our brothers and allies handle the rest.”

  They hurried the women across the creek, splashing wildly as they made their way down the ravine and into the waiting trees.

  A figure rose up there. “You’ve returned—with the hostages! What goes on up the ravine?”

  It was Argaf, and Meldus sat nearby nursing his leg in the dark.

  “This is all of us. The rest coming down that hill are enemies!” Keltos said. “Take them at your leisure, gentlemen. They’re in full rout.”

  The Duran grinned and clapped him on the shoulder as he hurried the women past. “Good man! You’ve done it!”

  Meldus rose to his feet, using a tree for support. “How close are they?”

  Argaf and seven other men standing among the trees leaned out to see up the ravine.