Demontech: Gulf Run (9 page)

One of those troops broke into a gallop when its commander spied the van of the column emerge from the Eikby road.

“Hold!”
the captain shouted, reining up in front of the lead wagon. His men arrayed themselves in three ranks behind him, weapons at the ready—swords in the hands of the front rank, lowered lances behind them, nocked arrows in the bows to the rear. The light armor that protected the soldiers’ chests and arms looked like it had seen battle; it was obvious even to the people in the column’s van that these weren’t ceremonial troops.

Esaulow, a stout, garrulous Eikbyer driving the lead wagon, stopped and looked fearfully at the cavalrymen. He hadn’t expected to be greeted by the prince, but hostile soldiers were even further from any welcome he’d thought likely.

“Yes, lord,” he said as he swept off his hat to bob his head and tug at his forelock.

“You must turn back,” the captain announced in a strong voice. “None more may approach Dartmutt.”

“Lord?” Esaulow asked. “I don’t quite well understand your words.” He’d never been to Dartmutt and wasn’t familiar with the local dialect.

“Are you deaf? I spoke clear enough. Turn back!” The captain put his hand on his sword hilt meaningfully.

“Stay, lord, stay!” Esaulow said quickly, holding up both hands as though to fend off a blow. “I’m sure someone else will gladly speak to you.” He twisted around to look back down the column and huffed out in relief when he saw horsemen cantering forward. “Who can speak Dartmutter?” he called out, and wondered why
he
had to be driving the lead wagon, he who couldn’t understand the way these Dartmutters mangled the tongue. Even as he asked the question, he saw Plotniko, the former master carpenter of Eikby, striding forward. Yes, Plotniko would understand the Dartmutt captain; he’d journeyed this way several times in quest for materials and tools. He watched Plotniko step aside for the horsemen—Spinner, Haft, and that harridan, Golden Girl.

“What’s the problem, Esaulow,” Spinner asked when he reached the van. He was proud of himself, he’d hardly had to pause before he remembered the man’s name.

Haft pulled up alongside Spinner and graced the Dartmutt captain with a polite nod and a wolfish smile. He didn’t put his hand on his axe, not quite, but it was obvious he could have it out as quickly as the captain could draw his sword. A sergeant murmured an order and half of the archers drew back their arrows and pointed their bows toward him.

Alyline shouldered her stallion forward and didn’t stop until she was midway between them and the cavalry officer. Nearly all of the Dartmutters shifted their attention to her; the archers eased the tension on their bowstrings.

“What’s going on here?” she snapped. Her meaning, if not her words, were clear.

The captain moved his hand from his sword and swept forward in a bow. “Lady,” he said with a rueful smile, “I am distressed to say I cannot allow you passage.”

“Can anybody understand him?” Alyline asked loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear.

“I can,” Plotniko said as he came up. He looked at her, then turned back to Spinner and Haft. “He says we cannot pass.” Turning to the captain, he said, “Sir, my name is Plotniko. I am Eikby’s master carpenter—or I was until the Jokapcul came and destroyed our beautiful town. We are the survivors, along with strangers who came among us in flight from the Jokapcul. I can translate for our leaders.”

The captain nodded brusquely. “Tell them my Lord Earl has decreed no more refugees are to approach the city. Your flight must take you elsewhere. I must demand that you turn back.”

While this exchange was taking place, Spinner looked over the confusion surrounding the city and crowding the harbor. He could guess what the captain was saying though the Dartmutter dialect was unintelligible to him. He wondered if the galleys that screened the harbor would have to use force to stop the rapidly approaching coast huggers.

“We can’t go back!” Alyline said when Plotniko translated the captain’s orders. “The only thing back there is a destroyed town and the Jokapcul.”

“We have fighting men,” Haft said. “We can help defend the city while we are here.”

The captain shook his head when Plotniko translated. “The army is full, we have no room for more deserters from other armies,” he said harshly.

Haft’s face went hard at the insult, but Spinner stopped him from doing anything by saying to Plotniko, “Ask him if there’s another road we can take to the east. If we can go east, then we can completely avoid Dartmutt.” He continued to watch the craft closing on the harbor.

There was a quick exchange during which the captain gave the wagons a doubtful look.

“There’s a track about a mile back,” Plotniko translated, “but he doubts it’s wide enough for our wagons to pass. Maybe the dog carts can, he says.”

Spinner remembered the track. It was narrow and looked like it had seen no recent use, he’d hardly taken note of it.

“I don’t think we should go east,” Haft said softly. “Look.” He nodded toward the harbor.

Fifteen of the coast huggers Spinner had noted had broken from the mass of craft to form a line facing the galley screen and close to a couple of hundred yards from them. Puffs of smoke shot back from two of them, followed by sprays of water like whales’ spouts splashing near the galleys. More puffs shot backward from the coast huggers and a galley staggered. Gnatlike specks flew from it, and other gnat-forms leaped from it to the water as flames began licking up its mast and spreading on its decks. The bangs of distant thunder reached them. There were more puffs from the coast huggers, and the galleys began to maneuver to dodge the geysers and close with the attacking craft. But the galleys turned too slowly, and several more were struck before any closed to grappling distance.

As soon as he realized the harbor was under attack, the cavalry captain forgot the Eikby refugee caravan and turned his troop to race to the city’s defense—surely if the coast huggers broke through the screen they would land soldiers on the quays, or perhaps soldiers were already marching along the shore from the east.

“They’ve changed their tactics,” Spinner murmured.

Haft nodded. “Must have,” he agreed. “I thought they only attacked harbors before dawn.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Alyline demanded. “Are you just going to sit here and let the Jokapcul take the port you led us to?”

Spinner wouldn’t look at her. “That’s a sea battle, we don’t have a ship. So we
can’t
do anything.”

“You could go down to the harbor shore,” she pointed at the side of the bay closest to the battle, “and use the demon spitters to even the odds.”

Haft
did
look at her. “I don’t know what those demon spitters are they’re using. I
do
know ours don’t have that much range. We don’t have anything to hit them with until they get much closer to shore.”

She muttered something unintelligible. Neither man asked her to repeat it. They watched the one-sided battle at the mouth of the harbor develop. A half-dozen galleys closed enough to grapple the smaller coast huggers. The others were shattered, burned, and sunk. A few crewmen managed to swim to the galleys still afloat and were hauled aboard to join in swarming onto the enemy craft. Others swam to shore. Too many went underwater and didn’t resurface. The galleys were two and three times the size of the coast huggers; their much larger crews were able to overpower their antagonists, though with severe loss of life. The victories were short-lived, as the other attackers didn’t hesitate to turn their demon spitters on the captured boats. The sea fight was over soon and the mass of coast huggers that gathered just beyond the fighting vessels advanced into the port.

“How many boats do you make out?” Spinner asked, peering through tubed hands.

Haft also had his hands curled into tubes held in front of his eyes to help focus his vision. “About a hundred,” he said grimly. “Twenty men per boat.”

“Two thousand men,” Spinner said softly. “How many were in the landing force at New Bally?”

Haft shrugged. “Ten thousand? I wasn’t counting.”

“That was before dawn, in an undefended city. This is during the day, with the defenses alert. That’s not a large enough force.”

“No, it’s not.”

The two Marines lowered their hands and looked at each other.

“Where are the rest of them?” Spinner asked.

“I’ll check that side trail.” Haft spun about and galloped toward the rear of the train, bellowing out, “Bloody Axes, to me!”

Spinner looked back. A squad of Zobran Prince’s Swords had edged forward. “Come with me,” he ordered. He turned to Alyline. “Get Fletcher, tell him to see to defense from the east.” He cantered east along the edge of the forest, looking for roads or foot paths. The Prince’s Swords formed up behind him as they went.

Alyline sniffed. “ ‘Get Fletcher’ indeed. As if I can’t do it myself.” Still, she went to get Fletcher. Between them they would organize the caravan into a defensive posture.

Two short lines of Prince’s Swords rode with Spinner just inside the edge of the forest, almost invisible from the city and harbor. He hadn’t told them what was happening, they saw for themselves when they reached the mouth of the road and looked across the farmland to the city and harbor. Half a mile ahead, the forest curved sharply north, almost to the waterline. Spinner slowed his gelding from a canter to a trot when he reached the bend and went partway toward the Gulf before turning into the wood. The trees grew close enough that he had to walk his horse. The Prince’s Swords could have continued the trot, but he wasn’t a good enough horseman to go through the forest at a faster pace. After a few hundred yards they began to hear the clash of arms to their front.

“I will go ahead, Lord Spinner,” Wudu, the squad leader, offered. He heeled his horse and didn’t hear Spinner’s muttered response:

“Don’t call me ‘Lord.’ ”

Spinner and the others continued forward at a walk. Wudu rejoined them in five minutes.

“Several troops of Dartmutters are in the open, fighting a holding action against a large Jokapcul force, lord,” he reported.

Spinner grimaced at the “Lord,” but let it go for now.

“How far ahead?”

“The wood ends in a couple hundred yards. The battle is an equal distance beyond that.”

“Let’s take a look.” Spinner risked a trot and managed to avoid being knocked off his horse by the branches he had to duck under.

They stayed far enough inside the trees that the combatants couldn’t see them. From here the battle looked fierce but fairly even. Even enough that Spinner thought they might be able to turn the tide in favor of the defenders. But he couldn’t be sure, and wasn’t willing to risk so many of the refugees’ defenders on someone else’s battle. He looked about. Not far away was a tree with branches spaced for easy climbing. He rode to it and climbed high enough to see over the heads of the fighters. From that angle the fight didn’t look as even as it had from ground level. Then he looked beyond it and saw more Jokapcul trotting forward. He clambered back to the ground and remounted his horse.

“They’re going to be overrun shortly,” he told the Zobrans. “We need to see to our people.” He twisted his gelding around and followed Wudu back at a trot. Wudu carefully picked a line that avoided most of the branches that could unsaddle a horseman less skilled than his Prince’s Swords.

Fletcher watched the Jokapcul swarming ashore from the coast huggers. “It’s a feint,” he told Alyline. “The main attack is going to come from the land side.” He squinted and looked to the land on the north side of the harbor. Unlike on the south, vegetation was thin there, thin enough that he should be able to see any large troop formations if they were there. He saw none within a couple miles north of the city’s walls. “They’re coming from this direction, maybe through us. We have to move.”

Alyline agreed. So did Jatke.

“If my memory is right,” the former Eikby chief hunter said, “there is a place not far from here where we can have some protection.”

“Can the wagons get there?” Alyline asked.

“I think so.”

“Let’s go.”

Jatke led the way to the verge of the farmland and along the edge of the forest to the west. No Dartmutt cavalry troop attempted to stop them, they had all sped to defend their city. After three-quarters of a mile, a road cut southwest into the forest. Jatke turned onto it. The land rose and quickly became rocky, strewn with boulders, some the size of a small hut. Half a mile along he left the road in a treeless cut between two large boulders. Beyond was a maze of large boulders, with many paths between large enough to allow a wagon to pass. He stopped and began directing traffic, different wagons into different paths of the maze. All but the two largest made it into the maze.

“We can use them to block the entrance if need be,” he said.

By then Spinner and the Prince’s Swords had rejoined the train.

“Where’s Haft?” Spinner wanted to know.

Alyline sniffed and looked away.

“He’s not back yet,” Fletcher said.

Spinner grimaced. If Haft came across that battle, he was impetuous enough to have joined it. And the Bloody Axes would have joined him without question.
Damn!
He shouldn’t have let Haft go without a cool-headed person along to keep him from doing things like that.

But he didn’t have time to fret about what Haft might have done. A runner came from the end of the road.

“Lord Spinner,” the runner gasped, “a large force of Jokapcul just came out of the forest and is attacking the refugees gathered south of the city!”

“Find a back way out,” Spinner ordered Jatke before he sped to the mouth of the road.

“Dismount,” Haft ordered when he reached the narrow trail leading east. He darted into the forest without looking to see how many of the Bloody Axes followed. He stopped fifty yards inside the trees and turned around. Fifteen Skraglanders gathered close.

“The Jokapcul are invading Dartmutt, but there aren’t enough of them in the boats. They must also be invading from the land side. That’s this way. This is a reconnaissance in force, to see if we can find them. If they’re coming on this track, our people are in big trouble. Any questions?”