Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (40 page)

“The Jokapcul are going to send more troops and we have to leave anyway,” Alyline said. “But if we defeat this force severely enough, those who come after us will come less eagerly.”

Spinner sighed again; he knew they were right. “Dawn tomorrow,” he said.

They began making plans.

Shortly after midnight, one hundred men, all but twenty of the soldiers—who remained behind to guard the camp—plus the veterans, and several hunters and former poachers, began moving from the valley to Eikby. When they were directly north of the fowl ponds they split. Under the command of Haft, twenty archers, the Bloody Axes, and the few survivors of the Eikby Guardsmen, left the forest to assume positions on the banks of the southmost ponds. Haft and three of the others were armed with demon spitters. Spinner took the bulk of the small force around to the east of Eikby’s burnt-out ruins. They stopped well short of the guard post on the east road.

Haft paired his men, archer and blade, and set them behind the coops and trees clustered on the south side of the ponds. When they were in place he let them sleep in shifts, one man awake watching while his partner slept. That positioning, as slow and silent as it was, didn’t eat up all of the time remaining before dawn, and he had nothing to do but wait once he took his own position.

“Sleep, Sir Haft,” Sergeant Phard told him. “You will need all your strength when dawn comes.”

But Haft was too tense and too eager for the dawn’s attack to sleep; it was all he could do to keep from fidgeting. He would have occupied himself by checking his men’s positions, but they were too close to where he believed many of the Jokapcul slept for him to risk moving about. Everything was quiet save for the hoots and
squee
s of night flyers and the buzzing of insects.

When the larger group reached its area of operation, Spinner grouped his men more closely than Haft had placed his and let two men out of three sleep while he took the Skragland Borderer named Kovasch and continued forward to see if the guard post was manned. It was, and the Jokapcul manning it were far more alert than those of the night before. He made out four sentries sitting up, but couldn’t tell how many were lying down, either awake or asleep. Spinner wondered if an officer had survived and Silent simply hadn’t seen him. If not, someone else must have managed to take command. He left Kovasch in place to watch the guard post and returned to the rest of his men. There, he briefly conferred with Xundoe and Silent. The mage and the giant each took a Lalla Mkouma and vanished.

“Ooh, oo biggun!”
Silent’s Lalla Mkouma burbled as she perched on his shoulder—she giggled when he tickled her under the chin with a fingertip as big as her head.

Xundoe slipped his right hand through the whirlwind that flowed around him and the wind that swirled around Silent and reached up to the level of his shoulder to take hold of the back of the giant’s belt. As quietly as his name, Silent walked out of the forest into the clear. Xundoe kept pace to his left rear. Together, they moved into the Jokapcul camp and trod softly among the sleeping bodies scattered here and there with no apparent concern for units or discipline.

The mage wasn’t very happy that he hadn’t had time to catalog all the contents of the chests he’d brought back from the Jokapcul camp. He’d had to use too much of the short time available to instruct the men with Haft on the use of the demon spitters. He’d argued that Haft give the instruction, but the Marine insisted he didn’t know enough—which, coming from the normally supremely self-confident sea soldier, surprised Xundoe. The chests might have held demons he’d find useful in these wee hours of the night. The handful of phoenix eggs he’d secreted about his person were wonderfully usable, of course, but unlike most demons, a phoenix egg could be used only once and no matter how many of them the chests might hold, the supply was limited. He couldn’t help thinking that the chests might hold a tome that would tell him other, perhaps better, ways of using the demons he already had. He’d
love
to get his hands on one of those tomes Lord Lackland had conjured that told the Jokapcul magicians how to use demons that had never before been used in warfare. Of course, he’d heard that the tomes were printed in some language not even the scholars at the University of the Great Rift could decipher with certainty. Still, no matter how few people had actually seen them, the illustrations in the tomes were legendary for their exquisite detail. Why, he—

Silent reached through the twin whirlwinds and touched Xundoe to signal that they were at the southernmost corner of the pyre. Nobody was nearby.

Xundoe wrenched his thoughts away from the chests, and flinched from the stench of decay that came from the structure. How could he have gotten so close to it without noticing the smell? He breathed through his mouth to keep his gorge from rising as he poked a hand inside a recess in his robe and withdrew a dowel and a cone. He propped a cone next to the corner of the structure and held it in place with the dowel. A phoenix egg came out of another recess of his robe. He gingerly placed it in the inverted cone. Breathlessly, he withdrew his hands, ready to close them on it again if it showed any sign of falling, but it stood steady. He signaled Silent to go to the pyre’s next corner before he gave the top of the phoenix egg a half twist and drew softly away. The egg kept its balance. He did the same at the next corner, then they headed north and he planted eggs at each of the north corners of the pyre. He was certain the Jokapcul would trip all of them and release the four phoenixes if they counterattacked Haft’s group to the north. If not, then he’d have to find a way of releasing the phoenixes when the battle was over. There was no possibility he’d try to retrieve any uncracked eggs—he doubted they could be safely handled after their tops were given a half turn. He looked north, but could barely distinguish the coops and larger trees from the dark bar of forest beyond them.

They returned to the east forest for the hodekin.

The rest of the night was quiet. Only a few times during the night did the watching soldiers discern the shadow of a Jokapcul making way from his sleeping position to the latrines and back. No sentries made rounds within the Jokapcul camp. The dome of the sky slowly grew lighter.

North of Eikby’s ruins, Haft made sure all his men were awake. He and the other three men with demon spitters made their stealthy way closer to the sleeping enemy, where they took position and listened for the first dawn welcomings of the treetop birds.

East of the burnt-out town, Spinner led a squad of archers and a squad of swordsmen through the darkness to where Kovasch still watched. It was a good place from which they could attack the guard post as soon as it was light enough to see.

The first ray of sunlight hit the treetops and an avian cacophony sang to it.

A Jokapcul at the guard post may have heard an unintended noise, or might have caught a vagrant scent that didn’t belong or he may have simply looked at random. Whatever happened, a sentry saw a too-regular shadow thirty yards away and shouted a warning.

Spinner reacted instantly with a shout of,
“Now!”

But the eight Jokapcul moved just as quickly and only two of the ten arrows hit their targets. One sentry dropped with an arrow in his chest, another paused to break off the shaft of an arrow that stuck in his shoulder. The ten swordsmen charged, yelling war cries, swords held ready to slash. Spinner dropped his crossbow in favor of his quarterstaff and joined the rush. The archers got off another volley but they’d had to try to avoid hitting their own men and all their arrows went off target. They dropped their bows and took up swords to join the melee.

Screaming, the two groups came together. Four Jokapcul were knocked off their feet by the rush of the larger Skraglanders, but only two of them bled from wounds, and only one of those two stayed down; the other bounded back to his feet. A Jokapcul ducked under a sword swing and thrust forward and up with his lance. His Skraglander opponent staggered, clutching the shaft of the lance buried in his upper abdomen, wrenching it out of the hands of his killer as he toppled to his side. The Jokapcul scooped up the Skraglander’s sword and leaped to the aid of a sentry being pressed hard by another attacker.

Spinner found himself sparring with a lancer who was almost as good with his lance as Spinner was with his quarterstaff—the lancer didn’t have to be as good to hold his own, the sharp blade his lance was tipped with saw to that. They thrust and jabbed and parried and slammed the shafts of their weapons together. Spinner was bigger and stronger and able to knock away the Jokapcul’s strikes, but the enemy sentry was more agile and danced out of the way of the strikes and swings of Spinner’s quarterstaff. After several moments of fencing the lancer feinted, easily dodged a strike at his throat, and turned his parry into a thrust. The point of his lance ripped along Spinner’s side as the Frangerian barely evaded the stab. He continued his sideways movement and turned it into a spin that slammed the butt of his staff into the side of the Jokapcul’s head and flipped him over and to the ground, dazed. Spinner put his full strength into a swing into the temple of his downed opponent.

All about him, sword clashed against sword, clanged against lance head. For all the bravery and strength of the Skraglanders, individually the Jokapcul were fiercer fighters. By the time the archers reached the melee, four of the Skraglanders were down and only two Jokapcul were out of the fight. The enemy was gaining the upper hand, but the reinforcements turned the tide for the moment.

The Jokapcul had spread all around Eikby as well as their campsite to sleep, five were waking nearby when the guard shouted his warning. Their shouts roused several others who followed them as they raced to the aid of their fellows. Farther away, on the fringes of Eikby and in the campsite, other early rising Jokapcul heard the shouts, picked up weapons, and began running east, shouting the alarm as they went.

Silent heard and saw and realized the plan of attack was already unraveled. It was time for Plan B, but they didn’t have a Plan B. He bellowed orders. The archers began shooting at the Jokapcul racing to the guard post, and the rest of the soldiers followed him in a mad race to join Spinner and the others before the reinforcing Jokapcul reached the guard post.

North of Eikby, Haft heard the first faint shouts from the east and knew something had gone wrong—but what? He couldn’t tell at that distance. He strained to look into the Jokapcul camp. The sky above was already a brilliant dawn blue, but the long shadow of the forest kept the light on the ground dim. At first he saw nothing but the same spiky shadows he’d been watching since he’d moved his men into position a few hours earlier. Then he made out what appeared to be random movement, which quickly resolved in the growing light into forms moving rapidly to the east. Whatever had gone wrong, Spinner and his group were about to be attacked by what might be overwhelming numbers. He couldn’t wait for the signal for his part of the attack to begin.

“Demon spitters!”
he shouted.
“Fire now!”

The demon in Haft’s weapon popped its door open.
“Wazzu whanns?”
it demanded.

“Do you see that group of men?”

The demon looked along Haft’s pointing arm.
“Dry mee,”
it said confidently and
snick
ed its door shut.

Haft aimed the tube at a knot of a dozen men more than a hundred yards away. He pressed the signaling lever and the demon spat just as the Jokapcul began to run east. He had aimed at the middle of the group and might have killed or injured all of them, but they moved far enough by the time the demon’s ejects got there that only seven were knocked down by the blast. The others spun about, saw what happened to their companions, and ran for cover.

To Haft’s sides, three other demons spat and downrange three more eruptions gouted dirt, flesh, and blood. All of the Jokapcul were awake now. Some, startled from sleep, groped for weapons and leaped to their feet. Others scrambled for cover. Unintelligible shouts and cries came from the direction of the camp.

More light flooded the cleared land as the sun inched above the trees. Not as many men were running east as had been, which was good, but he didn’t see any coming his way, either, which wasn’t. He looked for another target, but no one was standing and he couldn’t tell which of the indistinguishable splotches on the ground were Jokapcul and which were debris. He stood to get a better angle. In the camp, someone saw him and let out a yell. Individual Jokapcul jumped to their feet and sped toward him. He looked for several running close to each other and sighted his demon spitter on a quartet. He signaled, the demon spat, and the four tumbled through the air and crashed to the ground. They didn’t rise again.

Silent’s roar reverberated through the trees and it startled the Jokapcul who were fighting for their lives at the guard post. They looked around and the sight of the giant barreling at them terrified them. They broke and ran. Twenty yards away they passed the first of the Jokapcul racing to their aid. That soldier skidded to a stop and peered indecisively into the dimness under the trees. He turned his head to look at the fleeing sentries and never saw the arrow that took him in the heart. He grunted softly and fell onto his haunches where he teetered for a few seconds before toppling over.

Another twenty yards out, the fleeing Jokapcul collided with others coming to their aid. They shouted at one another as they tried to sort themselves out. Even with no officers to tell them what to do, they were still willing to fight and managed to get themselves on a line to charge back at the men in the trees. Just as one of them shouted for the charge to begin, the first demon spitter struck in the camp behind them. Some ran to battle, others held and looked back to see what the threat behind them was.

Spinner took advantage of the respite to get his troops set in two lines, archers behind swords, axes, and pikes. He ordered a volley of arrows shot at Jokapcul who milled about less than fifty yards away and watched as four of them fell with wounds. A second volley launched just as half of the Jokapcul began their charge and the sound of demon spitter eruptions came from the other side of the ruins. Two more Jokapcul fell to the arrows. The archers had time for one more volley, then Spinner ordered them to pick targets and fire independently.