Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (42 page)

A hundred yards out of the forest Silent, who still had his Lalla Mkouma, fell invisibly on the men with the demon spitters. He gathered the weapons from their bodies and ran back into the forest. He stopped halfway there and watched the phoenix emerge from its egg, unfurl its wings, and torch several Jokapcul, setting a small forest fire in the process. The Jokapcul broke and began running back to their camp. Silent lay down the demon spitters and drew his sword. He stood waiting, an invisible bladed barrier to the fleeing enemy. When those who ran to the sides of the road got past him, those who ran on the road were piled dead in front of him.

The Jokapcul who had attacked east met those who had attacked to the north. They screamed their tales of horror and terror at one another, then began a mad rush to the southern forest.

The final battle for Eikby was over.

Haft stood looking where the last Jokapcul had fled into the forest south of Eikby. His axe dangled from his hand alongside his leg; a drop of blood grew on the lower point of its half-moon blade, fattened, fell to the ground by his foot.

“We beat them,” he said in a flat voice, almost as though he didn’t believe it himself. “How many troops did we take on? And we beat them. They are gone and we are left holding the ground.” He turned to Spinner. “We won.”

Spinner nodded absently, he was looking at the bodies that covered the battlefield, at the people who roamed over it, separating the bodies of their own from the Jokapcul dead. They would take the time to bury their own, the Jokapcul corpses would be cared for by the carrion eaters who were already congregating and beginning to gorge themselves.

“At what cost?” he asked in just as flat a voice.

“A lower price than the Jokapcul paid.”

“But we only have a small number of men. They seem to have countless numbers.”

Haft’s shoulders rose in a shrug.

“We still won this time.”

“This time,” Spinner agreed. “But they’ll be back in a few days, and there will be more of them when they come again.” He looked at Haft. “We surprised them this time. You know that, don’t you? They didn’t expect us to have demon weapons and to strike at them the way we did.”

Haft nodded. “Surprise and daring—and a few good men. That’s how we beat them.” He looked at the bodies, at the members of the company and the townspeople carrying their dead to stack at the side of the communal grave that was being dug in the field west of Eikby’s ashes.

“In a few days they’ll be back,” Spinner repeated. “And
they
will occupy this ground. Then they’ll hunt for us. They’ll be ready the next time. We won’t surprise them when they catch us again.” He nodded at the people going about their grim business. “There are too many of us, too many civilians. We won’t be able to move fast enough to stay ahead of them.”

Haft flipped his axe up so he gripped it close behind its head, with its haft parallel to the ground—the spike that backed its blade lay almost against his forearm. He glared at the southern forest.

“So we’ll find another way to surprise them. We have to, you know. There are too many of them and too few of us.”

Spinner nodded, he knew that. But he didn’t believe they could find an effective way for their small numbers to surprise Jokapcul who expected to be surprised.

“We have fewer fighters now than we did a few hours ago.”

A flinch twitched the corner of Haft’s mouth.

“We have two or three hundred more men,” he said. “We’ll have to train them to be soldiers, that’s all.”

“Two or three hundred Marines wouldn’t be enough.”

Haft shrugged. “Wasn’t it you who said a week or two ago, ‘We don’t need Marines, we just need soldiers’?”

Spinner chuckled wryly. “That was when we thought we were only facing bandits.”

“And our half-trained soldiers beat the bandits. Think of the Jokapcul as better bandits. Soldiers can beat better bandits. But the Jokapcul have to catch us first.” He saw Alyline and Zweepee not far off, supervising gleaning the Jokapcul camp for anything usable and filling the wagons.

“Alyline, Zweepee!” he called. “How much longer? We have to get moving soon.”

Alyline ignored him.

“We’ll be done by the time the grave is filled,” Zweepee called back.

Part of Haft was glad the Jokapcul had burned so many people alive, that meant there were fewer bodies for them to collect and bury. He couldn’t suppress the shudder that thought caused.

At last their dead were collected and covered in the communal grave. They had food and supplies and enough wagons to carry them in, even if most of the food and supplies were unfamiliar booty from the Jokapcul camp.

“Which way do we go now?” Fletcher asked.

Spinner sighed. “North. We shouldn’t have turned back when we were in the Eastern Waste.”

“Most of us would have died if we had continued in the Waste,” Silent said.

Spinner stood in his stirrups and looked back at what had been Eikby. “Someone said they came here for us. Might the town have survived if we hadn’t come here?”

Haft spat. “The Jokapcul were on the peninsula, they would have gotten here soon anyway. You’ve seen what they do. Some of our people were from towns and villages that stood in their path and you’ve heard from them what they did. If we hadn’t been here, any people the Jokapcul left alive would be slaves. At least some of them are still alive and free.”

“If you call being a refugee being free,” Alyline said.

Spinner lifted his arm, and brought it forward. The long column began moving in fits and jerks as wagons, riders, and walkers began the trek north by west, around the foot of the mountains, headed toward Princedon Gulf. Soldiers, former soldiers, and other armed men rode ahead and to the sides of the column. The strongest force of soldiers brought up the rear to defend against Jokapcul or bandits who might come upon them from behind.

Spinner had no idea where they were going. Neither did Haft. All they knew was that they had to find an open port and shipping across the sea to Frangeria. All anyone else knew about their destination was, wherever the two Frangerian Marines went, so would they.

The Dark Prince sat erect on a midnight black stallion. A black cloak flowed down his back from his shoulders, a stygian waterfall that pooled and spread across his horse’s hindquarters. The black of his shirt blended with the cloak, the black of his trousers merged with the black of his saddle, which was barely discernible against his horse’s hide. His black-gloved hands looked like ravens perched on the pommel of his saddle. His eyes were coals in his face as he glared about the blackened ruins of Eikby.

Under the close supervision of Jokapcul soldiers, slaves, former citizens of what had been the independent city state of Penston, moved through the ruins gathering and stacking the dead on loose-woven wooden platforms for cremation. Children too small to gather bodies ran among them, chasing away the carrion eaters. Other slaves from Penston moved from one side of the cleared land to the other, gleaning everything that could be found on the ground.

“They are of no consequence,” the Dark Prince said to the Kamazai Commanding. “You said the bandit band led by the two Frangerian Marines was of no consequence.”

The Kamazai Commanding shifted uncomfortably on his saddle. A mixed troop and four troops of light cavalry had come to Eikby. They were more than enough to destroy the town and the bandit band that rested there. The town was destroyed, but all that remained of the five troops—
six hundred officers and fighters
—who had come to Eikby was a handful of broken, dispirited soldiers. Those surviving had told his interrogators the bandits had destroyed
them
and freed the people they had kept as slaves. How could that have happened?

Never before, not once since this army had first landed on the west coast of Nunimar to conquer the kingdoms of Matilda and Rampole, had any Jokapcul force larger than one troop been defeated—and then only when fallen upon by a much larger force. Yet there at Eikby, a force the size of a large troop had utterly destroyed five of his troops. It simply wasn’t possible!

The Kamazai Commanding had no response to give Lord Lackland.

The Dark Prince turned his coal eyes on the Kamazai Commanding. “The main army,” he said in a chillingly calm voice, “will continue to follow the coast of the Princedon Peninsula until all the Princedons are mine. The bandits and the townspeople went north. You will send a powerful kamazai with a strong force to find and follow the path of the bandits. When they find them they will kill them. When the main army reaches the head of Princedon Gulf, it will meet them, and they will have the heads of the bandits mounted on posts to greet them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Lord . . .” The Kamazai Commanding cleared his throat. “Yes, Dark Prince. I understand.”

“It is good that you understand,” the Dark Prince said with heat. “Because if that does not happen, I will serve the High Shoton both that kamazai’s head and yours on silver salvers.” He flicked his stallion’s reins, the horse turned about and began trotting south, back toward Penston and continued conquest.

By David Sherman

The Night Fighters

KNIVES IN THE NIGHT

MAIN FORCE ASSAULT

OUT OF THE FIRE

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

A NGHU NIGHT FALLS

CHARLIE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

Demontech

ONSLAUGHT

THERE I WAS: THE WAR OF CORPORAL HENRY J. MORRIS, USMC

THE SQUAD

A Del Rey
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Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Copyright © 2003 by David Sherman

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ISBN 0-345-46356-0

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Rally Point

David Sherman

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