Exile's Children (41 page)

“… little way. Likely not enough to halt them for long.”

He shook his head, yawning to unblock the stoppage of his ears, and blinked until he saw Baran's mouth moving.

“What?” His own voice sounded distant.

Baran leaned close and said, “We could drop the tunnel only a little way! The Maker help us, but it was built too strong. They'll likely clear it before long.”

“Then we fall back.” Colun narrowed his eyes, forcing them into focus. Rubble spilled like a ramp from the bulk of stone plugging the tunnel, all hazy in the roiling dust. “Drop the rest while they dig that out.”

Baran nodded and beckoned his fellow golans to him.

As they began their chant, Colun called up his warriors.

“We drop the tunnel.” He saw their eyes all wide with disbelief and horror and mouthed a curse. “Fall back!”

They retreated down the tunnel, leaving the golans to their work as a youngling came running up.

“Creddan! Colun! They're coming in all over!”

“What?” Colun felt chill fill his belly. “What do you mean?”

The youngster said, “They're entering the cavern.”

For an instant Colun rejected the news: it was too large to comprehend, too impossible. The caverns were inviolate, no matter what he'd said: surely the Maker would not allow it,
could
not allow it. Then he looked at the youngling's stricken face and knew it was so.

The world
was
turned on its head, all topsy-turvy.

He shouldered his borrowed ax and began to run, his fighting men on his heels.

And all the way he thought: Marjia, be alive. Maker, let her be alive.

He found chaos.

Rainbow-armored invaders spilled from the tunnels, pouring down the stairways like floodwater, all pushing one against the other in their
haste so that some were pitched off to fall and crash onto the stone below. They seemed uncaring of their dead and wounded, for when one fell, none went to his aid but only passed, often treading on the fallen so that the wounded were crushed under the weight of their fellows. Some halted on balconies and bridges, nocking long shafts to great bows and sending arrows down like rain on the Grannach below. And from several of the wider thoroughfares came the beasts, all snarling and slavering, their belling joining the battle cries of the Javitz and the howling of hurt folk and the screaming of women and children.

Colun halted his men where a wide, walled ledge afforded clear view of the cave, assessing the situation. He could not see Marjia, nor had the time to seek her, for a cluster of the invaders came charging at his position and he raised his ax to meet them.

They were tall as the flatlanders, these strangelings, and hard-armored. But height is not always an advantage and armor has weak spots: Colun need only duck his head to avoid the long sword that swung above him and then send his ax slicing against the invader's knee, all his Grannach strength in the blow.

The man—he supposed it was a man, but could not tell for sure—loosed a shrill cry and fell down as if kneeling before the creddan. Colun reversed his stroke and sent a scarlet helmet rolling away across the shelf, the head it protected still inside. Then he must spring back as the serrated blade of a pike stabbed at his chest. He turned, catching the pole between his left arm and ribs, and smashed his ax against it. The Grannach steel severed the pole and its user was pitched off balance. Before he had opportunity to draw the long knife he carried, Colun sank his ax into the bright yellow breastplate and roared in triumph as red blood spilled out. He shouldered the dying man aside and went in search of another victim.

There were none left: bodies littered the shelf, both invaders and Grannach, but where all the strangelings were dead, the Grannach had wounded they carried limping with them.

Colun ordered off the least hurt, leaving them to tend the worst, and led his remaining warriors at a run for the closest bridge, where invading archers stood. The Grannach swept them away, as many tossed down into the depths of the cavern as were slain by steel.

A pause then as he surveyed the cavern. There were not so many invaders as he had first thought. It was as if their shining armor, all so bright and light-reflecting, tricked the eye into a multiplication of their numbers. That, and perhaps the sheer fact that they were in the ancestral cave. Certainly no more emerged from the tunnels, and the Javitz drove
those on the bridges back, or over, and all down the walks along the stream there were glittering bodies like poisonous beetles.

Some yet lived, fighting in tight groups along the terraces, surrounded by massing rings of Grannach. Colun thought they must soon fall, for they were heavily outnumbered by the Javitz.

He looked down and saw three of the dreadful beasts still living, and then a cry burst from his throat and he was running for the nearest descending road.

Marjia stood by the stream, a house at her back and a pike in her hands, a group of women with her, all armed with poles and swords taken from the fallen, presenting a steely wall to the creature that spat and snarled and pawed at them as if it were some monstrous nightmare cat confronting a hedgehog whose spikes were sharp steel. From the doorway and the windows of the house, children stared wide-eyed at the beast, and even as he raced toward his wife, Colun saw the invader lurking behind the creature and surmised something of their nature.

It was a kind of symbiosis, he realized, the monstrous beast controlled in some fashion by the man, as if it were a fighting dog and the invader its handler, urging it on. His armor was not of the brilliant hues that marked his fellows, but only black, with bright crimson sigils on chest and back. He carried a tall pole that ended in a long spike from which protruded a recurved hook, and for all the beast needed no prompting in its bloodlust, still he poked at the hindquarters as if the carnage it wrought was insufficient to satisfy him.

Colun saw bodies littering the floor, some male but most women, slain in defense of the sanctuary, of the children hiding there. He saw Marjia thrust her pike at the beast and propelled himself desperately forward, his soul filled with a terrible dread.

He found the cavern's floor and charged the dark-armored invader. His ax rose and sank into the armored back. The invader jerked and stiffened, arms flung wide, the goad dropping from his hand. Colun swung the ax again, this time striking deep between the joindure of breastplate and tasset. He saw the man's head fling back and hooked it down as if he gaffed a fish. The armored figure was tugged onto its back and Colun sank his ax into the frontage of the jet helmet.

The beast roared then, and slowed as if it were struck, and turned from its attack to face the Grannach. It seemed confused and, as it roared and lashed its scaly tail, Colun darted past the wide-mouthed head to spring onto a shoulder as if it were a ladder and sink his ax into the backbone.

He was flung clear as the thing reared up, but his men were with
him and attacked from all sides, hacking and cutting until the beast lay bloody and dead. He rose, wincing as bruised limbs protested, and said, “Marjia?”

“I'm here.” She came to his side and put her arms around him, which hurt his ribs somewhat, but he said nothing. “That was brave.”

He said, “You're safe.”

“Yes.” She nodded and he saw her eyes wander frightened about the cavern. “But how many are dead?”

He said, “I don't know; wait,” and called up his men that he might tell them what he had guessed—that the beasts were each controlled by a single man and that they should seek the invaders in the dark armor and slay them, and after them their beasts. And then he said to his wife, “Stay here, eh?” and went back to the battle.

It was no easy thing to slay either the remaining creatures or the remaining invaders, but it was done and the Javitz looked to their hurt. There were too many, and Colun wondered how well they could withstand further attacks—and how the strangelings had succeeded in coming so far through the tunnels.

That was readily explained when scouts came back with wounded who told of a sudden massed attack, pressed home by so many invaders, they'd had no chance to send warning but could only fight and die where they stood.

“Then where are they?” Colun asked a Grannach whose face was forever scarred and whose left arm would never again bend readily. “Were there so many, where have they gone?”

That question, too, was answered as they licked their wounds and messengers hurried to the other family caverns to pass on and bring back news. Colun flinched when he heard it.

All the caves were assaulted, but that, for all the loss of life, seemed only a diversion designed to concentrate the families each within their own cavern, to draw them in from the high passes.

There, so word came, the invaders poured through, deep into the mountains, in such numbers as the Grannach could never hope to oppose.

“O Maker, stand with us now.” Colun closed his eyes as he heard the news. Then opened them wide: “We must speak of this, all the families.”

“You need rest.” Marjia set a hand on his shoulder. “You've broken ribs and more bruises than I can count.”

Colun patted her hand, though the movement cost him pain. “There's no time for rest,” he said. “Save that last one the Maker gives us all, and I'm not ready for that yet.”

“We Shapers can seal the tunnels,” Baran said. “All of them, needs be. Lock the Javitz in safe.”

“Ach, did we not speak of this?” Colun shook his head, and groaned. “Family by family, or as one people?”

“We'd be safe.” Baran shrugged. “The Javitz would survive.”

“And the world outside?” Colun began to move his head, thought better of it. “Shall we leave that go? Shall we Grannach all become moles—each family to its own sealed cavern? Shall we let these strangelings pass us by to conquer Ket-Ta-Witko?”

“What other choice have we?” Baran asked.

“To do what's right,” Colun said. “To fight them as an army.”

The creddans of the other families were of a different opinion.

All had suffered losses, not all were convinced the attacks were merely diversions.

“We fought them off,” Janzi said. “We can do it again.”

“Whilst they go through the passes?” Colun asked. “Into Ket-Ta-Witko?”

“Perhaps we're not so much in love with the flatlanders as you,” said Gort. “Why should we fight their battles?”

“Is it not our duty to guard these hills?” Colun asked.

“We do,” Janzi said. “We shall.”

“Only that?” Colun looked from one creddan to the other. “I'd thought our duty extended farther.”

“We guard the mountains,” Gort said. “We do our duty by the Maker.”

“The western tunnels are sealed, no?” Daryk said. “So they surely cannot attack again.”

“Save they cross the mountains and turn back,” Colun said, “from the east.”

“Ach!” Janzi made a gesture of irritated dismissal. “How shall they pass through the hills? They'll die up there.”

“How did they enter our tunnels?” asked Colun.

“We were not ready,” Janzi said. “Now we are.”

“Not ready?” Colun frowned. “We've been fighting them long enough, no?”

Janzi at least had the grace to look a moment ashamed. Then he said, “We were not ready for such numbers.”

“Perhaps if we sealed all the tunnels?” Menas ventured. “Of east and west both?”

“And starve?” asked Colun. “Our meat come from the valleys, no? And our crops. Would you lock those off?”

Menas shrugged.

“What do you suggest?” Daryk asked.

“That we forgo our differences,” Colun said. “That we fight as an army, all unified.”

“And doubtless with you as our commander,” Janzi said, and spat.

“No.” This time Colun remembered not to shake his head. “I say only that we need act as one, are we to defeat these strangelings.”

“We have,” said Gort. “There are none left alive in the cavern.”

“Ach, for now,” Colun said. “But do they cross the mountains, think you they'll let us be? I tell you they'll come back against us.”

“And I tell you that our caves are safe for now,” Daryk said, “and it must surely take these strange folk time to cross the hills, if they can. So we've time to think on all this.”

“We've no time at all!” Colun said.

“I think Daryk is right,” said Menas. “I think we should ponder this.”

“By the Maker!” Colun fisted an angry gesture. “What's to ponder? We are attacked! Invaders cross our mountains! What's left to ponder?”

“Much,” said Daryk.

“Yes,” said Gort. “I'm with Daryk. I say we think on all of this and not rush to decisions.”

Menas nodded his agreement. “And the while, look to our family caverns.”

Colun sighed and muttered a curse: he saw dark and bloody times ahead.

And so it went, in the Grannach way, slow as stone and as inexorable. And as they pondered, the invaders drove ever deeper into the mountains and into the high passes, moving relentlessly toward Ket-Ta-Witko. The Grannach fought them—not as Colun would have it, as a single unified army, but in the old way, family by family—and though many died, there seemed always more, the horde careless of its losses so that even when the Shapers sent avalanches down to bury the columns, or warriors tumbled boulders on them, still when the dust had cleared the horde pressed on, clambering over stone and corpses alike. The invaders seemed impervious to the cold of the high peaks and the rain that fell as
the year aged, as if they were some mindless gestalt unlimited by physical considerations or any kind of sentiment save bloodlust.

Colun thought it could be only a matter of time before the enemy held the hills and the Grannach hid like rabbits in a sealed warren, awaiting their executioners. And then, he thought, the weirdlings would likely flood down into Ket-Ta-Witko to strike against the Matawaye, and the Grannach have no allies left in all the world. He thought he could not allow that, but neither was he sure what to do, what he
could
do.