IronStar (24 page)

“Here, girl, let me see to your
injuries,” she continued, stepping around the red-faced major to where Peetha
sat bound in her saddle, blood still running in a steady trickle from her thigh
and dripping from her gore-soaked boot.

“Doi’tam-
fira'tachk
! There
is need of your services! Are you ready, or shall I send for other assistance?”
Kirrah put every bit of command she possessed into her voice.
What an
interesting shade of magenta
, she thought, looking at his face.

“Are you unwell, Sir?”

“This will be decided in Council,”
he ground out between clenched teeth. “Tonight!” he added, as he stabbed his
sword savagely back into its scabbard. Behind him, the line of mounted men
sheathed their weapons. “Bra’dack-
sana'tachk
! See to the security of
this compound!” The huge white charger wheeled to its left, and trotted, tail
high, out the gates.
Great exit
, thought Kirrah.
Wish I could do
that. You just need a great big horse. Keep the initiative, now…
As soon as
the indignant Major was out of earshot, she said to the Lieutenant:

“Bra’dack-
sana'tachk
. You
may find this …disagreement has left you in a difficult position. I believe we
have the same needs. I need trustworthy soldiers to keep this compound secure.
You have been ordered to do this. Are we agreed?”

“Yes …guest-Warmaster.” A little
reluctant, but at least he’s not charging us, Kirrah thought. “Providing all
your …students… remain unarmed, and bound.”

“I have already ordered my students
to disarm. They shall remain bound, except where Issthe’s services require
different. Would you please send a few of your men for tents? This field will
be our camp tonight.” The cavalry lieutenant very nearly saluted her, catching
his fist on its way to his throat. He turned it into a gesture toward several
men beside him, who trotted off, presumably on the requisite errand.
Should
have asked for food too
, Kirrah realized.
Oh well…

Issthe had untied Peetha’s wrists,
and with one of her fellow priests, helped the suddenly-pale girl to dismount,
and then to sit, shaking, on a small blanket one of them spread on the hard
ground. Gentle deft fingers undid the laces and removed the right boot,
explored the bloody but undamaged foot. A steady drip continued from the back
of the girl’s punctured thigh.

Kirrah looked around for Irshe who,
she suddenly noticed, was nowhere in sight. She gestured to the Wrth, standing
in small groups, to sit on the ground. They stared at her a moment, then
suddenly all folded their legs and sat where they were. Issthe shooed her
helpers away. The other priests homed in on the most severely injured captives,
by the simple expedient of following the trail of blood spots on the ground.

Kirrah watched the blue-garbed
woman’s hands, which moved over the young Wrth as though brushing the air, five
or ten centimeters over the girl’s skin. The hands paused, twice, over the
vivid red lesion on her forehead, then returned to the dripping leg wound.

Needs a tourniquet
, thought
Kirrah. Moving in the air around the injury, those pale slim hands made short
sweeping gestures, then paused, one above and one below the injury. The young
warrior’s eyes seemed to half close. The steady drip of blood suddenly began to
slow, and then stopped, as abruptly as though a tap had been turned off.
Kirrah’s eyes widened.

Issthe brought out a small vial
from the bag slung over her shoulder, and as gently as possible smoothed some
of the ointment into the edges of the wound. Peetha neither flinched nor
complained. A clean cloth went around the leg, covering both entry and exit
wounds. A dab of the same ointment went into another small cloth. Issthe put
the cloth in the girl’s hand, and guided the hand to her forehead. Their two
hands together spread the cloth over the angry red burn mark and held it there.

After a moment Peetha said a few
words in her own language, and a short, wiry Wrth a few paces away looked at
Kirrah, then nodded toward the Wrth mount standing patiently beside them.
Kirrah nodded in response, and the man rose awkwardly and began fumbling, hands
tied behind him, with the horse’s saddle cinch. Kirrah took his shoulder and
guided him to sit again, and with the help of one of her bodyguards, got the
saddle off the animal. The beast nickered sharply and flinched as the saddle
came off, revealing a small bloody gash in its hide where two centimeters of
the bodkin point had penetrated the heaviest leather at the edge of the saddle.
The guardsman called for a groom, who led the reluctant-looking horse away to
the nearby stables.

“We will care for your horses, all
of them, and they will remain yours,” Kirrah assured the assembly. One of the
Wrth repeated the pledge in his own language, and a wave of relief passed
around the seated Wrth.
As though they care more for their horses than their
own lives
, Kirrah thought.

In about another ten minutes Irshe
returned on the run with sixteen palace guards and twenty more archers. They
were shortly joined by a cartload of supplies. A few minutes later, Lieutenant
Bra’dack’s messengers returned, followed closely by a cart with a dozen or more
small field-tents.

When faced with the alternative of
helping set up the tents and then hand-feeding bound Wrth, or guarding a camp
of unarmed but unbound ‘students’, the Cavalry Lieutenant relented. By late afternoon,
Kirrah’s ‘students’ were all fed and in tents. Wounds were cared for as well as
Issthe’s workers were able, which somewhat to Kirrah’s surprise, was pretty
well. One man, who had taken an arrow high on the left shoulder and exiting low
on his left side, died - from internal bleeding, Kirrah imagined. How he had
managed to walk the half-klick here under his own power remained a mystery. The
twenty or thirty flesh wounds looked ugly and were probably painful, but all
had been bound up and the bleeding stopped. The various ointments seemed at
least to be treatments the priests had confidence in, to prevent infections.
Peetha was resting comfortably in one of the tents, suffering from mild shock
and blood loss, but on the way to recovery.

With the clear understanding that
Warmaster Kirrah had given her word, ‘no trouble, no harm’, and twenty palace
guards and forty loyal archers to oversee security, Kirrah finally relented and
allowed herself to return to the school for a hot bath and supper before the Council
meeting that evening. Akaray was ecstatic with the news that his Warmaster had
humiliated the mighty Wrth
and
humbled the Royal Cavalry, leaving Kirrah
to speculate on rumor as the universal human condition.

“It would be a great reform in
politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly.” –
Sir Winston Churchill
, op.cit.

“Wrth are not evil people, Akaray,”
she explained between mouthfulls of an excellent mildly-spiced creamy sauce and
white meat,
tastes like chicken, yeah…
with some crisp yellow
vegetables. “It is like when we found the
irwua
- it is their nature to
attack. You tricked them with a piece of meat; I tricked the Wrth with an open
gate.”

“Wrth killed my village, you killed
many Wrth. This was good,” the boy replied, with the irrefutable logic of
youth. “I want to grow up and kill
all
the Wrth.”

“Whenever some person or creature
attacks civilization, they may have to be killed for the good of all,” she
replied. “But you do not go back to the pond and try to kill the
irwua
,
if it is not bothering you. It is dangerous, and unnecessary.” After a short
pause, the boy said:

“What if the
irwua
follows
you home, and keeps attacking? That’s what the Wrth do.”
He’s got you there
,
Irshe’s gray eyes seemed to say from across the table. “I think Doi’tam-
fira'tachk
wants to kill them all, too,” Akaray added.
Great, twenty minutes ago the
kid was happy I’d foiled the Major, now he’s on
his
side…

“Akaray, what is better than a dead
enemy?” she asked. When he seemed baffled, Kirrah said: “What happened when
Irshe and I first met?” He thought that over for another few bites.

“A friend!” he said. “But, you
can’t be friends with the Wrth! They just want to kill everyone!”

“I already made friends with some
of the Wrth, Akaray. I need a way to talk to more of them. Sometimes words are
more effective weapons than a
not-sword
. I do not know the right words
yet, but I was lucky with the ones I caught this morning.” At the other end of
the table, Slaetra and Brai’klao exchanged thoughtful looks.

Forty-five minutes later they
arrived at the palace. The Council meeting was held in the large room at the
front of the same central building where Kirrah had first met Lord Tsano. In
the richly paneled and tapestried sixty by forty meter meeting room were seated
two hundred
shee’tho’vai
or block-leaders, one representing each of the
vai’atho
,
the city-block-sized living units. The King, his four executives the
Scribemaster, Armsmaster, Guildmaster and Issthe the priest, sat at desks at a
raised section on the back wall of the room.

There were two vacant desks on the
raised section, and Irshe guided Slaetra, Brai’klao and Kirrah to chairs at one
of them. The other one, Brai’klao informed her in a hushed whisper, was
normally for Major Doi’tam, but he was a petitioner at this meeting and so
would be taking the petitioners’ table in front of the King. As the Cavalry
major entered and took his seat, Brai’klao added that the King had marshaled
the agenda so that the Major’s petition would come
after
a report on the
day’s events.

As the King’s personal scribe
called the meeting to order, four of the block-leaders rose and stood with
their hands in the air, reminding Kirrah of a trainee with a question in
Academy classes. The King sighed audibly and signaled to a scribe, who carried
a heavy, ornate metal object to one of the standing women. She accepted it and
held it in front of her face like a microphone. Brai’klao whispered to Kirrah
that was the ‘Mouth of Talam’, that only the person holding it, and the King,
was allowed to speak in Council, and that they must hold it all the time they
were speaking.
Great idea
, thought Kirrah –
keeps the racket down,
and
limits the speech length… that thing looks
heavy
!
The woman spoke
up:

“You all know me, I am Tai’kara
shu’Naitha, from Waterside Block. Before hearing the doubtless interesting
reports of the day’s military action, on behalf of my Block I must protest that
a hundred Wrth raiders are camped in the City, barely four hundred
hab’la
from
our Block. I want to know what our King is doing to remove this stink from our
city and ensure the safety of citizens inside our own walls!” A murmur ran
through the gathering, heads bending and more rumors exchanged. “These three
shee’tho’vai
standing behind me, and doubtless many others, have the same concern, Oh
King.”
So much for agenda control
, thought Kirrah.

“These concerns are important,”
said the King, in a voice that carried surprisingly well in the large chamber.
“I am sure others will share them. This meeting is to deal with the Wrth
threat, please yield the Mouth to Armsmaster Opeth and we will begin to answer
your question.”

Armsmaster Opeth’s report was brief
and to the point. Warmaster Kirrah’s ‘stone surprise’ had worked perfectly.
Five hundred thirty-seven Wrth had charged through the gates. Of these, four
hundred forty-eight lay dead on Falling Ash Road, including three killed when
the gates closed on them. One died later in the care of the priests.
Eighty-eight were now held securely in the military compound. It was estimated
that another four hundred fifty to five hundred lay dead outside the walls,
prey to the new
longbow
and
bodkin-point
arrows. Total loss to
the raiders: between nine hundred eighty and one thousand thirty attackers.
Total loss to the Talamae: ten longbowmen picked off the walls during the
brief, fierce exchange of arrows, and two more hit on the roofs during the
ambush. Four of these casualties had died, the others would recover.

It was the Talamae’s greatest
military victory, the Wrth’s worst defeat, and the only known instance of Wrth
ceasing fighting in battle, ever. The room erupted in cheering and
table-pounding for a full minute before order could be restored.
Well done,
thought Kirrah,
you never used the term
prisoner
or
surrender
once in that entire report. Major Doi’tam and I may both yet leave this meeting
alive!

That individual was next to receive
the Mouth. He reviewed the proud service tradition of the Royal Cavalry,
thanked the guest Kirrah for her services to the Talamae, and declared that he
would see to a disposition of the prisoners in a manner that was safe for the
citizens of the city of Talameths’cha, with the King’s permission, and
understanding the concerns of Waterside Block and others.

Issthe signaled and received the
Mouth next. A hush fell over the room. In her clear voice she related the
events she had seen in the practice-yard, with a few well-chosen words painting
the picture of Major Doi’tam and his mounted, armed men about to attack Kirrah
Warmaster and the unarmed Wrth. At her words, sullen looks and mutterings were
exchanged among the council members.
She requested the Council
to formally confirm Kirrah’s status, and to set out clearly the
shee’thomm
 
between her, Armsmaster Opeth and
Major Doi’tam.