The Jongurian Mission (54 page)

“Aye,” Iago agreed.
“Is all of the way like this, walls of rock so close you can touch ‘em? Or are there some areas that’re more open and easier to defend?”

“In a couple hours we’ll get to a crossroads of sorts,” Wen said.
“It’s called the Oval due to its shape, and several canyons like this come together in one area, although most of them just lead to dead-ends further into the mountains. The area’s much more open than this and there’re several large boulders lying about. If men
are
waiting for us that’ll be the place.”

“Shouldn’t we develop some kind of strategy then?” Willem asked

“We have four bows,” Iago said, “those’ll be our most important weapons if an attack does come.” He turned to Wen. “Can men attack us from above in this spot of yours?”

“The walls are
still too high,” Wen replied. “Most of the attacks will come from behind the walls that branch off from the main route and from behind the many boulders strewn about.”

“What exactly will this area look like when we come upon it?” Halam asked.

Wen fingered his narrow beard as he thought for a few moments before answering. “The walls’ll be about as close together as they are now before they dramatically fan outward to create a large oval of open space. I’d say that there’s a good two hundred feet before the walls come together again and the path continues on toward the Isthmus. It’s in that space that the other canyons open up along the walls.”

“The way to the
Isthmus is a straight path from where we’ll enter this open area?” Willem asked.

“Aye, just walk straight like the open space is no different from the enclosed path we’ve been following.”

“Well, all we can really do then is keep moving toward this area,” Jurin said. “If an attack comes we’ll meet it as best we can.”

The
y walked on after that, each man anticipating and readying himself for the battle that they were certain was awaiting them. The sun was shining down into the canyons from above when Wen motioned for them to stop.

“The
Oval is right up around this next turn. If my memory serves, there’ll be several large boulders at the entrance, with more spread out ahead and side canyons further on. If there are men waiting for us, they’ll be hiding behind those boulders and waiting in those canyon entrances.”

The men nodded and Wen pulled the bow from behind his back and nocked an arrow
to it. Willem, Iago, and Jurin did the same while Halam unsheathed his shortsword and Conn took the small hand-axe from his belt. Trey, Jal, and Rodden still only had daggers, but they took them out and grasped them tightly.

“You men pick up any larger weapons that you can manage,” Wen told the three with daggers.
“Most likely they’ll come at us with bows and crossbows. Any man can fire a crossbow, so pick one up if you get the chance.”

Bryn took out his own dagger which had comforted him so much since Iago had given it to him aboard
The
Comely Maiden
before all of their trouble had began.

“Bryn, you stay close to me and keep your head down,” Rodden said, and Halam gave them a reassuring nod.

Wen looked to each of them again, then moved close to the canyon wall and crept forward. Bryn saw him disappear around the curving wall, followed by Iago, Willem, and Jurin. Halam, Conn, Trey, and Jal went next. Rodden and Bryn hung back, moving only after the others were around the wall and out of sight. When Bryn at last moved around the wall he could see the open Oval where the mountain walls spread out. It stretched on ahead of him for quite some time but he wasn’t able to see all the way across it to where it ended, although he could tell that the walls did become closer together once again. As Wen said, there were several large boulders laying all about, their edges sharp and jagged from where they’d split off from the walls above. Several smaller rocks lay all about from where they broke off from the larger boulders upon the sudden impact with the canyon floor.

Wen, Iago, and Willem had put some space between them and the rest of the men, mainly because Jurin was moving a bit slower.
They advanced at little more than a crawl, steadily getting closer to the first large boulder that partly blocked the entrance to the Oval. Suddenly Iago let out a yell and began to fall to the ground. Before he’d landed Bryn saw Wen loose an arrow then dive into a rolling crouch further up along the wall. He pulled another arrow from his sheaf and waited patiently for another shot. The rest of the men crouched down against the canyon wall, unsure of where the attack had come from.

Iago let out another cry of pain as Willem slowly crawled over to him and pulled him close to the wall and further back toward the other men.
That is when Bryn saw the crossbow quarrel stuck in Iago’s chest, just below his left shoulder. His face contorted with pain, he let out another cry as Willem tried to pull it out before stopping suddenly, either because the bolt was embedded too deep or the attempt to remove it was causing Iago too much pain.

“How is he?” Trey asked as quietly as he could while still being heard.

“The quarrel is in deep, all the way up to the fletches,” Willem replied. “I don’t think I can pull it out.”

“Then don’t lad,” Iago said painfully.
“I can still swing my sword arm. We’ll pull it out when we get through these men.”

“Did you see how many of them there are
?” Jal asked.

Ahead of them Wen let loose with the arrow he had held ready, and a cry rose somewhere ahead of them.
Two crossbow quarrels clattered harmlessly into the canyon wall over his head before he crawled further up and out of sight.

“I didn’t see anything,” Willem replied as
he turned his attention away from where Wen was and readied his bow once again. “Trey, you can handle a bow, right? Take Iago’s, I don’t think he can fire with his wound.”

Trey crawled up along the wall and took the bow and sheaf of arrows from Iago.
He knocked an arrow as best as he could while partly crawling further up toward where Wen had crouched. When he reached the spot where the crossbow bolts had struck, he turned back to look at them. “Wen’s made it up to the first boulder,” he said before advancing further out of sight.

Willem put his hand on Iago’s shoulder then crawled further up the wall and out of sight.
Another crossbow bolt clattered along the canyon floor and Bryn heard another shout of pain come from somewhere up ahead. Jurin and Halam moved up to where Iago lay. Halam said a few comforting words while Jurin peered around the wall.

“Wen, Trey, and Willem are all crouching behind a large boulder,” he said back to them as he looked forward.
“I can see one dead Jongurian lying in front of their boulder.” He turned to look back at them. “I’m going to get up there.”

He crept around the wall and was gone from sight.
Conn came up to take his place next to Iago.

“What do we do?” Bryn heard
him ask Halam.

“I don’t think there’s enough room for all of us behind that boulder up ahead,” Halam said.
“We’ve got our four bowmen up there now. All we can do is lay back and let them open up some more space for us. When they give the word, we can move up.”

Conn nodded and leaned back against the mountain.
From around the wall Bryn heard another shout of pain. It was followed a moment later by another, this time accompanied by the sound of a sword clattering against the ground. Rodden slapped Bryn on the back and smiled, sure that that last cry was yet another man that Wen had handled with his bow. A wave of relief swept over him as he realized that their chances weren’t that bad after all. Then the sound of a high-pitched horn sounded out from further ahead in the Oval and he became nervous once again. When another horn sounded from behind them a few moments later his knees began to shake.

* * * * *

When Liu told Leisu that they were nearing the Oval and would be there in just a few minutes he ordered that the horn be sounded. One of the other men from Waigo smiled as he pulled the large horn from his pack and put it to his mouth, blowing as hard as he could into it. The sound was deafening in the narrow canyons, but Leisu smiled. He knew the effect it would have on the Adjurians’ morale to hear such a sound from behind them when they were pinned down from the front.

Ko, with the help
Xu, who knew Waigo well, had managed to track down this man Liu who had agreed to find them men and guide them through the canyon, for a price. Leisu was angry to have to pay, but he was in no mood to negotiate or threaten, so he promised the man what he’d wanted. Liu had provided another ten men, so with the six that remained after Hui had left the city to head to the Oval they had a total of nineteen men, counting Ko, Liu, and Leisu. It wasn’t as many as he would have hoped for, but it would have to serve. The Adjurians were too close to escaping and he’d throw each of these men’s lives away before he let that happen.

THIRTY

Now that it was clear that another group of Jongurians were coming up behind them, Rodden and Bryn moved up closer to where Iago lay.

“We’ve got to get up to those boulders,” Halam said, looking at them all. “From the sound of that horn, whoever’s behind us isn’t far off.” He looked over at Jal. “How does it look out there?”

Jal crouched down and crawled around the protective wall.
He came back a few moments later. “They’ve moved up to another boulder further into the open,” Jal said. “It looks like they’ve killed a few more and might be pushing the rest back.”

“Can we move up behind one of those boulders then?” Halam asked.

“I think so,” replied Jal.

Halam looked down at Iago.
“We’re going to have to drag you up to the boulders, Iago.”

“No you’re not
!” Iago said. He moved to sit up, his face awash in pain. He fought through it, however, and was soon getting to his feet. “I can move just fine, now lead on.”

Halam nodded, and looked at the rest of them to make sure they were ready.
They nodded their heads, so he moved out around the wall, followed by Conn and Jal. Iago went next, the pain he must have felt in his chest and shoulder not slowing him any. Rodden urged Bryn forward while he followed close behind.

When he came around the wall that
’d been blocking the view of the fighting, but also protecting them from the Jongurians, Bryn saw that they were indeed winning the fight. Two Jongurians lay dead behind the boulder nearest to the mountain wall. One had an arrow through his throat, the other through his eye. Pools of blood collected around their heads. Bryn was able to see that Wen, Trey, and Willem had moved up to crouch behind the third boulder out from the entrance to the Oval. Another dead Jongurian was lying next to their position, a crossbow quarrel sticking out of his chest. Jurin, Jal, and Conn were directly behind them crouching next to another boulder, not more than a few feet from the larger rock protecting the first group, and about ten feet from the first boulder that Halam and Iago now leaned against. A little bit further ahead and twenty feet to their left were two more dead Jongurians laying beside another large boulder, both killed by arrows like the first two.

Rodden and Bryn came up to sit next to Halam and Iago.

“Looks like they took out the first two nests of Jongurians,” Iago said.
“There are three more a good thirty feet ahead of us hiding behind that cluster of boulders in the center of this space.”

“It won’t be long before more men come up behind us,” Halam said.
“We need to get out of the open.”

“We’ve three crossbows now,” Jal said, coming up to them and handing one of the weapons to Halam.
“These Jongurians don’t need them anymore.”

“Jal, you need to get up to Wen and tell him that we’ll have more men coming up on our rear any minute now,” Halam said.
“We’ll be fighting on two fronts then, so we need to get some bows pointed toward that canyon we just came from.”

“Aye,” Jal said as he crawled back up to the furthest boulder they had wrested from the Jongurians.

“Give me that crossbow,” Iago said, taking the weapon from Halam’s hand. “I’ll be of the most use right here firing at anyone who comes out of that canyon. If I can’t stop them with this,” he said as he began loading a quarrel into the crossbow, “I’ll stop them with this.” He patted the longsword that was unsheathed and laying across his legs.

“We can’t leave you here,” Rodden said.

“You can come back and get me when we’ve killed all these men,” Iago said with a smile. “Until then you three need to get out of this place. Get back to Adjuria. Tell them what happened here.”

Jal came back around the boulder with Trey behind him.
“Wen wants us to stay and fend off whoever is behind us,” Jal said as he dropped a sheaf of crossbow quarrels onto the ground in front of him.

“I’ll be staying right here to do the same,” Iago replied.
He looked over at Halam and Rodden. “Move up closer to Wen. He’ll get you out of here.”

Halam put his arm on Iago’s shoulder.
“Thank you, friend,” he said, then looked back at Rodden and Bryn and moved around the boulder.