The People of the Black Sun (32 page)

“No, wait!” Sindak jerked back so hard he almost toppled Gonda. “We can use the logs to block the gates. Look!”

Gonda turned and immediately saw what Sindak had noticed. Logs, evidently discarded during makeshift repairs, lay piled near the gate. Inside, a merry blaze was roaring through Gonda's woodpile.

“Blessed gods. You're a diabolical weasel, Sindak.” He slapped him on the shoulder. “Just my kind.” Then he glanced up at the archers overhead. “Think we can make it?”

“We're dead men anyway. Let's try.”

The warriors above had all of their attention fixed on dodging the flaming arrows that continued to drop from the sky. Sindak led the charge to the timbers at a desperate run. Gonda followed right behind him.

“It'll take both of us!” Sindak shouted. They each took an end, lifted a log, and groaned as they hauled it toward the gates. The wood was wet and heavy.

The last remaining warrior over the gate ran to see what they were doing.
“Sindak. It's Sindak! Someone help me! It's War Chief Sindak!”

To Gonda's amazement, the warrior hesitated long enough that they could brace their first log against the planks, and run back for another before arrows started slicing the air above and around them. Most of the arrows came from the marsh, where Wampa and Papon were covering them. They grabbed the second timber and charged for the gate again.

“Blessed gods!”
the man on the catwalk yelled as he dove for the safety behind the palisade. Incoming arrows slammed the logs in front of him.
“I need help over here. Help!”

Warriors rushed along the catwalks toward him, their bows drawn.

As Gonda and Sindak braced the timber, Sindak bellowed, “Run!” and they sprinted for the safety of the marsh.

We've done it!
Exhilaration pumping in Gonda's veins, he leaped a rock and …

Crack!

A jolt ran through his bones. At the same time the muscles in his right calf ripped apart. He stumbled, went down hard, the wind knocked from his lungs. He slid face-first through the wet leaves at the edge of the marsh.

For a dazed instant he wondered what had gone wrong. He struggled to breathe, to get air into his now panicked lungs. The sounds of the battle had grown oddly distant, removed. Yellow sparks of light, like disembodied fireflies twinkled in his graying vision.

An arrow hissed past his right ear and thumped into the earth, quivering from the impact. A fierce agony burned in his leg. Gasping, he dug his fingers into the soggy leaves and tried to drag himself into the water.

“Gonda?” Sindak shouted.

Sindak charged back for him.

“No! No! Run!” Gonda ordered hoarsely.

Then Sindak was there, bending down.

“Leave me! Get of here, you fool!”

Grabbing a fistful of Gonda's shirt, Sindak dragged Gonda's wounded body up. The world spun crazily as Sindak muscled Gonda onto his shoulder and pounded back toward the marsh.

Gonda rasped, “My leg is broken! I can't run. You have to go on without me!”

Arrows cut the air around them as Sindak splashed into the reeds. Weaving, half-stumbling beneath Gonda's weight, he struggled deeper into the darkness, sloshing through the cattail stalks.

Gonda saw Wampa and Papon ahead, using the trees as cover to shoot at the archers on the catwalk, and he shouted, “Get back to Bur Oak Village! Now!”

Wampa and Papon immediately turned and splashed back through the marsh.

“Sindak, curse you, drop me! You have to get out of here!”

Instead of obeying, Sindak dragged Gonda's arm over his shoulder and hauled him out beyond the gaudy halo of firelight to where the black water was neck-deep.

“Put me down!” Gonda shouted. “Blast you! You have never been able to obey orders!”

Sindak heaved Gonda aside, and commanded, “Hold tight to my shirt or I'll knock you senseless and drag you!”

Gonda clamped on to the man's wet shirt and Sindak stroked hard for Bur Oak Village.

Gonda mostly managed to keep his head above water until they reached the cattail shallows. When he tried to stand, to follow Sindak out of the water to make a run for the gate, his leg went out from under him. He flipped to his side and, dragging his injured leg, pulled himself ashore, gasping in pain.

Sindak never hesitated. He grasped Gonda's arm, grunted, and lifted him, carrying Gonda behind the curve in the palisade wall, out of the shower of arrows. “Saponi! Disu! Where are you?”

Two of Sindak's warriors appeared out of the darkness where they'd been hiding, demanding, “Sindak? Is that you?”

“Yes, and Gonda's hurt!” Sindak managed through ragged breaths.

Through the pain, Gonda growled, “I swear you are the worst warrior in the world. One of these days, your problems with authority are going to get you killed.”

Sindak spared only enough breath to reply, “This isn't my day to die … or yours apparently.”

When Deru launched another wave of flaming arrows, the enemy warriors on the Yellowtail catwalks ducked down.

“We have to go now!” Saponi said.

Three heartbeats later, Saponi and Disu hoisted Gonda's arms over their shoulders and pelted for the gate.

Sindak covered the retreat, calling, “Deru, we're coming in! Don't shoot!”

Gonda's scrambled vision recorded images of the gate, as he was dragged through in the safety of the palisade, and unceremoniously dropped on the ground. The two guards on the gate swiftly swung it closed, but not before Gonda noticed that the mist had picked up the orange gleam from the fires. It had shimmered into a huge gauzy halo over Yellowtail Village.

Sindak, breathless, turned to Saponi and Disu. “Get back to the fight. Follow Deru's orders. I'll meet you soon.”

“Yes, War Chief.” The two men ran.

Sindak knelt beside Gonda. The marsh had washed most of the soot from his serious face, but his beaked nose still bore smears of black. “How's your leg?”

“It hurts!”

“Well, I know that…”

The timbre of screams rising from Yellowtail Village changed, going from pain to breathless shrieks, the screams of men on fire.

Sindak went still, listening, and his expression slackened.

Weakly, Gonda said, “Leave me. I'll be fine.”

Sindak just nodded. He sprinted away, nocking an arrow as he ran.

Gonda barely had time to catch his breath before his stomach lurched and he threw up.

 

Twenty-eight

Negano jerked from a sound sleep when screams shredded the cold mist. In one fluid move, he rolled out of his blanket with his war club in his fist, and lunged to his feet. All around him, other sleeping warriors had grabbed weapons and leaped up. Panicked conversations erupted around hundreds of campfires.

It took only a few moments before Negano's sleep-numbed mind focused on Yellowtail Village where flames roared.

“Dear gods, what happened?”

From Negano's position on the hillside, he could gaze down, horror-struck, into the village where his warriors dodged toppling longhouse walls or sections of collapsing palisade, shrieking as they ran for their lives. Several men jumped from the palisade with their clothing flaming. A few managed to drag themselves out into the meadow, where showers of arrows, shot from the Bur Oak Village catwalks, lanced their bodies.

“Grab your weapons! We have to get down there to help them!” Snatching up his bow and quiver, he shouted, “Follow me!”

Negano led the charge down the hillside, splashed across the small creek, and up the incline that led to the villages situated on the rise. He didn't know how many warriors had followed him, but could hear feet pounding behind him.

As he dashed for Yellowtail Village, he saw the logs propped against the gates, locking everyone inside. The burning palisades had effectively ringed the village with flames.

He swung around and saw perhaps three hundred warriors. When he spotted deputy war chief Nesi, he shouted, “Nesi! Form a team, knock those logs down, and get those gates open!”

Nesi and two men charged for the timbers. The gates in front of them flamed, singeing their hair. When they managed to shove aside the logs and throw the gates open, thick blinding smoke boiled out, swallowing them.

Negano threw up his sleeve to cover his nose and mouth and squinted, trying to make out …

Five men came hobbling out, supporting one another, coughing, their soot-coated faces streaked with tears. One man gasped, “They attacked … so quickly … there was nothing we…” He fell into an uncontrollable coughing fit. The warrior supporting him dragged him away from the extreme heat and smoke.

Negano stared through the entry into the plaza. As some of the smoke cleared, he could see a little better. There must have been debris piled everywhere. Stacks of bark, old chunks of catwalks, and useless palisade poles lay in flaming heaps right next to the longhouses. Gods! No wonder the place had gone up like a torch!

Negano shouted. “Nesi, anyone who can still walk can make it out now. Let's take care of the Bur Oak archers!”

He led his warriors around the eastern side of Yellowtail Village and straight into a volley of arrows. Men went down all around him, shrieking. Hoarse cries, groans, and coughing wavered like a haunted chorus. There had to be five hundred archers on the Bur Oak catwalks! Some were old gray-haired elders and children barely old enough to carry bows, but they shot straight.

Negano managed to let two arrows fly, before he called,
“Retreat! Go back!”

As soon as they started to run, Jigonsaseh's deep voice rang out and the gates of Bur Oak Village were flung open. A flood of warriors sprinted out, chasing after Negano's forces with their bows singing.

He stumbled over his dead, dying, and wounded warriors as he dashed away from the shower of arrows. Something slammed into his quiver, the impact enough to send him staggering. In shock, his mind refused to believe the number of freshly killed men and women who lay sprawled across the frozen ground. Half? Maybe half the warriors who had followed him just moments ago? Gods, that couldn't be right.

When he veered around the blazing curve of the Yellowtail palisades, out of the line of fire, he turned to look back. Counting … counting warriors. Maybe forty. Forty out of three hundred.
No, no, there must be more.
The thick smoke boiling out of Yellowtail probably concealed …

“Don't stop! They're still after us!” Nesi shouted. “Blessed gods, how many arrows did Bur Oak Village stockpile?”

Negano shouted back, “The only thing I care about is how many they still have!”

He spun to look through the wide-open gates of Yellowtail Village and into the inferno, and readied himself to lead his remaining warriors inside to get them out of the line of …

Nesi called, “Don't do it, Negano!”

“Why not?” He swung around to glare at Nesi. “It's safer inside than outside!”

“Look at it!” He flung out a muscular arm, pointing to the plaza roaring with flames. “You lead a team in there, and Deru will box the village up so that none of us gets out alive! We have to retreat and regroup!”

Negano didn't even think, he just shouted, “Grab as many of the wounded as you can. Support them back to our camp!”

As warriors scurried to obey, dragging arms over shoulders, hauling another twenty or so men and women to their feet, the Bur Oak archers rounded the curve in the wall and starting letting fly again.

“Run! Hurry!”

All across the battlefield cries erupted, the wounded he'd left behind pleading for him to save them. The screams became more panicked when he charged in the opposite direction.

Twenty terrible heartbeats later, Jigonsaseh yelled another command, and the Bur Oak archers ceased pursuing them, and turned to silencing the cries of the wounded. One by one the begging voices were cut short in mid-scream.

Negano slowed to a trot and stared at the twenty or so shocked warriors who ran behind him, breathing hard. They appeared as dazed as men who'd been struck in the heads with war clubs. Nostrils flared. The sickly sweet scent of burning human flesh and scorched hair filled the night. None of them hauled wounded. Those who had tried must have lagged behind and been cut down.
Gods, I should have never given that order.…

Negano rubbed his numb face, struggling to gain a hold on his senses as he led the way through the firelit darkness toward the creek. From his own camp, hundreds of warriors flocked down the hillside, men and women who'd finally understood what was happening and grabbed their weapons to come help.

“Go back!” he ordered. “There's nothing more we can do tonight!”

Warriors stared wide-eyed as he tramped past. They gaped first at him, then at Yellowtail Village, then at the warriors who followed him as he splashed across the creek. Many called questions: