The Shasht War (19 page)

The space in front of the granary was a killing ground, and reluctantly, Thru signaled a retreat. They had to run back across the street and climb the wall the other way. But the men closed in behind and the last mots to climb were pulled down and killed.

There was no longer room for maneuver. The regiments from Glaine and Blana were surrounded. The fighting raged through the morning hours, eventually dwindling into small unit combats. Mots and brilbies fought to the end inside kitchens, narrow alleys, grain silos, and the like.

Thru had lost his sword somewhere along the way. It had stuck fast in a man's shield and been torn from his grasp. For a while he fought with a broken spontoon, using the last four feet of it as a club. Then he took up a farmer's woodchopper and buried it in a man's shoulder and took his sword.

The Shasht-made blade was heavy and clumsy in his hand, but it served anyway. He'd been cut and hit hard. His left arm had taken a couple of very hard blows and felt numb, almost useless.

For a while he was with a group of mots from the Sixth Regiment, fighting in a large house close to the center of the village. Men came over the wall into the yard, but the Sixth pitched into them and killed them, driving the few survivors back. Then more men broke down the gate and flowed into the front. The mots fought them all through the front rooms of the house. Windows were broken, doors torn off their hinges, but in the end the mots were all slain except for a couple who escaped by jumping out of the second-floor windows.

At the end Thru ran down an alley all alone. He stopped, for there was no visible pursuit, so he turned into a pigsty and pulled himself up on the beams and wedged himself under the narrow eave. Hauling himself up with his left arm was agonizing, but the place was quiet. The pigs were gone, but it still stank. His arm throbbed.

Two men looked in, missed him up in the eave above their heads, and ran on. He scrunched back into the narrow space, but couldn't get both legs inside. His left arm turned numb once more.

His mind was awhirl. Disaster had befallen the Land. The army of Sulmo had been defeated. Thru had no idea how badly the rest of the battle had gone, but he was certain that the Meld must have been driven from the field. Now four regiments were gone, slaughtered to the last mot.

Suddenly his exposed foot was seized, and he was pulled down into the mud below and struck repeatedly with heavy objects. He was still trying to get to his feet, and fight on when he lost consciousness.

He awoke to a sharp jab in his side and rolled over. The sun was directly overhead; he squinted, trying to focus.

Men stood around him. A spear was pointed at his chest.

"Alive," said one of them. Thru understood the Shashti word clearly. For a moment Simona flashed through his mind.

"Think he's good enough? He's kind of bloody and all."

"See if he can walk."

They scourged him up onto his feet with blows and jabs from spear and sword. Trembling, he stood, nauseous from the pain. His shoulder and arm felt broken. His head throbbed and momentarily blanked out, as he came close to falling on his face.

They shoved him ahead of them through the battered village. He saw a pitiful huddle of a dozen other wretches, all cut and bloody, pushed together in the center of a ring of men with spears. After another heave on his unsteady legs, he joined this group. They were mots of the Sixth Regiment. They recognized him, nodded, one or two tried to salute, then thought better of it.

Around them the village echoed with the victory shouts and whoops of the men. There was no doubting who had won the victory. The mots of Glaine kept their eyes downcast. One, badly wounded in the chest, collapsed suddenly, twitched a couple of times, and died.

Two men pushed into the group, shoving them all back with their spears, and dragged the dead mot away by his heels.

Other survivors were shoved into the group. Among them Thru noticed Ter-Saab. And then he gave an involuntary shudder as he saw the hill brilby's full face. Ter-Saab's left eye was gone, broken from a terrible cut that had placed a dark, straight line from his temple to the far side of his nose. All was ruined. Thru wondered that Ter-Saab was still alive.

They found each other, gripped hands with terrible strength.

"Can you see?" whispered Thru, wanting to say, how are you managing to stand up?

"Still have one eye. How about you?"

"All right, I think. Keep blacking out."

"What will they do now?"

"Kill us," said Thru tonelessly.

A few more survivors were pushed into the group, and then orders were bellowed. Thru understood some of the words, his Shashti came back to mind with a sudden clarity.

"Move, the 'somethings' down along the south road" was what he heard.

"What are they doing?" Ter-Saab was looking around himself with anxiety. Was this the signal for the killing?

"They want us to move somewhere," said Thru, feeling puzzled by this development. Indeed, the men did not kill them; instead they were herded out of the village.

Soon they were standing along the road, between small fields surrounded by stone walls. More survivors, from the Blanans and the Twelfth Regiment, were added to their group. The back of Thru's neck and his entire shoulder were stiff and swollen. Moving either was extremely painful. His left arm still numb, with a deep pain in the upper part, convinced him it was broken.

But compared to most of the others standing with him, he was in good shape. Despite everything, despite the imminence of death, Thru felt a little tremor of pride. The mots and brilbies had fought until they could no longer lift their weapons. They were all walking wounded, many of them staggering like himself, but they were still walking.

His head cleared somewhat, though it still hurt. They headed away from the village into the forest on a road that he could have sworn lead to the sea. He checked the sun's position, which he judged to be well nigh at the apex. The fighting had been in the early morning. He must have been unconscious for several hours.

Under the eaves of the forest, they escaped the heat of the day. It was dark and cool as they shuffled along, with men in front and behind them. Surprised at first that the men didn't bind their captives, Thru realized that none of the fifty or so survivors was capable of running ten steps, let alone trying to escape.

They stayed on that road all afternoon. One or two mots collapsed along the way and were speared and left for the scavengers. Once they paused by a stream, and the men made them drink from the stream on all fours, with spears pressed into their backs.

After being watered like this they were broken into smaller groups, ten mots apiece, with guards in front and behind. Now they were spurred on again with jabs and blows. Thru heard the curses, but did not understand them.

They were urged on to a faster pace until darkness when they halted for the night in a small clearing by a stream. Once again they were made to drink, then they were bound together in threes, roped at ankles and wrists.

Ter-Saab was still alive. His terrible wound had scabbed over and was no longer bleeding. He sank down beside Thru, and they were bound together with a skinny youngster that neither of them recognized. None of them had any energy left for conversation, and all were asleep in moments after being allowed to lie down.

The men posted a three-man watch while they ate some way bread and dried curd and went to sleep themselves. In truth, they hardly needed a watch. Their captives were so exhausted that none stirred until kicked awake at dawn.

There were no dreams for Thru, only the renewal of the nightmare the next morning when he was awoken with a blow from a spear butt on his agonizingly sore shoulder. With the rest he was hurried onto his feet after his bonds were loosed. A handful of mush, some kind of paste of beans and water, was thrust into his mouth from a spoon, and then a man with a whip started cracking it above their heads. The mots bristled at the crack of the whip. But it was a sound they would soon grow used to.

Thru and Ter-Saab walked beside each other. It appeared that as long as they were furtive and spoke in whispers they could converse.

"We are heading west, toward the sea," said Thru.

"Yes. I have heard that they kill their victims on the shore, then take their bodies out to their ships as meat."

Thru swallowed hard. "Yes, that is what I have seen."

Piles of heads left on jetties and headlands along the coast of the Land had become the calling cards of Shasht.

"What will happen now? To the Land I mean," said Ter-Saab.

"I don't know. There will be more battles. Our armies will improve. The Meld was not the best general we have."

"We should not have attacked so hastily," said Ter-Saab.

"We were just a little too late. The Meld's army withdrew too soon."

"Disaster."

"That is war, my friend. Triumph and disaster, so the Assenzi warned us. We have tasted triumph, it is sweet. Now we taste disaster. I would have preferred to have neither."

Ter-Saab straightened his shoulders and got a grip on his emotions.

"Until they do kill us, we must fight to stay alive. We may have a chance to escape."

The march went on to the noon hour when they were allowed to drink again, on their knees from a stream. Some of the men amused themselves by urinating in the stream at the same time.

An officer saw them and berated them angrily. Another man, heavyset, clearly a sergeant type, came up and threatened the men with whippings that would peel the hide off their backs.

"These is special!" snarled the sergeant, turning on his heel.

The guards made jokes after that about the "special" animals in their care, but they refrained from damaging blows or sharp jabs with their spears. After being allowed to drink the captives ate another handful of mush from a communal bowl and then staggered on the trail through the forest that ran past Farnem to the sea.

In the late afternoon they glimpsed the blue water for the first time, a little later they came down by the sea on the fishermot's road. Men had been building a fort there. Thru expected the axe, but instead boats waited on the shore. The captives were pushed into the boats and then rowed out, ten at a time to the ships.

The mots knelt in the center of the boat, while men with spears kept a close watch. Other men, in front and behind, heaved on the oars and made good speed through the chop to the huge ships anchored farther out.

The huge Shasht ships awed the mots and brilbies. Thru had been on one of these ships before, and he knew something of their huge size, but now contemplating them as they approached he was struck again by the might of the enemy. Such ships were far beyond the power of the folk of the Land to build. Simona's descriptions of her homeland returned to him. A harshly lit, brilliant city of stone, much larger than any place in the Land.

And then they were under the side of the huge ship, and netting was being lowered over the side for them to climb up.

Now was the moment, if they were ever to try and make a break for it. Thru looked at Ter-Saab, but both saw the defeat in the other's eyes. They had no weapons. The other mots were just as badly hurt. The men had taken up spears and swords.

Spears jabbed at them. They climbed up the heavy netting. For Thru that climb was an agony of grinding bone endings in his arm. Somehow he managed it, knowing that the alternative was to be left to drown. For some reason the will to live was too strong.

He lay on the deck for a while recovering. Then with the others he was driven below decks to a dark, narrow room. They had to remove their clothes and boots. Their clothes were taken away by the men with the scarlet paint on their shaved heads.

Now, Thru thought, came the killing.

But instead they were taken one by one through a door to another room.

There Thru was examined by a man wearing a white canvas apron. He recalled the other man, Simona's father, who had examined him in this manner. That man had given Thru a razor blade. This time there was no such assistance.

Thru's broken arm was set and bound in a splint. The shoulder was palpated, but apparently it was not broken, just severely bruised. His cuts were cleaned and treated with a sharp smelling liquid that stung furiously. Thru's curiosity was piqued. Clearly they were not going to be summarily executed.

Then he was placed with another dozen captives in a dark place, deep inside the ship. Their clothes and boots were returned to them, and they were left unbound. The air was hot and close, but to the exhausted captives that hardly mattered. They slept as if they were dead.

Victory was sweet. Admiral Heuze rested his stump in his private tent, set up behind the command post. The walls of the monkey city had finally been breached. His army was busy looting.

With military matters taken care of for the moment, the admiral summoned Biswas, his favorite confidant. When Filek appeared, now wearing his new uniform, the black tunic with the yellow stripe down the center that marked him as the army's chief surgeon, the admiral's good spirits were in full flow.

"Well, well, Filek, come in and take some of this ale. We found it in a monkey shebeen. There are lots of them inside the walls. The men are enjoying the fruits of conquest."

"Actually, sir, I will take a little. I'm not sure if we can trust the water here. And I have to say I'm very concerned about looting the city."

"Ach, by the Purple Ass of the Great God, the men need some fun."

"You recall the plague of last summer?"

"Who could forget? Killed a third of our army." Heuze shrugged. That was in the past. Victory was in the present.

"That began soon after we looted that first city of theirs. I think the two events were connected."

"Ach!" Heuze downed a gulp of the beer. It was excellent stuff, full-bodied with a nice bitterness to it as well as a hint of sweetness.

"The men have been stuck in this pestilential hole for almost three months. It was time we let them loose. Besides, you can forbid looting, but the men will loot anyway. It's their nature."