The Shasht War (3 page)

"It seems a long time ago now. Another world."

She rested her head on his shoulder. "Sometimes I think it will never end. We will be forced to live like this forever."

"Yes, I know that feeling."

"I want to pretend that we're in the old time, before they came, before the war."

"Yes," he said, bending his mouth down to kiss her lips.

They tried not to think about the war, just for a little longer.

Later, she told him about her trip down from Lushtan, using the coast road through Suffio to Twist in the Braided Valley.

"We brought six donkeys loaded with bandages, splints, and dried herbs for poultices."

His eyebrows bobbed up and down as he thought of all the work involved in making that much bandage.

"Sad to say, but we'll probably need them."

The war and its grim consequences was hard to shut out for long.

"They will come again, everyone says so."

"There have been raids all the way to Awn Annion. Sometime this summer they'll land an army," Thru predicted. "We will have to fight them again and defeat them so utterly that they are forced to flee this part of the world."

"Have you seen them?"

"Myself, no. But one of my regiments caught some raiders fair and square, before they could even burn the town. Killed some of them, too."

"I have heard that the wolves are helping the watch."

"Thanks be to the Assenzi. They have roused all the wolves, 'tis said. They helped warn the villages on two occasions."

"Do you have enough food?"

He laughed. "Barely, it's Highnoth rations for everyone these days. But none have died of starvation. We got through the winter. We ate turnips more than bushpod, but we ate."

Later, they went out in search of a meal and stopped in at the Whiteflower Inn. They dined on bushpod pie and crumbly beeks, a Sulmo specialty, and washed it down with some thin ale.

"What happened when you took Simona to her people?"

Thru's face grew solemn. He had fond memories of the human girl who had lived among the mots for a while the previous year. The circumstances in which she had returned to her own people had not been auspicious.

"The men can never be trusted."

"I know." She was still watching his eyes.

"They took me captive. They tortured her."

Nuza was left appalled at this thought. Indeed, the ways of men were hard to comprehend.

"I met her father. He helped me to escape. He is not like the rest of them, I think."

Afterward they strolled along the lane, enjoying nothing more than each other's company and the lush scent of the gardenias that were in bloom throughout the Outer Ward.

They spent the night in her room on Whiteflower Lane.

"I have to leave early in the morning. I left Ter-Saab in charge, and he's capable enough, but I should be there."

"Of course. And I will be here. We will build a new hospital."

"How I wish I could be posted here."

"Hush, my darling, don't talk anymore," she said, sealing his lips with her own.

In the early morning they took breakfast at the army kitchen by the South Gate. It was simple food, bushpods and meal mush, but there was plenty of it. Thru ate with a mind on the long march ahead of him.

"I wish this didn't have to be the way," he said, holding her hand like a drowning mot clutching at water weed. One night together seemed but an instant in time. If he let his thoughts turn to self-pity then every second seemed like a fragile flower, passing away to dust before his eyes.

"Oh, my love, it is cruel, but that is the way of our world. So much cruelty, so little love." Nuza closed her eyes. In the long winter months of separation, she had found a way to accept their fate. He had to learn to accept it, too. "We will survive this war. I know it." She reached out to stroke his cheek. "We've been so fortunate, just to have this."

They wandered for a while along the great Street of Charms, deliberately avoiding the gate. The Street of Charms had five solid blocks of shops and emporia stocked with goods both usual and exotic.

There were many emporia selling high-quality floor mats. He noticed a window showing two beautiful Misho mats, one a "Brilbies at the Gate" the other a "Mots at Prayer." In many other windows he saw the usual "Mots at Prayer," plus the traditional style of "Brilbies at the Gate." He even saw a few mats with the old "Chooks and Beetles" pattern. The same handful of pictures, repeated over and over. Only the Misho stood out with its obvious brilliance of effect and technique.

And suddenly an idea blossomed in his mind. It frightened him so much that almost immediately he shrugged it away. But it had been there for a moment. A new pattern, introducing a new subject. "Men at War" he would call it. He could visualize the work, oh, so easily!

And then it was gone, banished from his thoughts as too heretical to even be considered. But though it was dismissed, it was not quite erased. Nothing could do that.

The craft of mat weaving was organized with the customary thoroughness of his people. A handful of designs, those that had first been produced and blessed by the Assenzi many thousands of years before, were all that were ever produced. It was much the same in the other crafts, from woodwork to painting.

"Are you all right?" Nuza was looking at him with concern in her eyes.

He shook his head as if to clear it. "Yes, yes, it's just a difficult time."

They found a dry goods store that was open despite the early hour, and Nuza bought some fine Fauste cloth.

"I will make you some new trousers. By the looks of those you're wearing you need new ones very soon. You see, my love? That gives you a reason to come back to Sulmo."

They laughed for a moment and then turned away, too sad all of a sudden to look each other in the eye.

Outside, walking along, getting closer to the gate and their good-byes, Nuza was drawn to a stall selling stylish little boxes, buttons, and brooches. It, too, was open very early in the day. The stall displayed rings and other pieces of jewelry, lovely things from Mauste and Geld. Thru found a brooch for her, an antique piece, a lily worked in soft gold, with an emerald as the flower.

She fastened it to her jacket, and they admired its brilliance for a moment. The green stone accented her pale fur and grey eyes.

"I've never had anything so lovely." And right out in the open she kissed him hard on the lips. The owner of the stall gave a gasp at such scandalous behavior, but Nuza was an independent-minded mor who went her own way, and at that time of day there weren't many people on the street.

When they parted at the gate, they both understood that this might be the last time they would see each other. They hung back. Thru stared at the ground. The desperation was visible on both their faces.

Then time ran out. His regiments needed their commanding officer present in these times when a raid might come at any moment.

"Good-bye, my love."

He squared his shoulders and set off up the road without a backward glance. It was the only way he could do it. He covered fifty, then a hundred strides.

Suddenly there came a blast of trumpets from the direction of the Royal Palace. Thru stopped and looked back. Everyone was staring off toward the tower of the palace. The trumpets continued to call frantically. Distant figures were in motion. Mots scrambled to the top of the gate tower for a better view.

Shaking his head, Thru turned back. Something important had happened. He had to find out what this emergency was before he left the city.

"What can it be?" said Nuza as he rejoined her.

"Let us go to the palace and find out."

They hurried through the crowds to the palace gate, where they found a message board set up for all to see.

As Thru read the words, it felt as if a pit had opened up in his stomach. The enemy had landed in Reel Annion. At least three thousand men. This was more than a raid; this was the invasion they had expected all summer. They were at war and he was a day's march away from his command!

In huge red letters all soldiers were ordered to prepare themselves for an immediate march to the Annion coast.

From others in the crowd they learned that the news had come by messenger pigeon that very hour. More trumpets could be heard from the palace. The city of Sulmo was shaking itself awake to face the long-expected crisis.

King Gueillo published a proclamation that was read aloud by the city criers. He called on the folk of Sulmo to go about their work with determination and courage. Now was the time they had known must come when they must rise up and defeat the invaders. Many would be called to serve. It was imperative that everyone give everything they could to the cause, for defeat meant only one thing—complete annihilation at the hands of the men.

More birds and runners were sent out at once to carry the news quickly throughout the kingdom of Sulmo. Other birds were sent north by the Assenzi to take the word to Dronned. Within two or three days at most the news would have spread to the remotest parts of Creton and the north.

In the streets rumors swarmed like bees on clover as Thru and Nuza struggled through the crowds to the military headquarters. It was said that the invaders had been defeated by the local militia and chased back to their ships. Then they heard that the men had captured a village and devoured its inhabitants down to the last chook, and now they were marching through the county of Annion slaughtering anyone they captured. At the headquarters building the crowds stirred anxiously while mots hurried hither and yon in the effort to rejoin their units.

Thru had to report his presence. As a brigade-colonel he might be needed for any force sent out from the city itself. He saw Nuza for the last time there, on the steps outside the buildings.

She waved, a curious little frown on her forehead, even while she tried to smile. He waved back and then turned in through the big doors. Immediately he was swallowed up in the gathering storm. The confusion outside helped distract him from the chaos inside his head.

Mots, brilbies, and kobs jammed the passageways. Voices sent up a roar inside. Adding to it were the trumpets and drums going on the parade ground behind the palace. The trainee regiments were already forming up.

The Meld of Daneep was the commanding officer of the Royal Army of Sulmo. He had been closeted with the King and then with the officers of the trainee regiments. Communications had been sent north at once, but it would be a day or more before a bird returned from Dronned. The most immediate thing was to get an army into the field and in motion toward Annion.

Orders had been sent to the units stationed in the South Coast counties. Each brigade would send one regiment and retain the other. Brigade commanders would accompany the brigade sent to Annion and leave their seconds in command with the remainder. Something like six thousand mots were in the trainee regiments and with them would go eight hundred veterans of the Royal Guard of Sulmo. They would bolster the four thousand mots in the regiments already trained and in the field. Together this force would seek to surround and destroy the human army.

That at least was the plan, Thru knew, worked out in the winter conference when Toshak and the Assenzi had come south from Dronned to confer with King Gueillo.

When the Meld of Daneep finally found a minute to see him, Thru got a roasting for being absent from his own brigade at a time like this. Angrily, the Meld ordered Thru to travel with the Royal Guard units leaving that day and rejoin his own regiments in Annion.

Within the next hour, he was marching out the gate in a column of mots armed with everything from spears and swords to ancient tridents and round shields that had not seen use in combat for hundreds of years. The mots of Sulmo had no experience of war. Peace had been the rule in the southern land for a thousand years or more.

Now they marched to survive. Defeat was unthinkable.

After three days of hard marching, the army from Sulmo reached the outskirts of Reel Annion. They began to meet columns of refugees, mixed groups of mots, chooks, brilbies, and kobs, all exhausted and hungry.

They spoke in terrified tones of Man the Cruel and the devastation that was being wreaked in the coastal districts of Annion. The terror in their voices brought back unwelcome memories for Thru Gillo: the fear of being hunted for food.

From the confused accounts of the refugees, Thru had pieced together a semi-coherent tale.

The men had landed close to the tiny village of Sea Cor, which they had plundered and burned. The population had fled at the sight of the first sails and were untouched. Then the raiders had not re-embarked as had been their usual course of action. Instead, an army of men was landed. This army then moved south along the coast burning villages.

The inhabitants of these areas had fled up the valley of the Punwell on the single good road in the area, the Punwell Pike. When the column of men reached the Punwell road, they turned inland and marched upstream, pressing behind the fugitive folk.

Fortunately the Meld saw the great danger of this advance. The enemy, by chance, was heading toward Chenna, where he would stand between the two halves of the army of Sulmo. Communications between those two halves were already poor, and with an enemy army in the middle they would only get worse.

The Grys Annion was sent back along the line of the march to hurry up the stragglers at the rear of the army. The first thing was to get the army to Chenna as quickly as possible.

In the late afternoon when the army reached the small village of Demel, Thru received a summons from the Meld. Thru responded at once, determined to show that he was concerned only with the pursuit of victory.

"Ah, Gillo." The Meld's greeting bore overtones of unhappiness.

"When I spoke to General Toshak last, he told me to make good use of you. He said you were an exemplary type. And yet, I find you far from your own brigade headquarters in this time of trial."

"Sir, I know you don't want to hear excuses. So I will make none."