The Shasht War (7 page)

The enemy reserve regiment was coming on fast and would envelop the assault group of mots in a few moments. Thru saw the disaster looming.

"Come on!" he roared, drawing his own sword and driving all the mots around him, into the fray. "Forward, we have to hold them off!"

About fifty strong, including Thru's own brigade staffers, they sprinted forward to bolster the assault group, arriving just as the enemy regiment took a grip. Thru found himself holding the left flank of the Quarter, and immediately engaged by spearsmen.

He had his sword but no shield and could only parry spear thrusts as they came in. A brilby joined him, and then another, armed with a stump of a pike that he wielded like a club, hammering a spearsman into the ground with a terrific overhand blow.

Thru knocked aside a spear thrust, then felt a shield slam into his chest. A powerful man heaved him back, the spear thrust came down. Thru knocked it aside, and got a hand over the edge of the shield and tried to pull it down. The man snarled and slammed his helmeted forehead down on Thru's fingertips.

Thru heard himself howling in pain, while he hit the man on the head with the sword, but the blow slid off the helmet. Still it dazed the fellow, and Thru was able to shove back the shield.

The brilby on his left suddenly crumpled, a spearhead erupting from his side. A man was trying to pull his spear free. Thru struck with his sword, took the man in the shoulder. There was a scream in his ear, the spearsman hit him with the shield again, and he felt the spear slice across his arm, but miss his ribs.

Something hit him hard across the back of the head, but his backhand with the sword took the spearsman in the face and the man fell away howling in a spray of blood.

Another man was in his place, another was thrusting at him. Thru dodged, struck back, was joined by more mots who thrust in on either side and reinforced the flank. The stabbing spears withdrew, the mots attacked.

Suddenly there came a change of phase, rippling through the enemy lines. They had lost the momentum of their thrust. With well-trained precision they drew back to regain their formation.

Running up and down in front of the mass of mots, Thru and Ter-Saab screamed, shoved, and even slapped at them with the flat of the sword to get them turned around and moving back to the main line of the regiment.

The mots were on fire with battle. They could barely hear the commands shouted into their faces. But after intense work by the officers, they gave way and tumbled back to the main line. The mot army's front was reknit: spontoon bearers to the front, spear throwers behind them.

Almost immediately the men on their front charged, hoping to catch them on the hop while the mots reorganized. They came in with a determined thrust, but the spontoons proved deadly; being smaller and lighter than the pikes, they could be worked more quickly and the best brilbies with the spontoon were unbeatable. Now the fighting became intense right along their line.

Thru was in the thick of it, unable to disengage and return to the command post. It was close work with sword and spear, hard, dangerous, and confusing. When the two sides drew back again for a breather, he noticed that he'd taken a hard blow to the right shin, which was bleeding freely. His fingers were also bleeding. He'd lost a nail.

Around him the lines of the Sixth Regiment reformed as everyone found their own unit commanders. What had been total chaos was reshaped into something resembling a regiment.

Thru saw that Ter-Saab was still alive, still fighting, still bellowing orders as the units coalesced once more.

Horns blew on the Shasht side. The men on their front withdrew to the limit of bow shot and stood behind a wall of shields. More men were in motion behind them as the enemy prepared another assault column.

It would be a minute or two before they were ready. Thru took the opportunity to run across to Colss's command position. It took him just a few moments to sprint along behind the regiments, but when he reached the table, set beneath the brigade and army banner, he found disaster.

Colss was on the ground, dying in the arms of a sergeant. A stray arrow had taken him in the neck, penetrating clear through to the other side.

Crouched down beside the dying Colss was a nervous-looking Colonel Floss, a Sulmese aristocrat now grappling with the reality of command in the middle of a battle.

Lieutenant Chillespi was also there, the efficient youngster who ran Colss's staff.

"Brigadier," said Chillespi as Thru came up. Thru took it all in with a single glance. Ross was floundering, but prickly; Colss was done for. The pool of red around him was overwhelming. Despite the efforts of two orderlies, he was dying.

"General Colss is unable to speak, sir."

"I can see that, Lieutenant." Thru turned to Floss.

"Colonel, we must fall back over the stone walls at once. We can't allow ourselves to be trapped against them."

Floss saw the walls, but was obviously afraid of trying to withdraw in the face of the Shasht army.

"How?"

"Now's the moment. They're reorganizing before they attack again. We will simply pull back and keep moving. The enemy stood down, they're getting their breath back and putting together a fresh attack. You hear those horns?"

Floss licked his lips. "Yes, what do they signify?"

"Those are regimental horns; I hear two different pairs. It's a big attack they're planning, but that means it will take a half a minute. If we hurry."

Floss stared at him.

"But if they're gong to attack, we should make ready."

"We need to be behind those stone walls. We don't want them at our backs."

Floss still hesitated. Thru didn't wait, but simply turned to Chillespi. "Orders for the army. Moving to the rear. All units are to withdraw over the stone wall into the polder. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"But, wait, who are you to take command?" said Floss.

"Someone has to, or we will all die here."

Floss stared back at him, the indecision writ large on his face.

Thru's order went out, and was obeyed. Thru was in effective command.

"Everyone, back behind the walls, at the double!"

And they went, at a run. Crossing the walls in a mass and forming up on the other side with the low wall in front of them now.

The Shasht army leaped forward after them, but too late to take advantage. The clash came when the walls were between the two armies and the fight stabilized there, the whole line ringing with the sound of steel on steel while curses and cries of pain rose up in two tongues.

The mot line held. There were incursions, but each time, the mots drew strength from other units and counterattacked and threw the men back over the wall. After a half hour of combat, the men drew back and the mots surveyed the scene behind an unbroken shield wall.

They had held, but they had paid a price. Both sides had left more than three hundred dead on the field. In places they were heaped up three or four deep.

As soon as the men had drawn back out of bow shot, Thru ordered the wounded to be evacuated. They were brought back through the polder lanes to the riverside and then ferried downstream in the boats of the watermots of Chenna.

Thru himself went to study the river. Around the bend the polder gave way to wild water, a patch of the river bottom left uncultivated. While he investigated, an old river mot came up from the polder to help.

"You soldiers can climb out through the reeds down there. They be very thick reeds in there now."

Thru nodded, the seed planted in his head.

"Thanks, old-timer, that's good advice."

Thru knew he had to get these regiments away from this battle. With their superior numbers the men would eventually push them against this river and annihilate them there.

He decided to risk everything on a footrace to the crossroads at Shimpli-Dindi. If they could get there first, then they could reach the Meld first, and then things would be different.

Of course there were no boats left, so they would have to swim. Even their carts would be thrown into the river and left to float downstream. Same with the donkeys. They might not want to, but it was better than being left for the men, who would probably eat them.

He called Chillespi to his side and began to set up the orders that would be required. The wild area began with a great growth of willows. The mots need only swim down that far and from there get on the road to Shimpli-Dindi. At a stroke they'd put a half mile between themselves and the Shashti men. After that it would be a footrace.

Working in the mots' favor was the fact that the men had absorbed a lot of punishment in the fighting. Once they had penned the monkeys into a space alongside the river, they were ready to settle back and take a breather.

Cook fires were started. Wounded mots were dragged in and tortured to death to provide a little entertainment.

As darkness fell, the drumming began that signified the slaughter. While the men crowded around to watch the grisly rites, Thru set his plan into motion. Mots rose up quietly and began thinning out the lines. Thru was relieved to see that this was done with discipline and in almost complete silence.

With the screams of their comrades in their ears, the mots filed down to the river. There they handed their shields and spears over to the boats before setting out to float or swim around the bend to the wild water. Fortunately the river was calm and placid and easy to swim.

Once around the bend the whole nature of the land changed character dramatically. Instead of the uniformity of flat polder with small hedges and short walls, trees and mudflats abounded. A multitude of frogs filled the air with noise.

Here, under the trailing branches of the willows, the mots pulled themselves to the riverbank and hauled out onto the muddy shore.

One by one, the regiments, wet, muddy, but reunited with weapons and shields, eventually moved up the road, marching for Shimpli-Dindi as rapidly as they could go. All undetected by the Shashti, who were too interested in the gruesome fun that was being had around the fires.

Within a half hour the line at the polder wall had thinned to a handful. Thru watched anxiously for any sign that his maneuver had been detected. This was the vulnerable time; an enemy attack now would scupper his small force. But the men were too busy roasting the bodies of mots and brilbies for their supper to be vigilant.

Now the last line of mots fell back, leaving their shields and a few scarecrows set up as a final illusion. They ran down the narrow polder lanes and waded out into the cold water. Thru was one of the last. There was still no sign the enemy had detected anything.

He floated along, with an occasional kick to keep his head above water. Around him a dozen other mots swirled like the dead leaves of fall. His sword weighed him down somewhat, but his wicker armor buoyed him up. He kept an anxious hand on his sword handle, not wanting to lose it in the river.

Then came the bend in the river, and the willows. Thru reached up to the trailing branches, already stripped of their leaves by so many grasping hands. Carefully he halted his drift downstream and began moving in to the shore. At last he felt his foot ground on the muddy bottom. A few more strides and he splashed out onto the dark riverbank.

Like the others around him, he barely paused to empty his boots of water and then it was up the bank, through the bushes, and on along narrow trails through dense thickets.

At last they emerged onto more open space and found the road ahead, visible as a line of grey-and-white flint under the moonlight. A long line of mots and brilbies, wet, bedraggled, but alive and in motion marched toward Shimpli-Dindi.

Thru hurried up the road, trying to ignore his bleeding shin. Encountering Chillespi and the other junior officers of the staff, he learned that the maneuver had succeeded almost completely. They had lost some mots who'd been swept on around the bend of the river. But the army had survived, they were on the road and marching at a great pace for Shimpli-Dindi. However, there was no sign of Colonel Floss.

Of course, there was plenty of confusion, some units were mixed up with others, but that didn't matter. They were all marching northward and they had lived to fight again another day.

Ter-Saab had the Sixth Regiment organized and marching well, toward the front of the column. When Thru came up to him, the tall kob saluted and congratulated him on the success of the maneuver.

"Looks like it worked perfectly, Brigadier General. We've given him the slip."

"Mustn't count the chooks before they hatch, Colonel, but this is a good pace. If we can keep this up, we'll get to the Meld's camp before they can catch us."

"Everyone's well fed, we're strong enough now. Have to see how we respond in a few more days now that we've lost our food."

"Hopefully, the Meld can feed us."

The Sow's Head was visible now, a hump sitting in front of the larger mass of the Sow herself. The Meld's fires, glowed red on the smaller dark hill, inviting them to their warmth.

Chillespi came running up with a scout beside him.

"News from the enemy front, sir!"

"They are coming. They left everything, fires... everything."

"But we have a lead?"

"Two miles, sir."

Not much, thought Thru, but it might be enough. He corrected himself, it had to be enough!

Through the long hours of that night the race continued, pitting the battered but defiant mots of the southern command against the veteran soldiers of Shasht.

In the space between the two armies, a fluctuating band between a mile and two miles deep, scouting parties sniped and ambushed each other in endless small tussles.

For the mots and brilbies of the southern regiments, the march was literally a race against death. Anyone who fell out, or collapsed, would die when the men came upon him. This kept many marching despite the agonies of exhaustion or wounds. A few, too badly wounded to keep up the pace, elected to hide in the woods. Others asked for the mercy of a sword thrust through the heart.