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Chapter Twenty-five


Who asks whether the enemy were defeated by strategy or valor?

Virgil


The Lord of the Just and Sudden Reach gauged the dust of enemy horsemen. One of the riders of his advance party, doing the same, estimated, “They will be here in perhaps forty minutes, Majesty.”

Reacher shook his head. Those were swift desert chargers, bearing lightly armored Southwastelanders. They would arrive at the little way station here, where the men of Freegate had stopped, sooner than that. He looker to the courier who’d just come up from the main body of his army.

“How far back are my sister and the array?”

The man answered unwillingly, knowing it was bad news. “No less than an hour and another half, my Lord. They are harried by unarmored bowmen on fleet steeds who, firing at them, outrace pursuit. The Horseblooded might have chased and caught them, but the Snow Leopardess would not allow her force to go asunder. She will come as quickly as she can. It might mean delay, your Grace, or it might mean a fight.”

“It is Katya,” Reacher replied. “It will be a fight.” But she was handling things entirely correctly. It wouldn’t do to let the Horseblooded become separated from the slower-moving mailed warriors of Freegate, risking piecemeal combat in unfamiliar country. She couldn’t know this way station was here, deserted by its few sentinels, commanding high ground that would be defaulted to the thousand or so Southwastelanders coming at full speed.

Reacher had come ahead with two hundred men to scout the terrain in depth, only to find Southwastelanders within minutes of this strong position on its high ground, approaching from the opposite direction. He studied the hill, its grass burned brown by the overbearing sun. To the west, enormous broken teeth of stone formed a jagged hedge, sloping away toward the uneven, ravined land that led to the Central Sea. The position was secure enough there. The way station and its outbuildings were close by the side of the Southern Tangent, at the crest of the rise; from there the hill fell away to the east. It descended into gullies, draws and washes etched from the earth. That it wasn’t more heavily fortified was due to the fact that it fronted league after league of barren, uninhabited land to the north, guarding the farthest parts of Salamá’s domain. South of here, the Southern Tangent was said to stop, vanishing beneath a region of desert.

The way station was indefensible by two hundred men against a thousand or more, but that same thousand might hold it against many times their number. The Lord of the Just and Sudden Reach dismissed the idea of trying a useless holding action. That only left it to come back with his whole army and dig the desert men out, using precious time and costing a toll of men.

“We leave now,” he told the soldiers who waited tensely. They relaxed a bit hearing it. “Have all buildings been searched?” he added.

“It is being done, my Lord,” said the captain in charge of scouts. “There are some outbuildings left; it is nigh accomplished.”

“Where is the Lord Van Duyn?” The American had been eager for a look at the Southwastelands, asking to come in the advance party as a favor Reacher could hardly deny.

“He is gone up onto the roof of the way station,” one said, “to see the lay of the land.”


Edward Van Duyn eased the hauburgeon that always seemed to drag at his shoulders, rubbed dust from his gold-rimmed glasses and rechecked his estimate of the enemy’s rate of travel. The prevailing wind blew down the slope, out of the highlands behind him, toward the plains. Distances were difficult to judge with the brazen sun directly overhead.

Van Duyn might easily have remained back in Freegate, or returned there when Reacher had made his decision under the Trailingsword to go south. In the capital, he would have had the contiguity device close to hand, ready for escape from this Reality if the Masters should prevail. But Katya was accompanying her brother, not to be kept from his side in time of danger even by her feelings for the American. Threatened by prolonged separation from her, Van Duyn found himself unwilling to accept it.

There was another reason for his going, less subject to analysis. He’d found himself recalling Coramonde’s Highlands Province and how, at the end of a day’s toil at the model farm or surveying for the new dam, he and the Snow Leopardess and many others would gather in the community bath and sauna they’d built. There they’d baked out the chill, laughing, joking, buffing themselves lobster-red in the heat They’d spun a hundred plans and dreams, more than their tomorrows might bring, but no less worth conceiving.

He’d had something then, challenges and ideas, Accomplishments and hopes. He’d been accorded the friendship of the Highlanders, seldom given to outsiders, a thing of bedrock palpability, irrevocable. He’d thought of that often since the Province had been swallowed up by the polar magic of the Druids. To be sure, there were incalculable other Realities to which he could withdraw by Contiguity; he was frank enough with himself to own up that, in doing so, he’d sever a part of himself. In this line of thought, he’d been drawn more and more into the effort to cast down the influence of the Masters.

Reacher was suddenly standing beside him, having come up without the slightest sound. Van Duyn stifled his surprise. The King never meant discourtesy; it was just that, peerless hunter and tracker, he went with an unlabored, unthinking stealth. Standing just over five feet, lean and broad-shouldered, Reacher, it was said, could cross a field without disturbing any blade of grass. His wild, simple upbringing left him uneasy in the company of most people. His preference for passing among them inconspicuously had given him a rumored talent for invisibility.

Besides that there was, Van Duyn suspected, the matter of the King’s reflexes. The American had never been able to measure Reacher’s response time, but it was vanishing small. What attitudes and outlooks would he have developed, moving through a world of comparative sluggards with something like instantaneity? Anyway, nothing to make him outgoing.

“How soon?” asked the King forthrightly.

“I should say less than half an hour. They can catch us on open ground if we withdraw, can they not?”

“Unimportant; they will not pursue. They will occupy this ground.” He tugged at his high, ring-mail collar. Reacher disliked panoply, being used to the brief hunting gear of the Howlebeau who’d raised him, and whose foster brothers were the huge wolves of the steppes. The King had often run with the packs, a member among them. For that he was sometimes called “Wolf-Brother.”

After the conference at Earthfast, Reacher had led his armies far down the Southern Tangent, to the edge of Freegate’s boundaries. The Horseblooded had come, keeping their compacts with the men of the Free City and the strong bonds their hetmen had with the King. Southwastelanders had been raiding and sacking far into Freegate’s territory, and retribution had been overdue.

The King’s scouts had ferreted out the southerners’ advance base, hidden in the heart of the wastes. Reacher had made a long march and taken the place by surprise. On the same night, the Trailingsword had burned in the sky for the first time.

The Masters were using a young and warlike race, the Occhlon. Though prisoners had been reticent to the point of fanaticism, it had become clear that the Five weren’t simply fostering border troubles. This was some major effort, wherein they were fielding every man-at-arms they had. Andre deCourteney’s warnings in Earthfast stayed prominent in the King’s mind.

Though communication with Coramonde had been lost, Reacher had heeded military imperatives, decrees of legend, and his own wilderness instincts, letting the Omen lead him toward Salamá. The Freegaters and Wild Riders had sent the desert men flying, unable to match the northerners’ numbers. This way station marked the end of lands to which neither side had any claim, and the beginning of the South wastelands.

“If they reoccupy this place they’ll hold us back, won’t they?” Van Duyn more stated than asked.

“For a time. We here are too few to repel them.” He pulled the mailed coif up over his blond hair. Van Duyn picked up his Garand and they went back down me cylindrical stairway.

Departure was interrupted. From the last building to be searched, two warriors emerged with a struggling man braced between them. The captive, sobbing and pleading, was thrust on his knees before the King.

“This one was bound, gagged and hung by his sash,” explained the captain, his longsword drawn. “There was a pair of laden donkeys also, which he says to be his.” The captive waited like a mouse among snakes.

Reacher examined the Southwastelander curiously. The man was no soldier, and hardly a spy. He was dressed in overused robes, his conical hat battered and dusty, his beard matted and dirty. Around his neck hung a medallion stamped of brass. “What else is there?”

“In the stable, my Lord? Nothing more.” The captain’s gaze went south, where the enemy’s dust was nearer.

Reacher pointed to the medallion. “What emblem is that?”

The southerner’s eyes slid away. “Only my employer’s.”

“A minor official’s medal, Lord,” supplied the captain, who knew something of Southwastelanders. “This man would be an area newsgiver, and collector of tribute.”

“And what news did you give the sentinels here?” Van Duyn asked. The King was pleased his question had been anticipated. The prisoner hesitated.

The captain’s edge flicked up under the newsgiver’s chin. The prisoner squeaked and gabbled, “That all is well, and our armies in firm control of the wastelands. Th-that victory is assured.”

Van Duyn grinned. “Only, as you passed that encouraging dispatch, we were seen riding down; made you a liar, didn’t we? So the angry sentinels left you for us, apropos of your falsehood?”

The collector-newsgiver admitted it. The American chortled. “You poor sucker. Your employers never told you what happens to propagandists when reality catches up, did they?”

“I did believe it to be the truth, I swear upon my father’s eyes! Why else would I have stopped up here before turning south? Eee, spare me my life, I beg; I can make good recompense.”

“What payment is that?” pounced the captain.

“Do you but bring my donkeys, and I will show.” When the animals were fetched, he unpacked a long, thin sack. He opened one end, and spilled out a thin stream of red powder.

“Earnai,” the captain said, “Dreamdrowse.” He rattled the newsgiver by gathered lapels. “Why did the sentinels not take it?”

“Have mercy! Am I a madman, to risk my life by telling those provincial scum I was transporting the product of a season? And later, before I could buy back my freedom, I was gagged unspeaking.”

Reacher turned to go. The discovery had no tactical significance. Maybe, he thought, the Southwastelanders would find it and make themselves stuporous, but he doubted that. The collector-newsgiver, released, slumped in astonishment. They had no time to go slowly, with a prisoner, and it wasn’t the King’s way to slay offhandedly.

But Van Duyn was stirring the red powder with his boot. He called the Wolf-Brother back. “We could put this to work, you know.” Getting no response, he continued, “This is the form they call ‘mahónn’, am I correct?”

“It looks to be,” the captain agreed. “It is from the Old Tongue, meaning ‘rescue.’ ”

“Very concentrated,” Van Duyn went on, “quite flammable. Suppose we burned it upwind, when the Southwastelanders came?”

They all struggled to absorb the idea, except the King. Arms folded across his chest, he strolled over to look down the slope to the south. “Would they not avoid it?”

The American frowned. “Very well then, scatter it among the grass and fire it. Or better yet, egg them into charging upslope, and fire the mahónn as they pass through it.”

The captain spoke up, “If it does no more than afford us time it will be much, my Lord King.”

Reacher turned back to them. “We have only some minutes,” he warned; “therefore, let us do this thing with all speed.”

Prepared in the form of mahónn, the Dreamdrowse wasn’t effective until burned. Still, Van Duyn and the others tore strips of cloth and masked themselves against the dust they would raise sowing their bizarre seed. It was stored in long, thin tubes of canvas. Holding one end of a sack, they slit a corner at the opposite end and cantered along, shaking Earnai in among the tufts of grass, losing little to the wind. There were a dozen sacks in all, the area’s entire refined product of “rescue” for this growing season. The captive couldn’t bear to watch; he sat rocking and wailing with the hem of his robe to his eyes. At the bottom of the slope, sheltered by rocks, Reacher and fifty men waited to bait the trap.

Van Duyn finished, gave the command and sped back up the hill. The American and Reacher’s captain crouched and marked time.

They’d barely made it. The Southwastelanders’ formation, less disciplined than was the northern habit, appeared. It had extended itself in the course of a hard ride; Reacher had counted on that. He slammed down his visor, dropped his lance and charged, leading the way, but left it to his men to take up the war cry. The Wolf-Brother and his little wedge of armored men hewed into the southerners’ left flank, throwing dozens of them down with their first strikes. Then they fell in among the surprised desert men with swords, maces and cavalry picks. There was the wild, random exchange of blows. From the crest of the hill Van Duyn watched sunlight flicker on metal and heard the screams of the wounded and dying. The Freegaters had gotten to close quarters before the Occhlon could use their maneuverability, and Reacher’s strongly armored men prevailed.

But more Southwastelanders came up quickly behind the first. The King gave his trumpeter a yell. Retreat blew, and Reacher raced from the fray, his standard-bearer and trumpeter close after. They swept up the hill, their horses still fresh. Only a handful of desert men gave immediate chase; few really knew what had happened.

When they topped the hill, the men of Freegate turned and gave battle again. The captain spurred up in support, with the other northerners. While a milling skirmish broke out beside the way station, the rest of the Occhlon regrouped at the foot of the hill, and followed. Van Duyn noticed the southern banner for the first tune, a black scorpion on a crimson field, the device carried by Ibn-al-Yed, the sorcerer who’d died during the battle of the Hightower.

Reacher slid from his saddle and took the bow and fire-arrows that had been readied. He took his first arrow, with its collar of oil-soaked straw tied by wetted gut, and lit it from a fire-pot. He nocked, drew until the nock lay under his right eye, sighted and released in smooth series. There were three more arrows prepared, burning. Before the first had landed, he’d fired them all. Downslope, they thudded in among the clumps of sun-browned grass, scattering embers.

Smoke appeared, the wind nurturing it, as Reacher completed his pattern with three more shafts. The Southwastelanders, pouring up the slope, ignored the burning grass as being too low and dispersed to stop them.

Van Duyn unslung his Garand, holding it at high port, watching the charging cavalry worriedly. The King held up his hand though, to keep him from shooting. “That might deter their charge,” he said. “Few enough more will make it through.”

Prevailing winds rushed the fires down toward the enemy. The smoke took a reddish tinge as the Dreamdrowse was consumed. First wisps of it blew into the body of the Occhlon. Van Duyn prayed the breeze wouldn’t shift.

The charge wavered; some desert men actually drew rein. Then insanity broke out in what had been a determined, competent attack. Horses threw their riders; men fell or jumped from the saddle, colliding with one another. They ran screaming from imaginary terrors or sat weeping. They cringed from each other or lunged together with murder in mind, or sprawled out in a drugged stupor, depending on their turn of mind, tolerance, and exposure to the mahónn. Some in the rear weren’t affected and, divining that the smoke was more than it appeared, retreated. But the major part of the force was engulfed.

Van Duyn stayed to one side, as defenders on the hilltop finished off those Southwastelanders who’d made it to the top. He watched men below stagger through the smoke in tears, nausea, hallucinations and hysteria. Those who were able to lurched off the field to escape southward.

After several minutes, the smoke below began to thin as the fire burned itself out. The victors gathered. “That was no clean triumph,” the captain alleged, “but smacked more of conjuror’s tricks.”

“You have the high ground,” Van Duyn grated, “and your casualties are small. The enemy’s in rout, and has lost heavily.”

Reacher, watching stricken Southwastelanders crawl from the field or huddle down close to the ground, said nothing.

The last prisoners had been herded together when Katya arrived, the main body of Freegate coming in ranks behind her. With her was great Kisst-Haa and several of his kin, the reptile-men. Bringing up the rear were the laughing, unregimented Horseblooded, singing and cavorting among themselves. Spying Reacher, they forged ahead, calling, “Wolf-Brother, we are here!” They had given him that sobriquet, as they’d named his sister Sleethaná, the Snow Leopardess.

Now she vaulted from the saddle and caught Van Duyn and her brother up in a boisterous double hug. “I did worry,” she admitted, “but mounted archers were hitting us side and side, and outran even our fleet Horseblooded there, where southerners alone know the twisty canyons. I perforce set them a little trap. Staring hard, you may see the carrion birds from here. How went matters by you?”

“Well enough,” Reacher allowed. He held up a captured standard, the black scorpion on crimson field.

She puzzled aloud, “Why is this emblem still flown?”

The Wolf-Brother didn’t know, but was concerned as much as she. But he remembered to say, “Congratulate Edward; his inspiration gave us the day.” She bussed Van Duyn soundly; he hung an arm around her and returned it enthusiastically. She was first to stop for breath.

When she got around to checking the lay of the land to the south, she was delighted. “There is no fortress or impediment as far as the eye can see; only open plains. With Horseblooded outriders and heavy Freegate knights, we will make good way.”

Reacher was still distracted. With Van Duyn’s arm around her waist, the Snow Leopardess took her brother’s hand. “Leave off; a day’s work is done.”

The King went with them then, letting the defeated banner fall. But the black scorpion had awakened a disquiet he couldn’t set aside.



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