Dreams of Steel

Chapter Nine

Though I wasn’t trying to move quickly I outdistanced most of the survivors. For loners and small groups, foraging outweighed speed. Once I slowed to avoid reaching Ghoja, though, more and more caught up. Not many decided to enlist.

Already the band was recognizably alien. It scared outsiders.

I guessed maybe ten thousand men had escaped the debacle. How many would survive to reach Ghoja? If Taglios was fortunate, maybe half. The land had turned hostile.

Forty miles from Ghoja and the Main, just inside territory historically Taglian, I ordered a real camp built with a surrounding ditch. I chose a meadow on the north bank of a clean brook. The south bank was forested. The site was pleasant. I planned to stay, rest, train, till my foragers exhausted the countryside.

For days incoming fugitives had reported enemy light cavalry hunting behind them. An hour after we

began making camp I got a report of smoke south of the wood. I walked the mile to the far side, saw a cloud rising from a village six miles down the road. They were that close.

Trouble? It had to be considered.

An opportunity? Unlikely at this stage.

Narayan came running through the dusk. “Mistress. The Shadowmasters’ men. They’re making camp on the south side of the woods. They’ll catch us tomorrow.” His optimism had deserted him.

I thought about it. “Do the men know?”

“The news is spreading.”

“Damn. All right. Station reliable men along the ditch. Kill anybody who tries to leave. Put Ram in charge, then come back.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Narayan scampered off. At times he seemed a mouse. He returned. “They’re grumbling.”

“Let them. As long as they don’t run. Do the Shadowmasters’ men know we’re this close?”

Narayan shrugged.

“I want to know. Put out a picket line a quarter mile into the wood. Twenty good men. They’re not to interfere with scouts coming north but they’re to ambush them headed back.” They wouldn’t be expecting trouble going away. “Use men who aren’t good for anything else to raise an embankment along the creek. Drive stakes into its face. Sharpen them. Find vines. Sink them in the water. There’s no room to maneuver on the south bank. They’ll have to come straight at us, hard. Once you’ve got that started, come back.” Best get everybody busy and distract them from their fears. I snapped, “Narayan, wait! Find out if any of the men can handle horses.”

Other than my mounts there were just a half dozen animals with the band, all strays we’d captured. I’d had to teach Ram to care for mine. Riding amongst Taglians was restricted to high-caste Gunni and rich Shadar. Bullock and buffalo were the native work animals.

It was the tenth hour when Narayan returned. In the interim I prowled. I was pleased. I saw no panic, no outright terror, just a healthy ration of fear tempered by the certainty that chances of surviving were better here than on the run. They feared my displeasure more than they feared an enemy not yet seen. Perfect.

I made a suggestion about the angle of the stakes on the face or the embankment, then went to talk with Narayan.

I told him, “We’ll scout their camp now.”

“Just us?” His grin was forced.

“You and me.”

“Yes, Mistress. Though I’d feel more comfortable if Sindhu accompanied us.”

“Can he move quietly?” I couldn’t picture that bulk sneaking anywhere.

“Like a mouse, Mistress.”

“Get him. Don’t waste time. We’ll need all the darkness we’ve got.”

Narayan gave me an odd look, took off.

We left a password, crossed the creek. Narayan and Sindhu stole through the woods as though to stealth born. Quieter than mice. They took our pickets by surprise. Those had seen nothing of the enemy.

“Awfully sure of themselves,” Sindhu grumbled, the first I’d heard him volunteer an opinion.

“Maybe they’re plain stupid.” The Shadowmasters’ soldiers hadn’t impressed me with anything but their numbers.

We spied their campfires before I expected them.

They’d camped among the trees. I hadn’t foreseen that possibility. Damned inconsiderate of them.

Narayan touched my arm diffidently. Mouth to ear, he breathed, “Sentries. Wait here.” He stole forward like a ghost, returned like one. “Two of them. Sound asleep. Walk carefully.”

So we just strolled in to where I could see what I wanted. I studied the layout for several minutes. Satisfied, I said, “Let’s go.”

One of the sentries had wakened. He started up as Sindhu drifted past, firelight glistening off his broad, naked back.

Narayan’s hand darted to his waist. His arm whipped, his wrist snapped, a serpent of black cloth looped around the sentry’s neck. Narayan strangled him so efficiently his companion didn’t waken.

Sindhu took the other with a strip of scarlet cloth.

Now I knew what peeked from their loincloths. Their weapons.

They rearranged their victims so they looked like they were sleeping with their tongues out, all the while whispering cant that sounded ritualistic. I said, “Sindhu, stay and keep watch. Warn us if they discover the bodies. Narayan. Come with me.”

I hurried as much as darkness allowed. Once we reached camp I told Narayan, “That was neatly done. I want to learn that trick with the cloth.”

The notion surprised him. He didn’t say anything.

“Collect the ten best squads. Arm them. Also the twenty men you think best able to handle horses. Ram!”

Ram arrived as I began readying my armor. He grew troubled. “What’s the matter now?” Then I saw what he’d done to my helmet. “What the hell is this? I told you clean it, not destroy it.”

He was like a shy boy as he said, “This apes one aspect of the goddess Kina, Mistress. One of her names is Lifetaker. You see? In that avatar her aspect is very like this armor.”

“Next time, ask. Help me into this.”

Ten minutes later I stood at the center of the group I’d had Narayan assemble. “We’re going to attack them. The point isn’t glory or victory. We just want to discourage them from attacking us. We’re going in, we’re doing a little damage, then we’re getting out.”

I described the encampment, gave assignments, drawing in the dirt beside a fire. “In and out. Don’t waste time trying to kill them. Just hurt somebody. A dead man can be left where he falls but a wounded man becomes a burden to his comrades. Whatever happens, don’t go beyond the far edge of their camp. We’ll retreat when they start getting organized. Grab any weapon you can. Ram, capture every horse you can. Everybody. If you can’t grab weapons grab food or tools. Nobody risk anybody’s life trying to grab just one more thing. And, lastly, be quiet. We’re all dead if they hear us coming.”

Narayan reported the dead sentries still undiscovered. I sent him forward to eliminate as many more as he and Sindhu could manage. I had the main party cover the last two hundred yards in driblets. A hundred twenty men moving at once, no matter how they try, make noise.

I looked into the camp. Men were stirring. Looked like it was near time to change the guard.

Ram’s bunch joined us. I donned my helmet, turned my back on my men, walked toward the only shelter in the camp. It would belong to the commander. I set the witchfires playing over me, unsheathed my sword.

Fires ran out its blade.

It was coming back.

The few southerners awake gawked.

The men poured into the camp, stabbed the sleeping, overwhelmed those who were awake. I struck a man down, reached the tent, hacked it apart as the man within reacted to the uproar. I wound up two-handed and struck off his head, grabbed it by the hair, held it high, turned to check the progress of the raid.

The southerners were making no effort to defend themselves. Two hundred must have died already. The rest were trying to get away. Could I have routed them so easily?

Sindhu and Narayan came running, prostrated themselves, banged their heads on the ground and gobbled at me in that cant they used. Crows fluttered through the trees, raucous. My men hurtled around hacking and slashing, spending the wealth of fear they’d carried through the night.

“Narayan. See what the survivors are doing. Quickly. Before they mount a counterattack. Sindhu. Help me control these men.”

Narayan ran off. He came back in a few minutes. “They’ve started gathering a quarter mile down the road. They think a demon attacked them. They don’t want to come back. Their officers are telling them they can’t survive if they don’t recover their camp and animals.”

That was true. Maybe another glimpse of the demon would encourage them to stay away.

I got the men into a ragged line, advanced to the edge of the wood. Narayan and Sindhu sneaked ahead. I wanted warning if the southerners were inclined to fight. I’d back off.

They fled again. Narayan said they killed those officers who tried to rally them.

“Fortune smiles,” I recall murmuring. I’d have to take a closer look at this demon Kina. She must have some reputation. I wondered why I’d never heard of her.

I withdrew to the captured encampment. We’d come into a lot of useful material. “Ram, get the rest of the band. Have them bring the stakes from the embankment. Narayan, think about which men are least deserving of receiving arms.” There would be enough to go around now, almost.

Arms would be a trust and honor to be earned.

The change was dramatic. You’d have thought it was another Ghoja triumph. Even those who hadn’t participated gained confidence. I saw it everywhere. These men had a new feeling of self-worth. They were proud to be part of a desperate enterprise and they gave me my due place in it. I walked through the camp dropping hints that soon they would be part of something with power.

That had to be nurtured, and continually fertilized with suspicion and distrust of everyone outside the band.

It takes time to forge a hammer. More time than I would get, probably. It takes years, even decades, to create a force like the Black Company, which had been carried forward on the crest of a wave of tradition.

Here I was trying to magic up a Golden Hammer, something gaudy but with no real substance, deadly only to the ignorant and unprepared.

It was time for a ceremony alienating them from the rest of the world. Time for a blood rite that would bind them to one another and me.

I had the stakes from the embankment planted along the road south of the wood. Then I had all the dead southerners decapitated and their heads placed atop the stakes, facing southward, ostensibly warning travellers who shared their ambitions.

Narayan and Sindhu were delighted. They hacked off heads with great enthusiasm. No horror touched them.

None touched me, either. I’d seen everything in my time.