Shadowkill

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The Herbmistress had Eeda and Jassy and the rest of the garden chals out before dawn, working in the home gardens, harvesting the first planting of tubers. After the Shearing and the departure of the herds, Matja Mina had, set chal and chapa to getting in all produce mature enough for preserving; she wanted the storage bins and shelves filled as much as possible before the tumaks made working outside the walls too dangerous.

They were digging up the roots, brushing them off and tossing them into baskets, laughing, chattering, Jassy teasing the girls about lovers in the Brush, Eeda throwing tubers at her sister when she got too graphic. A cheerful lot, working hard, trying to get the field clean before the sun got too high.

There was a shot. Another.

Jassy’s head exploded, she fell sprawling across a row of tuber plants. Eeda screamed, crumpled across her sister as another pellet punched through her heart.

The watchchals in the towers began shooting.

The Herbmistress and the workers were on their stomachs crawling for the walls.

A few more shots tore through the rustling plants, a girl grunted and lay still, another screamed as a pellet tore off her braided topknot.

The top of one tower exploded. A ministinger from a dart tube. Another mini blew out part of the House’s roof.

Then the fire from the towers drove off the tumaks.

The Herbmistress and the chal and chapa still alive got to their feet, grabbed the tuber baskets, and ran for the Gate.

The attack was over.

As the days passed, tumaks set fire to the grainfields and the garden plots, destroying much of the food the Kuysstead needed for the winter.

They set fire to the Brush.

They blew apart more towers, killing the watchchals and those the towers fell on.

P’murr organized roving teams who managed to ambush many of the tumak bands; the chals had the advantage of knowing the land and the brushcraft of the tumaks was sketchy at best.

When the tumaks fired the Brush, the Brushies joined the fight. They slipped round the tumak bands and slaughtered them, armed themselves with the tumaks’ weapons, and searched out the base up in the mountains. It was defended and well supplied, but the Brushies knew the ground in ways even chal and chapa did not and they got in and out like ghosts, stealing whatever they could get their hands on, destroying what they couldn’t carry off.

And still the tumaks hit and hit again.