The Coming of the Horseclans

4

Only there was no more time for waiting. The third wave had formed and, leaping the bodies of their predecessors, were pouring up the hazardous slope. Sure of reinforcement, the handful of men at the scarp-foot were already beginning to seek handholds and pull themselves up toward their quarry. Milo loosed his last arrow, dropped the now-useless bow and picked up his heavy saber.

An arrow hissed by his ear and he instinctively ducked. The archers had advanced to the moraine and were once more bringing them under fire. Further down, at the very lip of the scarp, two of the nomads stood and began to heave at the huge, jagged rock which had been sheltering them. It gave a little, then abruptly slipped from its centuries-old niche, to drop straight down the scarp-face, hurling a couple of climbing soldiers to their deaths and crushing another as it bounced toward the moraine. When it struck the base of the rock wall, two hundred cubic yards of earth and stone dissolved and began to pour after it with frightening speed, taking three nomads and an undeterminable number of soldiers with it. The entire scarp quivered and Milo started to call his surviving men to quit it, but at that moment, the first cavalryman pulled himself over the rim, almost directly before Milo and Mara.

She struck first and, as the bearded trooper parried her blow, Milo severed the man’s right arm, just below the elbow. Holding the bloody stump and screaming, the soldier turned and stepped into space. When he struck the ground, his screams ceased. Then it was a maelstrom of hack and slash and thrust, of kicking the faces which came into view and stamping the hands, feeling the bones crunch under the boot heels.

For a moment, there was respite, even from arrows, for the archers had run out and had to send back to the horselines for more. While Milo and Mara and the four surviving nomads watched helplessly, their attackers reformed behind the moraine and a troop-strength contingent separated from the distant squadron to trot toward the scene of conflict. Meantime, the unemployed archers occupied themselves by dragging or carrying the wounded that lay on the slope back beyond the moraine.

After a brief pause to get their breath, Milo and the others hastily scrounged for arrows, being rewarded with a score of relatively undamaged shafts. The nomads thought to save them for the coming attack, until Milo pointed out that, except for those lost in the landslide, all their companions had been slain by those same archers, who were presently busy on the slope and well within range of Horseclan bows. When the archers had fled—leaving fourteen of their number dead or dying on the blood-slimed avenue of attack—Mara sped a shaft which spitted both cheeks of a junior noncom, who had been shouting instructions to the massing survivors of the earlier assaults. At this, they elected to form farther down the embankment, nearer to the horselines, which their reinforcements were quickly approaching.

All at once, the riderless horses commenced to mill and stir, nervously tossing their heads and stamping, their eyes rolling in fear. Then, with a blood-chilling snarl, two hundred pounds of grizzled feline fury launched itself from the lower reaches of the forest and landed atop the nearest cavalry mount. Though the cat attacked the animal viciously, it made no attempt to kill. The screams of the stricken horse panicked the others and, jerking their reins from the grasps of the horse-holders who were trying to remain on their own bucking mounts, they sped to the four winds. Some half-dozen bore through the formation of dismounted men, bowling them over and stamping out lives beneath heedless hoofs. Most of the frantic herd, however, careened into the ordered ranks of the advancing troop. The cat was still riding the leader of this herd and the sight and smell of him was enough to plunge most of the troop’s horses into a state of equal panic. Beyond the disordered troop, the cat adroitly turned his gashed and bleeding “mount” and “rode” through them a second time, now headed back toward the road. At the road’s edge, a dismounted archer loosed a hurriedly aimed shaft at the cat. It took the horse at the base of the throat and, as the stricken beast stumbled, the cat launched himself onto the stupidly-staring archer, slamming him onto his back as the long, cruel teeth crunched out his face. Bounding from his kill amid a hail of arrows, the cat sailed twenty feet to disappear into the woods from which he had emerged.

“I have done what I could, Cat-friend-called-Milo.”

“And well was it done!” replied Milo. “I will care for your kittens and females and vouchsafe you a clean death, when your teeth have dulled and age rests upon you.” Milo recited the ancient cat-human alliance formula.

The emotion which was beamed into Milo and Mara brought tears streaming down the girl’s dirty cheeks. “Oh, my Friends,” the cat mindspoke, “my kittens and my dear females and all my clan are long years dead, murdered by the Blackhairs. Nearly forty Cold-times have come and gone, since I opened my eyes and saw the sun. Age already nibbles at me with cold, hateful teeth. Though I shiver far from the plains of pleasant memory, in your mind, Friend Milo, I find the warmth of youth and home. I have no wish to suffer the slow death of an old animal, so, as you have given the words, I shall come up. It is a good death, to die fighting beside Cat-friends.”

Horsekiller’s thought broke in. “I too, have heard, Friend Milo, but there is no need for the old one’s death, or for yours. I am just behind the hill where the Blackhair road becomes straight. My clan-brother, Long-Ears, and most of the clan are in a stream bed and have almost reached a spot which will put them behind the Black-hair soldiers. So, you and the brave old one sit and wash yourselves. Now it is my clan’s turn to fight the Black-hairs.”

Then arrows clacked and hissed again among Milo and the group. The dismounted troops, impatient to get the job done, lumbered up the slope, shouting. On Milo’s right, beyond the moraine, a man screamed in pain and terror. There was another scream, in a different voice, then another and another. The arrow rain became an ill-aimed trickle, then ceased altogether. A few of the rearmost assaulters half-turned. Then, bounding over the rocks and bodies which marked the path of the landslide, came Horsekiller and a dozen other cats—snarling and spitting, their boiled-leather armor rattling and their razor-edge toothspurs throwing evil, metallic glints.

As he passed behind one of the troopers, Horsekiller’s great head dipped and swung in a smooth, practiced motion. The man yelped and his hauberk’s scales struck sparks from the slope as he fell, hamstrung. The cats were outnumbered by more than five-to-one, but their fantastic speed and agility and the unexpectedness of their attack stood them in good stead. Some were content to cripple, as had Horsekiller, others bore individual men to the ground, slashing at arms and legs, at faces and throats. Expecting to have to climb before they fought, the troopers had had their weapons sheathed and their baldrics hitched up and around, so that the swords hung between their shoulder-blades. In the time it took them to awkwardly draw the long swords, they took numerous casualties. Even when the steel was out, men continued to go down beneath tearing fangs and rending claws, for few swordsmen possessed the speed to counter a Prairie Cat.

The troopers attempted to form a shoulder-to-shoulder defensive semi-circle at the foot of the scarp, but were treated to such a shower of rocks from Milo and the nomads that, in the end, they broke rank to sprint for the moraine. On Mile’s left, Horsekiller leaped onto the back of a trooper, crouching over the screaming, struggling man, but unable to make a quick kill because of his armor. Another trooper ran back to bring his saber down on the cat’s already-cracked cuirass. Heavy as the blow was, it still failed to break the tough leather, but its force drove Horsekiller down, stunned. Gripping his hilt with both hands, the trooper whirled his blade up for another try. But just as the heavy steel whooshed downward, a bolt of unarmored, brown fury shot from the brush to knock the sword-wielder to his back. His helmet spun off and his attacker sank long cuspids into the top of his skull. Behind the newcomer, Horsekiller straightened up, shook himself, and with a forepaw flipped his own victim over, then, tore out his throat. He and the newcomer exchanged no communication, but raced after the other cats, on the trail of the terrified troopers.

Before the first archers had raced back across the road, the cavalry commander had already started the bulk of the squadron forward. At that distance, he could not discern the cause of his men’s withdrawal, but he surmised that his objective had been reinforced. Barely had the serried ranks started forward—four-deep, presenting squadron-front—when the earth behind them erupted with Long-Ear and over fifty of his clan. Emitting their horrific battle cries, they sped along the rearmost rank, slashing the horses’ haunches or hamstringing them or rearing to sink long claws into men’s arms or legs and drag them from the pitching backs of their crazed mounts. As only the rear rank had been attacked, all might have been saved, had the other three ranks turned and dealt with the small bank of felines; but these were warhorses, not hunters, and they refused to be turned. Long-Ears had chosen the proper angle of attack and the wind was right, carrying the horrible stink of predators and spilled blood to the quivering nostrils of every equine in the squadron. Those who did not first rid themselves of their human burdens, bore them—impotently. sawing tooth-held bits—on a wild gallop for the supposed safety of the road.

The troop which the stranger-cat had stampeded had just more-or-less re-formed when the fear-mad squadron rode into it, creating a tangled welter of downed men and horses. The screams of men and horses, the sick-soggy impact of flailing hoof on flesh, and the sharp cracks of snapping bones sped the still-erect on their way. But at the road, leaping ahead of the hapless assault troops, came Horsekiller at the head of his furry demons. At that point, Mahvroh Ahloghoh Squadron ceased being a unit! East and west raced a few mounted men and many riderless horses or horseless riders. The Cat Clan converged upon a field covered with discarded lances and smashed saddles and dented helmets. At its center squirmed the screaming, sobbing, writhing tangle of horse-man horror. Around and beyond it, as far as the retreating dust of the widely scattered survivors, lay the dead, dying, or stunned cavalrymen, and among them, others crawled or staggered aimlessly. Efficiently, the cats worked outward from their rallying point, slashing or tearing at any man-thing who moved or showed signs of life.

Milo, Mara, and the four nomads had not seen the rout of the bulk of the Kahtahphraktoee, but from the cacophony in the meadow, it had not been difficult to imagine what was taking place. Climbing down, they had picked their way across the unsure footing of the landslide and hurried back to the horses. As soon as the others were mounted, Milo urged them on their way and set about freeing the mounts of those who would not be coming for them. Because his cuirass, which had been split and was dangling, hampered his movements, he sheathed his saber and began removing the useless armor. At the mouth of the trail, Mara sat her fidgeting horse, Steeltooth’s reins looped over her right arm.

With a sudden crackling of underbrush, a wild-eyed, helmetless soldier tore into the tiny glade. He had lost his sword, but he gripped a broad dirk hi one hairy hand. Bellowing, he raced toward Milo, big boots thud-thudding on the loam.

As he had but one arm free, Milo was unable to protect himself from the snarling, berserk man whose rush knocked him down. With a shout of triumph, the soldier eluded his victim’s grasping left hand and plunged a leaf-shaped blade toward the side of his unarmored chest.

In the second required for the trooper to cross to Milo, Mara had dropped Steeltooth’s reins, drawn her saber, and spurred after the dirk-man. But even as she swung the blade up, towering over the combatants, she saw that she had arrived too late. The dirk was already hilt-deep hi Milo Moral’s chest. No man ever survived a wound like that, so the extra impetus of revenge was with the blade which split the soldier’s close-cropped skull. As the corpse rolled off Mile’s body, the dirk was wrenched out and a flood of frothy blood gushed from the hole it had made.

Mara shook her head sadly. For a barbarian, this man had been unusual, and something about him had attracted her. He could have made a few of the long years happier.

While she sat musing, Steeltooth trotted up and shouldered her mount away from Milo’s body; now he stood nosing at the inert form. When she dismounted and attempted to approach the motionless body, still half-encased in the shattered cuirass, the big stallion raised his head and bared his sharp teeth, rolling his eyes and stamping a warning. Mara tried to reach the horse’s mind, but reason had fled before the necessity of protecting his fallen master. She could discern little movement in Milo’s chest, so there appeared to be no good reason for braving the killer-stallion’s wrath. Retreating back to her own horse, she mounted and rode down the forest path.