The Middle of Nowhere

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

All night long every living soul in Nowhere labored. When Howland’s plan to cut off the dragon’s head failed, there seemed no hope of staving off a final, destructive attack. However, the general of Nowhere had one last stratagem. Everyone’s help was required to make it work. Almost a quarter of their strength had been killed or wounded, but the remaining defenders strove mightily through the night. The night took on a chill, the first hint of autumn, and the clarity of the cool air brought out every one of the myriad stars salting the heavens.

Looking up from his labors, Howland felt for the first time that there were no gods looking down on them. Live or die, their fate was in their own hands. Such notions used to worry him. Now, faced with imminent destruction, he found the spiritual solitude strangely comforting. If there were no good gods to come to their aid, there were also no evil ones to persecute them.

Dawn arrived in a light mist. Unlike the ponderous fogs they’d experienced before, this mist clung low to the ground, running in thin streams before the south wind. Day broke dark, with heavy clouds rising in the east and south. The bellies of the clouds were gray as slate, heavy with rain.

Villagers were still hauling baskets of earth to an earthen redoubt backed up against the rampart behind the trench. A simple triangle with sides eight feet high, the redoubt was constructed all in one night, using all the dirt formerly packed into the farmers’ huts. Howland wanted to dismantle the roofs and use the rafters to make a palisade atop the mound, but the villagers ran out of dirt-and time.

A very tired Raika was overseeing the dumping of earth when she heard a low rumbling, combined with a high-pitched squeaking. Standing on the highest part of the dirt pile, she looked for the source of the sound. It originated from the bandits’ eastern camp. A large, indistinct object was rolling through the barley stubs, propelled by more than a dozen grunting warriors.

“Sir Howland!” she cried. “They’re coming from the east!”

Howland, Malek, and Robien climbed the loose earthen mound and spied what Raika had seen.

“A siege engine?” asked the elf.

“I can’t tell. It isn’t tall enough to be a fighting tower,” Howland said.

Even as they tried to evaluate this new threat, the bandits ceased their shoving and stopped. Distant shouted commands reached the defenders, the words indistinct.

“Hey! Hey!” Carver was standing on one of the huts. “They’re forming up to the south!”

A quick glance confirmed the kender’s alarming report. Lines of horsemen had filed out of the south camp and taken up places along the low rise, facing the village. Their ranks had been thinned, but they still represented a daunting force for the depleted defenders.

Amergin, out of the village on reconnaissance, came running back, chased by three lancers. He vaulted neatly over the chest-high barricade on the north side of Nowhere, leaving his pursuers frantically trying to rein in. Carver’s boys pelted them with whippik darts, but the riders fended off the missiles with their shields before galloping away.

Out of breath, Amergin presented himself to his commander.

“They’re coming,” he panted. “All that remain.”

“From the east and south, too.” Howland looked down from the mound at the hard-pressed Kagonesti. “Thank you for your efforts.”

Amergin dismissed his gratitude with a slight toss of his head.

“They mean to come at us from all sides this time,” Raika muttered.

“It was bound to happen,” Robien said. “Could we-?”

He never got the chance to finish. There was a loud crash from the east, followed by a soft whistling. The next thing the people of Nowhere knew, a sixty-pound boulder landed just inside the ring of houses. Screaming children and old folks scattered as the rock, chiseled round to fly true, bounced on the hard soil and sailed on. It ricocheted twice more, finally burying itself in the soft slope of the new redoubt.

“So, they’ve brought out the catapult,” said Howland.

“Can they knock down our defenses?” asked Raika.

“They can smash up the huts, but their stones won’t have much effect on a pile of earth.” Howland pointed to the hysterical villagers cowering by their homes. “Get them inside,” he said. “There’ll be more stones, ten or more an hour if the catapult crew is good.”

Malek, who’d stayed at Howland’s side most of the night, wondered where the bandits were getting their projectiles. “You don’t find stones like that lying about, not in this country.”

Howland agreed, looking a bit relieved. “They must have brought a store of boulders with them. That’ll limit their fire.” He gave orders to recover any loose catapult stones and haul them to the top of the earthen mound.

“What for?” asked Raika.

“I mean to return them to their owners.”

Wounded villagers as well as those too old or too young to fight clambered up the sides of the mound. Inside, the dirt walls were held back by stakes, planks, and matting, leaving a tight sheltered zone inside, roughly twenty-four feet by twelve at the widest point. The villagers not fighting crowded in, huddling close together. Babies wailed. At one point a catapult stone hit the edge of the rampart sending a shower of dirt over the cowering families. Panic broke out, as one wounded villager cried out that they were being buried alive.

At this juncture Khorr appeared above them, brandishing a battle-axe taken from a fallen bandit. With all the power of his considerable voice, he boomed,

Take heart, hopeless, helpless ones!

Heroes of thy own hearth help thee!

Spilling the blood of the invader!

It was as much from the force of the minotaur’s delivery as the words he recited that the terrified villagers were calmed. Khorr’s band of spearmen raised their weapons high and cheered. Not to be outdone, Raika bullied her contingent into a battle cry, too. The result was not as stirring as Raika wanted.

“Milksops!” she shouted. “My one-legged granny can shout better than you!”

“Why does your granny have one leg?” asked Bakar.

“Shut up! Now yell like you mean it!”

From out on the plain, the bandits raised a cheer of their own. To Howland it sounded forced. This was not the fight they had joined Rakell’s band for. Easy pickings and plunder, that’s what they preferred. Brawling with fear-maddened peasants was not the sweet life they’d been promised.

Carver came running. The usually unflappable kender was genuinely agitated, though it was impossible to say if he was frightened or thrilled by the news he bore.

He tugged Howland’s shirt sleeve, and when the old soldier bent near, the kender said (quite loudly) in his ear, “Ogres!”

Howland paled. Raika uttered one of her favorite expletives. Robien wiped his smooth chin and lips with one hand, drawing air in through his teeth with a sharp hiss.

“How many?” asked Howland.

Carver counted to ten on his fingers and said, “Six!”

“Khorr!”

The minotaur circled around the mound. “Yes, Sir Howland?”

“I have an especially dangerous task for you.” He relayed Carver’s news. “It’s your job to try to stop the ogres.”

Khorr tapped the head of his axe against the palm of his large hand. “Do you think it is possible?”

“You must try. Our survival depends on breaking every element of Rakell’s attack. No matter how well we fend off his human warriors, everything will be for nought if the ogres can break through at will.”

The minotaur nodded his massive, horned head thoughtfully.

Howland clapped Khorr on the arm. “Good. You can do it. A minotaur is worth any number of ogres, after all!”

“But is a poet worth six trained warriors, I wonder?” Khorr replied.

“Good stuff for your epic,” said Raika encouragingly.

“If I live to compose it.”

The sixth boulder launched at the village demolished a hut on the north side, sending up a plume of yellow dust. Because the huts had been emptied of dirt, they fell easy victims to the plunging stones. The catapult crew shouted with joy at their success, but Howland sent Malek and four farmers to recover the rock.

The bombardment continued until the mist evaporated. A hot, humid wind scoured the scene, driving dust in the bandits’ faces. The wind died. The turgid clouds, which had been crawling from east to west like a school of malignant jellyfish, stopped with the wind. For a moment, calm reigned.

Trumpets blared on three sides. Howland shook hands with everyone close by-Khorr, Raika, Carver, Amergin, Caeta, Malek, and Robien.

“Good luck,” he told them all.

Everyone ran to their place. The outer line of defense, the huts and barricade, would be defended until the enemy broke through, which Howland conceded would eventually occur. When that happened, everyone was to fall back to the redoubt. Once there, there was no place left to retreat.

A few fat droplets of rain landed in the dust. As the bandit army started forward, a light shower began. Howland looked up at the sky.

“This is good,” he mused to Robien. “Rain will slacken their bowstrings and weaken their catapult skein.”

“Blade to blade, then,” said the bounty hunter.

Howland grunted.

The three bandit contingents were not well-coordinated. The southern band, presumably under Rakell’s command, started forward early. The eastern segment, where the ogres were stationed, got moving next, but the slow-walking creatures held their human allies back, and Rakell’s mounted troops moved farther ahead of them. Lastly came the northern contingent, mostly men on foot, marching in loose order toward the little ring of huts.

A horse neighed close by. Howland turned to see Raika mounted on the animal. Bakar handed her a brigand’s lance, which she couched inexpertly under her arm.

“Bend your arm more!” Howland called to her.

Raika acknowledged his advice with a wave. She turned her horse around and trotted to the east end of the village to await the ogres.

Forty yards from Nowhere, Rakell’s southern force lowered their lances and charged. Howland couldn’t believe an experienced commander would allow his cavalry to charge huts and fences. He ordered Amergin and his slingers forward to empty as many saddles as they could.

“Save one iron star for Rakell!” Howland said.

Amergin held out his hand, displaying the missile he was keeping for just that purpose.

At ten yards the slingers hurled, felling six bandits at once. Two tangled their feet in their stirrups and were dragged by their charging mounts. Amergin drew his group back a few steps and hurled again. Four bandits went down as well as two horses, then the enemy was upon them. The lead riders leaped their horses over the low barricade, coming down amidst the slingers. Amergin and the rest drew swords, but they were scattered and intimidated by the bandits’ lances.

“Come on, they need help!” Howland cried. With Robien and ten farmers with spears, they ran to the slingers’ rescue.

The second line of horsemen reached the barricade, dismounted, and rushed the barriers with their swords. Carver led in his young whippikers. Leap-frogging from roof to roof, they got above the enemy and scourged them with darts made from the bandits’ own arrows. Furious, some of the bandits abandoned the barricade and tried climbing the huts to get at the dart-throwers.

“Go back, all of you!” Carver shouted, pulling boys and girls away. Foolishly brave, some children were willing to go toe to toe with the bandits, but they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Two bandits stood unsteadily on one roof. The thatch, which supported the diminutive kender and children well enough, had been softened by rain and now sagged uncertainly under the armored warriors. Stung by days of frustration and defeat, their faces contorted, the bandits gingerly crossed the conical roof, slashing at the fleeing children.

Carver let out a yell and drew his sword, a brigand’s curved saber he’d ground down to suit his reach. Scrambling over the tight thatch, he drew off one bandit, and they traded cuts. Carver parried clumsily, holding the ungainly weapon in both hands. The bandit wasn’t much better off. After a third blow, his left foot plunged through the roof, and he fell, losing his sword. Carver darted in and plunged his short blade into the bandit’s ribs, behind his iron breastplate.

He had no time to celebrate his victory. The second bandit dealt Carver a smashing blow to the head with the crossguard of his sword, sending the kender stumbling backward. His new opponent raised his blade high for the killing blow. Carver tried to deflect it, but the thatch gave way under them both. Kender and bandit plunged through and vanished.

Howland saw Carver fall, but he was deeply engaged with enemy horsemen. He and the farmers had rushed to attack, jabbing their spears at the faces of bandits and horses alike. They danced backwards when the puffing steeds stormed at them then advanced again when horse and rider turned away to face other threats. In this way they managed to bring down three or four bandits, who were promptly dispatched as they rolled helplessly on the ground.

One after another, Amergin’s slingers had been lanced or ridden down until only the elf and two village women remained. They retreated to an alley between huts. There they held off several onslaughts until bandits swarmed at them from the other direction. Amergin and his surviving slingers were swallowed up in a wave of flashing armor and snorting horses.

Seeing Amergin beset, Howland forgot the sword in his hand and snatched up a loose stone, which he hurled at a near rider. It clanged off his helmet, dazing him, and in the confusion that followed he was speared from three directions by desperate farmers. Raika swooped in, trailed by her spear company. She might have known next to nothing about wielding a lance, but even a tyro can stick a sharp point into a target. The brave woman aimed her weapon at a well-turned out bandit with saffron plumes on his helmet. Her lance head skittered across his ribbed cuirass and caught on the brace on his shoulder. The brigand and Saifhumi sailor went flying off their respective horses. Raika bounced up, full of fight, but the bandit rolled over dead, pierced through the throat.

Howland fought his way to her side. “What of the ogres?” he yelled.

“Still coming, but slow! My one-legged granny-”

He missed the rest, as he dodged an enemy lance. The southern attack had disintegrated. Remnants of the enemy force were streaming the gaps, however. Panting hard, Howland watched them as light rain flecked his face, stinging from many small cuts and scratches.

“Reform your people,” he told Raika. “Where’s Khorr?”

“I left him to watch the ogres.”

“All right. Go back and wait with him. He will need your help.”

The villagers carried off their own dead and wounded, secreting them inside the redoubt. Howland tried to look for Amergin, but men and horses lay in heaps in the narrow lane, and arrows were raining down on the battle scene from enemy archers on the plains.

He and Robien then tried to push their way inside the hut where Carver had vanished, but the weakened structure began to collapse the moment they yanked at the door.

“Lookout! Catapult!”

Howland and Robien threw themselves down. A smooth sphere of sandstone hurtled through the air with deceptive slowness. It hit a few yards from Robien and dug in, caught by the thin layer of mud made by the rain.

Howland rounded up the closest available villagers. Only six were still fit to fight, three women and three men. Howland’s little army was thinning every hour.

With their kender leader gone, the young boys and girls also left the rooftops and presented themselves to Howland. The old soldier was deeply moved by their gallantry. They were too young to stand and fight armored horsemen, but the situation was so grave he had little choice. He ordered the young folk to take up positions atop the redoubt, guarding the salvaged catapult stones.

“Stand ready to roll them down when I give the signal,” Howland said. “Not before! We’ll be fighting with our backs to you, so we won’t see them coming until the last moment. Wait for my command.”

Carver’s whippikers responded unanimously, “Yes, Sir Howland!”

At the far end of the village, Khorr bellowed a warning. The ogres squad, six strong as Carver had reported, had almost reached the first huts. The minotaur and his loyal spearmen formed a wedge. Behind them were arrayed Raika’s band in loose formation.

Khorr stood at the front, waiting, his axe laid on his shoulder. No one saw his lips moving soundlessly as he recited the fourteenth Windwave Ballad under his breath. It was the Song of the Shipwrecked Sailor about a minotaur who fights off a tribe of ferocious cannibals single-handed then persishes when the battle is over from the prick of a poisoned arrow.

The leading ogres put aside their weapons and tore at the barricade with their bare hands. Great nobby knuckles flexed, and timbers snapped like straw. Seeing this, Khorr launched himself at the ogres. His men, full of pride in their stand in the trench days ago, followed close behind.

The first ogre had just broken through the flimsy barrier of fencing and vines when the burly minotaur appeared before him. Used to dealing with puny human, elf, or dwarf foes, the ogre was taken aback to see such a large creature rushing at him. He stepped back and groped for his battle-axe, hanging by a lanyard from his waist. Khorr charged in, kicking and swinging his broad blade. Khorr’s axe severed the ogre’s hands at his wrists. They hit the ground still gripping the axe handle.

Sweeping his axe up, Khorr ripped the ogre from belt to chin. Mortally wounded, the creature dropped but too slowly for the minotaur, who planted a foot on the ogre’s chest and kicked him aside and continued on.

Consternation reigned among the remaining ogres. No one had told them they would have to face a battle-mad minotaur, the only creature in the world ogres regarded with a degree of awe. They abandoned their attempt to tear down the barricade, backing away from Nowhere to regroup.

Raika slipped in behind Khorr in time to see the ogres beating a retreat. Spotting the thoroughly dead ogre Khorr killed lying in heap six yards away, Raika whistled excitedly.

“Now yell,” she advised her towering friend. “Brandish your axe!”

Khorr threw back his head and roared so loudly that even Raika felt a thrill of fear. He made chopping motions with his bloodstained blade, cleaving the air in all directions.

“How’s that?” he muttered over his shoulder to her.

“I’m convinced,” Raika said.

The ogres were made of stern stuff, however. Overcoming their surprise, they stood shoulder to shoulder and screamed defiance back. In unison, they raised their axes and started for Khorr at a dead run.

“I could use your help,” Khorr called. Crouching behind what remained of the barrier, the farmers extended their spears and braced themselves.

“What, no poetry?” Raika said, licking her dry lips. No amount of rain seemed to moisten them.

Khorr blinked his limpid brown eyes. For once he couldn’t think of an appropriate stanza to quote. Maybe the old legends of heroes who fought with a never-ending stream of verse on their lips were just that, tired old legends-

Only one word came to mind, Raika’s favorite obscenity. Khorr said it flatly. Behind him, the Saifhumi woman laughed long and loud.

“Now that’s poetry!”

The ogres hit the defenders like a landslide. One of them literally burst through the shell of an empty hut, scattering wattle and daub everywhere. Khorr caught the lead ogre’s thrust with the flat of his axe and tried to turn the creature’s blade away, but the ogre was powerful. Khorr’s bronze muscles coiled, writhing under his skin like snakes in a sack. Slowly, then with increasing speed, he turned the ogre’s axe, despite the fact his hulking foe was using both thick arms to resist Khorr.

Raika popped up under the minotaur’s arm. She ran her iron-tipped spear into the ogre’s armpit. Dark blood gushed forth. He tried to bat the woman’s spear away, but when he let go of his axe with one hand, Khorr overpowered him.

The ogre’s right arm flew back, and in the next instant the minotaur cleaved his skull.

Behind the first ogre was another, this one armed with a pair of cleaverlike swords called falchions. He came at Khorr with both blades flailing, and the minotaur had to give ground. Raika jabbed at the ogre, who chopped the head off her spear. She dropped the useless pole and whipped out her sword. She felt as if she were facing a bear with a dirk.

With a screech, one of the ogre’s falchions slashed across Khorr’s chest. His banded armor stopped much of the blow, but bright lines of blood appeared. If the minotaur felt any pain, Khorr didn’t show it. He chopped hard, not at the ogre’s hands but at his weapons. Catching the left falchion on its flat edge, Khorr’s axe cracked the wrought-iron blade. Khorr brought his right foot back and parried the ogre’s next attack. Weakened by the minotaur’s blow, the ogre’s left blade snapped off. He threw down the stump of the broken weapon and lunged point-first with the remaining one. Khorr was taken completely off-guard. Six inches of iron pierced his belly.

He grunted in surprise. His grotesque foe exposed yellow tusks in a ferocious snarl of triumph. Khorr shook his head and backed off the ogre’s blade then drove the upper point of his axe into his opponent’s chest. Driven by the minotaur’s mighty muscles, it went through a quarter inch of bronze cuirass like a nail through a pewter plate. Khorr gave the axe a hard twist, cracking the ogre’s ribs apart. The monster fell dead at his feet.

The minotaur poet staggered backward, blood seeping from his wound. Raika sheathed her sword and tried to shore up her great companion.

“Stand up! You’ll be all right!” she cried.

“Who can be all right with a hole in his belly?” said Khorr. He dropped to one knee.

Three ogres were dead, slain by the minotaur. Now the other three crashed through the defenses on either side, scattering the farmers who tried to oppose them. Seeing their mighty leader falter, Khorr’s men linked arms and threw themselves at the closest ogre. Eight men, each armed with a metal-tipped spear, impaled the ogre and drove him backwards into a still-standing hut. Ogre and hut collapsed together. Shouting Khorr’s name, the villagers rallied behind him.

The last pair of ogres reached the village common, opposed only by Raika’s scattered band. They encircled the ogres, keeping a safe distance while jabbing ineffectively at them.

Bolstered by the sight, Khorr rose to join the circle around the ogres. In as harsh and commanding a voice as he could muster, the minotaur said, “Lay down your arms and you shall be spared!”

The creature facing Khorr spat yellow phlegm. His meaning was clear.

Raika claimed a lost spear and urged her timid followers forward. Stabbing at the ogres’ faces or feet, they kept them off balance long enough for Khorr to land a telling blow on the arm of the leader. This ogre sagged to the ground, and Khorr’s men quickly finished him off, impaling him again and again.

Alone, the last ogre threw down his axe. The farmers, thinking he meant to give up, lowered their guard.

“Look out!” Raika screamed.

Drawing a dagger the size of Carver’s sword, the last ogre took a great leap and landed on Khorr. Locked together, the giants toppled into the mud. Raika tried to rush in and stab the ogre in the back, but she was knocked down by a flying fist. The blow almost broke her jaw.

The dagger flashed once, twice, covered in blood as it rose. Khorr had lost his axe when the ogre tackled him. All he had left were his enormous hands. Despite his wounds, he got his foe in a headlock. Over and over they rolled, right to the center of Nowhere. At last Khorr got hold of the ogre’s great flapping ear and with a supreme heave wrung his enemy’s neck. It cracked like a flash of lightning. The ogre let out a final grunt, and his limbs went slack.

Raika was there. She and two farmers levered the ogre’s stinking carcass off Khorr.

“Hey, poet!” she cried, “don’t die yet!”

“Death is not the end,” the minotaur said faintly. “Every epic closes with an epitaph.”

His hand slowly opened. Into the mud fell his most prized possession, the ronto, the memory book Ezu had given to him.

Raika picked up the rain-spattered book. Howland, Robien, and the villagers from the redoubt came running up.

“In all my life I’ve never seen such a fight!” Howland exclaimed. “Did Khorr kill all the ogres single-handed?”

Raika looked up at Howland. She was glad of the rain coursing down her face.

“Yes. Yes, he did.” She knew it wasn’t true, but it would make a better story that way.