The Torian Pearls

Chapter 20

Another dawn, the fourth since the Torians arrived. A breeze blew across the grass from the Torian camp, bringing with it the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat. The Torians were getting plenty of firewood from the forests to the east, but they must be getting short of food. The fort, on the other hand, held several weeks' supplies.

The Torians' morning patrol was mounting up. It seemed to be stronger than usual this morning-several hundred men at least. Blade scanned the line of blue horses and barrel-chested, bowlegged riders. The average Torian seemed to be about five and a half feet tall, and wore a combination of pigtail and mustache that gave him a distinctly Mongolian appearance.

Each of the riders had a piece of equipment Blade had never seen before-a large square wooden shield, slung on one side of his mount. Blade stared at the shields for another long moment. Then he whirled, cupped his hands, and bellowed, «Sound the alarm! The Torians are attacking!»

His voice carried to every corner of the fort. Men were dashing out of their huts and tents and scrambling up the ladders on the inside of the wall before Blade could repeat his call a third time.

By the time the gongs and drums sounded, the Torians were on the move. They seemed to explode out of their camp toward the fort like members of a well-rehearsed dance group. Doubtless they had been doing more than a little rehearsing, well out of sight of the fort's defenders. As he watched the Torian attack unfold, Blade could not help admiring their skill, even though he realized that skill might mean his death within the next few hours.

The horsemen with the shields headed straight for the fort at an easy trot. Behind them moved more than a thousand men on foot, each two or three men carrying either a scaling ladder or a bundle of brushwood. The mass of men and horses moving forward raised a veil of dust from the dry ground. It was impossible to see through that veil and make out what was happening with the Torian battering rams. Doubtless they would appear in their own good time.

Meanwhile the Kargoi were manning the walls with a rush, each warrior with every weapon he had. As they reached the top of the wall and saw the Torian attack, they began dropping swords and spears and unslinging their bows. One by one they knelt, nocked arrows, and let fly.

In their eagerness the Kargoi opened fire before any of the Torians were within range. The Torians' speed quickly brought them under Kargoi fire, though. The wooden shields were too clumsy to protect a man on horseback, and in any case the Kargoi aimed at the horses. The blue-skinned animals began to go down, screaming, kicking, rolling about and sometimes rolling onto their fallen riders. Parts of the incoming line became ghastly tangles of riderless or fallen or stumbling horses and staggering or crawling or fallen men. Neither the Torians nor their horses died quietly.

The Torians came on, and soon they could dismount and return the arrow fire. With the speed and precision of circus riders, they sprang down from their horses, bows in one hand and the great shields in the other. With shouts and slaps they turned their horses back. The animals dashed away through the oncoming infantry, who opened their ranks to let them pass.

Meanwhile the archers set up their shields on the ground and knelt behind them. The Kargoi shifted their fire, but it was hard to hit a shielded man and nearly impossible to kill him. The Torians would duck behind their shields, nock an arrow, pop up, let fly, then duck down before the Kargoi could fire. They were not shooting very well, but they were shooting fast and furiously. A steady stream of arrows poured over the wall, and Kargoi began to go down as the arrows pierced their reptile-hide armor or found exposed areas of their bodies.

Blade bellowed orders for the Kargoi to kneel behind the railing. That gave them some extra protection, but the arrows continued to whistle over them and into the fort.

Arrows began to run short on the wall. Someone inside the fort organized a line of the women to pass filled quivers up to the archers, while others collected Torian arrows. Blade saw Naula running toward the wall and scrambling up it without using a ladder, agile as a monkey. He shouted for her to get back down, but she seemed to be deaf to everything except the mounting roar of the battle. Her eyes were wide, more with excitement than with fear, and Blade saw that she had a carving knife stuck in her belt.

Well, if she wanted to get into a full-scale battle, shed chosen the right time and place. Reluctantly Blade put the girl out of his mind and turned back to the battle.

The archers of both sides were shooting as furiously as ever, but no longer very effectively. Both sides were now so well protected that they were neither taking nor doing much damage. If there'd been only archers on hand, the archery duel could have gone on all day, the archers using and reusing each others arrows until all the arrows and all the bowstrings were broken and not an archer on either side could lift a finger.

Now the Torian infantry were crowding up behind their archers, standing ready to advance when somebody gave them the word. They stood there for several minutes, long enough for the Kargoi to pick off some of them, long enough for some Torian commander to realize that the Kargoi archers weren't going to give up. Then a horn blew at one end of the Torian line, and all the Torians surged forward, a solid mass of more than a thousand men hurling themselves at the wall of the West Fort.

Along the wall Blade saw the Kargoi dropping their bows and picking up spears and swords. The men with the bags of naphtha did not pick them up, but stood close by them, ready to go to work.

The oncoming mass of Torians reached the ditch around the fort and the men with the brushwood bundles ran forward. They hurled the bundles down into the ditch while their own archers kept up a steady fire. Blade saw Kargoi rise to hurl spears and be picked off by arrows.

He shouted to them to get down and save their spears for the close combat that was only minutes away. Some of them heard him, others were too full of battle fury to listen to anyone or anything. Blade ran along the wall, ignoring the arrows flying past, jerking men down onto their knees.

Now the ditch was filled nearly to the top with brushwood in three places, and the Torians with the scaling ladders were coming to the front. The Torians wore no armor and their weapons for fighting on foot were not as good as those of the Kargoi-only a short curved sword and a small circular wooden shield. There might not have been much to fear, if the Torians hadn't so badly outnumbered the defenders and if they hadn't been coming on as if nothing but death could stop them. Probably nothing could.

Now the ladders were banging up against the wall and the first Torians were scrambling up them. Some Kargoi eagerly thrust their spears against the ladders the moment they were in position. Other waited until Torians were on the ladders, then pushed. Ladders and Torians fell with clatters, thuds, and screams.

Blade ran to where three ladders were rising above the wall almost side by side. The shower of incoming arrows had stopped; the Torian archers were too afraid of hitting their own men. The Kargoi had no such fear, and wherever the Torians were not coming up the wall Kargoi bows were at work. The ground outside the ditch was becoming littered with still or writhing bodies and stained with blood.

Blade reached the first of the ladders just as a Torian head popped up over the railing. His sword fell with a swish, the Torian head leaped from its shoulders, and the blood-spouting corpse fell back on the men climbing up behind it. The ladder swung away from the wall and crashed down on top of half a dozen more Torians. Kargoi arrows hissed down onto the men before they could get themselves sorted out, and several of them never got up again.

From the second ladder a Torian actually scrambled over the railing, onto the wall. Blade and a Kargoi warrior struck him in the same moment. The Kargoi's spear went through the man from the back, while Blade's sword laid open his belly. Each grabbed the Torian by one arm and heaved his body off the wall.

More Torians were running forward now, with more brushwood to make new crossing places. Blade gave his orders to the naphtha carriers. They waited until each crossing place was filled in and the Torians moving up to the wall. Then they threw down bags of naphtha and torches on top of that. Flames boomed up, brushwood crackled, and Torians died screaming horribly, rolling on the ground or running wildly, trailing flame and smoke.

Now Blade had a few moments free to look over the fort. He saw at once that too many men were trying to get in on the defense of the wall, and not enough were ready elsewhere. He began shouting, waving men away and pushing others toward the ladders. Gradually he got warriors and women drifting across the fort toward the gate. He would have liked to see Naula join that drift, but she seemed determined to stay with him on the wall until the last Torian attacker was beaten down or beaten back.

Blade's orders reinforcing the gate came just in time. Only minutes after the warriors started moving that way, the Torians attacked with their battering-ram. A tremendous booming crash rolled across the fort as the ram struck its first blow, drowning out all other sounds for a moment. The echoes died away, harsh Torian voices rose in a heaving chant, and the ram crashed home again. Blade saw the heavy logs of the gate shiver.

Torian heads appeared over the outer railing of the gate house and Kargoi scrambled up to meet them. A new and furious battle exploded up there, as the ram pounded away at the gate below. Blade saw Rehod leading warriors and a band of women and workers carrying logs, to brace the sagging gate. From the gate house Torian archers fired at Rehod's band, each one getting off an arrow or two before he was killed. Blade saw Rehod bend and pick up something from the ground, then run on toward the gate.

The Torians kept trying to scale the wall where Blade stood until all their brushwood and most of their ladders had been used up-smashed or burned or buried under mounds of corpses. In several places the ditch was nearly filled with Torian bodies. They'd lost nearly five hundred men, enough to make the bravest draw back and think again. Blade saw warriors beginning to drift around the walls of the fort, to join the attack on the gate.

The gate seemed to be only minutes from collapse. Blade saw several men shot down trying to toss naphtha down on the crew of the rare. Flames and screams rose in one place, but not the right one. The pounding of the ram went on.

Blade was heading for a ladder, to go down and join the defense of the gate, when a woman's cry struck a sudden new note in his ear. He turned, to see Naula standing close behind him. She was swaying like a drunkard, her teeth clamped down hard on her lower lip. Blade reached out a hand to steady her, then saw the Torian arrow driven into her breast.

Her lips moved, twisting painfully to get the words out. «Rehod-at you-saw him-he wanted us to think Torians-kill-«Then she sagged forward, and would have fallen off the wall if Blade hadn't caught her. He held her for a moment, long enough to feel the life go out of her. Then he laid her down, wiped the blood from her lips, and sprang down from the wall into the fort like a tiger on the hunt.

He had to kill Rehod, and quickly, before the baudz could attack again or get any of his personal followers to defend him against Blade. It would have to be a stealthy killing, too, or the garrison would see their two commanders locked in deadly combat as the Torians broke through the gate. That spectacle could sow panic and give the Torians victory.

As Blade ran across the fort the logs of the gate gave inward with an uproar of thuds and crackings. The women and workers trying to brace fresh logs in place scattered, leaping over the brush-filled ditch dug in a semicircle around the gate. The Torians followed them, scrambling over the fallen logs, coming on with shouts and screams, scenting victory.

Then Rehod threw a lighted torch down into the brushwood that filled the ditch. The naphtha-soaked wood exploded into a wall of flame that ran completely across the gate. At the very ends of the semicircle there were gaps, where the ditch was cut short to keep the wall from catching fire. Solid clusters of Kargoi with spears and swords ran into position behind those gaps. Meanwhile, every Kargoi within range who had a bow and arrows let fly.

The first few Torians could not draw back in time as the flames roared up. They tumbled straight into the ditch. The screams were indescribable, and Blade saw hardened Kargoi warriors turn white and vomit at the sound. Arrows rained down on the Torians who escaped the flames, and the head of the attacking column went down as if a machine gun had gone to work on it.

The spectacle of the dying Torians drew all of Rehod's attention. He stood at the edge of the smoke cloud around the fire-filled ditch, waving his sword, with no eyes for anything to his flanks or rear. Blade sprinted up to Rehod, pivoted on one foot, and wheel-kicked the baudz in the small of the back. Rehod was in the flaming ditch before he realized that he was falling. He did not scream long, but he screamed louder and more horribly than anyone else who'd died in the ditch. Blade could ignore those screams. Naula was now thoroughly avenged, and the danger of civil war or intrigue among the Kargoi greatly reduced.

Only a few minutes after Rehod's death, the attack through the gate collapsed. Again the Torians left several hundred dead and dying on the ground before they gave up the struggle. Between the two attacks, they'd lost more men than the whole strength of the garrison of the West Fort, without inflicting more than a hundred casualties on the Kargoi.

Blade kept his doubts about the future to himself. Apart from the lurking threat of the Menel, the Torians would certainly come again. They were intelligent as well as brave, and they would certainly learn valuable lessons from this repulse. When they came again, they might not be so comparatively easy to stop.

He wasn't even sure that the Torians had finished with this attack. The fort was dangerously short of both arrows and naphtha. If the Torians pushed home another assault, they might lose another thousand men, but they would probably have the West Fort when the battle was over.

Blade didn't relax until dawn the next morning showed empty plain where the Torian camp had been. Even then he was cautious about letting parties out of the fort to scavenge up the fallen weapons and collect the bodies for burial in a mass grave. The parties worked armed, with mounted scouts out in all directions.

That evening Paor appeared with five hundred mounted warriors and a long wagon convoy of supplies. Now the fort could hold out against any attack the Torians could launch for quite some time.

«Where's Rehod?» was Paor's question, after inspecting the fort.

«I killed him,» said Blade quietly. «He shot at me with a Torian arrow, to make it look like the work of the enemy. Naula died taking that arrow. I came down, caught Rehod by surprise, and pushed him into the fire ditch. No one could even recognize which body was his after the fire died down.

«Did anyone see you do it?»

Blade shook his head. «Let us say that if anyone saw it, they have said nothing to me about it. They know they will not raise Rehod from the dead, and they may perhaps join him if they offend me.»

«My sword would be with you in that,» said Paor.

«Good. It seems to me that we have now found as much of a new homeland as we are likely to have until we make peace with the Torians. That may be a long time. With Rehod dead there is less danger of plots and intrigues. Perhaps it is time that we consider making you High Baudz.»

Paor stared, then shook his head. «I-the gods only know whether I am worthy of this.»

«I know that you are worthy,» said Blade. «So do many of the other warriors, and neither I nor they are gods.»

Paor laughed weakly. «No, I suppose not. But I-Blade, I need time to think upon this. Can you give me that?»

«Certainly,» said Blade. «But do not ask for too much time. The Torians will not give it to you.»