Seventh Decimate

  In this season, the afternoon sun slanted across Prince Bifalt’s sight. His eyes blurred when he needed them to be clear. For a moment, he thought he saw a moving dot on the line where the sky met the hills. Then he was sure he had imagined it. Then a dull flash like sunlight on bronze crossed the bracken and tall grasses.

  “Captain,” he said: a low growl from the back of his mouth.

  Leaving Flisk to Elgart and Klamath, Captain Swalish joined his prince.

  “Hells,” breathed the Captain. “Is that—?”

  The dot waved an arm.

  “Vinsid,” pronounced Prince Bifalt. “It is Vinsid.”

  At once, Elgart and Klamath came closer, supporting Flisk between them. The five men watched the rider approach. They saw him punch the air with one fist, brandish his rifle with the other. A less sullen man would have shouted.

  As Vinsid rode nearer, the Prince was finally able to see that the guardsman had not been wounded.

  A moment later, the man dismounted. He seemed to be having trouble with his habitual glower. At intervals, it broke into flickers like grins. Even scowling, he gave an impression of exuberance.

  “Highness,” he said formally, “I did what you asked.”

  Prince Bifalt prompted him. “And?”

  Vinsid lost control of his visage for an instant. “One of them rode a lamed horse. I shot him. There were other stragglers, but the sound of my shot made them ride harder. I followed until they dropped into a wide hollow among the hills. I left my horse and crawled to the crest to look without being seen.

  “They were gathering themselves, as you said. Shouting at each other. Counting arrows. I saw sixteen men on good horses.”

  The Prince interrupted him. “Supplies?”

  “Not that I saw, Highness. They had no mules or packhorses. There were no other Amikans. They did not take bundles out of hiding, or dig them from the ground.”

  When Prince Bifalt nodded his approval, Vinsid continued.

  “The hollow is two leagues away. But I was not content with that distance. They could return against us too quickly. I fired a full clip. I was too far for good aim, but one lucky shot dropped a rider. The rest scattered for the far hills. I could not follow without being seen in the hollow.”

  Once again, the Prince said, “They fear our rifles.”

  “And, Highness,” added Vinsid, “they will not return galloping. They do not know where we might hide.” Just for a moment, he let himself smile. “When they come, they will come cautiously. If we go now, I do not think they will find us before sunset.”

  Prince Bifalt clapped Vinsid’s shoulder. “Then we will go.” Vinsid had restored his decisiveness. He knew what to do now. Behind the slow seethe of his anger at what the ambush had done to his company—behind his dismay at what he had lost, and his grief—he felt almost eager. “We will go as soon as we can.”

  Now at last he turned to consider the problem of Flisk’s wound.

  The color had returned to the young veteran’s face. He held his rifle like a man who meant to use it. His jaw jutted with determination, despite his obvious pain. But the Prince was not persuaded.

  Coldly, he ordered Flisk to ride away. In addition, he asked the teamsters to send Boy on another horse to watch over the guardsman.

  Boy objected until Spliner silenced him with a cuff to the side of his head. “It will make your ma glad,” muttered the teamster. “Do not take that lightly.”

  Flisk braced himself to refuse an order. Gripping his gun, he began, “No, Highness—”

  The Prince had no patience for an argument. He needed to go. He interrupted the young veteran by demanding, “Clean your rifle.”

  Sweating in pain, Flisk tried. But the condition of his shoulder crippled his whole arm. Unable to disguise his failure, his face twisted with chagrin. “Pardon, Highness,” he sighed. “I am useless. I will go.”

  Prince Bifalt could not afford sympathy. “Do only what you can,” he said. “Do not follow the track. Ride southwest, away from the Line. Look for aid. If you reach the King, report what you know.”

  Sternly, he sent Flisk and Boy on their way.

  Once they were gone, Captain Swalish and Elgart shifted as many of the wain’s burdens to the last horses as they could carry. Spliner, Hught, and Winnow again rerigged the oxen so that the three could pull the wain together.

  Glowering like a clenched fist, Vinsid spent a moment with Ardval’s body. To no one except himself, he muttered, “I have lost friends before. But I liked him.” Then he turned away.

  Because it was his place to do so, the Prince gave the Bellegerin army’s traditional farewell to the men he had lost. “Your blood for your comrades. Your blood for your people. Your blood for your king. No man can be asked to give more.”

  He did not know what else to say.

  When the men had eaten a quick meal, donned their moccasins, and fed and watered their animals, Prince Bifalt announced his intentions.

  “Those Amikans will not harm us again. We will not permit it.”

  “How will we stop them?” It was Elgart who spoke. He had always been a lean man, but now he looked positively emaciated by indignation, as if he had taken the ambush as a personal affront. Although his quick thinking had saved the wain, he did not congratulate himself. Instead, his manner challenged the Prince. “We have done what we can. They still outnumber us. And they are mounted.”

  Prince Bifalt studied the old scar that divided Elgart’s face from the center of his forehead to the point of his chin. It made him look like a man with two natures that had been imperfectly joined. Two chambers—

  The Prince ignored Elgart’s insolence. “We will leave this track,” he replied, “and head south until we gain the other road.” He meant the more southeasterly branching the company had passed. “There we will make better speed.”

  “And that will save us?” snorted Elgart. “I think not. In this grass, we will leave a trail a blind man could read. And the Amikans will still be mounted.”

  Now Captain Swalish snapped, “Elgart! You forget yourself. You address Prince Bifalt. He is the eldest son of King Abbator. I will have your hide if you cannot show respect.”

  Elgart chewed curses for a moment. Then he ducked his head. “Highness.”

  But now Vinsid and Klamath supported their comrade. “Still,” said Vinsid carefully, “Elgart speaks truth, Highness. We cannot outrun our foes. We cannot outfight them. They will strike at us when they have decided how to counter or avoid our guns.”

  Holding his side, Klamath nodded.

  Captain Swalish opened his mouth to shout down objections. The Prince silenced him with a gesture. “They will not,” he answered. “We will turn their tactics against them.”

  “How, Highness?” protested Klamath. “We are only five.”

  Grinding his teeth, Prince Bifalt emulated the patience of his father.

  “They will not come on us in daylight. You judged them rightly, Vinsid. They will require caution. If they come now, we will see them. Or we may have hidden ourselves to waylay them. They will not attack until nightfall. Until we have made our camp. And they will approach with care, sending scouts to be sure of our position. Those men will not outnumber us.

  “They hid in this grass to surprise us. We will do the same to them.”

  Briefly, he described what he had in mind. Then he concluded, “They have already come too far from their lands. They cannot hope for more supplies or men. We will kill their scouts, or drive them off. Then the Amikans who remain will attempt a concerted attack. They will have no choice. They cannot stop us by any other means.

  “If we can catch them in our cross fire, they will learn what rifles can do against numbers and horses and arrows.”

  The Prince’s men were veterans. They saw that the tactics he described might succeed. Elgart seemed t
o scowl with one side of his face, grin with the other. Vinsid’s glower promised killing. With one hand, Klamath wiped the pain from his face.

  “They will try to surprise us again,” warned Captain Swalish.

  Prince Bifalt nodded. “They will. When they do, try for a single shot. If you fire more than once, one of us will come to help you. But no more than one. The wain must be protected from other scouts.

  “And remember. The flash of your muzzle will show where you stand. Shoot and move. Shoot and move.”

  The guardsmen agreed. Apart from the teamsters, no one in the company would sleep this night. But perhaps one night would be enough.

  Like his men, the Prince shouldered his burdens: his weapons and bedroll, his satchel of clips, a leather canteen. When the diminished quest was ready, Swalish commanded the wain into motion. Sullen and fretting, Spliner and Winnow flicked their whips to start the oxen while Hught pulled on the yokes. Trailed by two laden horses, the heavy wain left the trail and began to plow arduously through the earth’s thick mantle of grasses, bracken, and wildflowers.

  Watching the rear, Prince Bifalt chewed his cheek and prayed he would not encounter some insurmountable obstacle—a deep gully, perhaps, or a swollen stream—before the sun set. He did not much care whether he reached the other trail or not. More than a faster pace, he wanted terrain that would suit his plans to repay the Amikan ambush.

  When evening came, they were still forcing their way through dense grass blades that sawed at the legs of the oxen. The teamsters had contrived padding to protect their beasts, but the animals were exhausted nonetheless. Prince Bifalt judged the company had gone no more than a league—an easy distance for mounted foes—and now night was near.

  Captain Swalish wanted to push on until the wain reached the shelter of a low escarpment dimly visible ahead. There the wall of higher ground would provide a measure of protection on one side. But the Prince decided otherwise. “The wain is our bait. It must be an easy target.” Also, he wanted time to eat a cold meal and rest before he and his men crept into hiding. “We will halt where we are.”

  While some light remained, he pointed Swalish and Elgart, Vinsid and Klamath, to their positions in the defensive cordon he desired. In effect, they would conceal themselves at the four points of a compass centered on the wain. His own task would be to support any of his men who needed help. Perhaps unnecessarily, he warned the teamsters against lighting any flames. If the wain could be located too easily, the Amikans would suspect a trap. Then, when all the men had fed, and the teamsters had gone to their bedding under the wain, he set himself to rest until the stars unrolled their uninterpretable map across the heavens.

  Fervently, he hoped for moonlight. It would aid him and his men more than their enemies.

  The sky remained cloudless, allowing the stars to shed their vague illumination; but the moon had not yet risen when Prince Bifalt’s tension forced him into motion. In whispers, he told his men to check their weapons and ammunition. Then he sent them to dare the night.

  Although they were not foot soldiers, they understood stealth. They made rustling sounds as they departed, but soon the Prince could not hear their movements.

  With his rifle in his hands, he left the wain as well, walking quietly along the company’s back trail. Eagerness and uncertainty rode the beating of his heart. He was sure of himself, and of his men, but of nothing else. He expected the scouts to be widely scattered when they came, but one of them might follow in the marks of the wain’s passage. He meant to be ready.

  If they came.

  When he had gone far enough to be sure he could spot archers before they came within arrow range of his bait, he turned aside. Slowly through the clogging blades and branches of the vegetation, he took ten steps, paused to gauge the visibility, then took ten more. There he crouched into a tall clump of wildflowers. Aiming his rifle toward the trail, he confirmed what he could see and what he could not. After that, he tried to relax.

  He hoped the scouts would come soon. They might. Their approach had not been threatened yet. They might believe that they could catch the Bellegerins unprepared.

  Time passed. By slow increments, a crescent moon climbed the east, bringing a subtle shift in the starlight. Prince Bifalt closed his eyes to ease the strain of peering endlessly at shapes he could almost see, shapes that seemed to shift and waver while he studied them. He counted his breaths until the tightness in his chest became too great to contain.

  When he looked again, he thought he saw a darker shape in the vicinity of the trail. He thought it moved. He imagined it was a horse and rider; but he was not sure.

  The stars were everywhere. The moon added a tint of silver so delicate it was almost invisible. The Prince’s finger curled on the trigger. Surely, the shape was a horse and rider.

  Surely, it was a bush. It had not so much as twitched a leaf since the evening breeze died away.

  If he fired prematurely—worse, if he fired at nothing—he might betray his position. His tactics. His men.

  Grim as stone, he held himself still.

  The crack of a rifle in the distance resolved his doubts. Warned by the sound, the shape he watched reacted. As it turned, it became unmistakable: a man on horseback.

  At once, Prince Bifalt’s rifle spoke. The flash blinded him. But it cleared quickly. In a moment, he knew he had hit the horse, not the rider. Both of them toppled into the grass and vanished. Only the horse cried out.

  Other scouts must have reacted, must have given themselves away. He heard a shot far to his left, another closer on his right. He ignored them. Swalish and Vinsid had more experience than he did. Elgart and Klamath were more accurate. None of them were fools. As fast as he could through the whipping grass, the stiff bracken, the Prince sprinted toward the place where his target had fallen.

  In his own ears, he sounded like surge, like the crash of heavy seas or the pound of a waterfall. Every stride announced his coming. At any instant, an arrow would sprout from his chest, and his quest would be done.

  Instinctively, he flung himself to the side, rolled heavily, and came up on his knees with his rifle aimed. Urgency and sudden movement sharpened his vision. Star-etched in the night, the darker shape of a man fled along the wain’s back trail.

  For the second time on this journey—the second time in his life—Prince Bifalt shot a man in the back.

  Heartbeats later, another rifle fired. After that, silence. The Prince heard nothing except his own breathing.

  He counted backward. Including his own, there had been six shots. Five scouts? Were they all dead? Had the Amikans truly sent five? If he had been their commander, he would not have risked so many. No more than three? One should have been enough. The wain was easy to find.

  Why had the Amikans sent five scouts? Were they that desperate? Or did they have some new surprise waiting for him, a danger he had not foreseen?

  Hells! Had his foes outwitted him again?

  Still holding his rifle to his shoulder, Prince Bifalt trotted back toward the wain.

  Captain Swalish joined him along the way. The Captain was grinning fiercely. For an instant, moonlight glistened faintly on his teeth. He had done more than kill a scout. He had captured the Amikan’s horse. Led by its reins, the beast followed Swalish at the Prince’s side.

  Prince Bifalt set his teeth on the inside of his cheek so that he would not ask aloud, Why did they send so many?

  Klamath appeared, an incarnation of moon- and starlight. “One, Highness,” he reported, whispering. Glancing at the Captain’s new mount, he added, “The horse ran.”

  The Prince said nothing.

  As they neared the wain, Vinsid caught up with them. Breathing hard, he panted, “I felled one, Highness, but I am not sure of him. I could not find a body. He may have crawled away.”

  “His horse?” asked Captain Swalish.

  “Gon
e,” replied Vinsid. “It panicked when he fell.”

  “Then he will not crawl far enough to harm us,” declared the Captain.

  Together, they reached the wain. Like the Prince himself, his men smelled of gunpowder in the motionless air. But there was also a pang of blood.

  Elgart’s return distracted him momentarily. The lean guardsman reported success. “A long shot, Highness. I would not have chanced it, but he was moving away.”

  Prince Bifalt shook his head. He did not understand. Why had the Amikans sent five men to scout an obvious trail?

  Suddenly, Captain Swalish whispered, “Highness! The oxen. They are gone.”

  “What?” The Prince whirled to look.

  By starlight, he saw the traces lying limp in the grass, the yokes empty.

  The sight smote his heart. The beasts had disappeared. Set free—or taken.

  While visions of Amikans leading oxen into the night spun in Prince Bifalt’s head, Captain Swalish demanded, “The teamsters?”

  Yes, the teamsters. Why had they not called out? Had they been killed in their sleep? All of them?

  Had they aided the Amikans? Were they as false as Slack?

  He would have staked his oath on them.

  Klamath was already crouching to peer under the wain. “Highness!” he croaked. “Come!”

  Three strides took Prince Bifalt to Klamath’s side. When he dropped to his hands and knees, the cloying metal scent of blood filled his nose.

  Under the wain, two men lay where there should have been three. The nearer was Hught. A cut gaped across his throat. Blood drenched the grass under his head; but it no longer pulsed from his wound. He was dead.

  The other man carried the bow and wore the garments of an Amikan: the orange headband, the orange scabbard.

  Elgart had run to the far side of the wain. As he dragged the body out, Prince Bifalt hastened to examine the Amikan.