The Cache

  “The Skego galleys are less than half a mile away!”

  “They must be working their slaves until they foam at the mouth,” said Lezpet. “If we can keep ahead of them long enough, we can tire them out.”

  She called for volunteers to station themselves at the entrance to the valley. Every man raised his sword to indicate his willingness. Benoni was among them. Not that he was so willing to fight what would have had to be a fatal battle—under ordinary circumstances— but that he felt that he could fight his way out with the Hairy Men’s weapon and then, having been left behind by the Pwez, desert with a good conscience.

  But she did not pick him among the two hundred she chose as a Leonidean force.

  A hundred and fifty stationed themselves behind rocks piled across the face of the entrance. Another fifty climbed to the top of both sides of the valley, there to shoot arrows and roll rocks down upon the Skego. The Pwez, after saluting the valiants who would stay behind, led the rest through the valley. This ran for three miles between ever narrowing and steeper cliffs. Their progress was slowed down because of the muddy and slippery soil. Suddenly, the bluffs fell away, and the open road and the river were before them.

  Also before them were Skego. On foot.

  The Pwez halted her horse. “The galleys got here first,” she said. “Some, anyway. We’ll have to charge, try to break through them.”

  Benoni, calculating their chances, saw that they would not be able to present a broad front to the Skego. Coming out of the narrow valley, they had no chance to spread out before running into the Skego. And archers were climbing the sides of the hills and up trees.

  Benoni, hoping that no one would notice him because they were all eyeing the Skego, pulled one of the weapons out of the knapsack. He put it in his left hand and held his sword in the other. When they charged, he would exchange the two.

  The Usspika said, “You must go back to the middle of the column, Your Excellency.

  Almost all of those in the front are bound to die. We cannot take a chance that you will be killed. Or worse, taken prisoner. The heart would go out of the men. And the Skego might then capture the treasure of the Hairy Men.”

  Lezpet hesitated a moment. Then she said, “I do not like to act like a cowardly woman, cousin. But, for the good of Kaywo, I will do as you say.”

  Benoni, Joel, and Zhem, as part of her bodyguard, rode back with her to the middle of the column. Benoni was pleased. Being surrounded by so many people, all intent on the Skego, would make it easier to use the weapon.

  The trumpeter blew the signal to charge. Screaming, “Kaywo! Kaywo!” the column lurched forward, then began to pick up speed. By the time the first of the Kaywo left the valley, the entire force was at a gallop.

  The Skego stood massed just outside the entrance, a solid body of bristling spears. And others were hurrying from the river to join them as swiftly as the late-arriving galleys could be beached and their soldiers could leap overboard.

  The first of the Kaywo went down, arrows sticking from their bodies or the flesh of their horses. Those behind leaped over them or also went down as their horses were caught in the flailing legs of the fallen. Then, the Kaywo had rammed into the spears of the Skego, fallen transfixed on the front ranks. Behind them came the swinging swords of their fellows, and the Skego were falling, too.

  Just before getting to the mouth of the valley, Benoni urged his horse to one side and slowed it. He transferred his sword to his left; the hand weapon, to his right. He raised the device, sighted along its barrel at a group of Skego running up from the bank. And pressed on the button.

  The weapon recoiled slightly. A cloud of smoke and a loud noise came from the group at which he had aimed.

  Heads and arms and broken bodies hurled out of the smoke. When the smoke cleared, there were at least twenty torn bodies. And the men near them were standing as if paralyzed, not knowing what had happened.

  Benoni was awed at the results and somewhat scared, too. However, he aimed again, this time at the edge of the melee, where a number of Skego were trying to get close enough to use their spears. Another cloud of smoke and a bang like a giant clapping his hands. A dozen torn-apart bodies.

  The noises had had one unfortunate effect. It had frightened the horses close to the explosion so that they reared and upset many of their riders. That could not be helped. Any more than it could be helped when he fired a third time and blew apart some of the Kaywo along with a much larger number of Skego.

  Now, he aimed over the heads of the group at a galley that had just beached and was disgorging its cargo of fifty soldiers. The explosion took place too far from the boat to do anything but scare the soldiers. He lowered the sights a trifle and pressed the button again. This time, the front half of the boat blew apart. He turned his attention to the rocks and the trees concealing the Skego archers. He held the button down and saw one cloud after another appear, and rocks, bodies, and trees fly apart. And the archers, throwing down their bows, ran as if Seytuh himself were after them.

  When he had released pressure on the button, it was only because the handweapon had ceased functioning. It was the work of less than a minute to open the lid and place twenty more cylinders within the revolving chamber. There was no sign of the spent cylinders; he supposed that they had been self-immolated when they did their work.

  He put his sword in its scabbard and urged his horse into a full gallop. By then, the Skego had retreated, and the survivors of the Kaywo were riding down the road, the three wagons among them. When Benoni came out of the valley, the others were far ahead of him. The Skego, seeing a lone rider, ran to intercept him.

  Two shots killed a dozen of the foremost; the others turned and ran in the opposite direction as swiftly as they had come towards him. And he was away from them.

  It did not take him long to catch up. The Kaywo had stopped and were staring at a barricade of logs on the road ahead of them.

  “You got away!” said Zhem exultantly. “I thought you were killed.”

  “Who threw that up?” said Benoni, pointing at the barricade.

  “Wild-men. L’wan from some of the villages around here. But they wouldn’t have done it on their own. We’ve seen some men in helmets with red horsehair plumes. Skego agents.”

  Benoni urged his horse closer to the Pwez, and he said to Zhem, “Why don’t we charge them?”

  “The wild-men outnumber us two to one. Must be over a thousand.”

  Benoni pointed at the river and said, “Here come some more Skego gallies.”

  The Pwez was talking to a colonel, second-in-command now that the Usspika had fallen. “I do not know what caused those explosions,” she was saying. “Perhaps they were lightning bolts thrown by the First to help us, as you say. But, if they were, why doesn’t the First destroy that barricade? And, with it, the savages?”

  “Perhaps he will, when we charge,” said the colonel.

  “There must be some other explanation,” said Lezpet. Maybe they had a new weapon, but it wasn’t tested sufficiently, and it exploded before it was supposed to.”

  “We have to go through the L’wan or around them,” said the colonel. “The Skego will be beaching their gallies soon.”

  “It’d be suicide to go through the forest. There must be a L’wan behind every tree. No, it’s through them.”

  The bugler was dead, and no one had picked up his horn. So, the Pwez gave the signal, and the five hundred charged. Benoni, riding just behind the Pwez, fired past her. The logs of the barricade flew out of the smoke. With them, pieces of bodies.

  The deafening blasts, however, frightened the horses, and they stopped and reared or bolted off into the forest. The horses that kept running straight ahead smashed into those that had stopped. Then, if the L’wan had charged, they would have caught the Kaywo in a very bad situation. But the L’wan were too busy running for their lives into the forest.

  By the time the horses had been settled down and order restored, seven Skego gallies h
ad beached.

  “Take the boats!” screamed Lezpet. “If we can capture some gallies, we’ll have a better chance of getting away! No more ambushes!”

  She spurred her horse towards the men jumping from the boats into the shallow water. The others followed her. All except Benoni.

  He rode to the river’s edge and aimed at the five gallies just coming up to help the others already beached. Now, he kept the button pressed and corrected his aim according to the gouts of water from the misses. Three of the boats blew up before he had to reload. Two of the survivors rammed their prows into the soft mud of the bank, and the Skego climbed out. Benoni finished reloading, sank the third, and then blasted the group assembling for battle array. There were a hundred of them when he started shooting. After the smoke cleared, fifty were permanently out of action. The rest were running towards the forest.

  He emptied the weapon at them to stimulate their panic, then reloaded and replaced it in his knapsack. With sword in hand, he steered his horse into the melee.

  It was bloody work for five minutes before the surviving Skego broke. They tried to shove their galleys back into the river; two boats did get away and began floating downstream with only a few aboard. The other boats were saved; the would-be refugees were cut down in the shallow waters alongside their craft.

  “It’s too late, Your Excellency!” said the colonel. He was pale, clutching a fountaining gash on his right arm, and swaying on the saddle. “See! They’ll be on us before we can get a good start!”

  Lezpet looked at the twenty galleys speeding towards them, and she frowned. What the colonel said was true. They could get aboard the captured boats. But, by the time they could start rowing, their avenue of escape would be cut off.

  “It’s too bad we lost so much time and so many men trying to take these,” she said. “So be it. Perhaps the First will intercede some more to save us.”

  Benoni hesitated for a minute. Should he tell her the truth? If he did, the Kaywo could unload the weapons from the wagons, charge the weapons with the cylinders, and sink all twenty of the Skego craft. But then Kaywo would be the inevitable conquerer of Eyzonuh. And Lezpet would execute him for not having told her when he first found out the weapon’s use.

  No, better to wait and see what would happen.

  “Let’s ride the river road,” said Lezpet. “Perhaps, the First will not run out of thunderbolts.”

  “Why not trust the First to sink those ships for us?” said the colonel.

  Lezpet opened her mouth to answer but gasped instead. The colonel had fainted and fallen off his horse.

  A soldier dismounted to examine him. He looked up and said, “I think he broke his neck, Your Excellency. He’s dead.”

  They rode off at a canter, for their horses were tiring. No L’wan or Skego agents appeared to bar their way. Benoni, suddenly seeing how they could escape, pulled his horse to a stop. He got off and pretended to be examining the hoof of his horse, as if it were injured. Apparently, his ruse worked, for the others rode by. Zhem had not noticed that he had stopped; he was riding with the others, close to Lezpet.

  As soon as the last of the column had disappeared around a bend in the road, Benoni led his horse into the woods. Near the bank, he tied the animal to a bush and then walked to a tree close to the bank. The Skego galleys came opposite him just as he reached the tree, and they were not twenty yards from him. He knelt by the tree, steadied the weapon against the trunk, and pressed the button.

  One after the other, the galleys blew up. He reloaded and re-emptied the weapon until the last of the boats broke in half and sank.

  Benoni paused a moment before placing more cylinders in the revolving chamber. His plan had worked out so far. Now, he could catch up with the others and tell them that the First had sunk the remaining boats. They could return and board the galleys they had left on the bank. Unless something unforeseen happened, nothing would bar them from rowing down the L’wan and to the Siy.

  He looked at the last of the boats as its stern turned over before sinking and at the hundreds of men struggling in the swift current. Most of them would drown, for they wore armor. Owning this weapon, he thought, was almost like being a god. Twenty boats and a thousand men destroyed in less than sixty seconds!

  But, what kind of a world would it be if everyone had a weapon like this? Then, a great warrior would be less than a man, for a half-grown woman could destroy him merely by pressing a button. Would it not be best if the weapons were to disappear forever?

  Still, this moment could never be taken away from him. He was if not a god . . .

  For a second, he could not understand what had happened. The shock drained away, and he knew that that was a spear with its head half-buried in the tree and the shaft vibrating. It had come so close that the head had burned his arm yet not drawn blood.

  He leaped to his feet, whirling as he did so, the weapon coming up in his hand, pointing at the unknown enemy.

  Unknown no longer, Joel Vahndert stood not less than fifty yards away. He was drawing his arm back for another try with a second javelin.

  Benoni pointed the weapon and pressed on the button. Nothing happened. He cursed as he realized that he had not reloaded the weapon. Joel threw the javelin. Benoni threw himself to one side, and the javelin whizzed through the space where he had been. Joel, drawing his sword from his scabbard, was running towards him.

  Benoni opened the little door in the back of the weapon, fumbled in his knapsack, found two cylinders, but dropped them as he tried to place both at the same time in the revolving chamber.

  There was a shout from behind Joel. Zhem appeared from the bushes. Joel whirled, saw Zhem, and kept on spinning. Evidently, he had decided that Benoni was the more dangerous. He must have seen Benoni use the weapon and must realize that, if Benoni were to load it, he was dead.

  Benoni rose and hurled the weapon at Joel’s face, striking him over the nose. Joel’s head flew back, and blood appeared over his face. But he kept on running. Benoni had time to draw his sword; Joel was like a whirlwind, striking with great force; he drove Benoni backwards.

  Benoni’s foot slipped on the mud at the edge of the bank, and he fell backwards five feet into the water. Joel poised to leap into the water after him and to strike him down before he could get up. But a dark form soared through the air and leaped on his back. Both tumbled forward into the water, went under, and came up apart.

  Benoni got to his feet and found himself waist-deep. He waded towards Joel, who still had his sword in his hand. Zhem, coming up two seconds later, was only a few feet from the much bigger man. Yet, weaponless, he leaped at him. And was caught on the ribs with the edge of Joel’s blade.

  Benoni, screaming, came up behind Joel, grabbed him around the neck with one arm, and punched with his fist into the small of his back.

  Joel’s breath whoofed out of him, and he tried to strike backwards, over his shoulder, at Benoni. The flat of the blade struck Benoni on the back and hurt him, but he refused to let go. Filled with the strength of his hate at Joel and with fury because he thought Zhem was dead, he reached around with his left hand. Found the open mouth, plunged his fist into the mouth, deep, deep, and closed upon the tongue.

  Joel choked, waved his arms, dropped the sword, and tried to close his mouth upon the fist. He was helpless. Strong as he was, he was in the grip of a man temporarily given superhuman force by his rage and grief.

  Benoni jerked once with a savage cry. Joel threw his hands up and fell backwards into the water as Benoni released him. He did not try to rise but floated a few feet, then sank. A great stain of blood spread out from where he had gone down. Benoni was left standing in the water, staring at the thing, so like a headless fish, in his hand.

  Finally, Benoni opened his hand and dropped the tongue into the river. He waded to Zhem, who was leaning against the bank. Zhem’s eyes were open, but they were fast becoming glazed.

  “You got him? Good,” he whispered. He slumped down and would have gone
under the surface if Benoni had not caught and held him.

  “Listen,” he murmured. “You . . . tell my people . . . I died like a . . . man?”

  “I’ll do that if I get a chance,” said Benoni. “But you aren’t dead yet.”

  “My debt. . . paid. So lo . . .”

  He slumped forward, and his heart quit beating.

  Benoni, though suddenly drained of his strength, managed to get Zhem up on the bank. He sat there, panting, wondering what to do next. Only when he heard the hooves of horses on the underbrush and the scrape of branches against armor, did he realize that all was not yet over.

  He rose to see the Pwez approaching on horseback. Behind her, the rest of Kaywo.

  Without thinking he stepped forward, picked up the fallen weapon, and reloaded it. He placed it in his belt.

  “We wondered why you three wild-men suddenly dropped out of sight,” she said. “I would not have bothered coming after you, but when I heard the explosions I got to thinking. Could the so-called intervention of the First have been you, using one of the devices we took from the Hairy Men’s ship? It did not seem likely that a simple savage could have discovered something we haven’t. However, you are not simple. After all, you were the one who found out how to enter the vessel.”

  Her face contorted and became an ugly red. “You traitor!” she screamed. “You found out how to use that thing at your belt! And you did not tell me! You were planning on taking it to the Eyzonuh!”

  “That is true,” said Benoni. “But I am no traitor. I was going to see that you got back to your country safely.”

  “Traitor! Ugly stinking wild-man!”

  She pointed at him with a shaking finger and shrilled, “Kill him! Kill him!”

  Benoni felt tired, very tired. He had had enough of blood to last him for a lifetime. And these men were brave men, great warriors. They should not have to die, here, in this alien forest, far from their homes. Especially, since they had fought so well and were so close to success.

  But he did not want to die. So, he must do what he had to do.