Never forget the shield is an active element, not passive like armor. The warmaster's remembered voice curled through her mind.
She edged her target up, a tiny shifting that would input into the other fighter's awareness and influence his strategy. He came in quickly, blade edge curving up for the angle of her jaw. It was a feint, to draw the shield to the area of sensitivity he had sensed. The ax looped over, down, back to the left, then struck horizontally as he shifted his hands and drove the spike in a line that would have ended in her gut.
The man had potential, she mused. Perhaps he would be reborn a Kommanz war-horse, or even a zh'ulda, and have a chance to realize it.
The ax fanned by. And her shieldboss punched out in a straight line, into his mouth. There was a hard smack, and a sound like sticks crunching. The axblow lost force, and she was inside the curve of danger now anyway. She caught the shaft of the ax on the guard of her saber; the force was still enough to shock her hand, but she held it and pinned the weapon down. She used it as a fulcrum for her own movement; her left leg straightened, driving her forward like a hydraulic piston; her right knee smashed upward, driving the hinged cover of her greave into his groin. And the shield struck again, upward this time, the metal-shod edge whipping up into his jaw. Bone broke, and shattered teeth were driven agonizingly together. Blood sprayed out of the corners of his mouth, and he spasmed backward, arms flung wide and body locked rigid as the automatic bend toward the savage pain in his crotch was balanced by the blow under his chin.
Shkai'ra let him put a little distance between them, hugged the shield to her, and lunged, in a perfect line from left heel through locked wrist to point. It went through the leather with a slight hesitation, through wool and linen and hard belly muscle, a familiar soft, heavy resistance. She held the thrust until the point slid out beside his spine, the blade grating on a vertebra, then withdrew with a vicious wrenching twist to open the arteries and let the lifeblood out.
"Uhhhhhhhh!" the man grunted at the chill shock gliding through his gut. He put his hands to the bubbling redness, felt a soft give he knew was a severed loop of intestine. The cold seemed to knock the pain-haze from his brain for a second. The withdrawal had jerked him almost face to face with his killer, and for a brief instant he was sickened by the sudden flare of orgasmic pleasure in her eyes. Then he crumpled to the ground, the noises from his broken mouth growing louder as pain seeped through shock.
Shkai'ra stood cleaning her saber and watching the awareness of death seeping into his eyes as he lay making the little animal sounds of agony. He might live for a few minutes more, but deep stab wounds in the gut were always fatal, even without heavy bleeding. She sighed with a heavy, sleepy satisfaction that gave a feeling of warm relaxation, then forced herself back to alertness.
She was wiping the last flecks from the difficult areas around the guard when the first warriors came trotting back; if you let blood run under the guard… well, blood was salt water and the tang could corrode unseen. She was not one of the ancient heroes, or a god, to have steel that did not rust.
"Hai, how went it, killers?" she called, running gloved fingers down the edge to check for nicks and sheathing the blade without glancing down.
"Good at first, Chiefkin," the squadleader said. "We caught them before they could disengage, and they turned their backs." That was the signal for massacre in any battle on foot. "Not more than twoscore, anyway, and hardly a match for us, even the ones with some armor."
She pricked up her ears at that. "Then they dropped the trees on us and attacked again. We regrouped and sent 'em back bewailing their dead. Banner-leader Kh'ait is bringing up the rear; we go to our mounts."
But he did not meet her eyes, seemed to look anywhere but at her face. Idly, he kicked at the fallen Minztan's kneecap; the body jerked.
She waved them onward, worried. They had not sounded as exultant as they should; quiet, almost subdued, rather.
When the last came up the Bannerleader was being helped between two troopers, grunting every time his right foot touched earth. Behind came others, wounded but still able to walk, and two pairs carrying bodies. Shkai'ra wondered at their silence; a Kommanz zh'ulda was not likely to be upset by a corpse. Then she saw what they bore.
The head of the first rested on his chest. The neck had not been cut through: the ragged edges and gobbets of hanging flesh, the twisted and broken laces of the gorget, made it clear that the head had been twisted off.
"Jh'unnd Zaizun's-kin," Kh-ait said thickly. "Always a reckless one." He jerked his cropped red beard at the body. "In the van of the pursuit, that one. He and Bh'uda ran ahead out of sight. We heard him cry out and found… that, and tracks… bigger than human feet could be, Chiefkin."
She bent over the second body and hissed in awe; the whole side of the chest had been crushed, the stiff fiberglass-backed layers of leather shattered and the bone and flesh beneath pulped to a soggy mass.
"It's what took the sentries, isn't it, Chiefkin?" he asked. "The woodswalker." He looked around at the woods with hatred. "Zaik, these trees! They're crushing us!"
Shkai'ra did not think he meant the Minztan trick. She grabbed him by the nasal of his helmet, an iron calm upon her. "Whatever's out there can only kill you," she said coldly. "Are you a killer, or a lamb bleating for the ewe? Are you afraid to die?"
For a moment he stared at her with the eyes of a stricken beast, then clamped control, shook his head, and straightened.
"Get back to the column," she snapped. "Kh'ait, they may try to punch through to the comes again. Watch for it."
For long moments she stood. The weight of the forest pressed down on her helmet, until she wanted to run screaming, to burst out on the steppe and feel space around her again. Out where the demons were ones she knew. At length she won herself back to an attitude of acceptance; what would be, would be. She would be a Mek Kermak still. She looked down at the form of the Minztan, using his body as a focus for the Warrior's Way, reaching back into her mind.
"I hate," she whispered. "I hate you all. I hate this shitpile forest, and the incompetents I have to command, and the useless twitching spook-pusher…"
Her voice sank into a singsong half-chant, and she felt the familiar black tide of strength filling her. She knelt and tore off his helm, drawing her knife and gripping his hair. "And I hate you," she hissed, as she prepared for the ritual scalping. "But I live, you die. You go, not me. I'm strong now, not weak. No one will hurt me again; I'll kill and kill, until the gods come to eat the world. And I'll dance in the flames…"
The man's eyes opened. He looked up into a face bent of shape, lips peeled back, lines of spittle hanging down. He jerked, and a degree of humanness returned to the glazed gray eyes. He was clear-headed now, with the odd lucid calm that sometimes comes in the moments before final blackout, but speech was an enormous effort.
'"Plains… dirt," he said. Shkai'ra forced her breathing to slow. Her left hand stayed in his hair; better to wait for the moment before the scalping, for this one had fought well enough to make a strong ghost.
"Aye," the thin voice continued, mushy past torn lips and broken teeth. "Kill me… but I saw. Snowbrother comes for you… she summons well. Never leave… woods…"
"Zoweitz eat you forever!" she shrieked, springing erect. Control snapped; she trampled and hacked, screaming, until a limp pile sagged redly to her blows, bootleather pounding into it with the sound of a hammer on wet liver.
Presently she stopped, ashamed of letting fear drive her. She gripped a lock of the hair, traced a circle on the scalp with the point of her knife, and ripped the clump of hair loose with a quick jerk. Shkai'ra stood over the body, puzzled. Fear she felt; well, it was no great disgrace to fear demons, any more than to fear thunder. But she was… she groped for the word… yes, sad. Shaking her head, she turned to go.
14
"We made a mistake," Narritanni said.
The remnants of the Minztan force huddled together under a deadfall of interl
aced trunks. There were thirty here, none unwounded, but all could still run and fight; those too badly hurt to move had had to be left for the Kommanz. Some might have hidden themselves. The snow would have helped; it was still falling, flakes swirling around under their shelter, falling down straight and thick and fleecy. Leafturn stood just outside, motionless, as the flakes hissed into their small and carefully shielded fire. There were a half-dozen other parties this size, fallen back on the prepared hiding places.
"Mistake!" spat the one whom unspoken consensus had made leader of the remaining Garnetseat villagers. "More than thirty of us dead, and only that many of the prisoners freed! How many came back from the fight on the ice? Five, count them, and you wouldn't send more of those precious 'soldiers' of yours. No, you kept them safe in the woods."
Narritanni raised his head. "For the second attack." he said flatly. That had been a fiasco—although they had dropped more trees across the Kommanz pursuit, and the plains-dwellers had been visibly nervous about scattering in the woods.
There were shadows like purple bruises under his eyes, and his shield arm ached to the bone, pain deep in joint and marrow. Vomit rose to his throat at the sight of the woman's face. He did not think that the other one would have spoken thus; that one had had at least the wit to recognize his own ignorance. But he had gone missing in the retreat through the woods; his scalp probably dangled frozen on a plains-dweller's weapon belt.
"Yes, mistake," he said. "Mistakes. To try it at all, we let sentiment override reason; it was too soon. And I told you, I told you that everything depended on getting through fast to the bank and holding the bulk of their force in play. A few minutes more and most of the slaves would have escaped, and all the attack party. But you couldn't keep up the pace, with the Circle itself turning for you."
"And you held your people back at the riverbank too—"
"To cover your retreat. If we hadn't been there, and ready, none of you would have gotten away when the westerners came up the slope."
There was a stir and mutter from the villagers; most could see the sense in that. The memory of the fight, bright blades and the squealing warcry at their heels, was still fresh. But the moment he had said it, Narritanni wished it back; he could see it in their eyes, how the thought daunted them. And the losses were shocking: a fifth of the band, a tenth of the adults in Garnetseat. There would be more than grief come spring. There would be hunger, for want of those hands and skills.
And nearly one in three of his trained rangers. That was far more serious; not just that those eager youngsters had been friends and surrogate family to him, that they had trusted his word, but their value to the New Way had been great. Suitable recruits were scarce. So few of those who had the desire had natural aptitude, and the cost of training and equipping and supporting them through the year was crippling. And, too, the Kommanz now knew that they existed.
He sank back against the log, hands resting on the long bone hilt of his sword. The desire for sleep was like fire playing on his nerves; nausea burned acid at the back of his throat, and he could feel the cold dragging at his body's inner reserves.
The villager had heard the sound in her hearthfolk's voices, and responded with a sneer she hoped would divert hostility back to the Seeker's troops.
"We made the mistakes, then."
"No." They all turned in surprise; it was always a shock when the Wise Man spoke, as if a tree or rock had done so. "Snowbrother aids us; the westerners are in fear of It." He withdrew his presence; not physically, but they could sense he would not speak again. He turned to watch the night. They were thankful for that, knowing what might run there.
From somewhere, Narritanni found the strength to rise. He knew the advantage of height and used it to the full, looming over his opponent. Red firelight flickered on his stained and battered armor, cast highlights from below over the curves and planes of his face, threw his eyes into shadow. He felt anger coiling like a snake under his breastbone.
"Think, then, if you can. If the Circle and the Harmony do not flow with our mission, how could the Snowbrother fight for us? Is it misfortune that the Initiate survived, and can call to It from the enemy's camp? It is a symbol of the link between humans and the living earth, sharing the Natures of beast and human."
Shock rode their faces, to hear holy things spoken of thus openly, but they could not deny the truth of it; had not the Enlightened One said so? Heads nodded gravely. Narritanni flung out a gloved hand, to the Wise Man, the night, the presence that dwelt in it. Huge it lay beyond the circle of their firelight. In the little villages, in hunter's camps, in solitary vigil, they had lived with that immensity all their days. It was for that timeless unity they fought.
"Next time, we use that aid properly." He could feel the conviction behind his words, knew he would rally them. "Didn't the Wise Man tell us? The raiders are afraid of It, not us. Next time we go to them behind It, not before, at night, in the darkness, after fear has had more time with them. And not one of the barbarians will return to the grasslands."
The discontented villager sprang to her feet also. "Next time?" she yelped. "Next time? When you can kill us all? No. No. Tomorrow I and my kinmates— those you've left alive with your warmaking—we go back to our homes. And I think some at least of those here will return with us."
"That would be an offense against our people, the Seeker's oath, and the Way of the Circle."
"So you say. No soul can walk another's Way."
"So, then I will save you from your own misjudgment—" the soldier continued, sadness overcoming anger on his haggard face. His sword rasped out of its sheath and flicked forward. The tip suddenly rested on the woman's throat, just a tensing of his wrist away from the jugular.
She gaped in astonishment, rolling eyes down in an unmoving face to stare at the edged metal. She could feel it dimpling her skin, cold and hard, with the unmistakable about-to-cut sensation of something very sharp. Her mind refused to believe the information her body presented. Minztans had no government, had never had; their laws were enforced by public opinion. Force was used, with extreme reluctance, only against foreigners and the very rare violent criminal. Strong disagreements were settled by one party or the other moving away; there had always been room.
There was nothing she could say to the sight of a naked sword in the hand of a fellow traveler on the Way, prepared to imperil the Harmony by infringing on the integrity of another.
"Mikkika," he said. His second in command looked up, face pale but set. "Alert the watches tonight. If this one"—he jabbed very slightly—"or any other tries to leave, to desert"—he used a foreign word perforce—"call me. If I'm asleep, kill them yourself."
Shaken, she nodded wordlessly. He sheathed the weapon again and continued more gently. "Believe me, I do this only for the good of us all. For the Minztan folk. Don't you see, we must?"
The other gathered herself. When she spoke again the petulant whine was out of her voice, replaced by a curious dignity. "So you may think, Narritanni Smaoth's-kin. But if you think you can save what is by breaking and remelting it, you are no craftsman, and a fool, and I think your feet walk a different Way from any I would choose." She glanced out at the Adept. He stood silent and immobile; the Harmony was also the wolf in winter and inexorable decay. She turned away and sat down, wrapping herself in her bedroll.
Narritanni did likewise, but his open eyes reflected the fire for long and long.
Shkai'ra rose from the corpse of the prisoner, scrubbing blood from her hands with snow. The Minztan had kept them busy for hours, not so much from hardihood, but because his wounds put limits on what they could do. It was difficult to further pain a man with bone showing in half a dozen places, and there was always the risk of snuffing out life too soon. Added to that was the fact that Shkai'ra alone of them spoke really fluent Minztan, and she was less confident of her command of the tongue than she had been.
And the man had resisted cleverly, using his own weakness, blood loss, shock t
o ride out the pain; several times he had almost succeeded in throwing himself into trance, had been roused only by holding his mouth and nose underwater. Also, he had already known his death was imminent; that made mutilation, the slow irreparable damage to one organ after another, considerably less effective in breaking the will and mind. Altogether, it had been unsatisfactory; he had spoken a little, and the shaman had been able to pick up somewhat more from the disintegrating mind, but…
And I didn't enjoy it, she thought, puzzled. "Well, so much for that," Shkai'ra said aloud. It had not even been very exhilarating, simply messy and boring.
"We know they've loosed a woods demon on us, yes," the shaman broke in.
"And that the sun will rise tomorrow," Eh'rik added, and looked up into the blackness above them. Snow pelted into his chinbeard and caught on his eyebrows, making a winter troll of him in the hissing, popping glow of the pinewood fire. Camp hearths only ten meters away were red glows muffled in white. "Best we stay up and check on that. He might have lied."
The shaman stalked away. "But this thing about the Minztans' setting up standing warbands," the warmaster went on, "this Seeker, this New Way, that's serious.
The High Senior must know, and the Kommand'ahan in Granfor."
"I have every intention of telling them, when we get back," Shkai'ra said.
"If," one of the Banner-leaders grunted.
Shkai'ra whirled on him. He fell back a pace, crouched, relaxed as he saw her beat down the murderous flare of killing-lust. You never knew when someone would go ahrappan, especially in a time like this.
"The day of our deaths is woven by Zailo," she said icily. "But I think there's a good chance some of us will make it."
"Who can fight witchcraft?" The words were heavy with dread, The wind hooted around them, laden with hungry ghosts, the ghosts of the slain, longing for the hell-wind of their slayers' deaths to blow them free into the afterlife and rebirth.
"We can, the children of the gods! Do you think the Mighty Ones can't aid us here, or that branches can hide the Sun? If live bark-eaters can't keep us from slaughtering them, then say boo to their thin ghosts, and their tame spook too. The Sun sees all the lands."