Foretellers (The Ydron Saga Book 3) (22 page)

“Won’t you at least take my sword?” Darva begged as Bedistai cinched the last of his saddlebags behind Chawah’s saddle.

He turned and shook his head.

“Swords are unwieldy. Shorter blades, such as these,” he touched the sheath at his hip, “are better suited to the conditions we’ll be facing. Although I’ve used one before,” he said, knowing she would recall their fight with the samanal, “it would get in the way. Much of the time, we’ll be confined to the narrow troughs that run between the hillocks. With so many men so close together, there won’t be enough room to swing a sword. That said, I would prefer to return home,” he said with a smile, adding, “to you,” as he drew her against him and kissed her.

The scabbard clattered to the ground as she reached with her arms to encircle him. When they finally paused for air, he saw she was crying. Wiping a tear from her eye, he emphasized, “I do intend to return.”

He stared into her eyes until she finally looked to meet his. She smiled, sniffed and wiped them with the back of her hand.

“I remember when I met your mother,” she said. “She told me nothing can prevent you from keeping a promise.”

“Salmeh never lies,” Bedistai admitted.

Her lips mouthed the words, “I know,” but her throat produced nothing as she choked back a sob. When she began to turn away to conceal her emotions, he held her shoulder and turned her back toward him. Kissing her, this time gently on the cheek, he said, “I promise I’ll come home.”

Then he smiled, stepped away, and leapt into the saddle, reining Chawah toward the hunters who made up his pod. Although he could have resumed command as soon as he had rejoined them, he had decided to keep Ortok in charge. It was important he do so, he decided, because removing the man from his post at such a critical hour could have an undermining effect on morale, especially if one were to attribute the act to a lack of confidence. He wanted no such misinterpretation because, if Ortok were to issue a command in the heat of battle, it was essential the others obey without hesitation.

When he had first installed him as pod leader, there had been no second choice. Ortok was fearless, but never reckless, judicious without hesitancy. After transitioning into manhood only five years before, he had consistently proven himself an almost peerless hunter, second only to Bedistai, as well as someone blessed with impeccable judgment. Ortok’s ability to quickly assess a situation and its proper response demonstrated greater maturity than any other Bedistai might have chosen. And while he lacked Bedistai’s imposing physique—his frame was still filling in, a youth in transition—his strong arms and shoulders coupled with a broad chest and back gave him the ability to handle any physical challenge. Those qualities allowed Bedistai to return as Ortok’s second, with no thought to altering the arrangement. And it was because of this decision that Bedistai found himself compelled to consult with him about an unprecedented change in protocol.

“I’d like to include Dorman,” he said.

“You know we can’t do that,” Ortok objected. “He won’t pass into manhood until the warm months arrive.”

“If we don’t include him, he may not survive until then. None of us may. And besides,” Bedistai added, “he won’t really be part of the fighting.”

Ortok cast an uncomprehending look, so Bedistai explained, “What I have in mind will keep him so far removed from the fighting there’s almost no chance he’ll be hurt. It’s the unique skill he possesses that will provide invaluable assistance and, at the same time, keep him out of harm’s way. While the endaths will give us an advantage, Dorman’s skill will add to it immeasurably.”

Once Bedistai had explained his intentions, Ortok could not help but agree. Dorman was thrilled when they informed him.

… … … … …

It was daybreak and Mostoon’s hunters had positioned themselves midway between Lake Ossan and a point roughly forty miles south of danBrad, near the river where Bedistai and Darva had encountered the supply wagons. Hunters from elsewhere in the region dispersed themselves at intervals around and behind those from Mostoon. Each had brought a bow, twenty-five to thirty arrows, a hunting knife the length of his thigh, but nothing by way of armor. While this was far less than most soldiers carried and left them more exposed, the Haroun believed by being so unencumbered they could respond faster and with greater mobility. If they were to need additional weapons, they reasoned, they could acquire them from Harad’s dead and wounded.

They had encamped in this hollow the night before, dining on dried meat and fruit, knowing that the smoke from cook fires would alert the enemy. After setting a watch, they had retired early. Now, shortly before dawn, while the sky was still taking on color, their endaths nudged them awake. They barely had time to take swigs from their water skins before the sounds of men’s voices brought them to attention. Ortok mounted his endath, and the rest followed suit, gathering their ground covers before hurriedly rolling and strapping them behind their saddles. While any seasoned hunter would recognize the matted grass and crushed leaves as clear signs of the prior night’s encampment, the Haroun believed Harad’s soldiers would be oblivious to all but the obvious.

They had taken shelter between four small, scrub-covered hillocks, each of which rose to no more than eight feet in height. Now, with danger so near, the Haroun lie prostrate in their saddles. If they were seated upright, each endath’s stature would position them higher than the hill tops.

As the enemies’ voices grew louder, the Haroun grew increasingly attentive. When the endaths clustered near one mound’s eastern face, it told them the soldiers would emerge around its western side. Since the depression was too small to permit six endaths and hunters to maneuver, it was essential they clear this tiny battlefield at once. Ortok motioned to four of the riders to circle the hill, remaining diametrically opposite the approaching soldiers, and indicated with hand signals that he and Bedistai would position themselves just beneath the mound’s summit. While the quartet of riders began circling, Bedistai and Ortok leapt from their mounts. Understanding their desire, Chawah and Ortok’s endath, Visha, ran off to find concealment.

A flash of light caught Bedistai’s eye. Ortok apparently noticed it as well, because he was staring toward a falo’an tree a little more than fifty yards distant. High in its branches, the light flashed again and a closer glance revealed Dorman.

Even the strongest Haroun find falo’an trees almost unclimbable. A mature tree can soar to more than two hundred fifty feet with its bottommost branches one hundred or more above the ground. The only way to scale such a giant requires the climber to wedge his hands into creases in the bark while placing the flat of his feet against its surface. While few could ascend to any significant height, Dorman was different. From his earliest years, he could often be found moving freely through the forest’s canopy. He was there now with an unimpeded view, so despite the Haroun proviso only adults went to war, Dorman’s unique vantage placed him well away from danger with places to hide from even the ablest archer.

The light flashed again.

At the time they were leaving, Bedistai had presented the youth with the square of polished silver Darva sometimes used to study her reflection. While Bedistai never understood that particular purpose, he saw at once how the square could be employed as a kind of signaling device.

After a series of flashes indicating he had spotted troops nearby, Dorman paused, then flashed twice to indicate two additional units approaching. A rapid flicker indicated their proximity. He stopped flashing signals and raised his arms overhead, bringing them down in two slicing motions aimed a little to their right, then directly at them. This placed one unit somewhat toward the northeast and the second at their rear. They turned to look, but saw nothing and Bedistai smiled at the intuition that had placed Dorman in his aerie.

As the first soldiers appeared, grumbling loudly among themselves, Bedistai was struck by their lack of awareness. They appeared to have received little or no training and most kept their eyes fastened on the ground or else focused on a comrade. He also thought it odd that their armor lacked uniformity. While some was fashioned from bronze, many wore leather protective gear and their weapons appeared to have been selected at random. Some carried pikes, but many others held spears, and the swords at their sides appeared to have come from a scrap heap of discarded weapons. When one soldier had the wits to look up and study his surroundings, Ortok and Bedistai scampered from view and peered over the crest.

Bedistai put the enemy’s number at eight: an easy match. He looked for his companions and saw the quartet of Haroun riders safely ensconced at the hillock’s rear. Ortok tossed a pebble that caromed off the ground and landed between two of them. When they looked up, Ortok motioned them to split into pairs and circle in opposite directions. Two moved around the northern face while the second pair backtracked to the south. Their reappearance cued Bedistai and Ortok, who unsheathed their knives and dove onto two of the approaching soldiers. Clamping their mouths with one hand and slicing their windpipes with the other, they silenced the pair as the rest of the pod came around. A stroke of the lead endaths’ tails swept the feet from under the remaining six and the Haroun, not waiting for them to recover, leapt from their saddles and dispatched them at once.

One stocky hunter named Tuvah, rose from his kill and sat on his victim’s chest. Wiping his blade on the man’s tunic, he grinned.

“This won’t be half as hard as I thought,” he announced, smiling at his pod members.

A spear struck the ground inches from his thigh, erasing Tuvah’s smile. Arrows flew and Tuvah rolled off, using the corpse for cover.

“Soldiers!” he cried.

Holding the arc of his bow parallel to the ground, Tuvah released two shafts in rapid succession. Bedistai rose to his feet and ran at the nearest new attacker. Startled by so many corpses and the Haroun rising to engage him, he had only begun reaching for his sword when Bedistai dove into him, driving his knife beneath the man’s breastplate.

With no more time to waste on this one, Bedistai raised his head and rolled aside just as a battle axe bit into the soldier’s armor. With a swipe of his legs, Bedistai scissored the axman’s own out from under him. They buckled and Bedistai buried his blade into the axman’s back. Another body landed inches away and Bedistai glanced up to see Ortok standing over him. Extricating his feet, he rose and saw more soldiers arriving. As they poured into the depression, he and his Haroun brothers met the new arrivals, slaying Harad’s untrained soldiers with reflexes trained to respond to the fleetest of beats.

A few moments later, as they were sorting themselves out, Bedistai appraised the bodies and saw that none of the dead were Haroun. A few were still in their death throes. And while all of the hunters had been bloodied, they all seemed to be sound, not even wounded.

Ortok grimaced as he wiped blood from his blade, then jerked his head at the last one he had slain.

“I don’t have much taste for killing children,” he said.

Bedistai looked and saw the face of a youth perhaps two years younger than Dorman.

“They’re capable of taking lives,” Ortok continued, “but I still don’t relish taking theirs.” He shook his head and gave a chuckle. “I wonder where Harad recruited them. Look at the gray hair on that one. Do you see the callouses on his hands? I’ll swear he has spent all his years walking behind a plow.”

Bedistai’s head jerked up. He had only been half-listening up to this point.

“What did you say?”

“I said he looks like a farmer, not a soldier.”

The words cut through Bedistai like a knife and he looked around in desperation.

“Where’s Chawah?”

“Why?” asked Ortok.

“I need her,” Bedistai replied, beginning to grow panicked.

“Don’t you recall? She and Visha ran off.”

As Bedistai glanced around in desperation, both endaths appeared, apparently sensing his desire.

“We are in the wrong place,” he told Ortok. “We need to find Tahmen and the others.”

“What do you mean the wrong place?”

Recalling Pandy’s prophesy, Bedistai grasped Ortok by the arms, telling him, “If we don’t find the rest of the pods at once, we may be too late to save Mostoon.”

The wind incarnate is how Bedistai thought of Chawah as she wrapped around the uneven terrain, slotting between the Expanse’s hummocks with unmatched velocity. Never had he wanted such fleetness from her as he required now. Lying prostrate on the saddle, tensioned between the pommel and the extended stirrups with his arms secured, Bedistai strained to see between slitted eyelids as the great beast clove the air. Glancing down the length of his body, he was rewarded with glimpses of Visha as she, too, negotiated No’eth’s expanse, the rest of the pod in close pursuit.

It had not taken Ortok long to locate Tahmen or the other pod leaders while Bedistai waited for Dorman to descend from his perch. The youth would ride with them now, fight beside them as well, as the new imperative compelled them to arrive at Mostoon before the warriors from the east.

“I suspect they will have been sent from Dar,” Peniff had told Bedistai before he and his young charge departed. “Pandy is unfamiliar with the geography in this part of the world, or I expect she would have been more specific. Still, when I study her thoughts, I can see she is envisioning them as coming out of the Northeast. If she is correct, it would be cause for concern. While Emmet Lehr has never sent his men into combat, people describe him as ruthless, so I expect his troops would be a force to contend with.”

“What do we do about the rest of Harad’s army?” Ortok asked when Bedistai had explained their situation. “Do we simply leave and allow them to do as they will?”

“The pods from the other villages will handle most of them,” he had replied. “We will deal with the rest when or if they manage to locate Mostoon. The foreteller warned me that the ones coming from Dar are our real concern. I have no reason to doubt her.”

“And you trust the thought gazer?” Ortok asked, furrowing his brow.

“I trust him with my life.”

Evening was approaching when they arrived at Mostoon. Ortok took the pods to its eastern extent before swinging them in a northeasterly arc in an effort to locate Dar’s warriors. They had travelled only three miles from the village when they encountered the first infantry unit. Chawah alerted Bedistai to their presence when she abruptly drew down from a gallop to a walk. Raising her neck to vertical, she began glancing around nervously, flicking her tail and shifting stance while snorting through her single nostril.

Needing more than mere assurance of the enemy’s proximity, Bedistai maneuvered her toward a grassy prominence. When Ortok nodded his approval, Bedistai leapt from the saddle and peered through the tussocks of grass festooning its summit. There, he saw several infantry soldiers moving toward him. Unlike Harad’s buffoons, these neither conversed nor showed signs of unease. They comported themselves with obvious intent, heads erect as their eyes scanned the terrain. No ragtag brigade, their armor had been fashioned from bronze of a uniform design and they were armed with identical weaponry.

Bedistai ducked below the ridge top and rolled onto his back, signaling with his hands that the enemy numbered perhaps forty, meaning those he could see, and indicated there might be others. When Ortok asked, also with signals, how they were grouped, Bedistai extended his hands, palms outward, fingers narrowly spaced to indicate they presented a wall, approaching in tight formation. Ortok motioned to Tahmen and his pod to circle wide to the left, and to another pod to circle right, leaving his own to confront the enemy head on. He motioned to two of his own to position themselves atop the hillocks flanking Tahmen’s group, tapping his quiver to indicate they were to serve as archers.

Shouldering his bow, Ortok joined the rest. When he indicated the archers were to act on their own initiative, Bedistai inched up again, far enough to determine the enemy’s position, and saw that the nearest ones were now almost beneath him. He nocked an arrow and heard Ortok and the others unsheathe their knives.

The armor Lehr’s soldiers wore was well-crafted, exposing almost none of their parts. Seeking a target, Bedistai mimicked a raptor’s cry. When several at the column’s head glanced up, he put an arrow through one helmet’s eye hole. The other archers took this for a cue and blinded two more while Ortok and the rest of his pod dashed around the hillock to engage them. As the Haroun and the soldiers from Dar clashed, Bedistai and the two flanking him continued to release arrows.

One soldier, coming into the depression where the fighting had begun, raised his mace and rushed at Tuvah, who was too embroiled in combat to notice. Tossing aside his bow, Bedistai leapt down the hill and ran at the attacker. As the soldier’s mace came up, Bedistai grabbed its handle and punched the man, leaving him reeling and partly toothless. He wrenched away the mace and bludgeoned the man, finishing him with four rapid blows to the head.

Seeing a flash of motion coming from his right, Bedistai jerked away. As the spearman completed his thrust, Bedistai backhanded him.

Two more armored figures came at him, one with a sword, the second with an axe. Arching away from the swordsman’s horizontal swing, then returning upright as the blade clove empty air, he grabbed the swordsman’s wrist while using the mace to strike the axman. In the swordsman’s hurry to drive his blade into Bedistai, he had inadvertently sliced through the axman’s side, spraying Bedistai with blood. The swordsman froze and Bedistai delivered two blows to his mouth and another to his belly, just as the tip of someone’s spear brushed past his shoulder.

Wiping the spatter from his eyes, Bedistai grasped the shaft and pulled. The tug, combined with the spearman’s momentum, brought the man toward Bedistai, unbalancing him. Blows to the arm, shoulder and head buckled the spearman’s knees. Discarding the mace in favor of his hunting knife, Bedistai drove the blade up and under the spearman’s breastplate.

He had moved beyond where the fighting had begun when cries arose ahead. When Bedistai arrived, he saw Tahmen’s pod faced with a solid wall of shields. The warriors were presenting them with their edges overlapped while driving their swords up and under, in an effort to impale the Haroun. Seeing that they would soon overwhelm Tahmen’s fighters, Bedistai came at them from their rear. Felling two, he created a sufficiently large breach that two Haroun were able to penetrate the line. Tahmen met his eyes, then impaled a soldier whom Bedistai had exposed.

They fought without letup until darkness made seeing impossible. Even then, as the soldiers fell back, whenever Bedistai’s hand fell upon a gorget or breastplate, he struck at the retreating figure. As often as not, his blade met empty air. At other times, it glanced harmlessly off metal. Occasionally, as the footsteps retreated, his knife plunged into flesh and he heard the unfortunate one scream.

When the Haroun finally found themselves alone, they assessed their damage. This time, the Haroun had not been facing farmers and children. Bartok, one of Tahmen’s pod, had taken an arrow in his shoulder and Nesuth, one of Bedistai’s, had been slain with an axe. Other hunters from several pods had suffered lesser injuries, considering themselves fortunate to have come away alive.

They encamped in the hollows between the hills, keeping two men on watch atop a nearby mound. Every few hours, the watchers would rouse their relief so that all would have at least two or three hours’ sleep before morning.

In the false light preceding the dawn, the pod arose and went to locate the enemy, using endaths to guide them. Expecting the soldiers would be ruthless upon arriving at Mostoon, the hunters intended to show them no mercy either.

They found their foe encamped in a hollow perhaps fifty feet across and walled by low-lying bluffs. There were two narrow exits at the hollow’s rear and two slightly broader avenues of escape at its front. It was through these four that the Haroun now advanced.

Perhaps, if the attack had come on foot, this location would have been defensible, restricting the number of attackers to a manageable flow. It was clear from the soldiers’ near inactivity and the minimal watch they had set, they had failed to take the Haroun’s endaths into account.

Some of the troops were rolling up ground cloths, while others were donning armor. A few early risers were wolfing down a meal of dried meat and bread, quite likely their last before nightfall. Pikes and lances were leaned into pyramids, propped in four neat groupings around the camp’s center. Quivers and bows were arranged across a tarpaulin, while swords hung in scabbards from the waists of the already clad. The blades of the recently awakened, however, still lie on the ground cloths where their owners had slept.

Silent as sunbeams, the endaths poured in. By the time the attack registered, more than a dozen hunters were already inside the camp with more coming through the entrances. Shouts rose as the soldiers reacted, reaching for weapons as the endaths appeared. Turning their rumps toward the center, the endaths began lashing out with their tails, delivering bone crushing blows to the ones they had encircled.

Bodies flew. Tossed about like dolls, some collided in mid air. Others were hurled into the walls of the depression. Those who had been able to unsheathe their swords, dropped their weapons when struck. A few raced toward the spears, only to be intercepted and hurled skyward.

The dozen Haroun archers who were watching from atop the bluffs found their skills were not needed. After perhaps two or three minutes, all who had inhabited this basin were either dead or lay dying, their moans growing weaker as they hemorrhaged.

“Visha indicates there is another unit encamped toward the northeast,” said Ortok as Bedistai brought Chawah beside him. Surveying the devastation, he said, “Would you like to reassume command?”

“Are you feeling unsure of your ability?” asked Bedistai.

Ortok shook his head.

“Then no. You’re doing fine. I couldn’t have hoped for better. Let’s find the rest of Dar’s soldiers and be done with this.”