So,
this one has been to school
, she thought. The surface of her mind was like a pool of still water, blanked to allow trained reflex to function faster than possible for conscious thought. Beneath that ran knowledge, weighing the strengths and limitations of the weapon she faced. Less reach than a saber, no point, but plenty of momentum, and the spike would punch through a breastplate with a solid hit. She knew the counters for it, of course, but it was too difficult to use from the saddle to be popular with her folk. Besides, although hugely strong for her size, she had never felt she had the heft for it.
They flowed together, seeming to cooperate in dance of shield, ax, sword, halberd-butt, boom and clatter and deep quick breaths. He was using short hard chops, sacrificing sheer battering mass for control, parrying with the bone-covered haft. He feinted with the butt, then reversed and cut full-swing for her head; she jerked her body back from the waist, just enough to feel the ugly wind of a bright blade passing close before her eyes. Her return thrust was blocked with a daringly simple twist that deflected her point over one of the reinforced gloves. The flat top of the ax snapped out at her throat, driven with one palm cupped on the bottom of the ax-handle; it did not need an edge to do harm with all his weight behind it. Her shield darted up and caught it, but the blow forced her to cat-jump back to regain balance.
Shkai'ra tasted exultation, a warm coppery tang in her mouth; she felt totally alive, doing the thing for which she had been born. The passage of arms had taken a scant ten seconds; data flowed into her mind, extrapolated subconsciously, produced a gestalt-picture of her opponent's fighting style.
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.
"We made a mistake," Narritanni said.
The remnants of the Minztan force huddled together under a deadfall of interlaced 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.