Blade awoke to shouts and screams and furiously running feet. For a few seconds he vaguely wondered if the sounds came from Naula, perhaps reliving in her dreams their pa.s.sion earlier that night. Then he snapped fully awake, remembering just in time not to spring to his feet and knock the tent down again. Gripping his shortsword, he crawled to the entrance of the tent and looked out.
Shadowy figures were pa.s.sing in all directions at a dead run. Some of them stumbled and fell. He heard cries of anger and fear, screams of pain, the tw.a.n.g of bowstrings, and the mounting bellow of what seemed like all the drends in the camp. It seemed as if madness had suddenly attacked all of the Red People at once.
Then Blade saw a flicker of movement overhead, and looked up. Above him in the darkness glided one of the bat-winged creatures Blade had seen flying high above the sh.o.r.e, silhouetted against the sunset. Half invisible in the night, it was a shadowy nightmare. As it showed clearly in the firelight it looked even worse. It was neither bird nor bat, but something that combined the worst features of both, expanded to ten or twenty times the size of either.
The bat-bird glided past, out of the light and into the darkness. Then came the snap of great wings folding and a raw, tearing scream as the thing swooped down on a victim somewhere out in that darkness.
A long line of bat-birds swept past, too high to be counted accurately. Blade heard arrows whistling upward at the dim fleeting shapes and cursed. Fired wildly like that, the arrows would seldom hit or kill and usually fall back somewhere into the crowded camp.
Then two more bat-birds came flying low through the light of the fire. This time cooler-headed archers waited for them. Blade heard the sharp cracks of arrows driving into the leathery wings. One bounced from a scaled belly. The bat-birds flew on, ignoring the arrows as they would have ignored wads of cotton from a child"s slingshot. They flew on into the darkness, and more screams rose where they stooped to the attack.
The bat-birds could seek and strike in total darkness, and what kind of defense could deal with them then? Blade couldn"t be sure, but he did know that no one could do much against the bat-birds unless they themselves were out in the darkness where the creatures struck.
Blade s.n.a.t.c.hed up his longsword, then suddenly realized that he would do well to take an even longer weapon. Naula stuck her head out of the tent. "Get back inside and stay down!" Blade shouted, reaching for the tent pole. He jerked it free with both hands and the tent slowly settled down on top of Naula. The bat-birds might be able to see in the dark like cats, but they could hardly see through the heavy leather.
Blade dodged around fear-paralyzed women and children huddled on the ground, and leaped over the body of a warrior sprawled on his back with a Kargoi arrow through his chest. He left behind the last glow of the fire, heard a low-pitched warbling cry above him, and turned to see a bat-bird beginning its stoop on him.
With only his swords Blade could not have met his attacker. They would have gone down into death together, steel and beak and talons all sinking in at the same moment.
Instead Blade held the tent pole, eight feet of limber wood, and he swung it like a champion cricketer. The darkness and the uproar and the nightmare creature hurling itself at him neither slowed nor weakened him. The pole caught the bat-bird across the side of its elongated head, and the thin skull cracked. The creature spun out of the air and thudded to the ground practically on top of Blade. He stepped back to let it fall, then jumped on it. Light bones cracked and crunched, the two ten-foot wings flapped wildly, then twitched into stillness. Blade sprang off the body and turned to meet the next attack.
Now the battle cries of warriors joined the uproar all around him. The Kargoi were beginning to fight back like the seasoned warriors they were. Another bat-bird swooped at Blade, then turned aside at the last moment as a dread thundered past. The beast ran blindly, bawling in panic and trampling down two women who stood in its path. On its back a bat-bird was perched, talons sunk deep in the flesh and booked beak burrowing even deeper. Blade himself had to step aside, then face the stoop of another enemy.
This time Blade had the time to strike with the precision of a surgeon and the deadliness of an executioner. Crack! and the pole struck the bat-bird in the throat, practically stopping it in midair. It fell. Crack! and the pole smashed down across the back of its neck. Crack! and the pole crushed its skull. It died without a cry or a twitch.
A third bat-bird singled Blade out for attack. This one came at him already slowed by two arrows that had found weak spots in its hide. Blade stood his ground and thrust with the end of his pole at the center of its chest. The beak snapped shut inches from his face and the talons reached out for his groin. The thrust had Blade"s full strength behind it, meeting the full weight of the bat-bird. Ribs and internal organs caved in and another kill lay at Blade"s feet.
After that Blade stopped keeping count. Every few moments a bat-bird came at him out of the darkness. He didn"t know what it was about him or the ground where he stood that drew the attackers to him, but he was sure there was something.
Some of the bat-birds missed and flew off to seek prey elsewhere. All those who pressed home their attacks met Blade"s lightning-quick pole, and all those who met the pole died. The bodies thrashed and twitched and poured out blood and death cries in a widening circle around him.
After a while Blade realized that some of the bat-birds were turning aside from him and the circle of dead around him. A little while longer, and he realized that the noise around him was dying away. Finally warriors of the Kargoi came picking their way through the darkness to stand and stare at Blade and his circle of dead. The attack of the bat-birds was over-for tonight.
As the warriors crowded toward him, Blade examined his pole. It was coated with blood and skin and scales. Under the slimy coating he could feel half a dozen cracks. A few more blows and it would have snapped off in his hands, leaving him no better off than the other warriors of the Kargoi.
As they crowded around him, the warriors pounded Blade"s back and shoulders and poured out half-hysterical congratulations. They made so much noise he had no chance to ask what had happened elsewhere in the camp of the Red People, amid the darkness and the screams and the bellows.
It was dawn before anyone really knew what had happened in the camp. It was later than that before Paor was able to tell Blade.
The tale was ugly. At least two hundred of the Kargoi were dead or wounded. Among them was the son of Adroon, the High Baudz, who lay with his stomach slashed opened by talons, a wound that would surely kill him in a day or two. As many drends had been killed or so badly hurt that no one but the butchers could get much use out of them now.
To be sure, more than three hundred of the bat-birds also lay dead, at least forty of them Blade"s own victims. But several times that many had attacked and flown away to safety.
Blade didn"t like hearing any of this. He disliked almost as much hearing that Rehod had slain nearly twenty of the bat-birds, some of them with his bare hands. Now the loud-mouthed baudz had done something to make people forget his treachery in the duel with Blade.
The more Blade thought about what Paor had told him, the more he began to suspect that there"d been organization or even intelligence behind the attack of the bat-birds. Were the creatures themselves at least slightly intelligent? Blade found that hard to believe. The brains in the narrow skulls were far too small.
But if there was intelligence or direction, and it didn"t come from the bat-birds themselves, then where did it come from?
Blade would much rather not have faced this question. But it wouldn"t go away, and sooner or later answering it would become important. For now there simply wasn"t enough information, and there were other things to do here that could save many lives. Blade made up his mind to watch the next attack much more closely, so that he would no longer have to rely on Kargoi observations of the bat-birds" behavior. It was just possible that everything he"d heard to suggest organization and intelligence was what untrained or frightened observers had imagined.
Blade sincerely hoped so.
Meanwhile, he was at work even as Paor talked to him. With his shortsword he systematically cut out the beaks and cut off the talons of the dead bat-birds. When he"d finished that he started cutting up the great leathery wings and started cutting out the tendons. Finally he took a fresh tent pole and tied one of the hooked, razor-sharp beaks to one end of it with several lashings of tendon. Paor watched all this in polite silence until Blade was finished.
"What do you make, Blade?"
Blade silently picked up his weapon and whirled it around his head. Then he swung it hard. The beak on the business end hissed angrily through the air. Paor carefully stepped out of range.
"I killed many bat-birds last night. I killed most of them with the pole of a tent. I would have killed more if I"d had something sharp on the end of that pole."
"I see."
If Paor didn"t see now, he would do so before long. The Kargoi were proud of their skill in war. They were not so proud that they would refuse to learn from a hero who worked so quietly that it would be hard for them to realize that he was even teaching.
Blade said nothing for a while, as he practiced with his improvised weapon. Then Paor bent down and picked up one of the talons and one of the beaks.
"May I take these?"
"Certainly." Blade laughed. "I suggest you tie them to something other than a tent pole, though. If the warriors of the Kargoi take all the tent poles to kill the bat-birds, all the tents will fall down on the women and children."
Chapter 11.
Blade spent the day alternately practicing with his weapon and cutting up more bat-birds. By noon he saw Paor making the rounds with a pole-weapon of his own. By midafternoon other warriors were coming around to pick up beaks and talons, while others started cutting up bat-birds on their own. By nightfall half the spare tent poles in the camp of the Red People had been carried off to be made into weapons.
There would still have been another b.l.o.o.d.y slaughter on both sides if the bat-birds had attacked that night. A hundred warriors stood watch all night, just in case. A few bat-birds flew high overhead, but none came swooping down to the attack.
The next morning a wood-cutting party rode off toward the forest, to cut branches and saplings for weapon shafts. That afternoon Paor discovered that tying a piece of sharp metal to the end of a pole made an even more effective weapon-a proper spear, in fact. The blacksmiths suddenly found themselves being asked to beat points and edges on every bit of sc.r.a.p metal in their wagons.
A second night went by without the bat-birds attacking. By the next evening several hundred warriors had spears or some sort of other pole weapon. Blade even saw Rehod practicing with a ten-foot pole that had a full-sized longsword tied to the end. He didn"t stay around to watch Rehod"s exercises. The man glared as though he would much rather use his new weapon on Blade than on the bat-birds.
Everyone had a chance to try out their new weapons that night. The bat-birds came again, twice as many as before. This time Blade himself could clearly see some direction and coordination in their attack. Those who attacked attacked fiercely against carefully chosen weak points. At the same time they held back what could only be called a reserve.
The warriors of the Red People didn"t care about any of this. They went into action with their new weapons and a grim determination to avenge their fallen comrades and protect their women and herds. Some of them died, but more of them killed and went on killing until there were no more bat-birds to kill. Archers rode among the drend herds, bows ready. They still could not bring the bat-birds down from the air, but they could often shoot them off the back of a drend before the beast suffered any harm. The women and children huddled safe in the tents or wagons.
There were dead Kargoi on the ground when the sun rose, but there were a great many more dead bat-birds. There were so many that half the warriors of the Red People could have made weapons from their victims" beaks and talons, if Paor hadn"t taught them the advantage of metal points.
After that, no one expected the bat-birds to return for some time. The scouts sent on ahead toward the sh.o.r.e came in, reporting that all three Peoples of the Kargoi would have to form a single column to pa.s.s along the sh.o.r.e. The hills ahead came almost down to the water, and reached far inland without a pa.s.s the wagons could hope to cross safely.
So it was either stay here, or risk the dash along the sh.o.r.e. Before the attack of the bat-birds, there were many who"d thought of settling here, with the plain on one hand and the forest on the other. The bat-birds had changed all that. No one cared to settle in a land where the darkness might hold so much horrible death. They"d got the better of the creatures, to be sure, but was that the only death that stalked by night in this land?
The drends were fat from good grazing. There was food for several weeks in the wagons, and there would be fish and game along the sh.o.r.e. The scouts reported many birds and large herds of the boar-like animals Blade had seen in the forest. Pushing on was clearly the best thing to do.
Blade agreed, but wondered if the land ahead would be much safer than the land they were leaving. If something was in fact directing the bat-birds down on the marching Kargoi, could it perhaps direct something else against them as they moved along the sh.o.r.e? Blade couldn"t be sure, nor could he put his doubts and suspicions into words the Kargoi would understand or believe.
The next attack didn"t catch Blade asleep, although it came in the same darkness as the attack of the bat-birds. It came as he lay beside Naula in a tent half a mile from the edge of the water. They"d just made love, but neither was so tired that sleep tempted them. They lay awake, exchanging pats and caresses, waiting until time would bring desire again.
Mounted sentries gave warning of the attack, but did little more. Against what came out of the sea against the Kargoi, there was no way they could have done much more.
Blade stretched, and found desire growing in him again, not fierce this time but warm and comfortable. His hand reached out, hovered in the air, and dropped gently on Naula"s breast. In the darkness he could sense she was smiling, feeling her own desire rising to match his.
Her hand was creeping across the hard muscles of his chest when a hissing roar blasted out of the night. Blade threw off the furs and started to rise. Naula lay with her caressing hand suspended in midair, frozen into a rigid claw.
As Blade rose, the first roar was echoed by others, too many to count and blending too rapidly into a monstrous sound that beat on Blade"s ears like the solid fists of an attacker. A hundred huge boilers all seemed to be letting off steam in a single moment.
Blade jerked Naula to her feet with one hand and picked up her clothes with the other. "Dress and follow me," he said, bending to pick up his weapons.
As he led Naula out into the darkness, Blade was fully armed with both swords, two spears, a knife, a bow, a quiver. He wore nothing except a padded loinguard and a leather brace on his right forearm. Clothes would only be a burden tonight, not a protection.
In the darkness terror was stalking the Kargoi, terror in the form of sixty-foot hulks of living flesh that hissed and roared, made the ground shake under their weight, and moved steadily forward. A single glance toward the sea showed Blade more than a hundred huge reptilian beasts heading toward the camp, forming a line more than a mile wide, like an incoming tide of armored flesh. Behind the first line he could dimly make out patches of foam as more beasts churned their way through the shallows.
There was fear in the camp, but the fear was not exploding into panic. From the rows of tents on the seaward side of the camp, women ran toward the circle of wagons, carrying crying babies or dragging shrieking children by the hand. Blade knew the beasts coming out of the sea could smash a wagon to kindling wood, but any shelter doubtless looked better than none.
Meanwhile the warriors ran toward the advancing reptiles, brandishing their swords and spears. The craftsmen ran with them, waving hammers and axes. Even the workers were there, with cooking spits and logs of firewood.
It was magnificent courage, but Blade was certain more would be needed before this night was over. Each of the reptiles looked far too strong to be attacked wildly or blindly, and there were far too many of them. Too many warriors would die under teeth and claws, trampling feet and lashing tails.
Who or what wanted things to happen that way? There was someone or something that did. Blade was now certain of that. He could not believe there was any natural cause for this attack. He could imagine natural causes for the sea reptiles gathering together in such numbers-a sudden abundance of food in one place, for example. He could not imagine them coming forward onto the land to attack humans or their livestock, and above all he could not imagine them coming forward in a line as solid and rigid as guardsmen on parade.
Mounted warriors now rode forward to join their comrades. Arrows whistled toward the oncoming enemy as archers let fly. With the darkness and the archers" excitement, not all the arrows flew high enough. Blade saw a Kargoi warrior fall from his saddle, hand clapped to a thigh neatly skewered by one of his comrade"s arrows.
Naula was still clinging tightly to him. Blade slapped her on the rump and pointed toward the wagons. "Run!" She looked at him, wide-eyed with fear that was more for him than for herself, then ran. Blade zig-zagged through the confusion of hurrying men, caught the reins of the riderless drend, and vaulted on to its broad back. Gripping the reins with one hand, he got his feet under him and stood on the saddle pad.
Now he could look out across the exploding battle, as the first of the lumbering reptiles and the onrushing men collided. Three of the beasts came on, and a fringe of men suddenly formed around them, spears thrusting and swords hacking at the scaly hides. A crested head rose, with a writhing stick figure clamped in long tangs that dripped blood. Two more men were scythed down by the sweep of a tail three feet thick and twenty feet long. Then the fringe of men broke up and two of the three beasts lumbered onward. The third beast remained behind, down on its knees with half a dozen warriors stabbing at the eyes and seeking out weak spots in the armored hide. Another half-dozen warriors lay still, writhed feebly, or crawled jerkily toward what safety they could find. One lay on his back, hands clapped to his groin, courage forgotten and all his remaining strength poured into an endless agonized screaming.
The beasts" masters had not only formed them into an unnaturally precise line for their attack, they seemed to be filling them with an equally unnatural ferocity. Half a dozen warriors maimed or dead for every beast killed meant the end of the Kargoi, if not tonight then soon.
A bright moon shone now, and Blade could see all along the attacking line and past it to the sh.o.r.e. He could count more than two hundred of the reptiles, of half a dozen different breeds. All were huge, all were hideous, all were moving steadily toward him, driving the warriors of the Kargoi before them. Here and there one of the beasts was down, kicking out its life under Kargoi steel, but there were far too few of these.
At least no more of the reptiles were surging out of the water to join the attack. They were not endless-at least not tonight. Now Blade knew what to do about tonight"s attack.
He filled his chest and roared out in a terrible voice, "Ho, Kargoi! Listen! Listen, and learn how to stand against these monsters as you stood against the batbirds!"
When he wanted to, Richard Blade could make himself heard in the middle of an exploding ammunition dump. His voice carried halfway across the battlefield. Men turned to stare at him, and even some of the advancing reptiles raised their heads in bewilderment at the strange sound.
Blade shouted again. "Form lines, two or three of them, wide lines all across the field! Stand with your spears toward the beasts. Stand, and let nothing but death move you! Stand, and let the archers aim at the eyes. Swordsmen, axemen, when they are blinded, strike!"
That was about as complicated a set of instructions as anybody would be likely to hear or understand, let alone follow, in the middle of a night battle. Blade hoped it would be enough to make clear to the Kargoi what they should do.
It should work. The pikemen of medieval and Renaissance Europe had often stood successfully against the ma.s.sed charge of armored knights. Admittedly, the Kargoi were not trained infantry, and tonight at least they would be fighting with eight- and ten-foot spears instead of pikes twice as long. Also, the beasts coming at them out of the sea were more ferocious than any knight and weighed ten times as much as any horse.
They were also a great deal slower on their feet and hopefully slower in their wits. Whoever drove them on to the attack could not give them speed that was not in their ma.s.sive bodies or intelligence that was not in the tiny brains inside the thick skulls.
Blade kept shouting his instructions, until his breath rasped in his raw throat, his chest heaved as if he"d run ten miles, and he could see that he was being heard. Ten, twenty, thirty warriors at a time would gather, then spread out into a line. Single lines at first, then double and triple lines as more warriors ran up from the rear or in from the flanks. The short lines grew longer, grew toward each other, formed longer lines of a hundred or two hundred warriors.
These lines were beginning to do what Blade had hoped they would. Where they found the lines across their paths, the sea reptiles were slowing down. Sometimes they would stop or even draw back when they felt a dozen spear points p.r.i.c.king their snouts, stabbing at their nostrils or eyes or into their open mouths. Others would press on, snapping and clawing as ferociously as ever. With warriors all around them, they did not last long. There was always someone ready and willing to strike when a beast was stopped. They struck with spears at the brain, down through the eyes or up through the open mouths. They struck from beneath with whatever weapon came to hand, ripping through the lighter belly scales. They struck at the necks, the flanks, the legs, even under the tails. They struck everywhere they could find a target. Blade heard a continuous drum roll of metal and wood pounding on scaly skin and slicing deep into the flesh beneath it. He also heard the bellows and roars of monstrous beasts in mortal agony. The warriors of the Kargoi were still going down, but now so were the attackers.
Once or twice a reptile plowed clear through a line, to break into the open beyond it and go rampaging among the tents. Blade heard screams as women who hadn"t fled in time died in those tents, and hoped Naula had run fast enough and far enough.
Other beasts had the good luck or the good sense to find open flanks where the sections of line hadn"t linked up. They plunged on toward the tents and the wagons, heads down and feet churning up the ground.
One of these beasts got as far as a trio of tethered riding drends. With a bellow, one of the drends broke its tether and charged the oncoming reptile. They met head-on, the drend"s long horns hooking wickedly, driving the reptile"s head to one side. Before it could recover a second drend came lumbering in and b.u.t.ted it in the flank. A full-grown riding drend weighed nearly a ton, and the impact shoved the reptile bodily to one side. Then someone dashed up and drove a cooking spit into one eye, deep enough to reach the brain. The beast slumped down into death and the drends lumbered off, bellowing in noisy triumph.
Blade realized it was time he got into the fight. He"d done about all he could do by standing on the back of a drend and shouting orders at the top of his lungs. Besides, his voice was completely gone.
So he leaped down from the back of the drend and ran forward. A dead reptile lay in his path. He swerved, ran across a patch of ground turned into mud by the beast"s blood, leaped over its outstretched tail, and found himself in the rear of a line of warriors. He ran along it until he came to the right flank and stepped into place.
Several of the warriors recognized him and shouted greetings, bared teeth startlingly white in blood-smeared faces. Shouts from farther along the line told of another reptile making its charge. As spears rose into position, it slowed but did not stop. A warrior ran out of the line with a spear and thrust at the beast"s eyes. The fanged head swung sideways, knocking the man down. He was unhurt. Before the jaws could close on him, he rolled clear, leaped up, and returned to the attack. Blade dashed forward to join the man.
Blade had to hear what he did after that from other people, who saw it all and marveled at it. He was never sure how much of what they said was the truth and how much of it just a good tale they enjoyed telling about a hero.
The Kargoi said he killed seven of the reptiles himself, helped other warriors kill five others, and drove half a dozen more back into the sea. He was willing to believe them. Certainly by the time he became aware of the world around him again, all his weapons were blunted and he was exhausted, aching, horribly thirsty, and covered with blood from head to foot.
He was less willing to believe that he"d strangled one of the beasts with his bare hands and lifted another completely off the ground, to drop it on its head and break its neck. Other tales of what he"d done were even less believable. It was, however, believable that the Kargoi had won. In fact it was certain.
Except for a dozen of so that had made their way back into the sea, all of the beasts were dead, more than two hundred of them. So were nearly three hundred warriors and a hundred women and children of the Kargoi. A hundred drends were dead, and a thousand more scattered all over the countryside by stampedes. Twenty wagons were smashed to splinters. Blade"s idea of forming lines hadn"t prevented a considerable toll of casualties, but it had certainly prevented disaster.
The drends were rounded up and harnessed; one by one the wagons rolled out of their circle and headed south. Blade bathed in the sea and climbed into his wagon, quite content not to be asked for any advice at the moment. The only thing he would have advised, the Kargoi were already doing-getting out of here! He fell asleep with his head in Naula"s lap as the wagon creaked into motion.
Chapter 12.
Blade rode out with the scouts that afternoon. They spread in a line five miles wide, stretching across the front of all the wagons. Blade rode within sight of the water.
The scouts beside him rode with one eye on the land and the other uneasily turned toward the water, waiting for whatever might come out of it. Fortunately the sea reptiles, like the bat-birds, seemed to be creatures of the night. Once Blade saw a dark head and back rise from the waves a few hundred yards off sh.o.r.e, then sink down again after a minute or two. Otherwise the water shone in the sun, kicked up into whitecaps by a brisk wind. It rolled in peacefully on the sh.o.r.e, with no sign that it had ever sp.a.w.ned last night"s horrors. Yet the reptiles were still out there, and so were their masters. They would come again, Blade was certain.
Once they"d made the new camp, Blade planned to ride back to the dead reptiles. He wanted to study them, learn more about what they could do, what could be done to them while they lived, and perhaps what could be done with them after they were dead. He might also find some clues about who their masters might be. At the moment this was such a total mystery that Blade refused even to guess.
The Kargoi made camp late that day, under the glaring sunset sky with the shadows already stretching far across the beaten-down gra.s.s. They made a camp huddled close against the foot of the hills and as far from the water as possible. The wagons of all three Peoples were drawn into an immense triple circle and all the warriors took up positions between them and the water. Except for the warriors no one left the wagons. No tents were pitched, no fires were lit.
No one in the whole camp slept that night except out of sheer exhaustion. All the wakefulness was unnecessary. Nothing came out of the sea or down from the sky.
At dawn Blade rode back to the battlefield. He would have preferred to ride alone, but that wasn"t possible. The moment he mentioned he was going to ride back, Paor insisted on coming with him. Then Naula swore she also would come and share his danger. Several other warriors immediately decided that they would be shamed if a woman went where they would not. They insisted on joining the party. In the end Blade rode back at the head of fifty warriors.
That was far too many witnesses for much of what Blade wanted to do. So far no one among the Kargoi had the faintest notion that the attacks of the bat-birds and the sea reptiles were anything but more monstrous freaks of nature, like the volcanoes or the rising sea. Blade desperately wanted them to stay ignorant as long as possible. He suspected that not even the courage of the Kargoi would survive the knowledge that the bat-birds and reptiles were being directed by some unknown intelligence greater than theirs. He also suspected that if warriors like Paor watched all he did on the battlefield, they would begin to wonder what he was looking for and then ask questions to which he could give no safe answers.