Part 33 (1/2)
you'd arrived!”
The fence was coming up fast and men were leaping to their horses, trotting them through the gate and forming up on the other side.
Kati pointed. ”How many here?”
”Fifty! The rest should be getting into position now, on a hill where we can shoot down on them!”
Her horse was wheezing, and she wondered how much further she could push him. ”My animal's
exhausted! I need a fresh mount!”
”I'm sorry. The spare mounts went with the others! It's not far now!”
They slowed when they reached the gate, and she felt her horse falter, agonizing for rest, its sides
heaving. ”One minute! Give me one minute!”She vaulted from the horse before it had stopped, and grabbed its bridle. Good horse. Strong horse. Hold still, now.
The animal's mouth was open, sucking air, thick tears like mucus beneath its eyes. She did not draw from the gong-s.h.i.+-jie, but used the light of Tengri-Khan, energy flowing from the crown of her aura and out through hands stroking a muzzle, ma.s.saging a neck, shoulders, caressing flanks. She released the bridle, but the little horse stood firm, still panting, and groaning when he first felt the heat from her hands. She worked the legs, then the ankles, spending an extra few seconds there, then ran both hands along his belly. The horse coughed, then sneezed and whinnied, shaking his head.
A little further, and you rest, and there will be more of this for you.
She cleaned the mucus from his eyes, and held his muzzle with both hands. You're a Tumatsin horse, now! You carry me fast!
The horse rolled his eyes, and nickered.
Kati vaulted into the saddle. ”Point the way!” she shouted, and the horses bolted together, heading north. She sprinted to come alongside the commander. Laser rifles clattered against the chest armor of helmeted troops, but something was missing.
”Where are your bows?!” she shouted. ”You have only swords and laser weapons!”
”Useless!” he shouted back. ”They're sure to be armored, and arrows will be ineffective, even in close!”
It made her angry. Hadn't Mengmoshu told him anything? The battle was to be as traditional as possible; that was the agreement. Flyers would be met by fire from s.p.a.ce, lasers met by lasers, leaving only the bow and the sword to honor the ancient ways. And if- A sudden, horrible thought came to her. Lasers meet lasers. And her people, the Tumatsin, had them, a few stolen from the Emperor's troops when her mother was a girl, like the weapon Da had hidden beneath the stove. If the home guard had them, they would be used, and how would Mandughai's forces react? One laser burst, or four or five, to be answered by a thousand?
The Change intensified within her in an instant. Her horse seemed to sense it and ran like the wind as the first growl escaped her. They ran over undulating hills of dry gra.s.s, and in the distance was a plume of black smoke. Waves crashed on sandy beaches less than a kilometer to their left, and riders were racing along water's edge, heading north. Tumatsin riders.
How many home guardsmen can we count on?” she shouted.
The commander narrowed his eyes, noting The Change. ”Less than a hundred. We've only heard from the northern ordus, and there aren't many. I don't know if the rest are even moving yet. They might keep their forces close to home!”
Let there be no lasers among them, she thought. She looked west, but the riders along the beach had disappeared. For some reason, that bothered her. There was a kind of presence, a tension, tugging at her mind, but she had no time to pursue the source of it.
The hill ahead of her gleamed as if covered with crystals, a long line of them just beneath the brow, and then she saw horses tethered in a great ma.s.s at the base of the hill. Troopers, hundreds of them, lay close together, sighting their rifles from the top of the hill to a target beyond it. The line stretched for a hundred meters, and a man was running down the hill towards them as they came to a halt and dismounted.
”They're coming in! The Tumatsin are just sitting there, waiting for them. They don't stand a chance!”
The troopers who'd arrived with Kati were running up the hill to find places in the line of defenders. Kati followed the commander and his subordinate, taking bow and quiver, but leaving her sword on the saddle. They climbed to the brow of the hill, and stood behind the line of prostrate troopers to look north.
Below them, by fifty meters to the left, four lines of mounted Tumatsin waited quietly at the edge of an alluvial fan formed by a small river which was now little more than a creek running into the sea. The sea was a hundred meters to their left, and the sandy beach only meters away. Soft sand, she noted, and difficult for a horse to run in.
The alluvial fan reached east to a cliff of sandstone running north from near her position, connected to it by a ridge. North of the fan was a broad, gra.s.sy slope leading up to a plateau, and if there was gra.s.s there it was now totally obscured by the wave of enemy soldiers descending it on foot and horseback, a solid ma.s.s of fighting men with gleaming armor, flowing like water. They came forward leisurely, like a crowd of invading pests bent on destroying everything in their path. It was Mandughai's horde, highly trained, bioengineered for war, and facing them were perhaps a hundred fishermen and herders of sheep, who had never known battle.
The invaders' infantry was crowded to the front, cavalry at the back, and more horses appeared at the edge of the plateau as Kati watched in horror. The cavalry moved down the slope, and laterally as the first infantry reached the soft earth of the alluvial fan. The cavalry was forming a crescent behind the wedge of infantry, reaching to the cliff, moving into position to charge the right flank of the defenders, so painfully few in number.
The Moshuguang commander ran along the line behind her, repeating his orders. ”At first laser-burst-fire at will. At first laser-burst-fire at will.”
He was meters from her when Kati stepped between two men, and stood on the brow of the hill in full view of the invaders. A trooper grabbed at her ankle. ”Get down! They'll see you!” he whispered.
”Let them,” she growled. She looked down at the mounted Tumatsin, and one of them saw her. Even at fifty meters, she saw him smile, and then he took something from a saddle scabbard, something that glinted metallically in the morning light. The other men in the front line of Tumatsin did the same. The things she saw were not swords. They were laser rifles. It was as if the sight of her had been a signal to the men. The one smiled at her, then raised his rifle, carefully aimed it, as did his comrades, and together they fired a single volley into the ranks of the invaders, now only two hundred meters away from them.
The return fire was instantaneous, and blinding, a thousand lasers aimed at the men and their horses, and they all went down in smouldering messes of burned flesh.
The rest of the Tumatsin turned their horses and fled, heading south along the beach and out of Kati's sight.
”FIRE!” screamed the Moshuguang commander behind her.
Bursts of laser fire streamed down from the hill and into the ranks of the invaders' infantry, bursts accurately aimed by hundreds of the Moshuguang elite. Fierce-faced men went down, others staggered backwards against their fellows in surprise, and the wedge of Mandughai's infantry faltered, but only for a moment. Now there was a chorus of howls that echoed from the cliff. The infantry were coming on again, at a run, firing as they came, and the line of cavalry was circling to get around them.
One burst of laser fire, met by thousands. Kati looked down at the smoke and steam coming from what had once been Tumatsin men, lying there now alone, abandoned by their companions.
Kati felt rage, felt it rise in her like an animal, a cold, killing thing. Laser fire still tore into the invaders, but now they were moving fast and spreading out, firing as they came. Kati had not left her exposed position and now flashes of fire burst rock and soil, moving up the hill towards her. Men fired from horseback, and she heard an agonized cry from her left. There was no time for consideration of any act, no time to debate the fairness of it. There were only the invaders who had come to kill her people and burn their homes.
Mandughai's infantry ma.s.s flowed towards them, breaking into two fingers like a hand opening, one heading towards where the surviving Tumatsin had fled, the other charging the hill, firing wildly to provide cover for the circling cavalry. Their howl was continuous and shrill, like wounded s.h.i.+zi; short, stocky men with red, blazing eyes in dark faces, canines like tusks thrust down from their open mouths. They came on like a wave, and the Moshuguang cut them down, but as their ranks thinned, each man ran a zig-zag path, making a difficult target. Now infantry were on the hill, charging up towards her like mindless beasts. Laser fire splattered the ground right in front of Kati, and she screamed, a horrible, guttural thing, holding out clenched fists in front of her, watching them turn green in the sudden blaze of light from her eyes.
And the light of creation followed those eyes.
A soldier of Mandughai raised his rifle and aimed it at her, and there was a flash like purple lightning, leaving nothing of him there. The atmosphere in front of her ignited in a wall of violet, red and green, and she felt white heat on her face, smelled singed hair, scorched leather. She pushed, and the roiling wall of gas, burning like a sun, swept down the hillside like a great wave, igniting the air as it went, rolling out onto the alluvial fan with a mind-numbing roar to drown out the screams of men and horses standing in its path. A column of burning nitrogen and oxygen rose upward with tornadic force, towering far up into a great anvil, but the sound of the lightning strokes within it could not be heard as the roiling wave moved on, scouring the fan to a fine surface of gla.s.sy pebbles mixed with the ashes of flesh and bone, and up the gra.s.sy slope beyond. The cavalry remaining there turned, and fled, but for many it was too late as the wave overtook them, reducing their bodies to elementary particles.
Kati screamed again, closing her eyes, the sparkling, purple matrix in her mind opening to receive the light.
And the wave was gone, leaving behind a fluorescent glow of green and red that lingered there for a moment, while lightning thundered in the great cloud overhead.
It began to rain, a light sprinkle at first, then a torrent, falling in sheets before her over the area of her destruction. Kati kept her eyes closed, and felt a kind of peace from the sound of the rain, but then someone called out.
”They're moving east! All cavalry! They're heading east from the plateau! They've broken off the attack!”
Kati's eyes snapped open. ”They'll join the force attacking the city! Get after them! KILL THEM ALL!”
There was terror in the eyes of those who dared to look at her, and then they were all running down the hill to mount frightened horses jerking hard on their tethers, rearing and shrieking. Kati was the last to leave the hill. She'd seen a group of riders top a rise near the beach, and watched until she recognized them as Tumatsin, perhaps the same group of cowards who'd fled the action. Now she ran hard to catch up. A trooper held a fresh mountain horse for her, her saddle and swords in place. She reached it as the Tumatsin drew near, and she saw her old horse grazing contentedly nearby.
She vaulted into the saddle, knocking mounted troopers aside to ride at the Tumatsin. They halted when she screamed at them.
”YOU! I saw you down there! You ran at the first burst of fire! You left your comrades to die!”