Demontech: Gulf Run (31 page)

“Pick up that carving knife,” she said to a young woman here, “Take that knife,” to a young woman there, “Pick up that cleaver, it’s not too big for you,” to a mostly grown farm girl. If another attack came from the south, she knew every hand would be needed, and every hand had to be armed. She picked up a short sword and hefted it. No, she thought she was more comfortable with the gold-hilted dagger in its golden sheath that angled across her belly, and dropped the sword.

She saw to it that all boys at least half grown were also armed. She knew the Jokapcul would show youth no mercy if they came. She suspected the Desert Men wouldn’t either. The men shook with fear, the women shuddered with sobs, the armed boys shivered with nervous pride at the trust and responsibility they bore and were determined to defeat any enemy who came their way.

Lieutenant Krysler raised a skeptical eyebrow when the Golden Girl armed the women in the circle that blocked the road, but complimented her on her good thinking. She nodded curtly in reply, and headed to the next circle to see to its defense.

Alyline, Doli, and Maid Marigold were midway to the next circle when excited voices drew their attention back.

“Wait for me,” Alyline snapped, and ran back to find out what was happening.

The Border Warder called Slice had just finished his report when she reached Krysler.

“What’s happening?” she demanded.

“The Jokapcul are in the bowl,” Krysler snapped at her. He turned to one of the Bloody Swords. “Go find Captain Phard, tell him.”

“Yes, Corp—sir!” the Bloody Sword said, and sprinted toward the circle where Phard had taken his makeshift platoon.

“We may have our chance to find out how well these women fight,” Krysler snapped at Alyline, then went to check his men.

She glared after him, jaw, fists, and shoulders clenched in anger at his disparaging tone.

“Indeed, we may!” she snarled.

Nearby, two frightened young women hugged each other and stared at her with doe eyes. She unclenched herself and waved them close. “Attend me,” she said softly.

“Yes, lady,” they said, and huddled close behind her, clutching the large-bladed knives she’d bade them pick up.

A moment later Hatchet, the last of the Border Warders watching the Jokapcul, sprinted into the circle. Alyline hustled to be close enough to hear his report. The two young women hurried to stay close to her.

Hatchet was heaving to catch his breath and his face was strained from his speedy run from the bowl; still, wonder showed clear on his face.

“The Jokapcul officers were haranguing their men,” he gasped. “I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I overheard two demons arguing! One said they should leave the Jokapcul, the other said that the Jokapcul were coming at us and if they wanted to eat they had to come with them and do their bidding!”

“They’re coming here now?” Krysler demanded.

Hatchet bobbed his head. “That’s what the demons said.”

“But you didn’t actually see them start out?”

“No. I heard what the demons said and immediately came to report.”

“You understood the demons?” the former corporal asked incredulously.

Hatchet’s posture said he agreed it sounded improbable. Nonetheless, “They talk funny, but I could understand them, yes.”

Krysler peered along the road, then looked back to where he hoped to see Phard and the rest of the soldiers. “If only we could get the Jokapcul and the Desert Men to fight each other,” he muttered.

Alyline closed her eyes, wanting to withdraw completely behind her eyelids as though that would remove her from the path of the oncoming Jokapcul. But no, she knew she couldn’t withdraw to someplace safe. Somehow, it was up to her to save the caravan from the Jokapcul. If only we could get them to turn north and attack the Desert Men, she thought. How could women distract soldiers from their attack, cause them to turn their direction and go into a battle they hadn’t planned? A plan beginning in her mind, she quietly withdrew from Krysler.

“You!” She clamped a hand on the shoulder of one of the women shadowing her. “Go to the next circle of wagons.” She pointed southeast. “Tell the fit women to join me in the first circle north of here. Bring only women who can run. Go fast.”

The woman nodded and took off in a sprint.

“You, go to the second wagon circle,” she said to the remaining woman. “Tell the fit women there the same. Hurry, we have no time to waste.”

She sprinted away to deliver the message.

In the circle that held the road, the Golden Girl turned and gathered all the women who looked like they could run. Once they were assembled, she rushed them to where she’d left Doli and Maid Marigold. Krysler didn’t notice them leave, he was too busy seeing to the placement of the two demon spitters he had.

“Come,” she said sharply when they reached the women. “We must prepare.” They all scampered after her.

Alyline looked to the north during the long minutes it took for the women she’d sent for to assemble. The battle still raged, but closer to the northern edge of the great circle. She couldn’t tell how it fared, but it seemed there were fewer cracks of demon spitters than earlier, and the sight of the occasional Phoenix rising on fiery wings told her Xundoe was in the thick of it.

The plan she’d thought of was audacious—and horrifying. It would work, she knew it would! And the very thought of it made her stomach crawl.

Her mind worked furiously, trying to devise an alternative, but nothing that she thought of had the certainty of her first plan. She knew it would draw the Jokapcul from their planned attack on the understrength southern defensive line and pull them toward the Desert Men. She didn’t want to do it. She wanted to cringe, but the gathering women were watching her, looking to her for direction, for leadership.

She steeled herself. This was going to be harder than that morning at Eikby when she lured the Jokapcul from their camp to their deaths in an ambush. It might be worse than when Master Yoel sold her body when she was a slave at the Burnt Man Inn.

If she didn’t quail in the face of something so—so—distasteful gave only the barest hint of what it was—it might work. And if the other women went with her, and if they did what they needed to do, and if they were able to run, then it
would
work.

She remembered times when Spinner fretted over all the “ifs” in a plan, all the things that had to go right for a plan to work. He and Haft always managed to pull things off. She straightened.
If they can do it, then I certainly can!

In a few minutes three hundred women had assembled in the wagon circle. Alyline looked at them. Some were young and coltish; some were old enough to be mothers, others grandmothers. The three hundred women ran the gamut of age and size. Some looked frightened, some nervous, some grim. But everyone gripped a blade.

Don’t think about it, Alyline told herself, just do it!

Her voice rang out. “There!” She pointed at the distant battle. “Our men are fighting. There,” she pointed toward the unseen bowl, “the Jokapcul are coming at us. We need to turn the Jokapcul and make them turn north, get them to attack the Desert Men! We will have to run to there.” She pointed north again, to where the battle was slowly getting closer. “If you cannot run that far, leave now!” She paused. No one left.

Then she took a deep breath to steady herself and told them how they were going to do it.

Jokapcul scouts had been active in the hours before dawn. They prowled the plateau for a distance of three miles around the encamped caravan, and came as close as fifty yards to its circles. The scouts frequently reported back to the Kamazai Commanding. He knew the numbers of the Desert Men who closed on the refugee caravan. He knew how brief had been the Desert Men’s undisciplined attacks against the refugees, and how they had been thrown back. He knew the losses the Desert Men had suffered, and how their chiefs struggled to get them to regroup. He knew how many soldiers there were among the refugees, and how so many of them had gone in undisciplined pursuit of the fleeing Desert Men, despite the entreaties of their commanders. He knew the battle on the desert was stalemated despite the few demon weapons the refugee soldiers had and the fierceness of the Desert Men.

And he knew how few soldiers still defended the caravan.

He was a very junior kamazai; this prisoner-guarding and staging area along the coast was by far the largest command he had yet held. Despite the size of the command, guarding prisoners and building a staging area was a demeaning task to be assigned. Why, not only did he have no cavalry assigned to his command, neither he nor his subordinate knights had horses!

A kamazai, without a horse! Outrageous!

And magic, why, they’d only given him three magicians! And he suspected they were lowly mages rather than full magicians. The higher kamazai who assigned him to that demeaning duty believed there would be no fighting, so he hadn’t even provided him with proper demon weapons! The only demon his magicians had that might be useful in a battle was a recalcitrant djinn. The rest were defensive. Even the troll was more a laborer than a fighter.

When two scouts using his only Lalla Mkouma to conceal themselves had reported that bands of Desert Men warriors were camped on both sides of the road, and that the refugee caravan had attempted to bypass them via the Low Desert, he saw a chance to prove himself worthy of a
combat
command.

He would leave a hundred fighters to guard the prisoners and take six hundred fighters to make short work of the few soldiers who guarded the road south of the refugee caravan. Then they would take positions at the northern end of the defenses and wait for the ultimate victor of the battle on the desert, bloodied, weakened, and tired, to come to him and be slaughtered. He would have little use for his worthless magicians and their defensive weapons on the expedition, so he took only one, with the Lalla Mkouma and the exus.

His men were anxious to close on the caravan and do battle. Not because of bloodlust, which they had in full measure, as proper for Jokapcul fighters. Nor were they eager to fight because he commanded them with brutality and fear, which he used in full measure as proper for a kamazai. His men were anxious to make battle because he had promised them all the women they could take once victory was theirs.

He
would be mounted after this victory, as would his knights. And he could assemble his own cavalry troops. He could turn
all
of his soldiers into cavalry if he wished!

And all the wealth the caravan contained, as well as the great glory of the victory, would be his.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

Doli gasped at Alyline’s plan—so did most of the other women.

“I can’t do that!” Doli squealed. Her face burned. “Even when we were slaves, I never exposed myself except when I was forced to. This is … it’s wrong to expose ourselves!”

“You haven’t hesitated to expose yourself for Spinner,” Alyline snapped, her face just as red.

Doli flinched as though struck. That was different. Bending over in a scoop-necked blouse and showing her breasts to strangers as a matter of “service” in an inn’s common room simply wasn’t the same as showing her body to entice the man she loved, the hero who’d rescued her from slavery. And it certainly wasn’t the same as
this
!

Doli wasn’t the only one to object.

“You
cannot
mean me!” snapped a woman in a thin gown that rippled in the light breeze.

Alyline looked at her sharply. “Bel Kyn, isn’t it?”

Bel Kyn held her head high, chin jutting arrogantly. “I am the earl’s concubine. You
cannot
demand such a thing of me.”

Alyline gave her a steady, cold look. “In Dartmutt you may have been the earl’s bed toy. Out here, you’re just another woman—or a common trollop. Your choice. You
will
do what is necessary to save the caravan. Or do you want to be caned again?”

Alyline paid her no more attention, but Doli had raised a point that she realized she must address.

“When the Jokapcul come here, they will rape and torture and kill,” she said loudly to the assembled women. “You know that as well as I do. We have to stop them from coming here.

“They are men. We are women. We know what men want from women.” She paused while a wave of nervous titters and shocked gasps made its way through the crowd. “Yes. So we let them think they are going to get it. I know the Jokapcul will follow a woman and not stop even when their officers order them to. I know that because I’ve led Jokapcul into an ambush before.” She looked to the east, where the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon.

“Now strip off your clothes and let’s go!”

Maid Marigold was almost as fast as disrobing as Alyline was. As soon as she was naked she faced the crowd; few of the other women had begun undressing.

“I was a prisoner of the Jokapcul once,” Maid Marigold called out. “I know how they treat their captives. I will not wait here for them to come, I’d rather go out to attack them and die if I must! If one of them gets close enough to you, kill him without hesitation. When Alyline says ’Run,’ run as if your life depends on it, because your life and more does!”

“Strip or I will strip you,” Alyline snarled at Doli.

Doli sobbed but she shucked off her clothes and the others began to as well. Bel Kyn was the last to drop her gown. She did it reluctantly and with great embarrassment, but she did it.

Alyline held her dagger up to catch the sun’s first rays. “Now let’s go!” she shouted.

Three hundred naked women turned and trotted southwest, parallel to the road. In the distance they could make out, as a deeper shadow in the predawn dark, the Jokapcul troops advancing along the road.

Dawn’s first light sped along the desert surface; illuminating the caravan’s eastern circles, it shot across the western circles of wagons, and cast harsh shadows on the battle just north of the caravan. It filled the grass and sandy ground beyond and seemed to pause when it reached the three hundred naked women running its way, as though it wanted to romp with them. But it couldn’t linger; it had to move on to shoot sparks off the weapons and armor of the Jokapcul marching up the road. It seemed to run onward a little faster then, as though it didn’t want to associate with those armed men. It reached the bowl from which the road emerged and dumped shadows in its depths, then climbed the bowl’s far side and quickly filled the land ahead as far as the eye could see.