Demontech: Gulf Run (43 page)

Sergeant Rammer exchanged a grin with Captains Phard, Geatwe, and Mearh, then said sternly, “Marine, head injuries are treacherous. If any one of the healers says you need bed rest, you will have bed rest. And that’s an order.”

“But—”

“You shouldn’t be standing up,” Nightbird snapped, “you need to be in bed.”

“Rest is the only cure for you,” added one of the healing magicians.

“Lay down or I will put you down,” Rammer growled.

“The Jokapcul—” Spinner objected.

“The Jokaps aren’t coming now,” Silent interrupted. “We have time for you to rest.”

“How do you know that?” Spinner demanded.

Silent gave him a look that said he’d asked a dumb question. “We nomads of the Northern Steppes have our means.”

“But—”

Haft, Rammer, and the company commanders closed on Spinner as Doli and Maid Primrose took his arms and pulled him to his pallet.

“But—”

Nobody paid any attention to his objections, and he didn’t resist when the women lay him down and covered him with a light blanket.

“Haft,” Rammer said when he was satisfied that Spinner was going to stay abed for at least a time, “come with me. We don’t have much time, but we need to take full advantage of it. I want some help training the recruits of Company D. Have you seen to security?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” Haft said briskly in automatic response to his former detachment commander. “Lieutenant Jatke has the border soldiers screening to the west.” Then he grimaced.
He
was the commander here,
not
Rammer! He was supposed to
give
the orders, not
take
them.

Rammer ignored the glare Haft gave him. The two headed for Company D. In fact, Haft knew Rammer was right about taking advantage of this time to train the recruits.

The shouts they heard as they approached the area assigned to the recruit company didn’t prepare them for what they found when they got there. All the survivors of Company D’s mistaken pursuit of the Desert Men stood in ranks with the men Rammer had recruited during the two days since—the survivors who had wanted to quit arms had instead decided to stay and get properly trained. Maybe it was simply due to encouragement or taunting from the other survivors, but they stayed.

Two hundred more men from the caravan were also gathered around—they all wanted to join the company and be trained in order to protect their families.

“We’re going to need two training companies,” Rammer said softly.

Haft simply nodded, he didn’t trust his voice. Who would command the other company?

“Call a meeting of the officers,” Rammer advised. “Find out who we’ve got who can properly train raw recruits.”

“Right,” Haft managed, and left to assemble the officers.

“We’re going to have problems,” Zweepee told Haft on the second day of the rest. It was a problem she would normally have taken to Spinner, but she didn’t think he was well enough to deal with it, and she wasn’t sure it could wait. Fletcher and Alyline, the only people she’d discussed it with, agreed with her.

Haft stifled a groan. “What problems?” He’d solved the problem of who would train the influx of recruits, but was still wrestling with who would replace the men assigned to that task from their positions as sergeants and corporals—and a lieutenant—in the other companies. He was also dealing with problems associated with the force suddenly growing from battalion-size to that of an understrength regiment. And, somehow, eight thousand people on the move had to be fed.

“The caravan had a few more than three hundred widows and other unmarried women,” Zweepee said, either not knowing or not caring about Haft’s other problems. “There are about a hundred and more among the prisoners we freed.”

“Yes? We have 450 widows and other unmarried women. So?” Haft had no idea what she was driving at.

“We
had
about a hundred unattached men. Now we have about six hundred. There are too many men, not enough women. There will be fights.”

Haft stared at her for a moment, not comprehending. There were always more men than women when a fleet put into port, and that seldom caused problems. Sure, a sea soldier or a sailor might get a little too attached to a whore and not want to share her and pull a knife on someone else who wanted to buy her for a time. But blood was seldom shed. All they had to do was …

He looked away from Zweepee and stared unfocused into nowhere. The caravan wasn’t a fleet in port, it was a mobile town. Those women with their own wagon who had joined them before the company reached Eikby—and given intimate female company to the unmarried men—weren’t available anymore. He was pretty sure all of them had paired off with one or another soldier. And, so far as he knew, no women had moved to take their place caring for the needs of the single men.

He’d heard of towns where there were more men than women, or more women than men. Whichever there were more of, enough left in search of mates that the balance was restored. People, especially men, particularly fighting men, couldn’t leave the caravan, couldn’t be allowed to.

He buried his face in his hands and wished Spinner was healthy so he didn’t have to face this problem.

“How much time do you think we have before it becomes a problem?” he asked through his hands.

Zweepee shrugged. “If we’re lucky, two weeks, a month.”

“If we’re lucky,” Haft repeated. He made a quick calculation and muttered to himself, “If we’re lucky, that’s long enough to get more than halfway from here to Handor’s Bay. “If we aren’t lucky …”

Zweepee answered as though he’d spoken to her. “If we aren’t lucky the problems are already starting.”

“Let me think,” Haft said. He briskly rubbed his face, then lowered his hands and walked away.

Zweepee watched him go. She also remembered the women with their own wagon and, unusual for a happily married woman, wished other women had taken their place. She shook her head. Not that four women would be enough. At least Haft knew there was a problem coming. Maybe there was some solution a soldier could think of that wouldn’t occur to a woman. She hoped so. The thought of hundreds of soldiers without women deciding to take their way with whatever women came to hand frightened her.

On the afternoon of the third day, the healers decided Spinner was well enough to travel—as were the remaining severely wounded. The caravan set out soon after dawn the next morning, with Spinner under strict orders to spend most of the day in a wagon instead of on horseback, riding from one end of the caravan to the other. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been to enforce the healers’ orders—the gelding Spinner had ridden since they left the Burnt Man Inn in far off western Skragland was dead, killed by the demon’s spit the Jokapcul officer had meant for him. He knew it would take time for him and a new horse to accustom themselves to each other. More important, he knew he wasn’t up to learning a new horse just then.

They traveled out of sight of the shore and sea and made good time for a few days. Then the Zobran Border Warders roaming to the front brought back word of another Jokapcul prison camp.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

Two days after the caravan resumed its eastward movement, the Dark Prince scuffed his soot-black boots through the sand, scattering the insects that feasted on the blood caked to the sand grains; here and there his hard leather soles crunched a shiny carapace. His hair was black, his shirt the color of hard coal, his trousers a moonless midnight, his cape a bottomless abyss. He held a black scabbard on one black-gloved hand and tapped it into his other black-gloved hand. His expression was as black as his garb. His stallion stood calmly nearby, munching on a patch of grass. The tackle seemed to merge seamlessly into the horse’s ebon hide.

“Lord Lackland,” said the Kamazai Commanding of the Jokapcul forces, coming to a halt in front of the Dark Prince, blocking his passage. The Kamazai Commanding’s face was as heated as his expression was grim, lending it a color to match the bronze-dyed leather of his steel-rectangle-studded armor. His hands were wrapped so tightly around the hilts of the swords—one long, the other short—hanging from his belt that the knuckles were white.

The Dark Prince lifted his eyes from the sand and gifted the Kamazai Commanding with an expression equal in its grimness. Though in the case of the Dark Prince, fully half of the grimness was caused by the barbarian’s use of the hated sobriquet. Someday, he thought, he would make this insufferable kamazai pay most painfully for use of the sobriquet “Lackland.” For now, the Dark Prince said nothing. He waited for the Kamazai Commanding to speak.

“We have exhumed all the graves, the older ones as well as the fresh. The older held only the remains of slaves. The fresh ones held soldiers, more of ours than theirs.”

The Dark Prince swept the bloodstained sand with his gaze. Why did this buffoon bother him with that detail? Buried soldiers were only to be expected, following a battle such as the one that had obviously been fought here. “Yes?”

“Ours were buried in shallow, mass graves,” the Kamazai Commanding said through clenched teeth. “Theirs were put to better rest.”

The Dark Prince struggled to control his impatience—shallow, mass graves were better treatment than
he
would allot a vanquished foe. He feigned disinterest.

“There are only the bodies of one troop’s worth of our fighters,” the kamazai said. “There were seven troops here. Where are the bodies of the other six troops?”

That information was so unexpected, the Dark Prince blinked in surprise. “Where indeed?” he snapped. “Look farther.” It was impossible that six troops had mutinied and changed sides. Or … “Perhaps they pursue those bandits.”

The Kamazai Commanding shook his head sharply. “I have scouts searching as far as a half day’s march from here. The six troops will be found. They are not in pursuit. The bandits would not have had time to bury the dead if they had not killed the others.” It was equally unthinkable that the six missing troops would have run in ignominious defeat.

Caws drew the Dark Prince’s attention to the trees under which the dead had been buried. Carrion eaters were drifting down from the sky. Most of them alighted in the tops of the strange bumber trees; few attempted to perch on the branches of the fan trees, which were too springy to bear the weight of any but the smallest of them. Soldiers chased away the few birds bold enough to come to ground—chased them from the bodies of Jokapcul dead, allowed them to gorge on the bodies of the dead slaves and bandits. The Dark Prince imagined flies lighting on the corpses and laying their eggs, pictured the carapaced crawlers ponderously burrowing their way into the dead, and stifled a smile.

“Inform me immediately of your scouts’ reports.” He turned away to pace the battleground.

The Kamazai Commanding glared at the back of the arrogant foreigner who the High Shoton had seen fit to place in nominal command of his invasion force. A smile flickered across his face as he envisioned how he would make that insufferable princeling scream when he was finally given leave to dispatch him.

“Lord Lackland,” the Kamazai Commanding reported that evening. “My scouts have returned from east and west. They have found no more graves, nor have they found signs of pursuit to the east nor signs of retreat to the west.”

“And to the north?”

“None have yet returned from above the escarpment.” He looked stonily in the direction of the line of cliffs that barred access to the Low Desert. “I have sent a troop to find them.”

The Dark Prince followed his gaze and wondered.

The Kamazai Commanding thought and decided. “Some of the scouts who went west reported the bandit caravan left the road to climb the escarpment, then returned.”

The Dark Prince flashed him a look mixed of hatred, disdain, and anger. “Why would they have gone above and then returned?”

“The Desert Men.”

“They might have returned because of the Desert Men, but why would they have gone up in the first place?”

The kamazai only shook his head.

The two stood silent, side by side, for a few moments, each silently vowing death most hideous to the other, then looked to a sudden commotion in the forest and saw a young, mounted knight burst out of the trees.

The knight reined his horse mere yards from the duo and fell from the saddle as much as dismounted. The horse huffed and its eyes rolled wildly. Its hooves tap-tap-tapped nervously, as though it wanted to gallop farther. Blood mixed with the lather on its flanks. The young knight himself bled from multiple wounds. There was no control to his body when he dropped to his knees to give his report.

“Lord Kamazai,” he barked, and added belatedly, “Dark Prince. Desert Men. They attacked. Killed all but me. We found—we found bodies. Scouts. Troops. All ours. Dead. Everyone.” He hung his head, his body sagging and tilting to the side.

The Dark Prince and the Kamazai Commanding looked at each other, for once of one mind. The Dark Prince nodded curtly. The Kamazai Commanding returned the nod more thoughtfully, then marched off, barking and howling orders to his troops to prepare to move out, up to the plateau to punish the Desert Men. No one could be allowed to defeat a Jokapcul troop.
No one!

The Dark Prince looked coldly at the knight who had brought the report from the near reaches of the Low Desert and coldly watched him fall to the side. He walked to his grazing horse and mounted to follow and observe the coming victory over the barbarous Desert Men.

The battle, when it came, was hardly one-sided. Yet it was a slaughter. Unlike when they attacked the refugee caravan, the Desert Men did not avoid the magicians and other users of demon weapons. They died in their scores and hundreds, but were relentless in their attacks on the magicians and other demon-weapon users. When the remnants of the Jokapcul force retreated, the Desert Men chief ululated orders to his surviving warriors to let them go. He wanted the word to spread among the invaders:

Mount the plateau of the Low Desert and die.