Under Strange Suns (39 page)

And the Lhakovi came on, actually picking up speed, the multi-colored banners designating individual units tilting fractionally back as the banner bearers ratcheted up to double-time. Individual voices–shouting orders, bellowing war-cries–grew indistinct, subsumed by a gathering collective roar drowning all other sounds. The Lhakovi left flank abutted the stream. The right shifted, edging further to envelop the wall as it curved eastward.

The attack would come over a pretty broad front. Aidan again considered committing the reaction force from the northeast sector, dismissed it. The commander who committed his reserve too early would be the commander of the losing side.

A section at the rear of the onrushing army fell behind, coming to a stop. Crossbows.

“Down!” Aidan yelled, realizing as he did so the futility of the command in a language his troops did not understand.

He ducked behind the parapet, hoping his example would be enough. Of course the joon could see as well as he and when the quarrels flashed over the wall, most of the militiamen crouched beneath their flickering menace. Most, not all. Sharp cries accompanied the meaty thump of shafts driven into the unlucky, the impact hurling five or six from the parapet to fall, pierced and broken.

Meantime, the ladders neared. The defenders popped up and hurled javelins. Aidan snatched up a javelin from a stockpile nearby, arched back and threw. The javelin wobbled in flight, glanced off of a ladder, and disappeared into the mob below. He decided two things: one, not to enter a decathlon; and two, to leave the javelins to the experts.

Despite his contribution, the javelins took a toll. Many attackers in the leading rank stumbled, the ladders falling, tripping up those who followed behind. But not all. The first ladders reached the wall and were toppled over to lean against the steep gradient of the wall. And the soldiers began to climb, the movement a series of fits and starts: the single hand reaching up, gripping and pulling, the legs following, the body bowing nearly in half, then the legs pushing off, the arm stretching for a farther rung.

It was ungainly but effective. Still, it gave the defenders an advantage: each Lhakovi dropping onto the parapet was unarmed, requiring a moment to draw his sword. Aidan’s troops gave few of the initial wave that moment, running them through or simply heaving them back over the wall, living missiles rolling down to smash into the ranks below.

But dealing with that first wave required small, critical moments. The second wave did have the time to arm itself, and now the parapet about Aidan grew crowded with desperate, struggling combatants. The parapet’s varying width allowed no more than two or three joon to confront each other at any given point. The distinct possibility of falling added a further dimension to the fight, and it seemed to Aidan that nearly as many casualties were being created by that route as by the sword of an enemy.

Aidan drew his own sword, switched it to his left hand, then filled his right with the pistol. The melee swirled about him.

At least he could easily differentiate the sides: the Lhakovi were uniformly armored. Aidan wasted no time in driving his rapier through the back of a Lhakovi locked in combat with one of his boys. It required a vigorous tug to free the blade, the gout that followed providing Aidan with his baptism for the battle. He stepped up into the newly vacant space, raised his pistol past the Girdled-by-Fields militiaman–who was already turning to find another opponent–and shot a Lhakovi through the face as he reached the top of his ladder.

A few paces ahead the parapet stood clear of defenders, the militiamen pushed off by the weight of several Lhakovi soldiers leaping from the top rung of their scaling ladders. Aidan followed the Girdled-by-Fields joon into the scrum. He squeezed off a couple of shots before contact. That evened up the contest a bit before his ally plowed into the Lhakovi. At first he couldn’t risk firing again for fear of shooting his own trooper in the back. Then, as he waded in beside him he was too tightly engaged for more than sporadically effective hip-shooting. He found the rapier in his left hand awkward to wield, not only because he was far from ambidextrous but because the quarters were so close. It was like fighting in a coffin. He told himself that, if he lived, he would employ the main gauche instead of the rapier for this kind of infighting. This was knife work; a sword required more space, especially a thrusting sword.

Here, at least, he had a slight advantage. The Lhakovi faced the same dilemma Aidan did, but unlike the Lhakovi, Aidan’s blade possessed an edge. It also boasted a bit more heft. While the Lhakovi tried to shorten their grips or simply body the defenders off the wall or push them back far enough to allow room for a thrust, Aidan could cut, taking advantage of his greater size and strength to chop at them with a flurry of short elbow or wrist cuts.

A mediocre offense proved a good defense. The soldiers before him were forced to spend more time fending off his pitty-pat attacks than they spent trying to drive holes into him. That allowed him enough time to gut shoot most of them, clear that section of the parapet. Though he didn’t accomplish it quickly enough; his ally was on his knees, watching blood pump from at least two punctures in his abdomen.

Aidan wanted to stay there, apply a field dressing, get the joon off the parapet and to a bed. But he couldn’t. Another bloody engagement was underway not twenty paces farther along. He had to clear the wall, beat back this attack. And so he charged on.

Even as he did so, he wondered if he should be engaging at all. Perhaps he should not be risking himself. He was in command. His datapad received the live feed. He held the information that would allow him to send troops to the right point on the battlefield at the right time.

But at the same time, if he didn’t push back the Lhakovi right here, right now, the battle was over and it made no difference then to Girdled-by-Fields if its Captain of the Militia lived or not.

So he did not falter, only slowing as he neared, leveling his pistol and emptying the remainder of the magazine before joining the three of his troopers still standing on this patch of the wall.

He parried a thrust, pushing it across his body, pinning the blade for a moment against the wall. One of his troopers rammed a javelin into the Lhakovi soldier’s side, punching the head and a couple of inches of the wooden shaft through the soldier’s armor. Aidan pistol whipped him for good measure, slewing the soldier’s helmet about ninety-degrees. He continued on, taking a stamping step forward and extending in a graceless, left-handed lunge. His Lhakovi target swatted at the rapier, backpedaled, but missed his footing and slipped off the parapet.

And then the wall was clear, occupied only by Girdled-by-Fields’ defenders–for all of a second. Another flight of crossbow bolts arced over the wall, piercing a dozen defenders. More ladders thumped against the wall, more Lhakovi scaled the ramparts.

“Shit,” Aidan said. He had no time to insert a fresh magazine. He let the pistol drop and reached out to grab the top rung of the nearest ladder. Leaning into it he pushed, driving forward, tired leg muscles bunched, right arm straining. He brought up his left hand, still clutching the rapier, and added the strength of that arm. The ladder lifted away from the wall as a Lhakovi head bobbed into view in time to fall back out of view along with the rest of the ladder.

No time to regroup. No time to review the tactical situation on the datapad. No time to think. Swearing, sweating, and feeling a rising anger, Aidan shifted the rapier to his right hand and waded into the group of Lhakovi springing down from a trio of ladders a few paces away. He did have time to pluck the main gauche from its sheath at his left hip before contact. Then he had time only for thrust, cut, and parry, his awareness narrowed to an oval filled with darting, flickering blades and the armored Lhakovi plying them.

Time pulsed and his awareness blossomed again. No living Lhakovi confronted him. The wall was clear–until, crossbow bolts again, ladders again, this time a cluster appearing twenty yards east along the wall.

Aidan sprinted to lend his arm to the defenders, his throat dry, his chest tight, his lungs burning with exertion.

Pulse. Aidan turned aside a thrust with his parrying dagger, driving the point of his rapier through his opponent’s throat. Moved on to the next fight.

Pulse. Two points flickered toward him. He was in position to deflect only one. He twisted, feeling the other blade scrape along a rib. Then he was into the Lhakovi, using his greater size and strength: hip-checking one off the wall, hammering the guard of his rapier into the face of the other below the rim of his helmet.

Pulse. Aidan knelt over a Lhakovi soldier, tugging his parrying dagger free of the armored torso. His sword dripped. He stood. He dripped and not all of the blood was the enemy’s. He looked about.

No ladders.

The wall was clear. The first assault had been repulsed. Horns sounded the withdrawal. The first musical instruments Aidan could remember hearing on Ghark and they were tools of war. Still, it was music to Aidan’s ears.

Aidan sucked in vast gulps of air. Then he pulled hard on the tube of his water bladder, taking vast gulps of water. He allowed himself a cursory inspection. Lacerations, several punctures leaking red. Nothing spurting, nothing deep. Nothing debilitating. Field dressing could wait. A slight toll, no more.

The toll the Girdled-by-Fields Militia paid, however, was severe. The dead and the dying lay where they’d fallen on the parapet, or on the ground below where they’d fallen off the parapet. Moans and shrieks needled into Aidan, overpowering the feeble cheer raised by the survivors. He wanted to help. The knowledge that he could not, dared not, rankled that much more. But he had a job to do.

He looked over the wall. The Lhakovi were withdrawing beyond javelin reach. The dead lay heaped where they had rolled down the slope of the wall, like so many broken dolls in a gutter. Quite a lot of them, Aidan thought, until he looked up to take in the regrouping army.

“Hell, we’ve barely made a dent,” he said. Then, “Where’s my fucking gun?”

* * *

Aidan found his pistol beneath a heap of bodies from both sides. Some still clutched weapons, as if carrying on the struggle even in death.

He called up the live feed.

It appeared that while the first attack had been underway, the commander of the Lhakovi army had managed a stream crossing with a strong detachment. It was even now forming up near the northwestern sector of the wall.

Aidan bounded down the nearest stairs, looking for his runners. He felt a moment of panic. What did they look like? He didn’t even know their names. Had they been killed? Run off?

“Carson,” said a voice behind him. There stood five of his messenger staff, all of them bloody, one limping badly. They’d followed him into battle. He wanted to thank them, to tell them not to be such jackasses next time. They were too valuable to risk. But all he could do was growl in frustration.

Aidan tore out another map and marked the threatened area and the corresponding reaction force. He watched the runner race across town, cutting through a side street, reappearing on the outskirts and disappearing from view among the fields.

Aidan couldn’t go with him. It would be irresponsible to do so. This Lhakovi detachment looked less formidable than the last assault force. He’d have to trust his troops to manage without him. He couldn’t get tangled in every scrap. He had to save his ammunition for the direst threats. And besides, he was too goddamned tired to sprint halfway across the village right now.

He shuffled away from the wall, seeking the center of the village. He glanced frequently at the live feed, monitoring the progress of the attempt on the northwest wall and keeping an eye on the main body of the Lhakovi army.

The engagement was stiff but the resistance looked stout, at least from Aidan’s god’s eye view. A probing attack, he figured, testing for weakness. And even as the fight continued, he watched another detachment approaching the eastern wall, not far north from the farthest extent of the initial grand assault.

“Testing our numbers as well,” he muttered. “I’m definitely beginning to talk to myself too much.”

He tore out another map and sent a runner to muster a reaction force to the endangered sector.

The contests on both flanks continued. The Lhakovi committed more and more soldiers to the two detachments, even though it was evident to Aidan that their assaults were hopeless. Less a probing attack than a holding action, keeping his forces dispersed...

His eyes flicked back to the diminished but still numerous main body. Here they came again. Shit. The enemy commander had been hoping to deplete his defenders, make him commit his reserves to the other embattled sectors. Well, he hadn’t. But that first massive attack had thinned his number severely.

“Runner!” he said.

It appeared he’d added at least one English word to the local joon vocabulary, for one of his staff appeared immediately. Aidan handed him another map, this one summoning the reaction force from the southwest sector to come to his aid. He did not want to commit this force; his numbers were already attenuated. He attempted to mitigate by drawing a slash through the middle of the circle about the reserve force. He hoped the commander would understand he was requesting only half of the troops.

Well, it was a day for throwing the dice. And he’d have to keep taking risks, throw after throw. Meanwhile he’d have to get back to the ramparts, hold back the assault until the reinforcements arrived. So Aidan rallied, urging his protesting legs to move.