I'm a hero with coward's legs. I'm a hero from the waist up.
—Spike Mulligan
Except for the weather, Walter Slovotsky's part of the attack went off like it was charmed.
Walter Slovotsky's commando—he insisted on the correct usage of the word; it referred to the group, not the members of the group—consisted of only ten; ten against the seventeen in the horseborne slaver reserves wasn't great odds.
But there were compensating factors. Lou had told him that Aeia was still just about the best shot in Home; Bren Adahan, while inexperienced with a pistol, was a better swordsman than Walter, and quite good with a crossbow—and, most important, an experienced warrior; he had been thoroughly blooded in the Holtun-Bieme war.
Six of the others were warriors that Daherrin had recommended, only two of them tyros, one of those serving as medic—which meant that in addition to his weapons, he carried bandages and the bottle of healing draughts.
Daherrin had suggested Jason as the tenth, but Walter had vetoed the suggestion: This was a tricky bit; much better to put Jason with the group that was going to hit the slaver scouts—that looked to be the relatively cushy job.
No, Jason wasn't his tenth. His tenth was Ahira. The two of them had been friends for half their lives, and partnered for much of that time. In or out of a fight, having Ahira around was to Slovotsky like having a concrete backboard when playing basketball: The ball would rebound, period.
Still, given that the goal was to end up with seventeen dead slavers and no-count-them-no dead Home soldiers, it was going to be touch-and-go. Their pistols should lower the odds some; the rope in his hands was going to even them even more.
As was the element of surprise.
Which was the reason that Walter was in tactical command, after all, and not Ahira.
Besides, Ahira was part of the tactical reserves. Way back when, when he was in ROTC, Walter Slovotsky had been told that it was always necessary to have a reserve; it was the only thing from his two-week military career that had benefited him.
A stray raindrop hit him square in the left eye, stinging as he rubbed at it.
The weather was not promising; it was hard to reload in the rain.
As before, there was no sign of the slaver reserves from down the road when the last of the main party vanished around the bend. Wind whispered down the trail, a further promise of the oncoming storm.
Walter crept around the bend and waited silently until they were far enough away so that he could be sure his low-voiced call to Aeia and Bren wouldn't possibly be heard.
Distant flashes of lightning and remote crashes of thunder sent chills racing down his neck.
"Okay, you two," he whispered, hefting a coil of braided-leather rope as he stepped onto the trail. "Let's get to it."
While the first spatter of raindrops touched the leaves overhead, Bren Adahan knelt next to a tree, easily lifting Aeia when she stepped into his cupped hands. Walter tossed her the end of the rope.
It only took a few seconds for her to make the rope fast to the tree; she dropped lightly to the trail, and she and Bren repeated the process on the other side.
"Gin," Walter said. "Now we just have to—"
Shots sounded from down the trail.
Too early!
Panic washed across him in an icy wave, as the rain intensified, hard drops spattering his chest. As he dove for the cover of the woods he heard a harsh voice whispering, "Everyone to his place, and hold your fire," and realized it was his own.
More gunshots sounded from down the road; distant cracks that had him reflexively reaching for the pistols in his belt, knives at his hip, the swordbelt that was slung over his left shoulder, the better to discard it.
He could see only four of his people; the other four, under Ahira, were farther down the trail, giving them two lines of fire.
If it worked.
The rain fell hard, icy sheets clawing down through the trees,
Hoofbeats thundered on the hard ground; the troop of slavers galloped down the path, four abreast.
His bare back against the rough bark of the tree, Walter reached across his waist and drew a pistol, cocking it as he brought it up to chest level, hoping, praying that the rain hadn't penetrated into the pan.
The first four slavers hit the rope almost simultaneously. The taut leather knocked them into the air as though they were bowling pins.
Except that bowling pins didn't have neckbones that cracked with a horrible snap. Bowling pins didn't fall to the ground twitching and screaming in a final agony.
Two of the horses stumbled and fell, one sending its rider tumbling, the other rolling and crushing the scream from its former rider.
Of the next four slavers, one was able to duck under, but a gunshot caught him in the shoulder, slamming him out of the saddle and to the ground. Walter Slovotsky stood, bringing his first pistol to bear on an advancing slaver, firing as the heavy-bearded man fell into his sights.
He must have overloaded the gun; it went off with a bang that shook Walter to the bone. He missed; he never did see where the bullet went.
But the flash of his pistol and the clamor of the gunshot had identified him as a target for the charging slavers, who were now reining their horses in, some with swords already unscabbarded, others with lances seated firmly against their hips, yet others with short hornbows brought up, arrows nocked.
The slaver he had fired at brought his lance down and spurred his horse toward Slovotsky.
It was strange, Walter thought as his fingers clawed for another pistol, the things you noticed at a time like this: mud splashing from the pounding hooves, the flaring of the horse's nostrils, a vein in the bearded man's throat pulsing once, twice, three times—
And then vanishing as a shotgun blast tore him from the saddle, turning the face into a bloody pulp and sending him tumbling in the rain to the wet ground.
Walter unholstered his remaining pistol, and cocked it. It had been perhaps ten seconds since the first of the slavers had hit the rope, and there were already eight down.
As he brought his pistol up, a flurry of gunfire knocked three more of the slavers from their saddles, including the one Slovotsky had been aiming at.
He switched targets, but missed; his bullet struck his intended target's horse in the neck as the animal reared.
The horse screamed.
Something whizzed past Walter's ear, stinging him as a new wetness touched his cheek.
Another slaver, this one a blond boy no older than Jason, reached with trembling fingers to pull his crossbow's string back, but Walter's fingers found the hilt of one of his knives, drew, and threw it, sending another one flying after it even as the first one thunked home.
And then, from behind the last of the slavers, Ahira stepped into the rain, a potlike steel helmet strapped to his head, new chainmail protecting his torso, the metal shirt dropping all the way to his knees.
His staff, freshly cut from a sapling, was easily three times his height; even though it was thicker than Walter Slovotsky's wrist, the dwarf held it easily in his huge hands.
With a guttural cry, Ahira swept the end of his oversized staff toward the nearest of the slavers, moving so quickly that the sapling visibly bent even before the end whipped around to bowl the slaver from his horse, the man broken like a discarded child's toy.
A bolt of lightning momentarily dazzled Slovotsky's eyes; as they began to clear he saw Ahira still wielding his oversized weapon as lightly and easily as a human would handle a wooden switch. The dwarf quickly batted five more from their saddles. Other Home warriors were upon the dazed or dead slavers in seconds, slitting their throats with an efficiency that chilled even Walter.
It had been less than half a minute since the trap had sprung, and there was only one slaver left alive and uninjured.
Slavery is an unjustifiable evil, at any time and in any place. But that does not mean that all slavers are cowards. The last one was a brave man: instead of trying to run, or cowering and waiting his fate, he vaulted from his saddle and with a muttered oath of defiance lunged at Ahira.
Ahira brought up his staff to parry, but his sandals slipped in the mud of the trail and he fell flat on his back, momentarily stunned, the pole falling from his hands.
The slaver lunged at the dwarf; the tip of his sword caught in Ahira's chainmail.
On his back, the dwarf tried to crab himself away, but the slaver turned only momentarily to parry the attack of one of Slovotsky's warriors, then went after Ahira, his sword weaving as it pursued the dwarf like a snake after a rabbit.
Walter Slovotsky had already snatched his own sword from its scabbard; at a full sprint, he barely paused, broken-field-style, to kick a dying slaver out of his way, and ran toward the dwarf and his opponent, hoping that he would make it in time, praying that Ahira could hold out just a few more seconds, just a few more.
"Hold your fire, everybody," Walter called out. Ahira and the slaver were too close; a mis-aimed shot could easily hit the dwarf instead of the slaver. And Ahira was trapped; he had crabbed himself backward into a tree, and had nowhere to go, no way to defend himself.
Walter dropped his sword and snatched at a throwing knife as the slaver brought back his own weapon for a final, fatal thrust.
Two shots rang out; the slaver's throat disappeared in an awful shower of blood and bone. As the body slipped to the mud, the slaver's head, its face miraculously almost whole, fell to the ground, all the while seemingly watching Walter with shocked, wide eyes.
A splash of muddy water covered the eyes.
Walter turned to see Aeia lower her second pistol. Her stringy hair, sopping from the rain, clung to her face and neck; she eyed him levelly as she pressed her free hand against her side. "I don't miss slavers," she said from between clenched teeth. "And I don't take chancy shots."
That was nonsense. Anyone could miss. But she hadn't missed, and that was what mattered.
Besides, there wasn't time for discussion, not now.
"Places, everyone," Walter Slovotsky said. "Gunmen, get under the tarpaulin and reload," he said, reaching for where he had dropped his own pistols and fumbling in his pouch for his powder horn. It still might work; they had set up a tarp as a fly, to give them a dry place to reload if the rain was too intense.
Which it was; he wiped the water from his eyes as he gathered up his own weapons, hoping that there were enough dry cloths under the tarp so that he could dry the weapons enough to reload.
"Jimmy, I want those trees down. Danerel, see to the injured animals; bind or put them out of their miser—"
In midword, it hit him.
Aeia was pressing her hand to her side. No.
He ran to her. She was sitting on the ground, leaning against the rough bark of a half-dead elm, staring blindly out into the rain, clumsy fingers clawing at her pouch, ignoring the pounding of the storm and the frightening dark wetness that spread across her hip, staining her shirt with her own blood.
"Aeia, please . . . let me," Bren Adahan said as he knelt next to her, but Walter shoved him away, sending the younger man tumbling.
It only occurred to him much later that he was acting like Karl would have—that monomaniac Cullinane could never concentrate on more than one thing at a time.
"Medic, dammit," he shouted, as he crouched beside her. "We need a goddamn medic here. We've got one down." He tore the pistol and powder horn from her hands and gripped both of her wrists in his left fist, ignoring her vague, distant protests.
"I decide what the priorities are here, understood?" he said, tugging at her shirt, trying to pull it up so that he could get at her wound. Wet, it resisted; it clung tightly to her skin.
Fastening both hands on her shirt, he ripped the cloth away, revealing the deep gash in her side. The hole went all the way through her, about kidney-height. Blood flowed evenly, a dark oozing. Trying to staunch the flow, he clapped a palm to her wound, then snatched it away as she screamed, her body writhing spasmodically.
"No," she said, struggling against his grip with a weakness that frightened him. "Later. Got to reload, or—" Her voice trailed off in a gurgle as a spasm sent a stream of bloody vomit pouring from her mouth, spattering him.
The runner arrived with the brass bottle of healing draughts; out of the corner of his eye Slovotsky saw Bren Adahan snatch it away and uncork it. Adahan splashed some on Aeia's wound, then forced the bottle between her lips, while Slovotsky held her still.
But another spasm splattered Walter's face with wasted healing draught and more sour vomit. Shaking his head to clear the vile fluid from his face, he tried to hold her still. Bren splashed more of the precious stuff on the outside of her wounds, and was only partly successful.
"Try it again—Aeia, you've got to drink this," Bren said.
"Can't—"
Walter Slovotsky called for his command voice:
"Do it, Aeia. Now," he said.
God, I sound like Karl, he thought, as she swallowed once, hard, and then went limp in his arms.
"No!" Bren Adahan shouted, a shrill half-scream, while Walter held her tightly against his chest, her cold, wet form horribly still.
No. Make it not so.
But—God and all the saints be praised!—the thumping wasn't just his own heart. It was hers, too.
"She's alive, Bren." Walter found himself smiling so hard he thought his face might split. "She's alive." Gripping her hands, he could feel her pulse. Thin and thready, but it was there. He fancied he could hear her heartbeat.
Somewhere off in the storm, Ahira was barking orders; a tree crashed to the ground. "Walter," the dwarf called, "we've got to set up."
Walter stood, Aeia in his arms. "Bren—take her away from the trail; I don't want her hurt any more."
Bren nodded grimly as he accepted her limp form, holding the girl easily, tenderly, leaving behind only a quick glare as he ducked his head and pushed away into the rain.
Clever, Slovotsky, very clever. You sure concealed that relationship well.
Walter Slovotsky had always prided himself on not being the kiss-and-tell type, but it never seemed to matter much; interested parties usually worked such things out.
To hell with it. He wiped sour vomit from his face and chest as he worked his way back to the trail, slogging through the now ankle-deep mud.
Save that for later.
"Save it for later, Walter," Ahira said, echoing his own thoughts. The dwarf swung the woodaxe against the bole of another tree; chips the size of Slovotsky's fist flew off into the rain. "And reload, now."
Walter looked down at where he had dropped his pistols; they lay in the leaves, wet and muddy. It would take more than a few towels and a few minutes to dry them enough for reloading.
"No good; I'm going to have to substitute."
"Then do it."
Crossbow, that was the best bet—he could relieve one of the dead slavers of a weapon. The bastards always seemed to have good bows.
He walked over to where the still body of a slaver crossbowman lay on the ground, half covered by his dappled mare. Glassy-eyed, barely breathing, the animal whinnied in pain, its right foreleg badly broken, bloody shards of bone poking through the skin.
Dead slavers were something that didn't bother Slovotsky, not after all these years. But an animal in pain was something he could never get used to.
"Danerel?" he called out. "You find any healing draughts?"
The fat man nodded and pulled a small clay bottle from his pouch, tossing it to Slovotsky.
While healing draughts were precious, it wasn't possible to trust the slavers' potions—more than once, they had been boobytrapped; once he had watched one of his and Karl's team die a horrible death in front of their eyes. Four times, Walter had watched the same happen to a captured slaver, used as a test animal.
There weren't any test animals here. "Then again, Dobbin, I don't see that you're going to lose anything by my trying."
Walter uncorked the bottle and poured the thick liquid onto the horse's wound.
This time, the stuff was pure, the real thing: Skin and muscle reached out and drew bone into place, slashed flesh sealed up like a zipper. But the horse was still weak, still whinnying in pain. Internal injuries, probably.
Well, Slovotsky decided, laughing inside at his own hypocrisy, there could still be a slow-acting poison in this; best to use it on the animal and not himself.
He splashed the rest into the animal's mouth, then tossed the now-empty bottle aside.
The familiar miracle repeated itself: In less than a minute, the horse was on its feet. As he stooped to move the body of the slaver, Walter took a moment to pat at its muzzle, resolving to take this mare as part of his share of the booty.
Half covered by the body of its former master, the slaver's crossbow was unbroken, surprisingly.
Cocking it, Walter took a quiver of bolts down from the horse's saddle and slipped one into the slot, nocking it into place. He hung the quiver from his belt and headed to the roadblock that Ahira had set up.
Three trees lay across the trail, their boles and branches making the way almost impassable. But over to the left, the brush on the side of the trail was thinned out, just enough. "Danerel—and you, yes, you—take positions over there. And restring the tripwire from that tree to that one. In case they crash through."
It had been only a few minutes since the start of the attack; retreating slavers should be due any moment. The only question in Slovotsky's mind was how long his commando could hold them without relief from the rest of the Home forces.
After all the anticipation, it was an anticlimax when only three slaver horsemen made it down the trail to the roadblock. Three bullets and two crossbow bolts were enough to bring them down.
* * *
"That was a pretty brace of shots from Aeia. I might have gotten myself badly nicked, otherwise," Ahira said, hefting one of the dead slavers' lances, then casually hurling it into what clearly was a corpse. The pole passed clear through the dead man.
"He was already dead," Walter Slovotsky said.
"So, no harm done. I take over from here, yes?" Ahira said, shaking his head to clear the rain from his eyes.
Walter nodded. "It's yours."
Fighting the exhaustion that threatened to drag him down into the wet darkness, Walter Slovotsky shook his head to try to clear it.
He shivered in the rain. Nothing that could be done about that, except maybe some internal heating. He fished a silver flask from his pouch, unscrewed the top, and tilted back a good mouthful of Riccetti's Best. The harsh corn liquor burned on the way down, then set up warming vibrations in his middle that pushed the chill away, if only a little.
He passed the bottle to Ahira. The dwarf took the barest taste—clearly doing that only out of politeness—before handing it back. "Good stuff. Now, put it away; we're not done for the day. Danerel, you finish with cleanup. Araven, go find Bren Adahan and Aeia, and tell them it's all over—and be careful, boy, keep calling their names as you go. You—what's your name?—Keevan, get Walter's and my horses; we're going to go hook up with the rest."
Ahira looked over at him in grim satisfaction, his open-palmed gesture taking in the corpses scattered across the ground, some almost lifelike, staring open-eyed at nothing, others, limbs missing and faces blasted into a horrid pulp, barely recognizable as human.
It all stank. Like a cesspool. In death, the slavers' sphincters had all relaxed, in the mindless reflex that tries to make all animals less tasty to their predators.
Ahira shook his head. "Remember when this bothered you?"
Walter Slovotsky swallowed twice, hard. "Nah," he said, forcing a smile that maybe even Ahira wouldn't have been able to tell from the real thing. "That was long ago, in a galaxy far, far away."
* * *
As always, the cleanup was tedious, but the familiarity of the routine was reassuring. The main assault under Daherrin had gone generally well, although not perfectly: The warrior who challenged Walter and Ahira on their way in said there had been many minor casualties among both Home warriors and ex-slaves, and, worse, two warrior deaths—Sereval and Hervan, two men that Walter knew only slightly—and almost a dozen slaves killed by stray shots and bolts.
It couldn't be helped. One of the many nasty facts of life is that innocence is no armor.
Even after a long layoff, Daherrin's team swung into their post-slaughter routine with practiced assurance, each one assuming his secondary role comfortably.
Warriors-turned-smiths chiseled through chains while warriors-turned-cooks sorted through the slavers' stores, handing out small pieces of jerky while several huge pots of stew were cooking, two men quickly butchering a killed horse for the pot. Others, now acting as medics, eyed all injuries skeptically, dispensing ointments and bandages liberally, doling out doses of healing draughts stingily. A detail dug graves for respectful burials for both Home warriors and dead slaves, while warrior-quartermasters stripped the slaver corpses and searched for personal effects.
Those with nothing else to do dragged the dead slavers off, away from the camp, to rot on the forest floor. Normal procedure was to leave the slavers' bodies where they fell, as an announcement and a warning. An exception had been made; because of the intermittent rain, Daherrin had decided—wisely, in Slovotsky's opinion—to make a rough camp here for the night, giving both warriors and former slaves a good rest before starting the long march Homeward in the morning.
Tarpaulins were pitched as lean-tos, sheltering some from the rain, which had slowed to a miserable drizzle, while others stood around the six cooking fires that defiantly shot flame out into the rain.
Getting close to half a thousand ex-slaves treated, fed, and bedded down for the night was a major operation, but Daherrin had it well in hand by the time Slovotsky and Ahira dismounted from their horses.
The dwarf issued a few quick orders to a lanky, teenaged horseman, then reached up and gave him a friendly slap on the leg. "Good. Be sure to run down the chart—and I want you to personally account for everyone on the team; we don't want anybody hurt and lost."
"Understood, Daherrin." The boy spurred his horse away.
"You have any casualties?" Daherrin asked.
"No problem. Aeia wounded, the wound treated," Ahira said. "Nothing else worth talking about."
"Looking good," Daherrin said, with a gap-toothed smile. "Don't like two dead, but it'll probably hold at that."
Walter shook his head. "What do you mean, probably? The guard said—"
"We don't have a report from the group that took on the outriders." The dwarf shrugged. "But not to worry—there were only two men in the slaver advance, and we had six waiting for 'em."
Hooves sending mud splashing into the air, Geveren's pony galloped up. Even before the horse had completely stopped, the battered dwarf had dismounted, stumbling on the muddy ground.
"Ahira, Walter Slovotsky," he said. "We have a problem."
"What—"
"Valeran is dead. And Jason Cullinane is gone." His expression grew grim. "When the shooting started, he ran. He took his horse and ran away."