Storm runner, p.33
Storm Runner, page 33
Aranur met the eyes of each man and woman before speaking again. “You know what we must do. Are we ready?”
One of the archers tilted her head at him. “Do we have a choice?” she asked wryly.
He smiled slightly. “Yes,” he responded. “Do you want the ground squad or the trail team?”
She grinned. “I’ll take the ground squad,” she answered slowly. “If we’re going to fight, not camp, you won’t catch me up on the Slot without a moonwarrior at my side.”
The others chuckled. “Where will the wolfwalkers be?” one asked.
Aranur glanced at Dion, then nodded at the other two. “Wilse has agreed to cross with Usu to the other side of the encampment; Sobovi will remain with me, and Dion will be on the cliff,” he answered. “Don’t count on them to use the wolves to coordinate your attacks,” he warned, seeing the hope on their faces. “The Gray Ones are being sent away.”
There were surprised looks, but Dion explained. “They cannot be near the fighting. The raiders used them to hunt humans. They must not be used to kill.”
“But Hishn and you…” The words of one of the men trailed off in embarrassment, and Dion looked at him soberly.
“In defense, yes—when my life was at stake. So, too, for the other wolfwalkers. But this—” She gestured at the ridge over which they would sneak come dawn. “This is not defense. This is deliberate fighting—attack against humans based on rational decisions, not unprecipitated action. This is not self-defense. This is… war.”
The last word came hard to her, and Aranur squeezed her shoulder. War. The ancient word seemed somehow evil. The ancients had studied war as an art form, as action, as politics, as simple business. But the wars they had known were things belonging to the distant stars. Never had such a thing come to Ariye—or any of the other counties. To create such a thing here… He quelled his shiver. He would carry a great burden with him to the moons when he died, may they have mercy on his soul.
Dion’s words hung in the air, and Aranur glanced from one face to the next. “War.” He repeated her word. Men and women alike looked down before they met his eyes again. “We bring war to Ariye,” he said softly. “Let us remember that. This is no simple venge, where a dozen of us ride out after four or five raiders to bring them to justice. This is something bigger which we unleash. If we are unsuccessful—” He paused, letting the words sink in ominously. “—we teach a powerful lesson to the raiders.” He nodded at their consternation. “We teach them organization of action, not just the possession of land. We are attacking in force here, on a scale never before seen on this world. If we do not succeed,” he repeated, “they will adopt our tactics and absorb them, improve them, until they use them next against us. We will be weaker, the strategy more effective against us than when we used it on them.”
One of the men stirred. “How do you know they will even notice what we do?”
Aranur glanced at him. “Because of all the people in Bilocctar there is one who will understand. That one person controls not only the Lloroi, but the raiders.”
The other man frowned. “The raiders I understand, but someone who controls the Lloroi, as well?”
Aranur nodded. “Longear.”
Even expecting the name, Gamon felt a chill crawl down his spine. Longear. The woman had held Bilocctar in her grip for years. She was the force behind the old Lloroi’s expansion into the other counties. She was the genius behind the raiders. What he and Aranur did here was to show her a new weapon she could turn and use against not only Ariye, but the rest of the counties she coveted. Gamon’s eyes narrowed. He had fought her before and come out lacking. This time…
Aranur followed his thoughts as if they were his own. His gray eyes were cold. “We must succeed,” he stated flatly. “We will succeed. We are fewer, but we are better trained than the raiders. We have the resistance fighters to bolster our numbers. We have surprise. We have determination. More ancient battles were won by those two elements than any other.” He glanced up at the flattened mountain that loomed over the ridge. “Rodt, when the first shadows fall across the cliff trail, take your four archers down as far as you can. There are some rough columns there with flattened tops almost like beds. Be careful. It is a narrow trail, and the lepa hunt there in the day.” He grinned at their faces. “But don’t worry. After a comfy night on the cliff, you should be ready for anything.” He removed his warcap and ran his hand through his hair; dropping the teasing, he added, “It will be a long night, but your position is critical. We attack at dawn, when the cliffs are half in light, half in shadow. Down low, your positions will be dark enough to hide you, but the ground will be light enough for us to fight.”
Gamon indicated the small group of archers. “It’s the best vantage point we can give you.”
“We’ll count our bolts,” one of the archers reassured.
Aranur gestured toward the man who stood silently behind him, hiding almost in the shadow. “Tehena, take your group of archers and follow Usu. He will take you to the mud flats, where half of you will stay until the raiders are driven toward you; the other half will attack the camp. Everyone else”—he smiled faintly—“is with me.” There was general groaning around the circle.
“Don’t get too excited yet,” he admonished them with a gleam in his gray eyes. “Those of you who will be going with me will crawl down the south side of Digger’s Gully this evening. From dusk to as far into the night as it takes, we will ease our way through the brush until we are within a hundred meters of the raider’s camp. We’ll stay there till dawn. When we see the signal from the trail archers, we attack from the east.”
“But,” one of the men broke in, “the east side of their camp is surrounded by fireweed. No one—”
“No one in their right mind would camp in a meadow of fireweed,” Aranur finished for him. He grinned slowly. The men and women stared at him.
“If it’s any consolation,” Gamon said sourly, “I’ll be there, too.”
Dion chuckled. Even with her fear of heights, she did not care to trade her cliff assignment for Aranur’s task. Apparently, the other archers agreed. Their night on the basalt columns was beginning to look better and better.
Gamon shrugged. “Those of us in the east will be attacking out of the darkness, for the sun will not have cleared the trees when the signal is given. Those on the cliffs will again have an advantage, since the ravines will keep the sun from your position until two hours past dawn. Those with Usu will not be protected by the sun, but by the mud. You won’t have to move into position until just before dawn. Instead, you will camp downstream, then wade up and crawl into the mud in the early morning. You are our shock tactic,” he said with a faint smile. “From the raiders’ point of view, you will be invisible. The dark shadows from the banks will hide your shapes in the mud, and they will not be able to see where your arrows come from. If you can close the ford to them, the swordsmen can sweep down on them from the east, driving them upstream where the bank grows suddenly steep, and they can be pushed off onto the rocks below. There won’t be many who survive that without broken bones of some sort.”
Aranur glanced at them. “There is one more thing,” he said quietly. “Even with our numbers, our strategy, and the help of the resistance group, we are not sure we have the strength to destroy the raiders. Our primary goal therefore is to push them back into Bilocctar. Do not overrun into the thick of them—that will weaken our position and cause us to shoot at ourselves unknowingly. We want to keep them bunched, drive them like oxen to the river. Best if we can destroy them like that. Otherwise, we will simply kill as many as we can as we drive them back to the border.”
Gamon looked at each fighter soberly. “Our success depends on the fact that each of us understands our purpose.”
“It will be confused fighting,” Aranur added. “There will be little light. Stay together. Fight in groups. Gang up on the raiders—don’t try to face them one by one. If you are separated from your group, stop, drop to the ground, worm your way back, or stay where you are until you locate your line again. This is critical,” he said more sharply as one of the women nodded, bored. “If you are separated and the raiders find you, you are dead.” The uneasy silence that followed that remark was proof that he had caught their attention again.
“Most of you have never ridden on a venge,” Dion said, her quiet voice a stark contrast to Aranur’s commands. “Many of you have never fought outside of a controlled ring.” She pointed at herself. “The first time isn’t bad—you don’t realize at first that it is real. After that—” She shrugged. “You might panic. You might freeze. You might become enraged and run among them like a wild person. The thing to understand,” she said as firmly as Aranur had done a moment before, “is that you can’t know what you will do until it happens to you. Take Aranur’s advice. Stay together. Stay alive.”
The woman who had paid little attention before was nodding soberly. Aranur gripped Dion’s arm, thanking her silently as he noted the other woman’s changed expression. “We have the moons with us tonight,” he said softly. “They will be with us tomorrow. Believe in yourselves, and we will win.”
Chapter 18
Night,
Which brings the loneliness
and the dark,
Brings also dawn.
It was dusk. Dion edged along the cliff with her heart in her mouth. Basalt shards shifted under her feet, and she eyed the black columns as sweat beaded on her temples and the hum of the Slot vibrated in her bones. Behind her, the archers followed. The trail was visible—just. If only they could have done this in daylight. But then the raiders would have seen them as they descended. As it was, the dusk was their protection and their danger. One misstep…
Wolfwalker, Gray Hishn called. The wolf was on a ridge, hunting with the pack, and her images raced through Dion’s mind.
Dion paused, one hand on the column beside her, her eyes unfocused. A heart pounded. Was it her? Or the wolf? You honor me, Hishn, she managed.
The hunt—run with us! Howl with the pack, Wolfwalker!
Joy filled their voices, and Dion clutched the stones, jamming her fist in one of the cracks between the broken-out columns.
“Dion?”
It was one of the archers, his expression concerned even in the gloom. Behind him, Tomi watched her closely, saying nothing. Dion was not happy that the boy was with her, but she had to agree that he was safer up here, on the cliffs, than he would be with either Aranur or Gamon.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just the wolves.”
Down along the curving trail. Down through the dust. They passed the droppings of a lepa, and Dion could not help looking up, searching the deepening gloom for a glimpse of the lepa caves, of the raptors that could tear her from this cliff as if she were a leaf.
How many breaths could be crammed into a second? Her ankle throbbed with every step—the wrap gave it strength, but not relief—and her cheekbones ached. The slash across her chest had scabbed, and now it pulled with every stretch and step. The trail dropped jaggedly, dodging out when columns leaned away from the face. Some were loose, and warnings passed along the line. Don’t lean here; touch not that stone. Pale moonlight lit the wall. Crevices split back into the face. Crevices that hid night rodents and snakes. Narrow caves that were black as a moonless night, and glinting with eyes disturbed by her hands… and Dion clutched the rocky edges and eased her way on down.
Were these minutes or hours? The moons barely budged in the sky. Her breath came harshly, but not from strain. Darkness did not hide the drop to her left; it plunged away like glass. Down, she staggered. Her knees ached. The jarring of each step became a throb of its own. The trail flattened suddenly, and Dion hurried carefully, her feet gliding out, feeling the path before her weight followed. Rising, the fourth moon eclipsed the fifth as it cleared the trees. Another jog; another bend; another drop, and she slipped in the dust, catching herself on the edge of another column. But the bottom of the trail was in sight at last. The broken rocks where the cliff crumbled into earth was only ten meters away. Twenty minutes, she guessed. It had been twenty minutes down from the top to where she was stopped.
Behind her, the archers passed the boy forward, and Dion pointed to a flattened pocket where he could crouch and sleep.
She settled in beside him, curling and shifting until she found the place where her hips were wedged between two curved spots and her head rested comfortably on a broken plane. Around her, the other archers nestled into the rocks. The wind that howled along the cliff did not touch them except to drop its dust on them like a blanket. One of the archers choked, suppressing his sneeze, and Tomi started. Dion reached out reassuringly. The need for silence was great—their sounds would carry to the raiders like rocks falling into their camp.
Moons crawled. Tomi snuggled into Dion’s lap. Her left buttock went numb. Then her shoulder. She shifted, her eyes searching out the stars so that she knew the time. One hour. Two. She dozed, and the rattle of a rock awoke her. She tensed, but it was only the wary steps of a rockrodent, creeping through the motionless humans, confident that though they hunted, it was not he who was their prey. She dozed again, shifting drowsily as her head tilted into a sharp corner of the column. Minutes… Hours… She came awake slowly, still seeing only dark, but knowing it was near the dawn. She woke the boy with a touch. Pointing, she showed him where to pee, and he did so, the faint sound blending with the wind that gusted along the trail. The other archers were stirring, too, and they took careful turns in the few sheltered places there to do their morning duty.
In the east, the sky was already light. The purple-blue glow flared into pink in the overcast sky, then stretched out seared fingers of red and orange. Dion and the others looked down at the raiders’ camp. The lights below were dim, the fires banked in the pits, and the dark hulks of the wagons and cabins sheltering the raider’s sleeping bags from her eyes. Dion and the archers could see their surroundings clearly now. They eased farther down the path, choosing spots where the basalt columns stuck up and out from the cliff face. Twice they stepped over narrow chasms, and Dion feared that Tomi would cry out; but the boy, looking into her eyes as he crossed, made no sound. They crouched only twenty meters above the raiders.
Dawn lit the top of the mountain like a dark fire. Shadows splintered across the broken columns with the light, and below, the raiders began to stir. Beside Dion, Rodt, the best archer, watched for the signal, his hand up, open-palmed, indicating that it was not yet visible. The sun crawled out of its eastern den, and suddenly the columns above them were bright gray-black, shining in the morning light, while Dion crouched in dark shadow. Black stones in the dusk; dark stones in the day. The basalt columns stretched out of the broken earth at the base of the cliff. Up, a hundred meters. Two hundred, then three. Broken-out caves darkened the face and hid the lepa who slept and dreamed of bloody meat. The light gray dawn would not bring them out; they waited for the sun. Below their dens, the trails crisscrossed the face. Only one trail went from base to top. One trail, no switchbacks. One straight rise broken only by those blackened columns that jutted into the path and made the trail jog out, then in.
The raiders rose. Sleeping bags were rolled and tossed in the empty wagons. Fires flared up in the pits. The cabins emptied as raiders came out to tend to their morning duties. Rodt’s hand was still open-palmed. Tomi glanced from Dion to Rodt and back. The wolfwalker seemed relaxed, but her eyes, alert, cataloged the movement below, noting each position, each piece of cover the raiders had.
Rodt hissed. His palm closed into a fist. A sudden roar erupted from the fireweed line, and the raiders, as one, leapt to their feet. Archers fired. Screams answered. Aranur’s men fired first, then scrambled to their feet and surged forward. The raider’s camp was in an uproar. Two of Dion’s archers fired flaming arrows, and the cabin roofs and wagons caught fire. Smoke curled up. They fired again, and flames sprouted suddenly, taking hold of the wood and racing along it as if the wood were a steep hill and the fire were water. How many had they taken out? Smoke formed a column blasting apart in the wind and blackening their view. “Down!” Dion shouted as a volley of arrows flew up toward them. The archers dropped back, one not soon enough. Shafts of wood struck the rocks around them, and one of the barbs cut across a woman’s cheek. She screamed, and her partner cut the bolt from her face, dragging it through where it had punctured the other side of her jaw. She moaned, spitting blood, but her partner lashed a pad to her face. Resolutely, she wiped her blood-slick hands on her trousers, then reached again for her bow.
Dion fired at one of the figures that ventured out from behind a cabin and followed with another bolt as the first one struck flesh. When a second figure raced across the porch, the wind gusted. Her third bolt went astray, skittering harmlessly across one of the water barrels beside the porch.
Fire stretched down the sides of the cabins now, and the raiders ran from within. Aranur’s men had gained the camp. The raiders, confused by the noise and the dark, gave way. With a roar, Aranur leapt forward. Dion held her breath as the smoke blew back against the cliff, stinging her eyes and blinding her to the action. From all over the camp, raiders raced to face the threat from the east. Behind them, from the west, two dozen figures leapt up from the dark, shooting into the raiders’ backs, then dropping back to the ground. Half the resistance fighters crawled forward like dogs, hidden in the green-black growth, while the other held back, waiting for their turn. The raiders turned, crying out that there was attack from the river side. Their confused force was split, some running to the west, some east, no one commanding their frantic energy. The resistance group reached the edge of the camp in less than a minute. A knot of raiders obeyed a furiously shouting figure and shot blindly into the shadows. Behind them, the fire silhouetted their forms for the resistance fighter’s arrows and cast dancing shadows forward to confuse the raiders’ eyes. A dozen men from the camp gave up and fled. More ran from the unseen death. Two seconds, three, and then the resistance group leapt up and surged forward. Silently, they raced into the camp, slashing as they went. One of the fighters went down under two raiders. Another tumbled, an arrow sticking out of his thigh. It snapped off with his hideous scream, and he dragged himself to the scant shelter of a broken barrel, thumbing another arrow to his bow as he crawled. Huge gaps of space opened up and shifted as the raiders ran for the attackers, then fled to the river. The Ariyens poured in.
