The Sky-Blue Wolves Page 3

  “And you yourself being so timid, Herry dear.”

  Heuradys raised one eyebrow. “I’m your household knight and heir-vavasour to three quite theoretical manors out in the Palouse with nothing on them yet but a few peasant families and about six thousand sheep munching on bunchgrass and crapping wherever they please. You’re the heir to Montival. It’s just a bit of a bigger responsibility.”

  “And I have four siblings after me. . . .”

  “Three if you don’t count the one who managed to get washed out to sea and is She-knows-where.”

  “Four siblings, so there’s more than one spare wheel to the dynastic wagon . . . There they go!”

  The assault battalions finished clambering over the rails and down the nets on the sides of the transports, and the barges pushed off with a row of oars flashing like the legs of a salt-water centipede on either side; there were local pilots in each, fishermen and sailors born with a foot in these waters and an instinctive feel for them. But the crews and the troops were her people, come here at her call, and she bared her teeth with the aching need to be with them and share their peril.

  Not yet, not yet; Herry’s right that far. The monarch doesn’t charge at the forefront more than once per battle and that at the crucial point, she thought. I can feel them, through the Sword . . . can they feel me with them? Yes, at some level, I think so . . . the veterans all swear that in the Prophet’s War they could sense Da’s hand on their shoulders somehow.

  Heuradys handed her a pair of binoculars and she leveled them, adjusting the focus and compensating for the ship’s roll. The first wave was a brigade of heavy infantry from the United States of Boise, in what the old world had called Idaho. Some very conservative elderly people there still called it simply the United States of America, though the Thurston line of Generals-President had quietly abandoned that claim when they swore allegiance to Rudi Mackenzie. Fred Thurston, their current ruler, had been with her father on the Quest in a complex sequence of events that had involved his elder brother in parricide and usurpation . . . and probably demonic possession.

  The Boiseans wore armor of bands and hoops of steel plate joined by polished brass clasps, helmets with flared neck-guards and bills over the eyes like jockey caps and hinged cheek-guards, big curved oval shields in their left hands and heavy javelins with long iron shanks behind the points in their right. An officer was the first to leap down as the barges grounded in near-unison, shin-deep in the low surf; you could tell his rank by the stiff upright crest of red hair from a horse’s mane mounted across his helmet from ear to ear and the vine-stock swagger stick in his hand. Beside him was a standard-bearer with a wolfskin cloak and the flayed head of the animal snarling above his brow, who was carrying a tall staff with the Stars and Stripes below a spread-winged gilded eagle.

  He was too far away for Órlaith to hear what he shouted, but she could hear the answering call from his troops: a long deep guttural snarling:

  “HOOOOOOOORRRAAHHH!”

  It carried as well as a drumbeat, and stirred something primal that coiled under her breastbone and made the little hairs on the back of her neck try to stand under the constriction of her arming-doublet.

  As they gave the Republic’s battle cry they leapt over the bows and sides of the barges, some of them neck-deep as they waded shoreward with their shields and javelins held over their heads. A few had to be rescued by their comrades and crawled ashore coughing, heaving and spitting up seawater, but the rest formed up quickly, crouching with shields up and covering them from eyes to the greaves on their shins. They needed to be; despite the constant stream of roundshot and bolts going by overhead, arrows were already coming back from the enemy ranks, standing quivering in the sheet-metal facings of the plywood shields marked with a black stenciled spread-wing eagle and crossed thunderbolts. More shafts came every moment, and the Korean forces used a powerful composite bow of horn and sinew. Here and there a man fell still or writhing, an arrow in face or arm or thigh showing you could meet your own personal ill-fate regardless of how the battle went overall. The rear ranks dragged them out of the way and back to the stretcher-bearers and medics and merciful morphine, and a new man stepped into each vacant place with stolid speed.

  Another order, this one carried by the hoarse screaming of brass cornu, coiled trumpets Boisean signalers wore like sashes. She’d known the Boisean battle-calls even before the Sword came to her—that one meant form standing testudo.

  The front rank went to one knee with their javelins point out and butts stamped into the sand, shields braced on the ground edge-to-edge like a wall bristling with spines; the second rank held their shields up to make the wall more than man-high, and the third and fourth snapped theirs up overhead to form a roof. The whole took mere seconds, in a rippling unison like a living machine, and full of a deadly menace and promise.

  More arrows sleeted down on them, but the formation stood. Just offshore now were more barges, keeping station as the empty ones threaded through and headed back out to load more troops. That second wave was full of archers in kilts and light open-faced sallet helms and green brigandines marked with a silver waxing crescent moon between black stag-antlers.

  “Oh, the kilties do love to sing and chant,” Heuradys said; those were the Clan Mackenzie’s archers. “It’s a pity they’re too crowded to do a sword-dance first. They’d rather dance than fight any day . . . well, so would I.”

  Behind her Karl Aylward Mackenzie and his brother Mathun—young men now of her household, and alike clansmen from Dun Fairfax—made small rude noises as they leaned on the cased staves of longbows made of yellow mountain yew from the Cascades, taller than a tall man and still unstrung, with grips and risers of black-walnut root and tipped with nocks carved from elk antler. The others in the small band of Mackenzies they led sniggered quietly.

  One of them—Órlaith didn’t turn her head to see which, for dignity’s sake, but the voice was female, she thought Boudicca Lopez Mackenzie—began to murmur along with the men and women raising their bows closer to shore, and she could feel her wish to be there like the tension on a drawn bowstring:

  “We are the point

  We are the edge—

  We are the wolves that Hecate fed!

  We are the bow

  We are the shaft—

  We are the darts that Hecate cast!”

  Not even Mackenzies, who were a people of the bow and raised to it all their lives, could shoot accurately from a barge rolling in the low waves near shore. They didn’t have to—their target was a black mass of thousands of men and spearpoints drawn up in plain sight and only about a hundred paces away . . . and there were thousands of the clansfolk, too. Thousands of the clothyard arrows flew upward at a forty-five degree angle for maximum range. They slowed to the top of their arch, twinkled slightly like stars on a rippling night-time sea as the honed edges of the heads caught the sunlight when they turned, and plunged point-down towards the enemy formation with a rushing whistle that was audible even here.

  It didn’t end, either, continuing like the sound of steady rain on a tile roof, punctuated by a multifold hail-drum as the points struck shields and helmets, armor and dirt . . . and human flesh. The enemy staggered under the blow and began to crumple, like a sandcastle in rain.

  “Maith thú, and doubly well done! Good shooting!” Karl said. “Mackenzie abú!”

  Another volley and another rose, regular as a metronome, until six or seven were in the air at the same time, and twelve left the strings in the first sixty seconds alone. At that angle a longbow shaft of dense straight-grain Port Orford cypress-wood from an old-growth tree, with a head beaten, cut and ground from the head of a pre-Change stainless-steel spoon, was moving three-quarters as fast when it hit as it had when it left the string . . . and that was very fast indeed.

  In the old wars with the Association, charges of knights had been stopped dead in thei
r tracks by that arrow-storm. And at the Battle of the Horse Heaven Hills the death-sworn fanatics of the Prophet’s red-armored elite guard had died in windrows before the Clan’s section of the battle line, men and horses piled four-deep, weakening them crucially for the charge that broke the power of the Church Universal and Triumphant forever. The Koreans weren’t nearly as heavily armored as either of those foes had been.

  “Nock . . . draw wholly together . . . let the gray geese fly . . . Loose! Nock . . .” one of the clansfolk behind her murmured.

  That echoed what the bow-captains in the barges would be shouting. Mackenzies prided themselves on being a free people, with no lords but the Chief of the line of Juniper Mackenzie they hailed themselves, governed by their assemblies where any crofter or crafter could stand and vote and speak their mind to anyone, including the Mackenzie Herself Herself. One of the reasons that boast was largely true was that anyone in the dúthchas could cut a dozen yew staves in a single autumn day and put them to season in the rafters of their cottage, and a year later a skilled bowyer could turn that seasoned stave into a longbow in an afternoon at modest cost. Long chill, rainy winter afternoons in the Black Months were often spent making arrows.

  Naysmith made a gesture with her telescope: “Ships to cease fire.”

  The clamor of the broadsides ended, a stillness running down the line of battle from Sea-Leopard to Wave-Witch. In that—relative—silence another brass snarl from the cornu rang clear, and the Boiseans began to move forward, opening up their formation into a checkerboard, boots pounding in unison and right hands cocked back with the javelins—the pila—leveled until they were thirty paces from the foe.

  Then at another signal each of the front line took a skipping sideways step and threw. The heavy spears flew out in flat arcs at close range, their narrow heads slamming into bodies and faces and penetrating armor of lacquered leather and steel lamellae like a metalsmith’s hammer-driven punch. Where they hit the heavy square shields with hard crack sounds they slammed through the outer layers of hide and wood, and then the shanks of soft iron bent to let the wooden shafts drag on the ground, making the shields useless . . . and making it impossible to pull them out and throw them back. She could see the enemy making that nasty discovery themselves, shaking their shields or wrestling and hammering at the embedded weapons while their officers screamed at them to keep ranks.

  “USA! USA!”

  A huge unified crashing bark from the whole Boisean brigade, and the front rank snapped out the short leaf-shaped thrusting-swords worn high on their right sides and charged at the run with shields advanced. The rows behind threw in sequence, three thousand spears in thirty seconds, then moved up behind their comrades in the dance of the maniples; taking spear-thrusts on their big shields, their helmets and shoulder-armor shedding the overarm slashes that the enemy’s point-heavy sabers delivered, punching the shield-bosses into faces like a twenty-pound set of brass knuckles and smashing the steel-shod lower edges down into feet hard enough to snap bone or into a fallen enemy’s neck to finish him. Crowding close and stabbing, stabbing, stabbing at face or groin or gut or armpit, sometimes bending under a shield held like a roof to aim a hocking backhand cut at an enemy’s ankle or knee.

  Officer’s whistles trilled, and the front rank stepped back as the second rank stepped forward sword in hand to replace them, letting the tired men at the enemy’s forefront face opponents who were always fresh. The effect was rather like the endless teeth of a circular saw in a water-powered timber mill ripping into one log of tough wood after another.

  Though wood doesn’t scream in quite that way . . . Órlaith thought.

  Behind them the barges bearing the Mackenzies moved in and grated on the sand of the beach, and the whooping clansfolk leapt free, holding their precious bows and quivers overhead.

  The savage wail of the bagpipes sounded then; the pipers of each contingent playing the skirling menace of “Hecate’s Wolves Their Howl” in unison as they assembled on the beach. Lambeg drums began their inhuman hammer and the tall upright carnyx horns bellowed through mouths shaped like the heads of boar and wolf and tiger. True howls and ululating banshee shrieks ran louder still from contorted faces painted for war in jagged designs, sept totems or sheer fancy in red and black and green and yellow.

  Some of them did dance a wild whirling step or two as they landed, or just flipped up the rear of their kilt and slapped their buttocks in the enemy’s direction.

  Those on board tossed loads of fresh arrows down in a rain of thirty-two shaft bundles before the sailors pushed off and started back out. The archers shook themselves out into their bands by Dun and sept or oath-bond, trotting up with wolfish springy strides to spread out on the flanks of the heavy infantry. This time they delivered aimed fire at close range, slower but even more deadly, with the eye-punching accuracy of lifelong practice, and eóghann—helpers, teenage apprentices not yet old enough for the bow-line—ran back and forth with bundles of shafts, or got the wounded to the rear and began first aid beside the healers.

  From about the age of six on, Mackenzies shot at the marks most days, for training and the public pride of making a good score. More, they rarely set foot outside their villages—duns in Clan dialect—without a bow in hand and a quiver on their back, because they hunted even more often for food and hides and fur. And to protect their crops and orchards and truck gardens from the nibbling hosts of deer and elk and boar and rabbit and bird, and their livestock and children from the hunger of wolf and cougar and tiger the year-round, in a world where humans and their tame fields and beasts were scarce again, and unpeopled forests and marshes and savannas many and broad.

  Órlaith nodded, feeling what her folk did, knowing what they knew.

  “It’s time,” she said. “Admiral Naysmith, send in the rest of the force—we have enough of a perimeter now not to get tangled up.”

  A question was in the glance she got, and she explained:

  “The enemy is bringing their first wave of reserves forward to try and push the Boiseans back into the sea by main weight while they’re fully engaged.”

  Then she looked at her allies, and back at her handfast Household companions. “And let’s get going ourselves.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHOSŎN MINJUJUŬI INMIN KONGHWAGUK

  (KOREA)

  NOVEMBER 1ST

  CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD

  Fighting depraved cannibals ruled by evil sorcerers was something all their neighbors had an interest in. The Khökh-Khan of Mongolia was not the least of those.

  Prince Dzhambul, son of Kha-Khan Qutughtu of the clan of the Borjigin—which made him a descendant of the great Temujin, not that half the world couldn’t say that—reflected that being a Prince wasn’t all that some people thought it was, particularly when your uncle disliked you and commanded the army in which you were serving. And, some said, or privately thought, he would be a better successor to the Kha-Khan than you would; the position was elective, within the line of Royal descent.

  For example, if you’re a prince in those boots you may get sent on a long-range scouting mission that may end up behind enemy lines, he thought.

  It was snowing a little, hard granular flecks out of a low gray sky that made him blink when he turned his head northward and caught in his thin young-man’s mustache and beard and made him glad he’d greased his face this morning. The ground was still mostly covered in dirty white and frozen hard, though it was early in the season for it, and he thought he smelled a change in the weather under the dry mealy scent of the snow. His horse snorted with resignation and turned a little under him, to get its nostrils out of the direction the snow was coming from.

  He watched the top of the barren hill for the scout’s signal, one booted foot cocked over the leather-sheathed arched wood of his saddle’s pommel. He’d been up long enough that the stiffness of sleeping on cold ground wrapped in a cloak had worn off
and he’d beaten all the bits of ice out of his wolf-fur lined coat before he put on his mail and ate a bowl of hot rice gruel, but it was still early morning.

  Behind him there was a wheep-wheep of someone sharpening something, and the restless hollow clatter of unshod horse-hooves as stationary mounts shifted their weight, the creak of harness, the snap of a pennant on a lance, someone making a low-voiced invocation to Sülde Tengri, who was a war God but also the Ancestor, Genghis, and who dwelt in the tugh war banner:

  “My Sülde who is without fear;

  You who become the armor for my body;

  Though it be threatened by ten thousand enemies—”

  Mostly they kept a disciplined silence. Though he reflected wryly that if the wind were wrong the enemy might smell them coming, rank man-sweat and horse-sweat soaked into felt and cloth and leather; contrary to what foreigners thought, Mongols did wash when that was practical. In the field it wasn’t and he hadn’t noticed warriors of any other nation smelling much sweeter, including the Han who were always going on about their superior civilization.

  Maybe that’s why we keep beating them—we talk less, but we hit harder.

  He waited with the stolid patience of a hunter and a herdsman, holding his helmet on his boot, though inwardly his stomach was clenching a bit at the thought of the weight of his decisions. This scouting mission wasn’t a major operation, but there were still two hundred men depending on him, and the army needed the information they were gathering.

  This little valley had grown maize in the year past, with some broken stalks still showing, and the remount herd were nosing at the ground, occasionally scraping with their hooves. They were down to three remounts per man, but the beasts were in good condition, since they’d looted enough grain to supplement the meager pasture since they crossed the Yalu. A huddled village of mud-and-stone shacks with one slightly better hovel for its supervisor stood about four long bowshots eastward, behind him.