The Sky-Blue Wolves Page 5

  “Split up?” Gansükh said.

  It was the standard response. You fought when you had the advantage, and ran when you didn’t, in the wars of the steppe and desert. The enemy was probably in a hurry. They’d almost certainly send a detachment after two hundred men fleeing in a body, but twenty separate parties was a problem without a solution for them if you didn’t have much time. Numbers were only the illusion of safety here, not the reality.

  “Yes. By squads.”

  Ten men was the basic Mongol unit. He forestalled the zuun-commander, who he could tell was not going to report to his regimental chief that he’d left the Kha-Khan’s son in the hands of his sister and a bunch of wild girls.

  “How many men in your hardest-hit squad? Not counting any too wounded to fight.”

  “Seven men, Noyon.”

  “I’ll take them, then, and the Hawks. Three remounts each, from the best of the captured animals, and enough food for a week. We’ll meet at the first of the agreed points.”

  They compared their maps, printed up in the army’s mobile records ger from woodblocks before they started this mission, and copiously annotated since. They were in agreement, which was important. They all noted this location and the date to mark where they’d divide their forces.

  “Go!” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Toktamish does not favor me,” Dzhambul admitted reluctantly, and quietly, as they walked aside from the hillside camp.

  It barely deserved that name; they were both gnawing at strips of dried horsemeat, only slightly softened by being stuck under the saddle. Even with the heavy soft snow that was falling a fire was out of the question, and they were in a globe of silence and privacy only a few paces from the sentries sitting up with the dirty-brown of their sheepskin cloaks gathering an extra layer of white and their bows beneath to keep them dry.

  “Toktamish hates the children of our mother and wants us dead,” Börte said. “But he hates you most of all, brother, because the common people and some of the noyons love you. When our father dies—”

  “I will not begin a civil war,” Dzhambul said. “Who sheds the blood of his own is a traitor to the people. Let our father live long, and the kurultai of noyons and chiefs will settle the succession among the blood of our grandfather.”

  He smiled at her. “Besides, remember the great prophecy of the idugan while this war was young. The dark magic of this land has been weakened. And the empire of Genghis Khan will be renewed. . . . What, you do not believe it?” he said, scandalized.

  Börte’s mouth twisted as if she had bitten into something sour.

  “Of course I believe it,” she said. “I was there. We all felt that the Tengri spoke through her. But I listened, where you did not.”

  “What?” he said.

  She began to tick points off on her fingers. “She said the spirits the Miqačin worship and whose slaves they are could no longer bar the Yalu River against us, and she was right. But!”

  Another finger. “She did not say that the Miqačin would not fight us with bow and saber and lance. And they are very many.”

  Another finger. “She did not say that their forts would fall without us having a proper siege train, and they have a lot of very strong forts.”

  Another finger. “She did not say we wouldn’t have trouble with the Han, and the Manchus, and the Russki, at the same time we were fighting here. And we are fighting the Han, the Manchus, and the Russki. Oh, and we and the Kazakhs and Uyghurs are all raiding each other.”

  Another finger. “She said the Empire of our ancestor Temujin would be restored when the Son of Heaven and the White Tsar, the Courts of the North and South, were no more. But she did not say how soon it would be restored.”

  Then she clenched the fingers into a fist and shook it under his nose. “And she did not say you and I wouldn’t be killed, you blockhead! By the Miqačin, or by Toktamish!”

  He sighed. She wasn’t necessarily wrong, but . . .

  “First, we have to get back to the army.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  PEARL HARBOR

  AUPUNI O HAWAIʻI

  (KINGDOM OF HAWAIʻI)

  DECEMBER 4TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD

  “I tell her and I tell her,” Heuradys said sotto voce as the Royal party walked towards the gangway at the side of the ship and the barge waiting below; the Hawaiians and Japanese had their own. “But does she listen? Nooooo. . . .”

  “Enough, Herry,” Órlaith said amiably but firmly; her knight was doing her job, after all. “The Powers gave House Artos a Sword to carry, not a notepad for writing orders or a megaphone for shouting them. We don’t just command, we lead.”

  The knight nodded with a chuckle—probably at the thought of a supernaturally powerful order-pad or speaking trumpet—but she did silently push forward with her shield up to lead the way down the gangway, which was an arrangement like a long hinged staircase down to the water level. It wasn’t even really paranoia; there had been more than one attempt at assassination lately, and from people none of them would have suspected.

  Alan, Órlaith thought, and pushed aside the pain for a man who might not have really existed at all, though she’d felt his touch.

  She’d thought it was more than diversion and sport. If they’d had more time together . . .

  And one of the reasons enemies try that sort of thing is to kill your trust if they can’t kill you, because nothing can be done without trust. Suspicion can be a prophecy too . . . a self-fulfilling one.

  The boat at the bottom of the gangway was Hawaiian, with a crew that King Kalākaua had furnished, as he had for Empress Reiko. The Hawaiian monarch was proud but shrewd, and carefully courteous to both his new allies, looking ahead to a time after the war, when Hawaiʻi would be the entrepôt where the trade of continents met, to the benefit of his subjects and his realm, holding the balance between many and so being safer among larger, more populous realms.

  So a King must think, if the job is to be done properly.

  Montivallans wouldn’t have been working stripped to the waist and the waists cinched with only a breechclout, but apart from that no single individual among the oarsmen would have looked out of place at home among a band of tall well-muscled young men, though as a group they ran more to brown skins and black hair than most parts of the High Kingdom. Heuradys made a slight ooooh sound of appreciation at the massed male hotness and one of them caught her eye and grinned and winked and gripped his oar so that the long muscles flexed on his arms and shoulders beneath smooth sweat-slicked skin. Órlaith was feeling too serious for that sort of byplay.

  She nodded to their captain, an elegant youngster with a red flower tucked behind one ear and a wicked-looking long knife in his belt. From what little she’d seen of the ordinary folk here since her fleet arrived, Hawaiians tended to the casual and happy-go-lucky even by Mackenzie standards, but when they needed to they could work in a unison even a Boisean would approve of, and very hard indeed . . . and they went spear-hunting for shark here, for the sport of it. His face was grave with responsibility.

  The boat captain waited by the tiller until the last of her party—the dozen boisterous tattooed McClintock caterans in their Great Kilts who followed Diarmuid Tennart McClintock their sub-chiefly tacksman—were shoved out of the way. The McClintocks were mountaineers from the southern uplands beyond the ruins of Eugene, without even the slight experience in boats a Mackenzie might get on the rivers of the Willamette low country. Their streams were rushing torrents good mainly for trout, salmon in season and turning the wheel of a gristmill, but they were agile as goats and adjusted quickly.

  Two of them, a huge redhead with a beard down his plaid like a burst mattress stuffed with ginger moss and a black-haired comrade nearly as big, were taking turns carrying and guarding her personal banner, the same C
rowned Mountain and Sword as Montival’s flag with the baton of her status as Heir across it, flying from a ten-foot pole of polished mountain ashwood with a good practical spearhead atop it.

  They looked fit to burst with pride, and their leatherwork and metal-sewn leather vests and the hilts of the great two-handed claidheamh-mòr slung over their backs had been lovingly polished to do the task justice; they’d probably boast about it the rest of their lives, if they made it back home to their native glens. She hadn’t had the heart to tell them she’d picked them for the honor because they were both, though immensely strong and very brave, also “thick as three short planks set together” as Diarmuid put it.

  This way they wouldn’t be expected to think quickly under unfamiliar stress.

  The Hawaiian officer called out sharply:

  “Fend off!”

  At his word the boatswain in the bows released the towrope, and the longboat peeled away from the moving flank of the frigate that loomed above it like a cliff topped with sails and masts fading upward to what looked like infinity. The starboard oarsmen planted the tips of their long tools against the metal-shod planks and shoved. In smooth unison they slid them back into the oarlocks and poised as he turned the tiller and the bow pointed towards the burning shore.

  Everything rose and fell as they crested the long smooth curves of the waves, land only continuously in view from where the water turned green as the sand beneath shelved shallower. This close to the water you felt the sea’s power more, the surge beneath them like the muscles of a blooded horse, the strong scent and the salt taste of spray on the lips.

  The smoldering palm trees and thick-scattered bodies seemed oddly incongruous against the broad white beach, though it matched the harsh scents the breeze was carrying and the cries of the gathering gulls attracted by the bounty. That wind carried the blurred din of onset too, the dull clatter of blades on shields and armor, the ting and crash of steel on steel, and roaring voices muted with distance cut through with the occasional shrill shrieking. The fight was farther back from the water by now, long bowshot, though still visible as a line of black that glittered with edged metal now and then, and the bagpipers and drummers and horns-men were strutting forward to follow it.

  Scores of boats and barges were turning shoreward now, the refilled ones of the first wave and more besides, up to the big specially-built types that had been carried knocked down in the holds of the ships from Montival and reassembled on Hilo to carry horses and field artillery. Cheers rose from all as her craft passed, weapons shaken in the air and her name on a thousand lips, along with nearly as many war cries and several languages. The feeling was heady . . . and heavy, as well.

  It’s not the first time I’ve gone into a fight. But it is the first time I’ve gone into one with so many depending on me.

  As if sensing her thought, Heuradys added with another chuckle:

  “I’d rather have my job than yours any day of the week and twice on Sunday, Orrey. Zeus father of Gods and men, why do people contend for thrones?”

  The folk here in Hawaiʻi mostly used English with one another, though often in ways a Montivallan found strange. They remembered the older tongue of the canoe-folk who’d first settled these lands, though, preserving it for speaking to their Gods and for occasions of ceremony . . . and for things like this. Now they took up a chant in a call-and-response pattern with the helmsman, a deep musical chorus that helped with the hard skilled effort of swinging the oars.

  The Sword of the Lady had given her their speech, as it did any tongue she needed:

  Ia wa’a nui

  That large canoe—

  Ia wa’a kioloa

  That long canoe—

  Ia wa’a peleleu

  That broad canoe—

  A lele mamala

  Let chips fly—

  A manu a uka

  The bird of the mountain—

  A manu a kai

  The bird of the sea—

  ‘I’iwi polena

  The red Honeycreeper—

  A kau ka hoku

  The stars hang above—

  A kau i ka malama

  The daylight arrives—

  A pae i kula

  Bring the canoe ashore!

  ‘Amama, ua noa

  The taboo is lifted!

  The last was a triumphant shout as the keel rutched on the sand. The oarsmen vaulted over the rails and ran the bow up higher and stood in the water to steady it; Órlaith ran to the bow herself and leapt down. She landed carefully with bent knees on the sand just beyond the highest riffle from the low waves and a slight grunt, but doing acrobatics in armor was one of the tests of knighthood and she could have done the same in a regular steel suit twenty pounds heavier than this. Her followers followed in a rush, shaking out behind her—or in Heuradys’ case, to the right and nearly level—and standing alert.

  Karl and Mathun and the other Mackenzies took their weapons out of the waxed-linen bags, tucked those away in their sporrans, strung the longbows in a practiced flex with the lower tip against the left boot and the thigh over the grip, and put arrows on the nock, their eyes scanning ceaselessly for threats.

  One of her followers was Susan Mika, still in the leathers of the Crown Courier Corps, slight and wiry and dark, with her black hair in feathered braids and a band of white-edged black painted across her eyes. She gave a high shrill whoop and called out down the beach in Lakota:

  “Wayáčhi yačhíŋ he?”

  Another barge was bringing the party’s mounts ashore, shuttled over from Hilo where they’d been enjoying a chance to get away from the cramped stalls of the transports that had brought them the long sea road from Astoria. Sir Droyn de Molalla was in charge of that, a dark handsome young man she’d knighted herself, and the third son of the Count of Molalla. He waved, and held up his shield. At this distance it was easier to recognize the arms, in his case an assegai and lion quartered with hers, than a face.

  A quarter horse with a white-and-brown speckled rump threw its head up at Susan’s cry, decided it liked the invitation to dance from its rider, and pulled its reins out of a groom’s hand with a speed that left her yelping and wringing a burnt palm. By the time it reached the Royal party it was galloping with the jackrabbit acceleration of its breed, head plunging and braided mane flying.

  Susan Mika—Susan Clever Raccoon—was running too, a stride that ended up with her grabbing the horn of her saddle, bounding into it, down on the other side, hitting the ground with both feet, doing a handstand in the saddle and flipping to stand on it and then dropping into it as her feet found the stirrups effortlessly as she circled back in spouts of wet sand.

  Hurry up and wait, Órlaith thought, suppressing an impulse to snap at Susan for the display of brio. They couldn’t move off the beach until those who’d be riding had gotten their horses.

  War is full of urgency and then getting stalled.

  “Show-off,” Heuradys called as the Courier cantered up to them. “Is this a fight we’re heading for, or a tinerant circus?”

  Susan halted without needing to touch the reins, grinning as she slung her shete—the broad-pointed horse-fighter’s chopper of the eastern plains—in its beaded sheath to the saddle, checked her bowcase and quiver, settled the two long knives she wore on her belt and the tomahawk through the loop at the small of her back, and reached forward to scratch the beast between the ears. The buffalo-hide shield slung over the bowcase was small and round, with a spread-winged Thunderbird symbol painted on it, and a small medicine bag and tuft of feathers.

  “Hey, is it my fault if you wašícu have no natural talent for horses?” Susan said to the Associate. “Go get a bicycle, knight-girl, or one of those lumbering short-nosed elephants you manor-and-castle types try to pass off as horses.”

  “Is that the noble chivalric destrier you’re slandering in your sa
vage nomadic ignorance?”

  “Noble?”

  Susan glanced up at the sky as if in deep thought and put a finger on her chin before saying in measured tones:

  “So noble is how Richard the Lionheart wannabes say fat and slow? Y’know, that explains a lot, it really does.”

  “Destriers are elegantly powerful and quick enough in the charge.”

  “So are elephants. Or destriers, as if there’s a difference between a destrier and an elephant. Or maybe they’re really just very skinny hippos?”

  Then they pointed at each other and yelled:

  “Bitch!”

  In unison, and laughed.

  Faramir Kovalevsky and his cousin Morfind Vogeler called to their horses as well, and swung up with equal skill to the backs of the dappled Arabs, if with a little less deliberate panache, reining in by Susan’s side. They were both in the loose mottled light clothing and mail-lined hippo-hide jerkins that the Dúnedain of Stath Eryn Muir—the southernmost outpost of their scattered people, in what the old world had called Muir Woods—wore in the field, so that the crowned Tree and seven Stars were hard to see on their breasts. All three uncased their four-foot recurved horse-bows of horn and sinew and reached for arrows, guiding their mounts effortlessly with weight and knees, leaving the reins knotted on the saddlebow.

  “Besides,” Heuradys said, nodding to them. “Your tree-house-dwelling wašícu squeezes there are just as good at show-off trick-riding as you are.”

  “The three of us are melethril to each other,” Morfind said loftily. “Squeeze is Common Speech, and just . . . so common, for one of noble blood, Lady Heuradys. And Faramir lived in a flet at Eryn Muir, but I was raised in my parents’ perfectly nice stone hall east of there in the Valley of the Moon. Besides, we’re not wašícu.”

  Her eyes were blue, though her hair was as black as Susan’s; Faramir’s were gray, and he had a mop of blond curls that peaked out a little from around the rim of the light helm he donned.

  “You’re not?” Heuradys said. “That’s new.”