The smoke and dust and darkness were a blessing. I couldn’t tell how many had died, or see the suffering of them that were only maimed.
Even now, in the face of such calamity, the Half-Ax fighters that were left stuck to their plan and tried to whelm us. But help was at hand, as we had purposed. This was when Rampart Knife and the rest of our tally came surging out of the gap in the fence with their swords and spears out. Loosed arrows and hurled knives flew out of the spilling, surging smoke and found flesh. Catrin’s lance of fire cleared a way as Challenger turned a quarter circle and set off again, this time with all our cohort running at our side.
When we hit the stake-blind’s ditch, Challenger bucked and kicked like a mule. I was flung all the way out of my seat, through the magic mirror – which was as harmless as gossamer – and full into the main console. The breath was knocked out of me, and for a few seconds I saw nothing but flashes of light and flashes of dark. I slid to the floor on hands and knees. If Challenger had needed my hands to steer him, we would have been in a sad case, but Elaine’s ghost hand was holding his reins and he did not even slow.
“Catrin!” I panted. “Jemiu! Are they—?”
“They’re fine,” Elaine said. “Just scratches.”
“And the others?”
“Could have been worse.”
I quailed to think what that might mean, but there was no time to play guessing games with it. We were outside the Half-Ax ring and moving fast towards the trees, but there were yet some fighters running us close. We could not hope to win in a stand-off. We had got to shake them off and break clear.
Morrez took aim with the rifle, and Gendel with the scatter-gun. They began to pick off the fighters that were chasing after us, aiming over the heads of our own people.
Something that shone as bright as the bonfire at a Salt Feast and spat out sparks like fat on a griddle shot past us. It hit the tree-line and was lost from sight, but a second later we were rocked by a great explosion. Everything ahead of us went white for a moment.
“Phosphorus,” said Elaine.
“Can it hurt us?”
“It can burn you to the bone.”
But Morrez had seen the fighter that fired that shot – or rather he had seen the tech she was carrying, which was a thing like a drainpipe with a handle to it. As she raised it to fire again, he was taking slow and steady aim on the centre of her body. They both loosed their shots at the same time. The fighter fell, tumbling head over heels, and lay still. But a tiny sun rose in the midst of our runners, yellow-white and sudden. Three of them caught fire and spun away, flailing and staggering.
Then we were in the trees, on a wide path that wound between oaks and elms and chokers. The Half-Ax tally were lost from sight, and even the cries of the wounded and dying fell away.
“Slow a little,” Catrin called down. “We got to let our runners catch up.”
I passed the order to Elaine, my heart beating against the inside of my ribs like a bird in a panic. Catrin knew as well as I did that the heat from those fires was going to rouse the trees. If we went too slow, our people would be fighting the waked forest. But if we went too quick, we’d leave them behind to be picked off by the Half-Ax tech. Also, our whole plan hung on Berrobis giving chase to us.
Elaine slowed Challenger to a walking pace, or a little faster, until some of the runners broke past us. Then she speeded up again to stay alongside them. The trees on either side of the path were moving against the wind, which was a bad sign. Further off in the forest, I could hear the booms and crashes that come when one thick trunk strikes against another.
But nothing was moving at our backs. “What do you see?” I asked Challenger.
For a second, he was silent. The view in the magic mirror shifted as he looked further and further out. The red dots were all gathered in a cluster near the fence. The white dot was right in the midst of them. Then all at once they started to move.
“They’re coming,” he said at last.
“How many?”
“Almost all of them. Your stratagem worked.”
I let out the huffed breath I had been holding. That was what we wanted, and needed. I only hoped it wouldn’t be the death of us.
65
Forests are not in all ways good for battle wagons. Challenger was heavy enough to topple young trees and ride over them, and he didn’t notice weeds and brush at all. Elaine saw the bigger trees coming and wove a path between them. Some of them were awake, but – thank the dead god! – they were sluggish. They groped for us but were not quick enough to catch us. Coming along behind us, the Half-Ax tally might have a harder time of it.
But there was nothing we could do about the ground, which was far from even. The long climb out of the valley was not too bad, but after that we met streams and slopes and rocks in great plenty, and they all made our going harder. It was not that they slowed us – we were letting the runners beside and behind us set our pace – but they threatened ever and again to mire us down or make us slide out of control or break Challenger’s treads and cripple him. That was what we feared most of all. The battle wagon was such rich spoils that if we once let Berrobis and her people catch up with him, they were not likely to go any further. They would stop to finish him and take him, and all our purposing would be at a sad end.
So we picked our way with care, going round and about when we had to – and that brought its own problems. Bolts of light shot over our heads as the Half-Ax fighters coming on behind found us again and loosed their tech on us. Some of the bolts were silver and some were gold. Where the gold lights hit the ground, fires started, and once started they spread quickly. The air filled with smoke, blinding our runners so they were in danger of losing us. Meanwhile the burning brush forced us to veer off our course. I realised quickly that all the fires were to the left of us. They were not fired in a great scatter but carefully aimed to make us turn back towards Calder and the slopes we’d just climbed. Berrobis wanted her people to be higher than us, the better to pen us in.
The silver lights landed closer to us and were fiercer still. They made a great jostling and trembling in the air. That might not sound so very terrible, but it was. It was as if a giant rose up out of the ground, waked by those lights, and with a mighty roar set about to smash whatever it could see. Trees were riven and toppled. Our runners were thrown off their feet. The air filled with shredded wood and flung-up earth.
I saw one man die without being hit by anything at all. A Half-Ax bolt drew a kind of circle in the air that took him in. He faltered in his running, then fell and crawled along the ground a little way, his hand on his throat, his mouth opening and closing, until at last he fell and lay still. I remembered Morrez’s words about weapons that could steal your breath away. It seemed that Berrobis had brought them too.
“What can we do?” I cried out. “They’re killing us!”
“Keep your damn nerve,” Elaine said, “is what you can do. You were always going to lose a few people – and these fuckers can’t see you any more clearly than you can them. All in all, it’s not a bad thing if they spend their ammunition now.”
I knew she was right, but still I gnawed my hand and watched in horror what was unfolding around us. I took control of the magic mirror and swung it round to look behind, but for all Challenger’s powers the night and the smoke hid too much. I saw a great many running figures, but they were blurs of colour and shadow. It was impossible even to tell if they were ours or Berrobis’s, let alone to see if Jon was safe.