“We got to help them,” I said.
I didn’t even know I’d said it out loud until Cup answered me. She had rode her own drudge up alongside me while I was staring down and seeing nothing but the fight in the valley. “Why? Do you know them fools?”
“They’re not fools. They’re my friends.”
“They got to be pretty stupid to let theirselves get surrounded like that.”
“Monono—”
“I hear you, Koli-bou. Dismount.”
“What does that mean?”
“Get down off the drudges. I’ll send them ahead.”
I looked at the long line of Half-Ax soldiers. Wherever Catrin played her fire, they fell back, but everywhere else they was still coming on. As soon as they was far enough forward to aim their bolts and arrows along the line of the river, the fight would be over. “I think we’re like to need more than just the drudges,” I said.
“I think so too. But we’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Okay then,” Cup said. “I guess if we’re doing this we might as well go to it.” She stepped down quick from the drudge and unshipped her bow. Before I even set foot on the ground, she was sprinting down the hill towards that broke and stilled wagon. I jumped off and followed as quick as my feet could take me.
The drone stayed by my shoulder for a little while as I run. “Stay in cover, Koli,” Monono said through its speaker. “There’s a ton of tech down there and half of it is stuff I’ve never seen before. Don’t put yourself in front of it.”
“I’ll try not to!” I said. I couldn’t say no more than that, for all my breath was took up in running. The drone rose up and shot away, heading for the grey fighters up on the hill. The drudges was already galloping down into the valley, their guns sliding up into position as they went.
We was at war with Half-Ax.
Again.
Spinner
67
The Half-Ax soldiers were closing on us slowly. Most of them carried bows, but there were at least two with rifles like the one we had taken at the ford.
Even now, they did everything carefully and in good order. They hadn’t all turned from the bigger fight to deal with us. More than half of them had their backs to us and were firing down into the cut to keep our tally pinned behind the rocks there. Only about a dozen were in the ring that was surrounding Challenger. But it would be more than enough.
“Hey,” Elaine said. “Spinner. Snap out of it.” She had said my name before and I had not been listening.
“Sorry, Elaine! I can’t— They’re going to—”
“Not unless we let them. What have you got by way of a weapon?”
“I got my knife.” I pulled it from its sheath and held it up.
“Well, isn’t that the cutest thing! Put it away. I just had a better idea. Challenger, pop the trunk.”
A hatch opened up in the wall of the cockpit, next to my head. There was lots of stuff in there I hadn’t ever seen before. I knew they must be tools of some kind, but I couldn’t guess what any of them were meant to do.
“Pick up that metal bottle on the left there,” Elaine said. “And the wand thing that’s attached to it.”
I did as I was bid. The bottle was heavier than it looked and almost slipped out of my fingers. What Elaine called the wand was a kind of pipe, joined to the bottle by a rope – only the rope was made of shiny metal rings that all locked each to other.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s a tread repair tool. The bottle’s full of compressed air. The wand extrudes a new tread connector in between two blown treads that are being held together with a track puller. But that’s just another way of saying it spits out heavy metal pins really hard and really fast. There’s a stud on the side of the hand grip that you press down to fire. Be careful where you aim it. It’s got no range at all, but up to four or five feet it will put a crease in anyone’s day.”
The ring of soldiers outside was drawing tighter. One of the fighters clambered up on Challenger’s flank. Kneeling there, she fitted an arrow to her bow.
I pointed the wand straight up. In the magic mirror, I watched the soldier’s every movement. She pulled back the arrow until the string was as tight as it could get. Taking care not to slacken that tension, she turned the bow so it was on its side, level with the ground. She stepped up onto the turret, where she waited a moment to listen.
As she leaned forward to loose her shot, I pressed the raised nub my thumb had found on the wand’s side. It kicked in my hands and made a sound like a sneeze.
The tread connector was just as Elaine had described it: a rod of grey metal a little shorter than the shaft of an arrow but three times as thick. It hit the soldier in the middle of her chest and threw her high into the air. In the mirror, I saw her fall backwards off the wagon’s side, hitting the ground so hard that she went head over heels before she stopped moving, falling at last on her face. The connector had gone most of the way through her, the end of it sticking a handspan or so out of her back. Her comrades stepped back at once, widening their ring again in expectation of some fresh attack – but then one of them broke out of the line to run to the fallen archer and see if she yet breathed.
“That will give them something to think about at least,” Elaine said.
But it didn’t hold them long. A man with more red mixed into his grey than most turned and gave orders, pointing to this one and that one. Four soldiers ran forward out of the ring and scaled Challenger’s sides all at once.
I raised the wand again. “No use,” Elaine said. “It takes a minute or so to get up to pressure again. Grab that flare gun. Maybe at this range we can— Holy shit!”
I turned back to the mirror. A drone had dropped down out of the sky right beside us. It spat out rays of red light as thin as ribbon that went among the Half-Ax soldiers and cut them down.
The ones with rifles fired back, but the drone was whipping back and forth and spinning like a top. Bolts and arrows filled the air all round it without once hitting their mark.
The Half-Ax commander took something out of his belt and threw it into the air. It was another grenade, and when it exploded at the top of its arc it took the drone out of the sky. At the same time, a woman and a man ran full tilt down the hill and in among the Half-Ax fighters. The woman had a painted face like shunned men are wont to wear – a line that went down from her two eyes to meet under her chin. She also had a bow, and she loosed off three arrows in the space of three breaths. One of them went wide, but the other two ended up buried deep in grey uniforms.
The man had a knife, but he didn’t seem too keen on using it. He was holding it in his two hands, straight out in front of him, as if he hoped his enemies would run onto the end of it and save him the trouble of aiming. He didn’t slow, but ran right on past me, leaving me with the strangest sense that I knew him from another place or time.
I lost him quickly in the smoke that drifted across from the burning woods.
Koli
68
If I’d knowed Spinner was in the battle wagon, I surely would of stopped to help her.