“The birds,” he said. “The yellowhats. They’ve flown, Spinner. Half-Ax is coming.”
32
Challenger made a noise like something big and angry was waking up inside him. His whole body lifted an inch or two, and he set off across the gather-ground – slow at first, but getting quicker and quicker until he went through the gates like a horse at the gallop. In his cockpit there was me and Rampart Fire, Jil Reedwright and Gendel. Riding outside on the wide ledge over his treads there were two more fighters – Lune Cooper and Jarter Shepherd. Both of them had been at Calder’s ford. Both of them knew what it was like to face Half-Ax fire and had come away from it alive. Jarter was carrying the scatter-gun.
Jon was desperate to come too, and had begged and pleaded with Catrin to be allowed, but she was not to be swayed. He and Fer, with the rifle and the bolt gun, were our back-up and our bulwark if Half-Ax beat us or got past us in the deep woods and marched on the village. I saw his sorrow and his frustration, and I offered him what comfort I could, but I was glad Catrin decided that way. If things went badly for us, I didn’t want Val to lose her mother and her father all in one go.
Jemiu’s birds had given us the direction to go in. We had set nesting boxes along all the paths leading towards Mythen Rood from the east, and left gifts of seed inside the boxes to bring the yellowhats looking. We’d created a whole village of birds, and we’d done it all for this one day and this one purpose.
Our lookout tower had seen three flights of yellowhats all on the same path that led down from Bulmer Top. One flight might have been a tree-cat; two could still have been a swarm of needles or some such, but three swarms so close and quick together spoke of a sizeable force coming over the Top and down into the valley on our side. And they were following the paths, where needles would keep to the trees. The sentry turned his spyglass in that direction and saw as much proof as he needed – the tops of bushes swaying as something big pushed them aside or shouldered through them. And here and there, when he had watched a long time, he glimpsed a flash of grey from Half-Ax uniforms.
Uniforms was a word I’d learned from Elaine. Soldiers in her day went into battle all dressed the same, as if to say that they all were limbs of the one same thing. “It worked too. That was how we felt. Like Albion was flexing its muscles and showing its claws, and that was us.”
I can’t speak for Catrin and the others, but that wasn’t how I was feeling when we rode out of Mythen Rood and into the waiting woods. What I felt was a movement inside me as if my stomach had dropped out of my body and still was falling from me, deeper and deeper. I had kissed Jon goodbye before I left (our quarrel ended with Gendel’s words), and pressed my face against my sleeping girl’s. I felt them still, the two of them, on my lips and on my cheek. They helped me to pull myself up out of that fall and keep myself in the world.
We kept to the paths at first. Elaine said Challenger could go among trees if he had to, and it would come to that soon enough. But the bigger and closer together the trees were, the more we would be obliged to slow and go round about. If we wanted to make the best speed, we were best to stick to the path as long as there was one.
“Why are they coming so late in the day?” Jil wondered aloud. “They can’t fight in the dark.”
“Do you know that for sure?” Elaine said. “If you want my opinion, it’s best to take nothing for granted.”
“Today was mostly clouds,” Catrin said, “after two or three days that was a lot brighter. It may be they was slowed by the trees on their way here, and now they’re pressing hard to make up the time they lost.”
“And evening’s not a bad time to move, as far as that goes.” This was Gendel now. “The light comes in slanted and the trees is starting to settle down. There’s other things waking up, but if you’ve got the numbers and the weapons you can answer any beasts that come. I think they may even mean to carry on after night falls, making their own light with torches, and come on us in the dark.”
“It’s reckless,” Catrin said.
“It is. But I mind what that red fool Voice told you. The Peacemaker don’t take an insult lightly, and we abased his pride at Calder ford.” Gendel looked at me when he said this, and he give a short smile. “I think they’re going to have to tear that day out of their calendar.”
“Okay, this is you,” Elaine told us. “We’re at the first fork.”
“And is it safe to get out?”
“There is no enemy activity within scanner range,” Challenger said.
The four of us climbed up through the hatch and then down onto the ground. Jarter and Lune were already at work since they had only got to jump down from Challenger’s flank.
I told you already that we had closed some of the paths. Now we closed some more. We did it as quickly as we could manage, and quietly too – although the roar of Challenger’s engine must have been heard as far as Friday, as my father used to say. There wasn’t any hiding that we were there. What we did hope to hide was that the screens of uprooted bushes and broke-off branches we dragged across the paths had not grown there but had all been gathered up by hand and tied together with rope. We wanted the Peacemaker’s force to take the turns we chose for them, and we were coaxing them along, as it were, by taking the other choices off the table. When we were done, it looked as though nobody had gone that way in years and the path was overgrown all the way down – though really it was only as far as the first turning.
“This might not work,” Morrez Ten-Taken had warned us. “Half-Ax is used to sending scouts ahead of a column to map the advance. They may know that those paths were open weeks or days ago. Though it’s true they take most care when they’re laying in for a full assault. With a quick strike, this close to home, they may just come in cold.”
“We’ll see what we can make of it anyway,” Rampart Fire said. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll have the same fight on our hands as if we hadn’t tried.”
We tacked up and down and around and about, leaving similar disguises wherever we went. When the work was done, it seemed as if there was only one good way from Bulmer Top to the western slope where Mythen Rood stood.
Now Challenger took us in among the trees, so as not to undo our work. It was hard and slow going. Trap-spinners swarmed out from among the choker roots and tried to climb up the tank’s treads. They were ploughed under. Needles in the high branches kept pace with us but didn’t close, the roar of the engine and the shaking of the ground keeping them at bay. Once, a tree of a kind I’d never seen before loomed of a sudden in our path, its thick bole gaping open like a fanged mouth. As Challenger swerved away, protecting Jarter and Lune with the side of his turret, Jarter gave it a blast with the scatter-gun. The wooden mouth slammed shut again, as quick as it had opened, and the tree went back to its place looking the same as any other.
We come at last to a spot where the path widened for about a hundred paces between two narrower points. The choke point at one end was a flank of rock, and at the other it was a dead tree that had fallen against its neighbour. The place in between didn’t have a name but it had a reputation among our hunters. You had to be wary there, both going and coming. There were mature chokers all along that stretch, so old that their sap didn’t freeze all the way even in the coldest of Winters. If you went by them when the path was under three feet of snow, you still would hear them creaking and grumbling.