And we would still have lost ours.
33
In Challenger’s magic mirror, I saw everything that happened, probably more clearly than them that were on the ground and in the midst of it. The fading light didn’t trouble Challenger, and his many eyes (that he called systems) could see through leaf and branch at need.
The Half-Ax tally came on towards us. They came slowly, the dozen or so fighters that were not cumbered matching their pace to the four bearers. Like us of Mythen Rood, they marched in a way that broke the rhythm of their steps – what we called the catcher’s walk – so the trees and beasts around them that listened for such patterns would be tricked into leaving them alone. It was full evening now and the day had not been warm, so the trees were mostly slumbering in any case, but the fighters were wise to be wary. There were many things that waked when the sun was low.
They came to the choke point, where the path narrowed between the kissing trees. Their leader signed for the column to slow, seeing that their line of sight was blocked. He spoke to the first two fighters. He spoke in Franker signs, but his hands moved so quick I couldn’t make out what order he gave. It was clear a moment later though, for the two fighters went to the head of the column and passed between the kissing trees in a low crouch. Once they were through the gap, they came up facing in opposite directions, each covering the other’s back. One of them had a shortbow. The other’s hands looked to be empty, but they were raised as if he was ready to fight.
They scanned the trees on either side, and on down the path. Jarter was only two steps away from them, but they didn’t see her. She was lying under a hide she’d made for herself out of plaited branches daubed with mud and leaf-mulch.
By and by, the two whistled to say all was clear. Even then, the others didn’t come through all at once but in twos, spreading out slowly from the gap and looking on all sides as they went in case there was anything unfriendly that was waiting there. There were more whistles as they moved, most of them from the leader.
I watched all this with great disquiet. I had never seen anyone move so quick and so smooth like that, all in a group and all knowing their places, unless it was people treading a ring at Summer-dance. Compared to these though, we were ragged when we danced. They all were dressed the same, in grey, and they all moved as one without ever needing to look to see where all the others were. To tell you truly, it frightened me to look on. I didn’t see how you could still be all yourself when you had become so perfectly a part of something else.
“They’re so careful,” I whispered, dismayed. “And so…” The word I was trying to tip off the end of my tongue was disciplined, but I didn’t have it back then. “… neat,” I said instead.
“They’re soldiers,” Elaine said – in her normal voice, for sounds that were made in the cockpit didn’t stray outside it, and my whispering wasn’t to the purpose. “Well trained too. You’ve got your work cut out.”
She called it by its right name. They were soldiers, and what were we? Makers of chests and barrels, herders of sheep, tanners and dyers of cloth. Out of all of us, Catrin was the onliest one that had any real gift for fighting, and the things she fought had almost always been beasts and trees. But then, until the Peacemaker came to rule in Half-Ax, there had never been any great reason for people to fight each other. Not when every other living thing was already set on killing us.
The Half-Ax fighters walked on down the path, picking up their pace as it widened. Then they slowed again as they came on our barricade.
We had worked long and hard on it. The false walls of twigs and branches we’d drawn across the side paths earlier were only meant to fool, but this was meant to block. It was a wall of wood and wire and nails ten feet high, built on posts that we’d sunk two feet into the dirt. Taking it apart would not be a minute’s work, nor even an hour’s. Going over it would be harder, for there were sharp stakes pointing in and down.
The easy thing, it seemed, would be to go around it. But when the fighters stepped off the path on either side, they found the wall was there too. It went along beside the path for twenty strides, set back among the trees and disguised from easy view by a curtain of vines and leaves. It turned the path into a kind of a sheep pen without a gate.
The tally’s leader called a halt. He went to the barricade and looked it up and down. He pushed his hand against it. Then with no thought or hesitation he signed again. The whole column turned in the same moment to go back the way they’d come.
That was when our side moved. Gendel and Jil loosed an arrow each, and Lune flung a spear. One of the arrows went wide, but the other found its mark and so did Lune’s spear. One fighter went down at once, taken high up in the chest. Another was hit in the shoulder. He staggered but stayed standing. The Half-Ax fighters looked all ways at once in the thick shadows under the trees to see where that volley had come from, bringing their own weapons to the ready. Then Jarter stepped right out on the path next to the kissing trees, only twenty or thirty strides from the nearest grey uniforms. She lifted the scatter-gun and pulled the trigger. We heard the booming sound of it even inside Challenger.
We had pinned our hopes on that first shot. At such close range, with no warning, we thought a lot of the Half-Ax fighters would take hurt all in one moment and shorten the odds against us considerably. That was not what happened though.
As quick as Jarter moved, one of the grey soldiers was quicker. He stepped in front of the column and made a pass with his empty hand. There was a flash of bright light that seemed to come from his spread fingers, as if he was carrying a torch and was swinging it to see the light dance. As he did this, the air bent and shifted in front of him in a way I had seen oftentimes before.
He was caught full in the centre of the scatter-gun blast, but he stood his ground and wasn’t touched by it. None of the fighters behind him took any harm either that I could see. Then the man moved his hand again.
Jarter had seen that shimmering of the air too, and knew what it meant. She jumped back behind one of the giant chokers just in time. Branches rained down all round her, slashed right through. A line was scored across the trunk of the tree that was as straight as a ruler and three inches deep.
The Half-Ax soldier was wearing a cutter. And he was using its invisible field as both blade and shield. Our first thrust was turned aside.
But now came our second. Catrin cut loose with the firethrower. She missed the fighters by a long way, but that was purposed. She was aiming at the gullies full of oil that we had dug alongside the path, at the base of the wall. Curtains of fire sprung up high on both sides of the Half-Ax tally, hemming them in.
But Rampart Fire had given away her position, and showed herself the greater threat. The Half-Ax fighters all turned their weapons the one way and let loose such a volley as you never saw.
Jil and Gendel got off a few more arrows but none of them hit, and now the Half-Ax commander was leading his men quickly back along the path towards the kissing trees, more than half of them firing backwards towards where Catrin was hid, pinning her down so she couldn’t take aim on them again. We had hoped Jarter would be able to hold them in place with the scatter-gun until the fire got a good hold. Then the rest of our plan would unfold like a shook-out tablecloth.