330 - You will all be my warriors

The next day the A-niah saw an army of several thousand moving through the trees, from the city of Roskat towards us. Mirko gave his army their day of rest on the day before, then set to travel by night to arrive a little before dawn. Roskati rebels have been creeping through forest for three generations now, so an entire army can do it without flashing a flame or snapping a twig.

At false dawn we soaked twelve of the mamokal by leading them into the river where the water was shallow, at least for a mamoka, then geared them up and set ranks. The Arkan alarms sounded, and we saw the rows of helms and spear-tips on the wall, glinting darkly in the dim indigo light. Plumes of smoke rose; they were preparing the fire-arrows. Each beast’s mahu had several buckets of water in the mamoka-turret, for good measure. I am not one to get battle-nerves much, but I felt myself swallow, without willing it, when I saw that smoke. I spoke firmly to myself.

Then, as the orange sky in the east went brilliant, there was more and bigger smoke, from further back, and worried shouts among the Arkans. Our scout was high enough that the flash of her mirror to the interpreter beside me was yellow; she told me what I already knew, “The Roskati are overrunning the Arkan camp.”

But my sense of time whispered to me, wait. The Arkans were distracted, yes, but holding their posts, which meant they’d received firm orders from a commander they respected. Barakas had about five ranks on the wall, about twenty-thousand, the rest in reserve on the ground behind; at the very least he’d about-face the rear-most of them to take a Roskati charge, but he might also send them to the camp to engage the Roskatis there, splitting his own force.

It’s a dilemma. If you let an ally take losses to save yourself same, you risk his anger and the loss of his alliance; if you try to time your moves so it is even but you misjudge and he takes more losses anyway, you risk him thinking it was not a mistake.

What Mirko did then took great trust in both my scouting—no doubt he’d heard about it—and in me, since we had not planned it. He ordered his people to quit enjoying themselves plundering and torching Arkan tents and form up. “The Roskatis are full-charging the Arkan rear,” my scout flashed and my interpreter said. My signaler was waiting at the gong, hammer drawn back. Wait… A few moments later: “Now about ten thousand of the Arkan reserve have about-faced and are advancing at a walk, lines three hundred paces apart.”

Wait… wait… You know how it is; you just want to kyashin bang it. I imagined myself on the wing, looking down, seeing the distances. Everything converges into a knowing… They were outnumbered, we had a wall to break through; now. “Sound charge,” I said, and the gong began its shattering roar. Bukangt was already taking his enormous steps forward as I scrambled up the ladder onto his back. A thread of eye-burning sun formed over the slope of a mountain to the east.

My mamoka was the sword-side rear ram-beast in the middle team of four. The markspeople were in the fore pairs, their present assignment, of course, to take down fire-archers. The warriors on the rear pairs, which by no coincidence included me, would be part of the crossfire of Hyerne javelins. It was something of a message to the Hyerne, but also, now I’d gained some skill at it from practicing over winter, I’d come to love doing it. There is something about that particular swing of arm and snap of wrist and feeling of the javelin coming off the crook of the stick with such force. Knowing we had both plenty of storage space and time before the wall broke, I’d ordered each person to take thirty, mostly altered Arkan ones, with the famous barb. Three of mine, in fact, I had personally collected in Hirina. Back to you, but harder, I thought as I threw.

Though I should concentrate entirely on that, I had half an eye on the first fire-arrow to hit a mamoka. It fizzled out delightfully, leaving only foul-whiffing smoke. The Lakans all let out a roar of cheering.

The first booming stroke of the rams—since mamokal do not run, they take fast steps toward the wall and then stop short on command, making the rams swing forward with immense force—made the wall shudder, some stones and at least one Arkan fall off. “Sereng, sereng!”—Again! Again!—Sokolardk commanded and the subcommanders relayed, and we were stepping back, still in formation.

The weak point, we’d decided, was central; to either side of the mamokal I saw the ladders thick with my warriors. There was a little deception there; the first two up on every one were elite, but I’d had them exchange their insignia with regulars, so the Arkans wouldn’t be so urgent in getting their elite men to the ladder-heads. It can work both ways, in truth—sometimes when they see that white circle, the enemy will back off in fear, and then you’ve taken your wall position without a stroke—but surprise is more reliable, in my opinion.

On the second ram-stroke, more stones and Arkans fell, the mortar at the top not entirely dry, and I saw long cracks snake up from where our ram had hit. “Sereng! With all you’ve got, Parshahask drive you, we’re close!” I yelled, in Lakan. Once we made a breach, my own assignment was to get onto point as fast as I could for the charge in with the darya semanakraseye, who were clustered around the mamokal. Every beast had several plumes of steam rising from his shaggy brown fur at any one time; the air reeked of hot wet mamoka fur, infinitely sweeter to my nose than burning mamoka-fur.

“Stand fast! Stand fast!” the solas commanders shouted at their men on that part of the wall, as they began to decide that the melees elsewhere on the wall-top were where duty truly should take them. They might know more through their feet than I did through my eyes. The beasts were stepping forward again, Bukangt rolling like a quinquereme under me. “With everything in you, drive through, break through!” I roared. Like the fist of a giant as big as the Earthsphere, our ram punched a little way in this time, sending up more cracks, and the others sent up cracks as well; a top section collapsed, sending ten or twelve Arkans plunging, and leaving a massive bite out of the wall. “Next one! Next one it’ll go! Darya semanakraseyeni ready!” I still had fourteen javelins left; I let them fly as fast as I could.

“Aim for the eyes!” I heard, in a frantic Aitzas accent. Small for the head, mamoka eyes are not easy to hit, but it could still happen, and that would throw off the whole foursome, of course. Plate barding made of anything works very well on mamokal, padded so well by their fur that it gives and so holds, but the eye-holes are a weakness. Set Diyadesai on this, I told myself as I threw the third-last javelin. Like walking hillocks, the twelve beasts drove forward as one again.

This would be new to me, since we had not done it at Chinisinal. The danger, of course, is that when the wall collapses, the mamokal will get caught in the falling rubble. To counter that, they are well-trained to obey the fast-retreat command, and the ram generally extends a good five paces ahead of their heads (and same to the rear for balance). There is a danger that the ram itself will be pinned, pinning them, but they are generally very good at hauling it out from under virtually anything, and in a pinch the ropes (which are like ship-hawsers) can be cut. As we closed in, I threw my last javelin, dropped the thrower, strapped on my shield and unclipped Chirel.

The three booms at once seemed to shake the bedrock; with crackings you could feel in your bones and a roar that started slowly like in a landslide, the wall began to come down, slowly, as if I were seeing it from a distance. “Kaimaek! Kaimaek!” the mahus all bellowed, fast-retreat, and the beasts were stepping back as fast as mamokal can.

“Darya semanakraseye to me!” The dust, thick as a storm-cloud, would cover our charge, but the rubble should settle a little before we ran in. I slid down the rope that joined Bukangt’s neck to the ram and ran forward its full length, leaping off the retreating ramhead onto the ground to a roar of war-cries. When it seemed safe, I ordered charge and began scrambling over.

Though it gets in your eyes and nose and lungs, dust is as good an advantage to a person with weapon-sense as darkness. I felt a few blades and spears under my feet, in the hands of Arkans who’d fallen with the wall and were now crushed and dying; beyond, the reserve was reforming its ranks, having faded back to avoid the falling stone. Ahead of everyone else, I decided to hold my usual war-cry and so fall on the Arkans out of the dust with no warning.

That was a good start to cutting through them in our wedge. Once we were through and in clear air, I sent half the flow of warriors to one side, half to the other, positioning Krero as the dividing point. Since we could not use horses, Barakas and his aides would get away on theirs, so no point going after him.

I got Kunarda to lift me onto his shoulders to see how the Roskatis were faring. They and the Arkans were engaged, and it wasn’t clear they needed help, but they must want it, and things were going well enough here. It was the Yeoli heavy-armed coming through the breach now, so I called three of the milakraseyel to me, formed up, ran and piled into Mirko’s Arkans’ rear.

The solas fought with the spirit of people who are trying desperately to keep up their morale in the face of a deeper feeling of hopelessness, perhaps refusing to see that vein of defeat in their own hearts, but realizing at the first setback. They’d be brave at first, standing very firm, but then break suddenly. You could see it on their faces, grimness but little resolve, fear and no joy. Tell the truth, Arkans usually fight like that to some degree; it’s in their raising. But it was starker here.

The breaking of the wall had been the first setback, and they’d all seen it. It was over in a bead or so. About half who could fled into the woods, with Roskatis hard on their heels; the other half we hemmed in against the river. I called halt and demanded surrender, and some did indeed hold up their gloved thumbs as if to say, “I give mine up!”

The light of the path unconceived flashed through my mind. I was not on Yeoli soil. I had someone fetch an ivy branch, and under it with my crystal in my hand I said, “All-Spirit and your Gods too be witness: if this alliance conquers Arko, I will become Imperator, and you will all be my warriors. So, we will not thumb nor do any other harm to any Arkan who surrenders in good faith, not now, nor ever again in this war; only keep you prisoner. Second Fire come if I am forsworn.”

They did not want to believe me, not least because the Pages had reported I’d broken such oaths before, particularly in the harbour of Tinga-e, where I’d left it far too easy to miss the subtlety. But it was either that or fall gradually to an arrow and javelin rain, so the wish to surrender carried it. They’d learn that it was true. Our losses were few, though Sachara took a sword-wound in the side of the knee that had Kaninjer worried about him walking in the future.