“Get everyone up—but quiet.”
Her smile showed white in the darkness, and she ghosted away. He shrugged into his padded jacket, wriggling to get the mail shirt down and into place, and slid the carrying strap of his round shield over his head. He heard the howl of a coyote now and then, and the occa sional whit-whit whit of an owl; the preparations of his own folk were a little rustling and chinking only. He’d come a long way from that hulking clumsy nineteen year old who’d ridden off to make a name in the short glorious war against the Injuns.
God, I was useless. We all were. Everyone here now knows their jobs, though. Even the new ones hired for this trip.
The night was loud: wind in the trees, bullfrogs, cicadas, creak and rustle and groan, now and then the call of some foraging beast, once a distant squall of triumph as a catamount made a kill. Ingolf reached his commander’s battle station, in front of one of the loopholed board barricades between two wagons. Jose the Tejano was there too, cradling a crossbow. He was a good few years older than Ingolf, old enough to have some strands of white in his black mustache, and he’d fought in most mix-ups between the Llano Estacado and the Red River of the North over the past ten years.
They looked out into the darkness, not straining their eyes, just waiting; he counted down internally, timing his breath to it and using that to calm himself. More mos quitoes bit, but he couldn’t slap at them; the chance of the natives noticing it and learning their prey was onto their attack . . . was small but not zero. One thing he’d learned long ago was that mistakes could kill you, even little ones.
Of course, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time could kill you, even if you were an expert and careful as hell. A sudden high-pitched shriek of surprised pain came from out in the darkness.
“Now!” he shouted.
A deep tunnng sounded from the center of the en campment, where a man pulled the lanyard on a small heavy machine of springs and levers. It threw the dart shaped projectile upward nearly a thousand feet; there was a sizzling popping sound, and the magnesium flare burned with explosive brightness—as close to an explo sion as you could get in the Changed world, that was. He didn’t look up; the spot of fire would kill his night vision, and hopefully a lot of the attackers who weren’t expecting it would look, by reflex. From overhead it lit the clearing with a pitiless blue-white radiance, the huge shadows jerking and twisting; the flare swung and twisted beneath the parachute as it drifted down.
The crink-crink-crink of the winch’s gearing sounded as the crew wound the thrower again, ready to launch another flare before the first hit the ground. The Boss man of Des Moines really had laid out for the very best on this trip, including choice items from his own armory. For some reason Kuttner seemed to find the sound disagreeable.
Out in the clearing the light showed a carpet of dark ragged furtive crawling movement, studded with gleams from eyes and teeth and ancient knives. His mouth went dry; there were a lot more of them than he’d thought there would be, at least a hundred and maybe twice that, eeling towards the circle of wagons on their bellies. A half dozen bands must have gotten together for this, a rare degree of cooperation among the wild men, who in variably hated one another with the malignant loathing born of a generation of stalking and eating the unwary, often starting the process of eating before death.
But then, an intrusion by outsiders was rare too. Apart from the meat of men and horses, their well-made gear and weapons would be a prize beyond price. None of them could let their rivals gain such strength.
A massed squealing arose, an endless AitAitAitAitAit-AitAitAit—
Some part of him realized that it was a word, or had been once: Eat.
The natives rose and rushed forward in a wave, like rats exploding out of a neglected grain bin when you opened the lid and shone a lantern inside. Seconds later about half of them started hopping and screaming, where they’d run into the mesh matting his people had spread around right after they camped. Lying flat and artfully camouflaged with soot and sand and pine duff, the nets were studded with upright razor-edged three-inch spikes.
Some of the enemy fell onto the points and slashed themselves open as they tried to roll away. Others just kept coming, hitting the bare patches by luck or in a frenzy great enough to ignore the pain.
A couple of the squad leaders shouted, Fire! Ingolf didn’t bother, since everyone knew what to do and he personally had always disliked someone bawling at him in situations like that. He just drew to the ear and shot into the mass of them and reached for another arrow; there were boxes of them on the inside of the prefab barricade. The snap of bowstrings and the tung! of cross bows sounded, and shouts and curses of the salvagers, and the unearthly throbbing squeal of the wild men. Even as he drew and loosed, he realized . . .
“They aren’t stopping for shit! Ready for it, you Villains! ” he roared.
A whistling, and he ducked as a shower of little throw ing spears came down out of the night, driving into the sandy ground with a dry crunch, or into wood with hard cracks; the ones that hit the triple ply canvas of the wagon tilts made a drumhead sound and hung there like porcupine quills. One went into the barricade next to his eyes, and he could see that the head was a ground-down table knife. He used the moment to slide the shield from his back and run his left arm through the loops, and then the luckiest or fastest of the natives were at the barri cade. This was the south facing edge of the wagon-fort, and they were thickest here.
“Richland!” he shouted as he surged up.
He wore his shete over his back when he was on foot, the hilt jutting up by his left shoulder. He swept it out and cut with the same motion. A snarling face with a shock of greasy blond hair and a human finger bone thrust through the septum of its nose fell back in a splash of red. An ancient shovel crashed down on his shield, bang, and a kitchen knife probed at his armor. He jerked the shield downward and broke both the savage’s arms; then he thrust across the thrashing body with his shete, the blade skidding on the wood of the shovel handle and taking off the fingers of the wielder. . . .
A long snarling scrimmage around the edge of the wagons, steel glittering in the light of the second flare, gasping breaths, banging and rattling and shrieks. The horses in their paddock snorted and reared against the ropes; the half dozen spearmen of the reserve came pelting up in a line where some of the savages had gotten onto the top of a wagon’s cover, and thrust them back with their long weapons. A few more minutes, and the attackers realized what the odds were of storming what amounted to a fortress held by men with real weapons and good armor, trained in fighting as a team.
Then they ran; Ingolf stuck his shete point-down in the sand and snatched up his bow again to shoot at their running backs, and so did everyone else except the wounded.
Kill enough and the rest would hide safely far away.
Silence fell as they waited to be sure the enemy would keep running, deep silence except for the pop of another parachute flare going off, panting breath, and the moan ing of wounded savages. Then the night sounds slowly began to return, which meant that there weren’t any humans running through the woods.
Men went around outside the wagon circle with spears and crossbows and lanterns, making sure of any enemy still moving; their two medics switched weapons for kit and went around inside, bandaging and cleaning—nobody seemed to be dead, or to have a crippling in jury, but a couple had nasty bites that would fester if not swabbed out carefully. That included himself; he hadn’t noticed it at the time, and swore mildly at the sharp hard sting when the doctor irrigated the little wound on his neck with disinfectant.
A few wild men had been caught in the razor wire under the wagons and had to be finished there. In golf sprang up to the bed of a wagon and looked out carefully.
“They won’t try again tonight, or anytime soon,” he said.
“You think, Capitán?” Jose said. “They were pretty fierce, this bunch.”
“We probably killed off half the swinging dicks in thr
ee or four bands—and all the stronger ones. They’ll be fighting each other for weeks, settling who eats who.”
“Sí. Good thing we were ready for them, though.”
The commander of the Villains nodded; if they’d got ten right up to the wagons where they could use their numbers, everybody in the Villains would have died. Quickly, if they were lucky.
“Hey, maybe you’d better look at this, though,” Jose went on.
Ingolf turned and waved to the thrower crew so they would stand down; they didn’t have so many flares that they could keep lobbing them indefinitely. Then he vaulted over the barricade and followed his second-in-command a short way into the dark.
A wild man lay there; there was a bolt through his thigh, his feet had been slashed to ribbons by crossing the spikes, and he was trying to crawl away around them. As they approached he turned, glaring. He had a finger bone through his nose too, and one through each earlobe; on his body was an ancient threadbare pair of jeans, loose on his skinny shanks and patched with rabbit skin. A cloak of the same had been about his shoulders, and from the smell roughly piss tanned. There was a big gold necklace around his neck, lying on the bare chest and glittering with diamonds. It was all pretty fancy, by local standards.
What really caught Vogeler’s eye was what Jose had noticed, the weapon near the man’s hand.
“Probably their jefe, their bossman,” Jose said. “That’s funny that he has a shete, isn’t it, Capitán?”
“Damned odd,” Ingolf agreed, his eyes narrowing. “It’s not a machete—that’s new work.”
The modern weapon was longer and thicker at the back of the blade than the pre-Change tool which had inspired it.
“Want to try to get the story out of him?”
The wild man snarled at them and barked, an ough ough-ough sound, snapping with little lunges of his brown-yellow teeth, his hands scrabbling for something to throw.
“No, I don’t think this one’s a great talker.”
“Sí, he doesn’t look like it, does he?”
Jose shrugged and brought the crossbow to his shoul der and aimed carefully. Tunngg, a flash through the dark, and right beneath it a meaty whack. The scrawny body jerked and went slack; Jose bent, set the span ning hook on the string, and cranked the crossbow taut again.
“You’ve got the watch until dawn,” Ingolf said to his second-in-command, kicking the mysterious shete farther away from the body before picking it up.
He didn’t want to go near the dead man; the lice and fleas jumped ship when a man died, and these probably carried disease. Safer to leave the burial detail for a day or so. Which reminded him . . .
“If they try to drag the bodies away, let them.”
“Capitán?”
“Don’t want them stinking the place up.” Any worse than it is now, he thought.
Smell was inevitable when you cut men’s bodies open. At least the sandy soil would sop up the liquids; it would be safer to bury any remaining tomorrow.
“This is the most defensible campsite we’re going to find around here, I think, so you’ll be stuck in this location for a while.”
He took the captured shete back under the lamps—not much point in trying to sleep more tonight—and as he cleansed his hands and arms with sand and then water, he studied the weapon.
It was a fairly typical example of what horsemen used everywhere he knew of, from the Big Muddy to the Rockies and south to the Rio Grande; a yard long piece of slightly curved steel, three fingers broad at the widest spot near the tip, sharpened all along one edge and four inches down the other from the point for a backhander. The hilt had a simple cross guard and a full-length tang, with fillets of wood on the grip and a wrapping of braided rawhide that was coming loose in one or two spots; the pommel was a plain brass oval.
This one was better made than most, forged by a real smith and not simply ground and filed out of old-time stock. He tapped it against a wagon’s frame, and the al most bell-like sound was right, and so was the elastic way it sprang back when he bent it against a tree stump by sticking the point in and leaning on it.
Still sharp, he thought, feeling cautiously with his thumb. Shame the way it’s been let rust. Looks like it hasn’t been cleaned or oiled in a month... maybe a bit less, with the air here.
He rotated his wrist, whipping the steel through a blurring figure eight; the air hissed behind it. It was lighter than he preferred, but it felt alive in his hand.
Over at the fire he got out his cleaning kit and went to work. When he’d finished and held it out at arm’s length towards the flames his brows went up. There was a rash of rust pits, no way around that the way it had been neglected, but the surface of the metal rippled in the firelight under the thin coating of linseed oil he’d applied, full of wavy lines—not just forged, but layer-forged from a mixture of spring and mild steel, and then hardened on the edge.
There was a very slight roughness in the steel along the working part, the point and about a foot back from there; that was blood etching, the way the salt and acid of blood attacked the softer layers even if you cleaned it immediately.
This beauty would set you back fifty, sixty dollars in Des Moines. More in Richland or Marshall, since the Iowan capital attracted the best craftsmen. That was the price of a good ordinary horse, or two months’ wages for a laborer, but it was a working tool that had been used hard, not a dress weapon—no fancies like inlay.
Wait, I lie, he thought.
Symbols had been graven in the surface in the same spot on both sides, not far from the hilt: a stylized rayed sun, and within it three letters—C and U and T.
“Well, that’s what it’s for,” he said. Then he called out: “Hey, Kaur, Singh!”
The scouts came over; Singh was still rubbing a cloth on the serrated head of the mace he used for close-and personal work. It smelled if you left the results in the grooves. There were spatters on his turban, as well.
“Ranjeet is well avenged, Captain,” he said, his dark eyes sparkling.
Ingolf felt a little uneasy about these two on occasion.
Revenge was all very well, but there were times when he thought the pair of them were a bit monomaniacal on the subject.
“Take a look at this,” Ingolf said. “One of the wild men had it.”
They both looked surprised; they hadn’t seen any thing more complex than tying a knife onto a stick since they got east of the Illinois Valley.
“It’s modern work,” Singh said, turning it over in his big hands. “Well done, too.”
He had been a blacksmith’s apprentice before his village was wiped out, and still dabbled usefully in it. Now he flicked a fingernail against the edge of the weapon to test the sound, and tilted it so that the firelight would pick out surface features.
“See the wavy line along the cutting edge, just a fin ger’s width in? I have heard of that. It is done by coating all the blade except the edge with clay, then packing it in red-hot charcoal, letting it cool, and then retempering. It makes the cutting edge very hard, glass hard, without turning the whole blade brittle, but it requires great skill. The heat treatment has been well done, too!”
He was waxing enthusiastic. His sister leaned forward, a frown on her dark comely face.
“What is that doing here, Captain?” she said, toying with the long single braid of her hair. “These wild men, they can’t even take apart a pair of old garden shears to make knives. Make shetes?”
She made a complex dismissive sound that involved gargling and spitting.
“Yeah, that’s the question,” Ingolf said. “So they must have stolen it off the body of someone in from the Mid west like us. I don’t think I know of more than three or four other expeditions that’ve gotten east of the Ohio.”
“There could be more that we don’t know of, more so if they were small and done quietly,” Singh said. “If they died here, who would hear anything?”
Ingolf grunted skeptically. “News travels slowly, but it does get aroun
d,” he said. “And it would take a big outfit, well found, to get this far.”
He took the shete back, reversed the blade and held it out to Kaur. “This is a little light for my arm, but it should be about right for you.”
Her eyes lit as she took the blade and ran through a series of cuts and thrusts, feet moving like a dancer’s as she whirled and lunged. “Yes! Thank you, Captain. This is a very fine weapon, better than mine or my spare.”
“And see if anyone else knows what those marks on the blade are,” he said.
Kuttner was standing by his bedroll. Ingolf got out his pipe and fixings and lit it with an ember held in a green twig as he sat and leaned back against his saddle. He didn’t smoke much. If nothing else, tobacco was too hard to find outside the Republic of Richland, or too bad if you did—good leaf and fine cheeses and apple brandy were his home country’s main exports. But sometimes it was an aid to thought.
And hopefully it might discourage the mosquitoes, or at least Kuttner, who he’d noticed hated the smell. He dragged the smoke across his tongue and blew a ring into the darkness, watching it catch faint light from the lan terns and coals of the fire and enjoying the mellow scent.
“Why did you give the shete to the woman?” Kuttner asked at last.
Noticed he doesn’t like Kaur. Doesn’t like Singh ei ther, but he really doesn’t like Kaur. Doesn’t seem to like women in general much, at least none of the ones with us, but I don’t think he’s queer, either.
“It’s the right weight and length for her. You’ve seen her fight,” Ingolf said reasonably, then described the etchings. “You ever seen anything like those marks?”
Firelight was good for playing poker; the shadows cast on a man’s face made it harder to lie. He could see the slight hesitation in Kuttner’s response, and the way his eyes flicked aside for a moment.
“Not really. I think I’ve heard that someone uses those symbols in the far West, but no details—there isn’t much trade that way.”
Ingolf nodded; it was true enough. Iowa had plenty of cattle and wheat from its own fields, and the metals trade mostly went up and down the Mississippi and its right-bank tributaries. But there was something....