Shanji. Part 33

you'd arrived!"

The fence was coming up fast and men were leaping to their horses, trotting them through the gate and forming up on the other side.

Kati pointed. "How many here?"

"Fifty! The rest should be getting into position now, on a hill where we can shoot down on them!"

Her horse was wheezing, and she wondered how much further she could push him. "My animal's

exhausted! I need a fresh mount!"

"I'm sorry. The spare mounts went with the others! It's not far now!"

They slowed when they reached the gate, and she felt her horse falter, agonizing for rest, its sides

heaving. "One minute! Give me one minute!"She vaulted from the horse before it had stopped, and grabbed its bridle. Good horse. Strong horse. Hold still, now.

The animal's mouth was open, sucking air, thick tears like mucus beneath its eyes. She did not draw from the gong-s.h.i.+-jie, but used the light of Tengri-Khan, energy flowing from the crown of her aura and out through hands stroking a muzzle, ma.s.saging a neck, shoulders, caressing flanks. She released the bridle, but the little horse stood firm, still panting, and groaning when he first felt the heat from her hands. She worked the legs, then the ankles, spending an extra few seconds there, then ran both hands along his belly. The horse coughed, then sneezed and whinnied, shaking his head.

A little further, and you rest, and there will be more of this for you.

She cleaned the mucus from his eyes, and held his muzzle with both hands. You're a Tumatsin horse, now! You carry me fast!

The horse rolled his eyes, and nickered.

Kati vaulted into the saddle. "Point the way!" she shouted, and the horses bolted together, heading north. She sprinted to come alongside the commander. Laser rifles clattered against the chest armor of helmeted troops, but something was missing.

"Where are your bows?!" she shouted. "You have only swords and laser weapons!"

"Useless!" he shouted back. "They're sure to be armored, and arrows will be ineffective, even in close!"

It made her angry. Hadn't Mengmoshu told him anything? The battle was to be as traditional as possible; that was the agreement. Flyers would be met by fire from s.p.a.ce, lasers met by lasers, leaving only the bow and the sword to honor the ancient ways. And if- A sudden, horrible thought came to her. Lasers meet lasers. And her people, the Tumatsin, had them, a few stolen from the Emperor's troops when her mother was a girl, like the weapon Da had hidden beneath the stove. If the home guard had them, they would be used, and how would Mandughai's forces react? One laser burst, or four or five, to be answered by a thousand?

The Change intensified within her in an instant. Her horse seemed to sense it and ran like the wind as the first growl escaped her. They ran over undulating hills of dry gra.s.s, and in the distance was a plume of black smoke. Waves crashed on sandy beaches less than a kilometer to their left, and riders were racing along water's edge, heading north. Tumatsin riders.

How many home guardsmen can we count on?" she shouted.

The commander narrowed his eyes, noting The Change. "Less than a hundred. We've only heard from the northern ordus, and there aren't many. I don't know if the rest are even moving yet. They might keep their forces close to home!"

Let there be no lasers among them, she thought. She looked west, but the riders along the beach had disappeared. For some reason, that bothered her. There was a kind of presence, a tension, tugging at her mind, but she had no time to pursue the source of it.

The hill ahead of her gleamed as if covered with crystals, a long line of them just beneath the brow, and then she saw horses tethered in a great ma.s.s at the base of the hill. Troopers, hundreds of them, lay close together, sighting their rifles from the top of the hill to a target beyond it. The line stretched for a hundred meters, and a man was running down the hill towards them as they came to a halt and dismounted.

"They're coming in! The Tumatsin are just sitting there, waiting for them. They don't stand a chance!"

The troopers who'd arrived with Kati were running up the hill to find places in the line of defenders. Kati followed the commander and his subordinate, taking bow and quiver, but leaving her sword on the saddle. They climbed to the brow of the hill, and stood behind the line of prostrate troopers to look north.

Below them, by fifty meters to the left, four lines of mounted Tumatsin waited quietly at the edge of an alluvial fan formed by a small river which was now little more than a creek running into the sea. The sea was a hundred meters to their left, and the sandy beach only meters away. Soft sand, she noted, and difficult for a horse to run in.

The alluvial fan reached east to a cliff of sandstone running north from near her position, connected to it by a ridge. North of the fan was a broad, gra.s.sy slope leading up to a plateau, and if there was gra.s.s there it was now totally obscured by the wave of enemy soldiers descending it on foot and horseback, a solid ma.s.s of fighting men with gleaming armor, flowing like water. They came forward leisurely, like a crowd of invading pests bent on destroying everything in their path. It was Mandughai's horde, highly trained, bioengineered for war, and facing them were perhaps a hundred fishermen and herders of sheep, who had never known battle.

The invaders' infantry was crowded to the front, cavalry at the back, and more horses appeared at the edge of the plateau as Kati watched in horror. The cavalry moved down the slope, and laterally as the first infantry reached the soft earth of the alluvial fan. The cavalry was forming a crescent behind the wedge of infantry, reaching to the cliff, moving into position to charge the right flank of the defenders, so painfully few in number.

The Moshuguang commander ran along the line behind her, repeating his orders. "At first laser-burst-fire at will. At first laser-burst-fire at will."

He was meters from her when Kati stepped between two men, and stood on the brow of the hill in full view of the invaders. A trooper grabbed at her ankle. "Get down! They'll see you!" he whispered.

"Let them," she growled. She looked down at the mounted Tumatsin, and one of them saw her. Even at fifty meters, she saw him smile, and then he took something from a saddle scabbard, something that glinted metallically in the morning light. The other men in the front line of Tumatsin did the same. The things she saw were not swords. They were laser rifles. It was as if the sight of her had been a signal to the men. The one smiled at her, then raised his rifle, carefully aimed it, as did his comrades, and together they fired a single volley into the ranks of the invaders, now only two hundred meters away from them.

The return fire was instantaneous, and blinding, a thousand lasers aimed at the men and their horses, and they all went down in smouldering messes of burned flesh.

The rest of the Tumatsin turned their horses and fled, heading south along the beach and out of Kati's sight.

"FIRE!" screamed the Moshuguang commander behind her.

Bursts of laser fire streamed down from the hill and into the ranks of the invaders' infantry, bursts accurately aimed by hundreds of the Moshuguang elite. Fierce-faced men went down, others staggered backwards against their fellows in surprise, and the wedge of Mandughai's infantry faltered, but only for a moment. Now there was a chorus of howls that echoed from the cliff. The infantry were coming on again, at a run, firing as they came, and the line of cavalry was circling to get around them.

One burst of laser fire, met by thousands. Kati looked down at the smoke and steam coming from what had once been Tumatsin men, lying there now alone, abandoned by their companions.

Kati felt rage, felt it rise in her like an animal, a cold, killing thing. Laser fire still tore into the invaders, but now they were moving fast and spreading out, firing as they came. Kati had not left her exposed position and now flashes of fire burst rock and soil, moving up the hill towards her. Men fired from horseback, and she heard an agonized cry from her left. There was no time for consideration of any act, no time to debate the fairness of it. There were only the invaders who had come to kill her people and burn their homes.

Mandughai's infantry ma.s.s flowed towards them, breaking into two fingers like a hand opening, one heading towards where the surviving Tumatsin had fled, the other charging the hill, firing wildly to provide cover for the circling cavalry. Their howl was continuous and shrill, like wounded s.h.i.+zi; short, stocky men with red, blazing eyes in dark faces, canines like tusks thrust down from their open mouths. They came on like a wave, and the Moshuguang cut them down, but as their ranks thinned, each man ran a zig-zag path, making a difficult target. Now infantry were on the hill, charging up towards her like mindless beasts. Laser fire splattered the ground right in front of Kati, and she screamed, a horrible, guttural thing, holding out clenched fists in front of her, watching them turn green in the sudden blaze of light from her eyes.

And the light of creation followed those eyes.

A soldier of Mandughai raised his rifle and aimed it at her, and there was a flash like purple lightning, leaving nothing of him there. The atmosphere in front of her ignited in a wall of violet, red and green, and she felt white heat on her face, smelled singed hair, scorched leather. She pushed, and the roiling wall of gas, burning like a sun, swept down the hillside like a great wave, igniting the air as it went, rolling out onto the alluvial fan with a mind-numbing roar to drown out the screams of men and horses standing in its path. A column of burning nitrogen and oxygen rose upward with tornadic force, towering far up into a great anvil, but the sound of the lightning strokes within it could not be heard as the roiling wave moved on, scouring the fan to a fine surface of gla.s.sy pebbles mixed with the ashes of flesh and bone, and up the gra.s.sy slope beyond. The cavalry remaining there turned, and fled, but for many it was too late as the wave overtook them, reducing their bodies to elementary particles.

Kati screamed again, closing her eyes, the sparkling, purple matrix in her mind opening to receive the light.

And the wave was gone, leaving behind a fluorescent glow of green and red that lingered there for a moment, while lightning thundered in the great cloud overhead.

It began to rain, a light sprinkle at first, then a torrent, falling in sheets before her over the area of her destruction. Kati kept her eyes closed, and felt a kind of peace from the sound of the rain, but then someone called out.

"They're moving east! All cavalry! They're heading east from the plateau! They've broken off the attack!"

Kati's eyes snapped open. "They'll join the force attacking the city! Get after them! KILL THEM ALL!"

There was terror in the eyes of those who dared to look at her, and then they were all running down the hill to mount frightened horses jerking hard on their tethers, rearing and shrieking. Kati was the last to leave the hill. She'd seen a group of riders top a rise near the beach, and watched until she recognized them as Tumatsin, perhaps the same group of cowards who'd fled the action. Now she ran hard to catch up. A trooper held a fresh mountain horse for her, her saddle and swords in place. She reached it as the Tumatsin drew near, and she saw her old horse grazing contentedly nearby.

She vaulted into the saddle, knocking mounted troopers aside to ride at the Tumatsin. They halted when she screamed at them.

"YOU! I saw you down there! You ran at the first burst of fire! You left your comrades to die!"

One man stepped his horse forward as she reined in, her Changeling face flushed and gaunt with fury.

"NO! You don't understand! It was a trap! We were to provoke them, get them to chase us along the beach, stringing them out along the narrow strip of firm ground this side of the beach!" He pointed back towards the sea. "Short, box canyons all along there, our people hidden, waiting for them to nearly pa.s.s, then charging out to cut their ranks to pieces we could deal with! Everyone's down there, but I've called them out! They're right behind me!"

"Everyone? How many is that?"

"As many as we could muster. I've seen what you've done. As few as we are, we're all ready to fight for you! We couldn't be sure you'd come! We planned our own defense, and those who died knew the certainty of it! They knew you were here! They died for you!"

She could not speak, for her eyes had detected movement beyond these men, riders appearing at points along the last hills leading down to the sea. They came over the hills from ascents of steep canyons, riders in single file from countless points south as far as she could see. As they reached flat ground, they galloped to join lines, trickles streaming into a growing ma.s.s of cavalry until the roar of hoofbeats came to her ears, louder and louder. They streamed over the hills like an army of ants, more trickles coming from the beach to join them until the gra.s.s was covered with a black ma.s.s of riders and the ground trembled beneath her feet.

She remembered the Tumatsin propensity for understatement.

The man who'd spoken to her didn't look so afraid, now. "We're here! You tell us what to do, and we'll do it!"

The thunder of approaching horses made it necessary for her to shout. "We follow the force that attacked us, and hit it from behind, destroy it if we can, and continue on to the city! Moshuguang in front, with lasers, but after what we've been though, the weapons will soon be spent!"

She looked at the Moshuguang commander for a reaction, but he only nodded.

"The Moshuguang drop back, and we go in fast with bow and sword! We don't have heavy armor to slow us! We have to move! The enemy isn't waiting for us! Now!"

She turned her horse, and climbed up the hill, the Moshuguang commander going with her, his troops following, then the great ma.s.s of Tumatsin home guard riding hard to catch up. They went over the hill, and down through the lifeless area scoured by cosmic light, the towering cloud still above them, still releasing wet mist to cool earth now turned to gla.s.s. The devastation she'd wrought continued up the far slope, extending many meters out onto a small plateau and the broad valley heading southeast.

There were bodies there: men and horses, scorched black, the smell of cooked meat in the air. Kati felt sorry for the horses. Further up the valley were a few more bodies of fang-toothed men only partly burned, but dead from shock, their horses gone. She rode hard, outdistancing the Moshuguang with their heavy armor and large horses not bred for the mountains. It wouldn't do, and then she began noticing the curved, sparkling sheets of thin-filmed metal scattered to either side of her, growing in number until she suddenly stopped with the realization of what she was seeing.

"They've taken off their armor so they can ride faster!" she shouted, as the Moshuguang caught up to her. "Take off your armor, and let the Tumatsin get in front! We have to ride even faster now!"

They lost precious minutes in getting the Tumatsin moved to the front, but it was a welcome rest for the horses. Kati reared her horse.

"Now! As fast as we can ride! If we get close enough, use your bows! For SHANJI!"

Her horse leaped forward, and the men howled behind her. They thundered up the valley at a gallop. How long? An hour? Four? The Tumatsin mounts were relatively fresh, and again she was on a mountain horse. She hoped it was like the dear one she'd ridden from the city: a good horse, an incredible horse, willing to put out full effort for her. But for how long?

There were enemy riders along the rims of hills to her left, appearing, then disappearing in groups of four or five. She worried about a trap, if they were being enticed into a flank attack from above, but then she saw the dust ahead, dust kicked up by many riders where the valley began curving south towards the city. She waved an arm and pointed, hoping the others would see the dust and know they were rapidly gaining on the ones they pursued.

Riders within the dust cloud were moving at a trot, and her force was rapidly closing in on them. The sound of Tumatsin hoofbeats was a dull roar in Kati's ears, and she saw a soldier of Mandughai turn in his saddle to see them. He waved his arms wildly, shouting ahead. She was now a hundred meters away, closing fast, and saw a few figures visible in the cloud of dust. The enemy horses were already tiring; their stamina was poor, perhaps due to many weeks in transit to Shanji.

Kati turned to see the front rank of packed Tumatsin only a horse's length behind her. She grabbed bow and quiver, and held them overhead. "Shoot into the cloud! As deep as you can!"

She wrapped the reins loosely around the saddle horn, and made a knot, then nocked an arrow at full gallop, pressing tightly with her knees. She fired her arrow in a high arc, well into the dust cloud, and used her bow to beckon the others to do the same.

Shouts behind her, then a long pause. She nocked another arrow, and drew her bow as there was a commanding shout behind her.

A yellow cloud that was a thousand arrows arched high over her head and fell into the swirling storm of dust.

She heard horses scream, and men, and then another cloud of arrows was on its way, and then another. Kati fired with them as fast as she could, her arrows flying blindly into the cloud without a target. Shower after shower of arrows arched into the cloud, and then dust was swirling around her, her vision suddenly limited. Ahead, a horse had fallen, bristling with arrow shafts. Its tusked rider charged her on foot, sword raised, and she fired her last arrow through his throat.

Fallen horses and men were everywhere, and men stumbling towards both sides in panic. One dared to meet her, sword arm c.o.c.ked defiantly. She rode him down, but felt the pain of a sword-slash deflected from the saddle to her leg as he fell beneath her. She threw down bow and quiver, unsheathed her sword, and screamed as she raised it.

The sound of her people thrilled her, the screams of a thousand s.h.i.+zi.

She rode into the scattered, fallen soldiers of Mandughai, slas.h.i.+ng left and right. Most of them escaped her blade, only to be crushed by the wave of horses behind her, and then suddenly they were running on gra.s.s, and the dust was gone. She was ten meters behind the remainder of those who'd escaped her by the sea, and a last volley of arrows from her people shrieked by her head to strike them. Men went down by the dozens, but the others charged on, and now she could see why.

Far ahead, the dome of the Emperor's city glistened, and they were heading down a final slope to the broad valley of plowed earth and barley stubble now covered with horses and struggling men, black smoke belching from the ruins of three downed flyers. As far as she could see, horses were charging each other, men fighting hand-to-hand, blades flas.h.i.+ng. She caught up to a dark man who turned to slash at her. She parried his move, then stuck him in the throat and pushed him from his horse with her foot. She was riding among Mandughai's ranks, slas.h.i.+ng and parrying, not wondering where her terrible strength came from. Her people were piling in behind her, enveloping the invaders like an amoeba encountering a bacterium, absorbing them, cutting them down, cras.h.i.+ng straight through with the weight of their numbers, then charging down the slope to the stubble fields, Kati waving her sword, hoa.r.s.ely screaming the word that empowered them all.

"SHANJIIII!".

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE FALLEN.

The moment had been electric when Mengnu shouted the name of their world. Her eyes had blazed emerald green, ivory jutting beneath her lip; the purple aura surrounding her had seemed supernatural, yet he'd not been afraid this time. In a way, he still loved her, and now it was said she would be Empress over all of them.

Lui-Pang watched her ride alone up the mountain trail until the glow that accompanied her disappeared in trees at the edge of the cliff. His courage rose. One girl, supernatural or not, was riding alone to lead a small force against an army of unknown strength, and he was left with a far greater force in defending the city.

Still, there were rumors that the enemy camp had been examined from s.p.a.ce with the instruments on the mother s.h.i.+p, and that the number of invading soldiers was at least three times their own. There was also the matter of experience; none of them, young, old, even their officers, had ever known battle. What was the experience of those who would come at them from the valley to the north?

Lui-Pang pondered these things as he mounted up with the other young troopers at the rear of the long lines of cavalry reaching from the gate to far beyond the barracks where the dome intersected the mountain. Hours earlier, before Mengnu's arrival, the Moshuguang's elite guard had gone out on foot, leading their horses to dig in along the valley slopes and establish a cross-fire against approaching infantry. Each man carried an extra power pack, giving him a capability of six hundred bursts, but against a sizable force it would surely not be enough. It would serve mainly to deplete the capability of an enemy on foot or horseback to return laser fire when charged by Hansui cavalry.

He looked for Master Yung, but couldn't find him. He'd said that Mengnu was no longer his student. The student days were over. Today they would be soldiers, and veterans if they survived.

It was still dark, and two hours after Mengnu had left they all filed through the gate and out of the city, marching hundreds of meters into the fields to form their companies of three hundred in twelve blocks four wide and three deep across the valley. Somewhere in front of them, up on the slopes, the Moshuguang were dug in, lasers poised. Lui-Pang looked for a sign of them and saw nothing.

Their wait was not long. The first sign was a dull sound, like heavy breath, coming up the valley towards them. Lui-Pang's horse snorted, hooves stomping nervously. Far ahead an officer shouted, but he couldn't make out the words.

The second sign was more dramatic and nearly drove their horses into a panic. A flyer hummed behind them, lifting out of the dome and heading straight west towards the cliffs. Even at this distance, he could see it was full of men. A few troopers cheered them.

The sky was lit up by a single, blinding flash that came over their heads from the stars in the northwest, and the flyer was gone, leaving a ball of sputtering gas that settled slowly to the ground and seemed to explode there. But the sound was drowned out by the crack of a horrible thunder that shocked his ears and made his horse jump, screaming. Lui-Pang fought to control it; the closeness of their ranks was all that kept it from running.

Weapons in s.p.a.ce. More rumors, now verified. Weapons that could destroy an army in a flash, and they were sitting there, in the open, a target much larger than the flyer.

Everyone was looking up, waiting for death to come from the sky, some still fighting to control their animals. Lui-Pang had never felt so vulnerable and watched the stars, waiting for one to suddenly brighten.

Calm returned slowly. If s.p.a.ce weapons would be used against them, it should have happened by now, and hadn't. The flyer was the target, not men on the ground. Even his horse was settling down. Lui-Pang tried to do the same, and failed. The dull roar still came up the valley, the sound of many feet, many horses. Getting louder.

They were coming.

The sound was soon loud enough to distinguish hoofbeats from the armor-clanking steps of men, then there was a loud whine and seven flyers rose through the opening in the dome. This time, n.o.body cheered. Seven flyers, with laser cannon and crews of three, formed into a vee and came over their heads at low alt.i.tude, turbines screaming as they headed down the valley. Half a kilometer, then one. Lui-Pang held his breath, then cried out as the light came out of the sky from a point further east than before, seeming to come right towards him but striking only the flyers with terrible precision. Three flyers went down in fiery ruins to crash and explode, while the others were only b.a.l.l.s of ionized gas popping and sputtering. A column of air clear out to the stars glowed eerily red and green. The thunder was as before, and again Lui-Pang fought for control of his terrified horse. With the shock and fright came a strange relief. The flyers were indeed the targets, not ground troops. The thing he had to fear was on the ground, not in s.p.a.ce, and an hour later laser fire began coming from the valley slopes northeast of him. The Moshuguang had opened up. The enemy was within laser range.

There was shouting from the front ranks, and word was pa.s.sed back. "No lasers! String your bows! Ready an arrow! They're a kilometer out, infantry coming on the run! No cavalry! First shot at two hundred meters!"