forward. 'Can't we delay them, Captain? Destroy their rafts? Hold the shore?'
'What good will that do?' demanded Menard. 'They'll just float downstream and put to shore elsewhere.'
'Patience,' said Anji with an unexpected smile. After a night off his feet, he was still stiff, but his gait was steady. He surveyed his troops: the Olossi militiamen, four Qin guardsmen, and forty or so locals. 'We have to keep them pinned on the other bank. How deep is the river?'
'Shallow to the height of a man for more than a stone's throw from shore on this side. The current cuts closer to the far shore, and has for years. That's why the ferry leads on this side. You can see there's a ramp of paving stones somewhat eroded on the other side. It gets steep fast.'
'The current will pull them downstream.'
'Downstream the bank on our side gets steep, as the current shifts. If I were them, I'd put the rafts into the water upstream and aim for the shoals here.'
Anji stared across the water. A great deal of movement was going on, upstream. 'They seem to have the same idea. Yet I wonder. I read a tale once in the archives of the palace library… a hidden barricade under water that slowed the advance of a fleet.'
'May the Great Lady come to our aid, Captain. If you have any ideas at all, let us know them.'
Eyes still narrowed, Anji glanced at Joss. 'Marshal?'
'We've some oil of naya, but with forest cover, wet ground, and mobile troops, it's unlikely to meet with the same success as at Olossi.'
But Anji, Joss saw, had already ridden on in his own mind. He'd concocted a new plan, and like the others, Joss found himself wondering, waiting, and hoping.
'The oil of naya will find its use. But we don't want to scatter them. We want to kill them. Here's what we'll do.'
For the rest of the day, eagles ran sweeps over the enemy but raised no alert. Again, the sun surrendered the sky to the brilliant stars. With night, the winch turned and the ferry moved out into the channel, piled high with wooden furniture and bales of old hay, drenched with a bit of oil and a lot of lard. From the bank, Joss listened for and thought he heard the faint plops of villagers rolling off the hack, each trio hauling a bundle of spears and poles. As the raft neared the deep channel, it burst into flame so bright that Joss
blinked back tears. The winch cranked a few more times. Shouts rose from the far shore as arrows whistled across the water, many consumed by the fire. The raft blazed, rocked by the streaming current, a bright distraction as the swimmers did their best to drive poles into the shallows. They finished their work as the flames began to die. One by one, they emerged on shore. When the count was made, one had gone missing, but no one knew if he'd drowned, lost heart and fled downstream, or swum across to warn the enemy.
For a while longer the raft glowed and the enemy did not react.
Then their rafts hit the water. The splash and slop of poles in the water and occasional words of encouragement or barked obscenities bounced off the surface to carry farther, perhaps, than intended. Beside Joss, a youth crouched on the shore, carefully piling stones and moistening the straps of his sling by sucking on the leather.
As the rafts entered the channel and picked up speed, arrows arced out from the rafts, most dropping harmlessly in the water while a few peppered the shore. Anji's troops, even the raw village recruits, held position behind their own crude shields of planks or sturdy wicker.
The rafts angled toward shore. A thunk sounded from the lead raft as its bottom caught on one of the submerged poles. The four Qin soldiers lit pitch-stained arrows and loosed them at the first raft, then at a second and third that, scraping on poles, swirled in the current. Fire spurted. Panicked men shouted. Rafts rocked, and bodies tumbled into the river.
'On your left,' Joss shouted to mark a swimmer paddling desperately into the shallows. Arrows followed him until his stroke ceased and his corpse floated away, borne on the current.
One group of six men made the shallows and, banding together, used a pair of wicker shields and their spears to push onto shore. Ten Olossi militiamen closed in a disciplined group to confront them, trying to drive them back. Menard had crafted a long pole with a thickly knotted rope fastening a club to one end, and driven bits of jagged metal into the club. Coming up on the flank of the militia, he hefted the flail and, grunting, swung it. The club crashed down twice on enemy shields, which shuddered but did not splinter. Again the old man raised the flail, but this time as he stretched, an arrow caught him in the belly and a javelin's bite drove him back.
He fell, tried to raise himself, and collapsed. With a scream of rage, one of the village lads hoisted the flail and waded forward, club swinging so wildly that the Olossi militia men cried out both in warning and in laughter as the lad broke apart the enemy.
'Heya!' the youth next to Joss leaped back, abandoning his neat pile of stones.
Joss spun to face a man splashing up out of the shallows. Joss stabbed with his short sword, wrenched it free, and waded in as a second man lunged at him. He knocked aside a spear thrust and cut him down, and leaped back to realize he had just killed two men.
This was butcher's work. Reeves were never meant to chop and hack like ordinands.
'Marshal! Your back!'
Spinning, he faced one of the enemy, who had axe raised; the man slumped, toppling forward and bringing Joss down with him. He squirmed out as the man twitched, to find Sengel grinning at him as he offered a hand up.
'Hu! That was close!'
Six rafts had been released into the waters, and the stragglers, their arrows spent and their comrades dead, dove into the water to swim back to the far shore. A single raft floated downstream, spinning away in the night as arrows vanished harmlessly into the river behind it.
Above the eastern woodland, the Basket Moon rose.
Anji trotted out to Joss, streaks and splashes of blood revealing he'd done his share of fighting. 'Thirty of the enemy accounted for, and more lost in the river, I expect. We lost one man in the river, another three in the fighting on shore, and have five wounded. But we've delayed them.'
Joss wiped his brow. 'I need a drink,' he said, looking at the bodies littering the shore. Villagers were already cutting their throats to make sure they were dead, stripping anything of value, and then dragging the bodies into the river.
'Now we wait for the strike force?' Joss asked.
Anji nodded. 'Now we wait.'
Joss whistled Scar in at dawn. The enemy camp was in turmoil, men arming, rafts abandoned. It looked as if they were readying to march
upstream to Hammering Ford. He got high enough to scan several mey down the road, and he did suck in air, then, as Scar chirped interrogatively, feeling the shocked tightening of Joss's shoulders.
'The hells!'
He hadn't thought the strike force could really ride that far, that fast, but cursed if they hadn't managed it: about three hundred riders, a mix of Qin and local men who'd been training with them. Joss signaled with his flags.
Eagles closed in, thirty strong. Below, the strike force approached at a ground-devouring pace, pounding up the road with their remounts left behind for the final dash. Before the enemy could break north into the forest, the eagles flew low and dropped oil of naya in their path, driving them back toward the road. In confusion, they fled. The unluckiest caught a scrap of the unquenchable fire on their bodies. Those who ran screaming into the water still burned.
In the direction of the road, the clash of arms rang with ugly vigor, the shouts and screams of a battle engaged. But Joss's attention was caught by a throng clamoring after the cloaked man, who was riding away into the forest. He was abandoning his own troops. Reaching open space, the horse opened its wings and flew.
'There, Scar!' But the eagle did not fix his keen eyes on the other beast. Even Joss found himself losing track of the horse's flight, as if it literally possessed less substance in the air than on the ground, fading like mist under sun.
He wasn't going to lose the cursed Guardian after all this!
He yanked ruthlessly on the jesses, and at first Scar swept a full circle and only reluctantly pulled in the direction Joss directed him. There! A wink of light stung the reeve's eye. He followed sparks until he flew over a
