Crusade

as well.

His warrior-minded sister had seen the change in him when she recovered from her wounds, but she’d believed it was just a sign that he’d grown up at last. She hadn’t realized the more fundamental nature of the change. Once, his greatest ambition had been to one day become a wing clan chief. That goal no longer even entered his thoughts. He no longer cared about running Salissa’s great wings, or those of any other Home. He still loved Salissa, but Walker was his Home now and he was a destroyerman through and through. He knew most people believed he was playing a game with Selass, rubbing her nose in her rejection of him for Saak-Fas. But as far as he was concerned, she could remain mated to the mad, broken shell that Saak-Fas had become. The only thing he really felt for her now was pity. He didn’t care about anything that once seemed so important — other than his sister, of course, despite her bothersome behavior, and the safety of his people and their strange tail-less friends. All that mattered now was the joy he felt when he was destroying their enemies. A joy he felt even now, in spite of the pain and thirst and exhaustion.

He’d spent most of the fight in the second rank, where his height gave him an advantage, stabbing and thrusting powerfully with his spear. Then the one in front of him, another wing runner from Salissa, fell. Chack immediately took his place. He couldn’t kill as many of the enemy from the wall, fighting and straining to hold back the weight of thousands, it seemed, but the wall had to hold. Another Grik took the place of the one he had slain, battering furiously at his shield with its sickle-shaped sword. Chack dug his feet into the slurry of sandy, bloody mud and leaned hard into his attacker. He let his spear fall toward the warrior at his back — quite certain it would be put to good use — and drew the cutlass that the destroyermen had given him. He slashed at the Grik’s feet under the bottom edge of his shield and was rewarded with a jarring contact of blade on bone.

The pressure eased, but as he stood up straight, a blow from an axe right on top of his head drove him down again. He was stunned for a moment and he’d bitten his tongue. His comrades to the right and left helped support him while his senses returned. Thank the stars for the strange, platter-shaped helmet, he thought. He spat blood between gasps for air. There was frenzied shouting from behind him and he risked a quick glimpse. The muzzle of one of the cannons was inching through the press. He and the others near him shielded its progress until it was right behind them and then, at a shout, they gave back on either side.

Instantly, there was a deafening thunderclap, seemingly inside his head. The pressure turned his bones to jelly and the fur on the right side of his body felt like it had been driven into his skin. A choking cloud of smoke engulfed him and a high-pitched ringing sound replaced the noise of battle. He didn’t care. For just a moment, all that remained of the enemy in front of him was a vast semicircle of churned, shattered gobbets of flesh. He barked an almost hysterical laugh and was surprised he couldn’t even hear himself. Recoil had driven the gun backward, and the wall closed up tight where it had been. Something caught his eye and he looked up. High in the air, beginning to descend, was yet another flare.

«It’s fallin’ apart, Skipper,» Gray wheezed, his hands on his knees. He had lost his hat and his hair was matted with blood. To their left, they heard the rattle of a Thompson on full auto. None of the guys could have much ammo left, thought Matt as he inserted his last magazine into the butt of the Colt. He glanced at the barricade behind them just a lt U dast magazihe grass that had covered this plain.

A tremendous roar went up from the Grik, a predatory roar of triumph as the shield wall broke yet again. This time, it was as if some critical point had been reached beyond all endurance. One moment, a few Grik were racing through a small gap, hacking and slashing as they came, and in the next, like a pane of glass in a hailstorm, the entire wall around the gap shattered and fell away. Lieutenant Shinya raced by, aiming for the breakthrough, but Matt caught his arm. The Japanese officer whirled toward him, an insane light in his eyes that dimmed just slightly when he recognized the captain.

«Save the guns, if you can,» Matt croaked. «Try to form a square around them. If we can make it to the breastworks, we might be able to hold them there.» Shinya nodded reluctantly, deterred from his suicidal charge. He ran off shouting for runners. They both knew it was hopeless. Too many had already started to run. But it was all they had left and they had to try.

Maybe not hopeless after all, Matt amended as he wiped his eyes and struggled to see through the developing chaos. The Second Marines and most of the First Guards had already formed a square of sorts. It was a maneuver the Marines practiced often and the Guards had simply retreated into the formation with the Marines. They’d managed to save at least a couple of guns too — suddenly a pair of bronze snouts pushed through and barked spitefully at the Grik that had begun to curve around and try to get between the square and the barricade. Scores fell beneath the billowing smoke and the banshee wail of canister. To the right, the line still miraculously held. But its severed end had curled back toward the wall to form a semicircle at its base.

Separate from either force, however, Matt, Gray, and Keje stood alone as the shield wall in front of them melted away, oblivious to anything but the need to escape. Behind them raged the thundering horde. Matt gauged the distance to the Marine square. Many within it were shouting his name, or Keje’s, and waving, urging them toward it. There was no way.

A lone Lemurian gunner, abandoned with her dead crew, stood waiting while the Grik swept down upon her. Crouching behind the axle as bolts whizzed by or spanged off the barrel of her gun, she looked small and frail compared to the monsters coming for her. There was no doubting the determination of her stance, however, and her tail flicked back and forth as if she was preparing to pounce. At the last moment, she touched the linstock to the vent and the gun blew itself apart with a tremendous blast. Grik bodies were hurled into the air or mowed down by fragments of the tube or pieces of the carriage. She must have loaded it to the muzzle, Matt thought, stricken by the act. Of the lone Lemurian gunner, nothing remained.

«Come, my friends!» Keje bellowed, pointing at the Marine square. «We must try!» With a final glance through the smoke at the momentarily stunned Grik advance, Matt and Gray joined Keje, racing toward the square as it resumed a slow, shuffling retreat.

Gray uttered a sudden, startled grunt of surprise and fell to the ground as if he’d tripped. Matt and Keje both stopped and turned toward him. He was lying on his side with a black vaned crossbow bolt protruding from his hip. Irritably, he waved them on. Keje disemboweled a Grik warrior with his scota as it ran toward them out of the lingering cloud and Matt took careful aim and shot another with his pistol. More were coming. Soon it would be a flood. «Go on, damn it! I’ll be along!» Gray yelled.

«Shut up,» Matt grated as he and Keje helped him to his feet. Stifling a tooward the square. Matt shot another Grik and then another as they struggled closer to the Marines, whose formation had started to expand toward them as it moved, hoping to take them into its embrace. Keje deflected a blow from a Grik sword with his small shield and Matt shot the creature as it snapped at Gray with its terrible jaws. His pistol slide locked back. Empty. He tucked the gun into his belt and parried a spear thrust with his sword. He wasn’t much of a swordsman, but holding the Chief and fighting with his left hand, he was almost helpless. He managed to deflect the spear just enough that instead of driving through his chest, the sharp blade rasped along his ribs. He gasped with pain but clamped down with his arm so the Grik couldn’t pull the spear back for another thrust and Gray drove the point of his cutlass into its eye. It shrieked and fell back, but then Keje went down, pulling them down on top of him.

Matt rolled onto his stomach to rise. All around him he saw running feet, Grik feet with long curved claws that slashed at the earth as they ran. He felt a searing blow of agony in his left shoulder blade that drove him to the ground, out of breath. He raised his head once more. There, just ahead, was the Marine square. He could see the tired, bloody faces of the people he had brought to this, staring expressionlessly back at him, but with their eyes blinking in frustration. He could feel Chief Gray, trapped beneath him and struggling to rise, and he tried to roll aside. Got to let him up, he thought. Then something struck him on the side of the head, and bright sparks swirled behind his eyes, quickly scattering into darkness.

«Through! Charge through! Do not stop at the barricade!» bellowed Lord Rolak, waving his sword above his head. He was nearly spent and his old legs ached from unaccustomed exertion. He stopped, gasping for a moment as his warriors flowed past, shouldering their way through the debris of a shocked and splintered army. He stared at the survivors of the sea folk as they stumbled, slack-jawed and empty-eyed toward the dock as if they knew, instinctively, safety for them could only be found at sea. He couldn’t believe it. They’d broken, yes, but they had fought against impossible odds for longer than he’d ever expected, and his shame warred with his pride for their accomplishment. Never again could it be said with honesty that sea folk would not fight.

Some fought still. A solid block of sea folk warriors with several flags held high in their midst was churning