Crusade

its way through a mass of enemies back toward the relative safety of the barricade. The block was dwindling even as he watched, but the path they hewed through the foe was out of all proportion to their losses. His sense of failure and shame was only slightly assuaged by the fact that he wasn’t entirely too late. It had taken his and the Orphan Queen’s forces almost two hours to work their way through the streets of Aryaal, streets that became ever more congested as they neared the north gate. The fighting had caused a general exodus of townsfolk to gather there seeking refuge from the firebombs and hoping that if the city fell they might yet escape to B’mbaado. It was an empty hope, of course, but it was the only hope they had. Then, when they finally forced their way to the gate itself, they found it closed and fortified from the inside as well as out. The king, or his brat, must have foreseen something like what Rolak was attempting and ordered his personal guard to prevent anyone from trying to leave. It was then that Rolak’s defiance of his king had sparked a civil war in the city of Aryaal.

He stormed the gate with Queen Maraan at his side. The fight for the towers that housed the gate windlasses was difficult and costly — he himself had overseen their construction years before with that very purposked their way to the machinery that opened the massive doors, leaving scores of white-clad bodies behind them. When the gate swung wide, Queen Maraan’s Six Hundred and a slightly larger number of Aryaalan warriors — rebels now — swarmed down into the waterfront shantytown where fisherfolk and boat people dwelt. Through the squalid alleys filled with muck they raced, until finally they emerged behind the breastworks to see the disaster their king’s treachery had wrought. Tears of guilt and humiliation stung Rolak’s eyes as he beheld, at last, the extent of Aryaal’s dishonor. The fact that any of those they had betrayed still lived — let alone fought — was proof that if only they’d followed the plan, a great victory could have been achieved. Now all that remained was to save what he could of this valiant army as well as his own people’s soul.

«Straight through the barricade!» he urged hoarsely once more as another cluster of soldiers passed. He noticed a group of warriors standing nearby, leaning on their spears and watching the battle beyond the breastworks as the last of his own troops clawed through the gap and slashed into the milling Grik. «What are you doing?» he demanded. One of them looked at him and blinked confusion.

«We are the guard here. This is our station. We have no orders but to defend this position.»

Furious, Lord Rolak struck the hapless Aryaalan with the flat of his sword. «You do now!» he bellowed. «Through, now, the lot of you! Or I’ll have your tails for baldrics!» More terrified of the raging Protector than of the Grik, the entire barricade garrison hurried to obey. Rolak stood waiting, catching his breath and cursing his age and frailty until the absolute last of the defensive force hurried through to join the battle. He felt a hand on his arm.

«Rest here a moment,» spoke the queen of B’mbaado. Her eyelids flickered with concern.

«Never,» he said, «will I rest again until the honor that was stolen from me is restored.»

She turned her gaze to the battle that raged a short distance away. B’mbaadans and Aryaalans didn’t fight in the strange, ordered way she’d seen the sea folk begin the battle, but their tightly massed attack of screaming and slashing reinforcements led by an almost berserk Haakar-Faask had taken the Grik unawares. In moments they had battered a deep wedge through the enemy and were on the verge of linking with the exhausted Marines.

«In that case, Lord Rolak, let us salvage what we may of it while we can!» She flashed him a predatory grin and drew her sword. He nodded and smiled back at her. Aryaalan females never became warriors; it was forbidden. B’mbaadans almost never did, but there were a few exceptions — a noted one stood before him now. Sea folk females fought right alongside the males, and hundreds of them had died that day defending all the people of Aryaal, including its proud male warriors who had done nothing. He knew it was no use trying to make Queen Maraan stay out of the fight. She’d already been in the thick of it at the gate.

«Of course, dear queen, just promise not to outrun me. What little honor I have left would not survive.» She clasped his arm tightly this time, and together they charged into battle.

Matt’s eyes focused slowly on the battle lantern swaying above him. He didn’t know how long he’d been staring at it, but it seemed like quite a while. It was only now, however, that he real sizld do was look at her in wonder and confusion. «The only ones to know defeat today were the Grik!»

A ragged cheer broke out and quickly spread to the area beyond the tent. It didn’t last long, because the voices that made it were exhausted and hurt, but it was real and it was sincere and he knew somehow that her words were true. He closed his eyes in confusion and saw it all again, those last terrible moments when he knew all was lost. He couldn’t imagine how they’d escaped disaster, but they must have. Sandra said so. He was alive, so it must be true.

Victory, he thought. «My God.» He squeezed her fingers gently.

Long after she felt his hand relax in hers, Sandra sat beside Matt on the cot, looking down at him, wiping away her tears of relief while he slept.

It had been like a terrible nightmare. They’d all been so confident, God knows why. Maybe the string of small victories Matt led them to had made them think they could accomplish anything. After the battle in the bay, that confidence was reinforced. Sandra had watched with the rest as the proud army marched across the field, banners flying, and opened the battle with a terrible, one-sided blow. Even from her vantage point, where she had a better perspective of the horde they faced, she’d still been confident. The battle was unfolding precisely as planned. The Grik reserve was distracted on the far side of the river and the entire force attacking the city had been diverted down upon the Allied Expeditionary Force. And then, like a puff of smoke in a high wind, the grand plan that would have led them to victory, perhaps even with relatively light casualties, was just. gone.

The whole thing depended on the Aryaalans coming out and striking hard into the enemy rear, which might not only have sent the Grik into a panic, but would also have cut them off from reinforcements at the ferry landing. She ran her fingers through her hair, scooping the loose locks out of her eyes, and glanced around at the countless wounded around her.

They’d been so stupid! Even in their own world people so rarely did the things they ought to do — had to do! — when the need was so clear! Look at how long Europe had appeased Hitler. How long the United States had tried to accommodate Japan’s unspeakably brutal expansionism in Asia. Treachery wasn’t a unique and alien Aryaalan trait. Nakja-Mur had warned them, and Keje had too, not to count too heavily on the people of Surabaya. But under the circumstances, surely they had to see the logic? She snorted quietly. They’d applied their own concept of self-interest to others, she realized, and that was always a dangerous thing to do. It had been the greatest flaw in their plan.

She’d known something was wrong when the second flare went up. The battle line held and held for what seemed an eternity — surely longer than they’d expected to feel the full crush of the enemy assault. All the while, the booming of guns and the drifting white smoke made it impossible to see much detail. The first steady stream of wounded began to arrive, however. Up to that point there’d been a trickle, a few at a time, and most of those had made it to the rear under their own power or assisted by a comrade. Those that came as the battle raged on were carried, and their wounds were almost always desperate. She flew into the fray of spurting blood and severed limbs and directed the surgery with an energy and steady detachment that helped instill calm and confidence into the overworked staff of healers under her command. She was overjoyed when Kathy McCoy and Pam Cross arrived from Mahan, but there was no time for a psteastood. But they hadn’t been part of the «team» Sandra had trained for just this situation. It took a while for Pam and Kathy to integrate themselves and find their most effective roles.

And still the battle raged. The wounded that returned from the fighting were no longer excited and boastful. An atmosphere of exhausted desperation began to prevail. They were fighting like fiends and the field was choked with Grik dead, but something was wrong. The Aryaalans hadn’t come. Then came Shinya’s runner, horribly wounded but able to tell her the order Captain Reddy sent. By then she half expected it, but it still struck her like a slap. She quickly instructed her orderlies to prepare to move the wounded and raced to the barricade to see for herself. The horror was beyond anything she’d ever expected, or could possibly have imagined.

The battle was much closer now, close enough to see individuals, and she quickly picked out the white and coffee-khaki dress of the captain and the Bosun near the center of the line. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of other destroyermen here and there and she heard the sound of their weapons when they fired. Beyond the diminishing, wavering line was an endless sea of menacing shapes surging forward with a single-minded, palpable ferocity. She still heard the thunderclap of cannon, but the surflike roar of the Grik and the clash of weapons absorbed the sound of all else except thought.

Abstractly, the struggle before her brought to mind a scene from her childhood. A small green grasshopper had inadvertently landed upon an ant bed. Before it could recover and launch itself again, dozens of ants swarmed