It was no time for argument. Everyone was waiting for them, and Gorn could be stubborn when he chose.
'Come on then,' said Alish, 'but do nothing until I strike the first blow.'
The first raft rocked beneath their feet. Three rafts away sat the Melski headman and the rest of the Melski elders.
Alish was tempted to look back; he was afraid the men on the shore might betray the plan by grouping for the charge. The Melski were not experienced warriors, but their natural suspicion of strangers would make them wary.
But it was too late to look back now.
The wind sang in his ears. The trees across the river spired up into the wind. Green, dark green, rising to blustery blue. There will be screams on the wind and blood in the screams. Soon. It is happening. It cannot be stopped.
A few Melski were swimming, turning lazy circles in the water. Others were dozing on the rafts in the sun; some were inside the cabins. Alish could hear Gorn panting. The sound repulsed him.
The sun: too hot. Wind brisked about him. Glare from the water. He narrowed his eyes. He could smell Gorn. Sweating. Alish blinked. He was breathing too quickly. He tried to control his breathing.
What was wrong? It was hardly his first battle. He was Elkor Alish, warrior of Rovac, veteran of the Cold West. Now he was starting to sound like Hearst when the drink was doing his talking. But it was true. He was a professional, a veteran of countless battles of blood and slaughter.
Was it going into combat without helmet and shield that made him so uneasy? To avoid arousing the suspicions of the Melski, they wore no armour but a little chain mail. Without armour, was a man more vulnerable to his memories?
They were almost there.
They stepped onto the headman's raft. The headman, a big muscular Melski, stared at them intently. There was a pause. Alish felt his heart pounding. His mouth, dry, tasted of metal.
The Melski headman slowly stood up, the better to protest at the intrustion of so many strangers onto his raft. His chest inflated, then sank as he delivered a belch of discontent. He was preparing himself for oratory. There was plenty of time to observe his heavy muscles, his sunken eyes, his prodigious neck.
'You've upset him,' said Gorn, grinning. 'Come on, you'd better say something. Let your sword do the speaking.'
Alish said nothing. He knew they were all waiting for him.
'Hor-hurop!' said the Melski headman. Gorn looked at Alish.
'Hor-drup! Muur-muur. Muur hulp! Mulsk!' Alish stood there, trembling. And Gorn attacked.
'Yar!' screamed Gorn, hacking his axe to the headman's chest.
The headman staggered, belched blood. Gorn hacked for the neck. Alish lugged out his sword Ethlite. Around him, blades were lunging and slicing. And suddenly it was all over: they stood panting on the raft with corpses at their feet.
'Alish,' said Gorn. 'You were too slow to eat with us.'
And he laughed, and wiped his hands through his hair. With whoops and yells, the men on the shore were charging onto the carpet of rafts. There was a clamour of pain, of Melski bellows, clashing metal, whirring arrows. Shield and sword, the charge swept forward. Sleepers and sunbathers were cut down. Bewildered Melski stumbling from their cabins were killed in the doorways. A few dived for the water, but most stood their ground and fought.
Some charged Alish and his fist of warriors, isolated on the headman's raft.
'Alish!' shouted Gorn. 'Back to back!'
They stood back to back and braced themselves. The Melski came in a rush, green muscles swinging clubs, swinging sunglitter swords. They shouted as they came: 'Huur!'
'Gaar!'
'Horg-hulg!'
Alish took out the boldest: stabbed for the gut, drew free, then swung for the neck, shouting as he swung. The wind whipped away his shout. The boldest went down, then the onslaught was upon them.
Alish struck at a face. It slipped away. Ethlite swung free, slewed to slice at a leg. A falling Melski crashed against his hip. Alish went down on one knee. A Melski loomed over him. A club swept down.
Alish parried, rose to his feet. Again the club swung. His sword sliced air to meet it. His blade slid along the wood and carried away the hands that held it. Alish stepped back for room to move, then hacked at the head. He spun, and his sword met flesh. A spurt of blood. He turned again, meeting a face with the edge of his blade.
Again he wheeled, to find a Melski driving at him with a sword. Alish parried. Their blades locked hilt to hilt. Face to face they struggled, close enough to kiss. Alish slammed his forehead into his enemy's face. The Melski reeled backwards. Alish chopped sword to ribs. Again. Again. Hack through, hack through.
His blade pulled free from the bloody shatter of ribs and arced up for the throat. Something struck him on the back of the head. He fell.
Alish saw water snatch his sword. Then he embraced the cold shock of water. Chain mail jerked him down. Briefly, he glimpsed his blade, a thin thread of blood wisping away as it twirled down into the depths.
In slow motion, he struggled with the chain mail, as one may struggle with a monster in dreams. Pressure hurt his ears. His struggles snapped the thin gold round his neck, which fell away, bearing the red charm down into the depths. Then the jerkin came free. Alish rose, feet kicking slow and clumsy in his waterlogged boots.
Looking up, he saw a raft just above him. Contact! Volumes of green slime broke free and filtered away as he clawed along the underside of the raft. He surfaced, gasped air. A Melski glanced down in surprise, then stamped on his face.
Alish went down. Under, under. He looked around the shadow-green underwater world. In the depths, a wounded Melski turned slow, bloody circles towards darkness as it tried to swim away from agony. Bright surface was the sun. Smudged green shadows were the rafts. Alish swam, then surfaced.
He threw back his head and engulfed an ocean of air.
A small frightened Melski, perching on the edge of a raft, threatened him with a knife. The knife was pitted with rust. There were dried fish scales on the blade.
'Muur!' said the Melski.
Alish screamed at it. The Melski dived in panic.
Alish pulled himself from the water, still gasping in buckets of air. The combs which had held his long black hair in place were lost: his hair fell free. He wiped it out of his face.
Alish snatched up the first weapon he saw – a Melski club – and stood in the sunlight, blinking and gasping. He coughed. The sun was a slash of light in the blue sky. Clouds boiled in the wind. He glanced around and was dazzled by the sunlight on the water. Men, shouting, were plunging from raft to raft, but where were the Melski? Some – little ones – sat in shock, rocking from side to side, moaning. Elsewhere there was still some fighting, but here it was over.
Many of the cabins were burning where cooking fires had been scattered from their foundations of sand and rocks. Smoke streamed across the rafts, driven by the wind, confusing everything. There was fighting somewhere in the smoke. Alish could hear shouts, screams, the thump of boots, the whirr of arrows, the groans of the wounded. He heard the quick crackle of flames sprinting through bamboo cabins, occasional explosions as joints of bamboo heated up then burst.
The Melski club felt heavy in his hand. He dropped it. He saw a sword, but did not pick it up. Ethlite was gone, Ethlite, Ethlite, his sword, his lover, snatched by the river, drowned too deep to dive for.
The weariness that came over him then was sudden and absolute. Without looking any more at the flames and the smoke, without listening any more to the fighting, he started walking back toward the shore. Rafts rocked underfoot as he stepped from one to the other. Some water moved inside his left ear; he shook his head to try and get rid of it. His nose was bleeding. The wind knifing through his wet clothes felt cold.
Alish passed a few of the men who had already begun to plunder the dead. They had all been fighting: they were all hot, red-faced and sweating still. Most were bloodstained; a couple were wounded, but only lightly. Water squelched in Alish's boots as he walked.
On the shore, the two wizards of the order of Arl, Phyphor and Garash, stood watching the battle with detached interest.
