come cannot see that side yet, and all the moropes are there and behind this building. All of you with the gunpowder mount up and, when I signal the charge, you will go at once to the trees. The rest of us will delay the soldiers and then join you.”
“How many men do you think are attacking?” Jason asked, as the gunpowder bearers hurried out.
“Many. Two hands times the count of a man, perhaps more. Go with the gunpowder, the attack is close.” It was, too. Bullets splattered against the wall and spanged in through the firing slits. The roar of attacking voices sounded just outside.
The count of a man, Jason thought, hopping and hobbling to his morope, which was being held outside. All of a man’s fingers and toes, twenty. And a hand times that would be a hundred, two hands two hundred. And their party numbered 23 at the most, if no more of the men had been killed during the last attack. Ten men, each to carry a barrel of gunpowder, with Jason along as technical adviser, left 13 lancers for the attack. Thirteen against a couple of hundred. Good barbarian odds.
Events moved fast after that. Jason barely had time to haul himself into the saddle before the gunpowder party wheeled away, and he made a tardy rearguard. They reached the back of the building just as the
first attackers appeared. The remaining 13 riders charged out and the victorious roar of the foot soldiers turned instantly into mingled cries of shock and pain. Jason stole one glance over his shoulder and saw the cannon upended, men fleeing in all directions, while the moropes and their bloodthirsty riders cut a swathe of death through the ranks. Then the trees were before him and he had to avoid the whipping branches.
They waited just inside the screen of the woods. Within a minute there was the thud-thud of galloping moropes and seven of them plunged through the sodden brush. One of the beasts was carrying two riders. Their numbers were decreasing with every encounter.
“Go on,” Temuchin ordered. “Follow the trail back the way we came. We will stay here and slow down any who try to follow.”
As Jason and the powder team left, the survivors were dismounting and taking cover at the edge of the open field. It would take a determined attack to press home against the deadly arrows that would emerge from the obscuring forest.
Jason did not enjoy the ride. He had not dared to bring his medikit, though he wished now that he had taken this risk. Neither had he ever before tried to bandage two slippery wounds on himself, with cardboard-stiff chamois, while charging along a twisting trail on a hump-backed inorope. It was his fond hope that he would never have to do it again. Before they reached the sacked fariithouse, the other riders caught up with them and the entire party galloped on in exhausted silence. Jason was hopelessly lost on the foggy, tree-shrouded paths, which all looked alike to him. But the nomads had far better eyes for the terrain and rode steadily toward their objective. The inoropes were faltering and could be kept moving only by constant application of the prickspurs. Blood streamed down their sides and soaked into their damp fur.
When they reached the river, Temuchin signaled a stop.
“Dismount,” he ordered, “and take only what you must have from your saddlebags. We leave the beasts here. One at a time now, over that rise to the river.” He moved off first, leading his own mount.
Jason was too foggy from exhaustion and pain to realize what was happening. When he finally pulled his mount forward, he was surprised to see a knot of men on the riverbank with not a single inorope in sight.
“Do you have everything you want?” Temuchin asked, taking Jason’s bridle and pulling the morope close to the bank. As Jason nodded, he whipped the bowie knife across in a wicked, backhand slash that cut the creature’s throat and almost severed its head from its body. He moved quickly to avoid the pulsing gout of blood, then put his foot
against the swaying animal and pushed it sideways into the river. The swift current carried it quickly from sight.
“The machine cannot lift a tnorope up the cliff,” Temuchin said. “And we do not want their bodies near the landing spot or the place will be known and soldiers will wait there. We walk.” He looked at Jason’s wounded leg. “You can walk, can’t you?”
“Great,” Jason said. “Never felt better. A little hike after a couple of nights without sleep and a thousand- kilometer ride is just what I need. Here we go.” He walked off as swiftly as he could, trying not to limp. “We’ll get this gunpowder back and I’ll show you just how to use it,” he reminded, just in case the warlord had forgotten.
It was not a very nice walk. They did not stop, but instead, to relieve each other, passed the barrels from one to another without halting. At least Jason and the other three walking wounded missed this assignment. Trudging uphill on the slippery grass was not easy. Jason’s leg was a pillar of pain that bled a steady trickle of blood down into his boot top. He kept falling behind, and the march was endless. All of the others had passed him and, at one point, they were out of sight over a ridge ahead. He wiped the rain and sweat from his eyes and limped on, trying to follow their vague path in the tall grass, which was already straightening up and blurring the signs. Temuchin appeared on the hilltop above and looked back at him, fingering his sword hilt, and Jason put on a lung-destroying burst of speed. If he faltered, he would join the moropes.
An indeterminate period of time later, it came as a complete shock when he stumbled into the small group of men sitting on the grass, their backs to a familiar tower of rock.
“Temuchin has gone,” Ahankk said. “You will go next. Each of the first ten men on the rope will carry up a barrel of this gunpowder.”
“That’s a great idea,” Jason said collapsing inertly onto the soggy grass. It was an unconscionably long time before he could even struggle to a sitting position to do what he could to fix his crude bandages. One of the men carried over a barrel of gunpowder that had been secured in a harness of leather straps, with a loop to go around Jason’s neck. The rope came down soon after this and he allowed himself to be strapped into it. This time the possibility of falling did not trouble him in the slightest. He rested his head on the gunpowder and fell asleep as soon as the lift began, nor did he awake until they pulled him to the clifftop and his forehead banged against the rock. Fresh moropes were waiting and he was permitted to return alone to the camp, without the gunpowder. He allowed the animal to go at its slowest pace so
that the ride was not unbearable, but when he reached his own camach, he found that he did not possess the strength to dismount.
“Meta,” he croaked. “Help a wounded veteran of the wars.” He swayed when she poked her head out of the flap, then let go. She caught him before he hit the ground and carried him in her arms into the tent. It was a pleasant experience.
“You should eat something,” Meta said sternly. “You have had enough to drink.”
“Nonsense,” he said, sipping from the iron cup and smacking his lips. “I don’t have tired blood, I have no blood. The medikit said that I was partially exsanguinated and gave me a stiff iron injection to make up for it. Besides, I’m too tired to eat.”
“The readings also said that you needed a transfusion.”
“A little hard to do that here. I’ll drink plenty of water and have goat’s liver for dinner every night.”
“Open!” someone shouted, pulling at the laced and knotted entrance flap of the cainach. “I speak with the voice of Temuchin.”
Meta put the medikit under a fur and went to the entrance. Crif, who had been fanning the fire, picked up a lance and balanced it in his hand. A soldier poked his head in.
“You will come to Temuchin now.”
“I come at once, tell him that.”
The soldier started to argue, but Meta twisted his nose and pushed him back through the opening. She laced it shut again.
“You cannot go,” she said.
“I have no choice. We’ve sutured the wounds by hand with gut, that’s acceptable, and the antibiotics are not detectable. The iron is a!ready seeping into my bone marrow.”
“That is not what I meant,” Meta said angrily.
“I know what you meant, but there is very little we can do about it.” He pulled out the medikit and twisted the control dial. “Pain killer in the leg so I can walk on it, and a nice big shot of stimulant. I’m taking years off my life with this drug addiction, and I hope someone appreciates it.”
When he stood up, Meta grabbed him by the arms. “No, you cannot,” she said.
