The raiders launched their rafts from the former bridge landing. Warriors on foot pelted the opposite shore with a thick rain of darts, driving Huru’s defenders back. The first rafts carried no horses, only armed men and frightened slaves with long poles for pushing the rafts. The defenders could do nothing but watch as ten timber platforms packed with garishly painted raiders left the western shore.
Amero led his group away from the imminent fight. It pained him to do so, but he knew Zannian had enough men, and probably enough rafts, to make other crossings. His band took up a position hidden in a deep ditch a league from Hum’s men, and there they waited. Lookouts on higher ground stood ready to signal Amero when the raiders made their move.
In unison, the raiders raised their spears and chanted, “Zannian! Zannian!”
Huru’s people awaited them in silence. Raiders armed with throwing sticks lofted darts over the heads of their comrades. The darts, each two spans long and tipped with flint, thudded into the sand in front of Huru’s position. The missiles climbed up the hill as the rafts drew closer.
“Stand ready,” Huru said quietly. Each villager laid his spear in the gap between his own shield and his neighbor’s.
The nearest raft was only a few steps from shore. On the first raft stood Hoten. The balding raider wore his elaborate collar of bear and panther teeth. Despite winning his bet with Zannian, he’d volunteered to lead the attack. He was past the prime of a plainsman’s life and knew this would likely be his last fight, one way or another.
His raft scraped sand. Drawing a bronze elven blade from the scabbard at his side, Hoten raised it high.
“Forward!” he bellowed.
“Let’s go!” shouted foundry master Huru, and the wall of shields, bristling with spears and studded with thrown darts, moved down the hill.
Darts hummed over Hoten’s head toward the villagers. Now and then one found its mark, and a defender went down. The man or woman behind the stricken fighter stepped forward to fill the gap. Hoten admired their tenacity. The villagers had shown more courage and ingenuity than any foe the raiders had battled on their long march across the plains.
He swung his metal blade down, splintering a villager’s wooden shield. A black flint spearhead whisked by his ear. Wrenching his sword free, Hoten lopped off the spearhead, then thrust his blade at the man facing him. Silvanesti bronze met flesh. Bleeding copiously, the man couldn’t even fall, so tightly were his neighbors pressed against him.
Huru’s band had the better of the hundred or so raiders struggling ashore. His rear ranks were actually suffering more from darts than the front ranks were from close combat.
The villagers pressed on until their feet were in the river. Raiders swarmed around them, stabbing at the villagers’ faces or legs. More rafts were coming ashore above and below the defenders, and Huru saw they might be surrounded if they remained too deeply engaged. He called for his people to withdraw slowly up the hill and to reform their line from five ranks deep to four, thus lengthening their line.
As he turned to face the enemy again, a bronze blade pierced his shield and drove into his chest. His knees sagged. Huru looked into the face of his killer, then collapsed in a heap, the life leaving his eyes.
Hoten put his foot on the dead man’s shield and yanked his blade out.
Their leader gone, the villagers began to lose heart. The wall of overlapping shields was broken, and raiders pushed in between the confused ranks. Dart throwers had to halt their firing as their own warriors were now mixed too closely with the enemy.
Upriver, Amero saw that Huru’s band was slowly breaking apart. He wanted to race to the rescue, but he knew this was what Zannian expected. He and his people stayed put, their anguished eyes fastened on the nearby battle.
It took several blasts of the lookouts’ horns to penetrate their concentration and warn Amero of a new threat. Through the orchard came several very large rafts, pushed over the tilled earth by a swarm of slaves. Once shoved onto the lake, men and horses filed onto these oversized rafts. They rode easily in the calm water.
Amero felt his heart sink. He’d been outflanked. There was nothing to stop the raiders from landing on the east shore. He’d gambled Zannian wouldn’t strike so far south, and he’d lost the gamble.
“Stand up!” he cried. Those around him looked puzzled, their attention still fixed on the fight at the bridge crossing. “Stand up! Sling your shields and couch your spears! We’ve got to stop them!”
Amero led them up the hill to the stone flats above the lake. He let the fleetest young people sprint ahead, with orders to torch the hoist to Duranix’s cave and the other wooden structures outside the wall. By the time his band had re-formed on the shore, smoke was already rising from the hoist. At least the raiders wouldn’t be able to use the dragon’s cave to get above Yala-tene.
From midlake, Zannian saw the villagers break and run. He rejoiced at first, thinking they were quitting the fight. When he saw them take up a new position to oppose his landing, his delight faded. He was certain his two hundred mounted warriors would trample the foolish villagers into the mud, but he’d hoped for a rout, not a hard, bitter fight.
“No mercy,” he reminded his men. “We must hit them fast and hard and not let them escape to that pile of mud and stone they call a village.”
The wind shifted, blowing smoke from the burning huts over the lake. It obscured the beach as well, but Zannian kept the rafts going straight ahead. When they finally pad-died clear of the smoke, he saw the villagers had adopted a new formation. Unlike the solid wall of shields they’d used earlier, they were now disposed in a hollow circle, two ranks deep. A smaller band of fighters, shieldless, stood in the center of the circle.
Zannian frowned. What were the mud-toes up to now?
As planned, the trailing rafts had pushed off to each side, so that all would land at the same time. Zannian expected a fight at the water’s edge, but the villagers were drawn up on the highest point of the rocky ledge overlooking the lake. This was a grave mistake. His men would be able to disembark, mount, and then attack.
The rafts bumped ashore. Without waiting to lead his horse onto dry land, Zannian swung onto the animal’s back and raised his sword.
“For Almurk, and victory!” he cried, and dug in his heels. The gray stallion sprang into the shallow water and splashed ashore.
Amero watched the raiders. “Are you ready?” he asked his people. They answered with silent nods, eyes on the approaching enemy. “Then let’em have the stones.”
The villagers in the center of the armed circle, all strong young men, picked up stones and hurled them at the gathering raiders. The rocks had been chiseled with sharp edges and the muscular youths delivered them with great force. Several raiders went down with bleeding heads.
As calmly as he could, Amero said, “Shields overhead.”
As he expected, the infuriated Zannian called forth a shower of darts in retaliation. With their shields over their heads, the villagers absorbed the heavy hail of darts with no ill effects.
The last raiders ashore mounted their horses. “Everyone ready?” asked Amero. Again, the silent nods. He gave the signal, waving his arms.
The front and rear of the circle opened, and villagers came running down from the cliffs, rolling flaming logs ahead of them. Thirty paces from the enemy, the log rollers let go. The nine large timbers, taken from the burning buildings outside the wall, smashed into the riders coming up the hill, scattering them.
*
Zannian had to do some fancy riding to keep his horse from being bowled over by a blazing tree trunk. Once the fiery logs had passed, he rode among his confused men, hitting them with the flat of his sword, kicking them, swearing at them. By the time he settled them again, Amero’s band had withdrawn higher up the slope.
“They want to play tricks, do they?” Zannian fumed. “I’ll teach them some tricks!”
He divided his men into two groups. One, he sent down low along the lakeshore toward the village. The other, which he led, walked their horses slowly up the hill to where Amero’s people waited.
“Darts,” Zannian commanded. The raiders loaded their throwing sticks. “Give them three rounds of darts, then we charge!”
Arms whipped forward, lofting a storm of lethal missiles at the villagers. They held their shields up as before, but they had been weakened by the earlier barrage, and this time many of the flint-headed darts got through.
