IronStar Page 15

  Abruptly fed up with her own complaining, the Regnum Navy Lieutenant spun on her heel and scrambled down the ladder inside the tower. At the base of the tower, Whoopsie waited patiently. Too distracted to notice her increasing ease around horses, she stepped into the stirrup and mounted. She rode three blocks south along Falling Ash Road, the main north-south concourse, riding past the first three cross-streets with their entrances blocked at her orders by new stone walls. Then three blocks east along Scholar’s Road brought her to the corner of the Stone in a River school. With apologies to the beast for not currying her herself, Kirrah turned her horse over to the duty groom, sitting in the small stable built into the side of the school’s entryway.

  She walked into the central courtyard, deserted except for a few students sitting in the northeast corner around one of the scattered torches. Feeling too tired to take on any new job, but too irritable to sleep, Kirrah paced among the benches, statues and delicately scented flowering trees, finally settling precariously on the edge of a bench.

  “What troubles you?” a soft voice asked from the darkness nearby. Kirrah started, then relaxed as Issthe stood quietly.

  “Nothing. Oh, I don’t know. Nothing, and everything.”

  “I came to ask if you needed anything. I see I was not mistaken.”

  “No, I’m fine. Really.” Issthe stepped forward and knelt gracefully in front of Kirrah, holding out her slim pale hands together between them, palms up, as though she were presenting a small gift.

  “Would you place your hands over mine, just for a moment?” Startled by the unexpected action and request, Kirrah asked:

  “What are you going to do?”

  “My job. Please, I am very good, and there is no harm to you.” Half curious, yet trusting this strange, calm woman, Kirrah held her hands out over the other’s. Nothing happened. She could just feel the warmth of Issthe’s hands, two or three centimeters under her hands. The gentle, supporting, reassuring human warmth, slowly spreading across her palms, soaking into her tired bones, sliding like a balm up her wrists and forearms… oh, she hadn’t noticed how tight her shoulders were. Kirrah looked down at the woman’s beautiful face in front of her, tilted up, so calm, eyes half-lidded, staring somewhere into the distance past Kirrah, no, through her… no, she decided, into her. The back of her throat seemed tight, and her eyes watered. A tear slid down her face and fell into her lap. Another. Why am I crying? some distant observer wondered. Issthe watched her, no question, no judgement, just watched and held the space under her hands, as calm and solid as a… as a stone, in a river. Gradually the tears eased.

  Issthe’s robe made a hushed whisper as she moved to Kirrah’s left side and stood, left hand in front of Kirrah’s chest, right hand behind her back. Kirrah felt again that tiny warmth, fainter than before. Fainter because you’re wearing hullmetal cloth, silly… on impulse, Kirrah keyed the controls and as the suit parted down the front, she shrugged out of it to her waist.

  “Thank you, that is better.” Issthe stepped closer, her hands reassuming their front-and-back position. The warmth seemed more …available now, spreading gently across her chest, into her back. Kirrah could feel muscles unknotting, tension unwinding. Her head began to nod.

  Issthe knelt at her side, moving her right hand to supply a gentle almost-pressure at the base of Kirrah’s spine, her left hand making slow, sweeping passes down the front of her body.

  “You bring transformation to our Realm,” Issthe spoke so softly, like the sound of wind in a tree. “…to our world. Do you forget, that to transform is also to be transformed? It is for this reason, that you are here. I will help remember, if you wish. May I touch your feet?”

  The question seemed so - mundane, compared to the warmth and ease seeping into her stiff body, that Kirrah simply slipped the rest of the way out of her survival suit and sat there in the dark in her undersuit. Issthe moved - so graceful! - and sat cross-legged in front of Kirrah. One hand wrapped gently around the inside of each of Kirrah’s feet, and long, expert fingers probed her soles until they found the same points, just at the base of each big toe. A gentle, rhythmic circular pressure seemed to induce waves of… of not-tense, up Kirrah’s back, across her shoulders, into her neck and scalp. Suddenly, like a breaking wave, all the day’s, the week’s tensions seemed to sag out of her, and slump like a wet towel to her feet. She drew a long, deep, shuddering breath. Issthe reacted by stroking the tops of her feet, almost as though planting me in the ground, Kirrah thought.

  The priestess rose to stand beside her. “Come, my dear karadoi, it is best if you rest now… shall I bring your armor for you?”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” Kirrah replied, from some distance. Issthe smiled, scooped up the wondrous garment and led the other woman to her room, where she tucked her in and laid the suit across the foot of the bed.

  “Is she well?” asked Slaetra a few moments later, as Issthe left Kirrah’s apartment and came back into the courtyard.

  “Why would I think anything escapes your notice, here in your own heart?” asked the younger woman, as they embraced briefly but warmly. “She seems tired, but well. She carries much, and does not remember to set down her burden at the end of the day. I hope she sleeps well tonight. The Realm’s future may use her hard.”

  Chapter 18 (Landing plus thirty-nine): Stone Surprise

  “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.” – Sir Winston Churchill, op.cit.

  The next day dawned with a high thin overcast, a good deal cooler. Kirrah woke to the sound of alarm bells ringing across the city. Mmph, where was her suit… not locked in its usual place around the heavy bedpost… oh, there, someone had left it across the foot of the bed, when she’d gone to bed after Issthe had done …whatever that had been. Yes, I hear you in there, Paranoia Central; that was indeed a significant security breach, nodding off with the suit unsecured like that… Dang! she felt better this morning, though – both more relaxed and more energized.

  While she and Irshe grabbed a handful of fruit and half a loaf of bread for a walking breakfast, Kirrah verified with him the watchtower’s coded bell-message, two low tones and one high: ‘Enemy In Sight’. After extracting a promise from Akaray that he would not set foot, hand, hoof, or wheel outside the school, or allow himself to be transported outside by someone else, or in any way whatsoever depart from within its walls, Kirrah, Irshe and their …her, actually, her personal guard, set out. That kid will make a fine lawyer when he grows up, she thought wryly as they trotted west along Scholar’s Road. At Falling Ash Road, they turned north toward the gate in the city’s north wall, the one called Gate of Ashes. If he grows up… well, that’s what this is about, isn’t it?

  Uh-oh! she thought, five minutes later as they joined Lord Tsano and Armsmaster Opeth atop the wall beside the still-open Ash Gate. Spread out in an arc a good kilometer distant, stretching from west to north all the way around to the east, was a solid ring of horsemen. There must be… wait, they’re grouped under those small banners, Irshe said they were usually thirty to a, a platoon… A few moments’ counting, and some simple extrapolating, yielded the result that the two-kilometer arc of horsemen centered on this gate consisted of some two thousand mounted enemy - in the front row. How deep were those ranks? Surely not three riders deep, not six thousand Wrth, all at once, here, now…

  “Irshe’jasa, this evening I will want to discuss the accuracy of your scouting reports. You said ‘perhaps two thousand’, I remember clearly.”

  “Kirrah’jasa, I also said ‘perhaps more’,” he replied with a wry smile. Everyone’s playing lawyer today, she thought. Why is he looking so calm? Lord Tsano turned towards them:

  “Warmaster, is this too many for your stone-surprise?” he asked.

  “I think not, Lord. Even better now, to break some of them so cheaply, if they will just …cooperate. Why do you suppose they wait?”

  “They seek to frighten us. And they fear our walls. The other gates are all closed, as yo
u …suggested.”

  “May I also suggest, then, that you send men to check the house-doors behind us. And please get all the townspeople out of these six vai’athoz,” Kirrah said, indicating the three city blocks on either side of the street immediately south of Ash Gate.

  “Irshe, signal the archers.” Another loud whistle, followed by hand gestures, and thirty archers clambered up onto the walltop east of the gate, and another thirty to the west wall where Kirrah stood. Each man carried one of the old bows and one of the new, and two sets of arrows. Behind them, city patrol armsmen made their way south from the gate down the main street, hammering on private doors and testing each one. Any unlocked doors were quickly bolted from the inside. The citizens for three city blocks south of Ash Gate began gathering in groups in the streets to east and west, away from the main street.

  At a signal from Armsmaster Opeth, a troop of twenty Border Patrol rode out through the still-open gates and a short distance up the north road, among the deserted shops and buildings huddled outside the walls. There was a stirring in the ranks of Wrth. C’mon, take the bait… nothing. After ten minutes of posturing and waiting, Kirrah turned to Opeth and asked:

  “What does it take, to get these raiders’ attention?”

  “They are wary of our walls and towers. Even our old bows can sting, if they come under the walls. They will not waste themselves for nothing.”

  “Then why are they here?”

  “They want us to believe that we no longer own the land outside our walls. They will attack any farmers or travelers. They will probably leave us in our city as long as we stay here, or until they actually have the siege-engines you warned us of.” Kirrah thought about this for another few minutes, then asked Opeth, Lord Tsano and Irshe for a conference.

  “On my world,” she said, “if the prey will not take the bait, the hunter changes to another bait. Could we arrange for some volunteer armsmen to dress as farmers, and send them into the fields near the gate?”

  “This might provoke them,” Lord Tsano said.

  “We could send a wagon, I think the wagon we used for training archers is just inside the courtyard of the second block on the east, there.” Irshe pointed.

  Twenty minutes later, a cluster of a dozen ‘farmers’ began working the fields adjacent to Ash Gate, and ten minutes after that a wagon rumbled out, loaded with sacks of seed for planting. There was no further response from the Wrth.

  By mid-morning, there were two dozen fake farmers sweating in the cool, humid air, and Kirrah was becoming very frustrated.

  “What kind of raiders are these,” she grumbled. “They don’t raid. They just sit there.”

  “Perhaps that is what they’ve been waiting for,” said Lieutenant Rash’koi, who had joined them on the wall-top. That was a cluster of horses and mu’atha, the smaller domesticated version of the huge grazing animals, moving slowly across the open plains from the west. The convoy drew up to the north road, about a kilometer from the wall where the arc of raiders intersected the road. It appeared to consist of several loads hauled on large wagons. After a good deal of pushing and pulling, the wagons were turned and began to rumble slowly south down the road, toward the still-open Ash Gate. The center section of the semicircle of mounted Wrth followed, the remainder of the arc closing in from a thousand meter radius to about seven hundred meters.

  As the wagons approached, it became apparent that they were not ordinary trade carriages. They were seven or eight meters long, two and a half or three meters wide, and covered with heavy wooden plank roofing. Each carriage was on four massive wheels almost as tall as a man’s shoulder, and under the roof Kirrah could see what looked like a huge log, suspended by ropes or chains. She turned to the others and exclaimed:

  “This carriage is a ram. It is intended to break these gates. It may be strong enough to do it. We must interfere with it. Do you have any oil that will burn?” Opeth confirmed that flammable oil was available, and sent a messenger to requisition some. He added:

  “It will be a close race. Their rams move slowly, but the oil must come from the warehouse district, about twenty blocks away.”

  “I am sorry,” said Kirrah, thinking frantically. “I should have thought of using oil, earlier.” It’s my first time doing this, honest! “I think we must call the Royal Cavalry to help. I hoped to keep them in reserve.” Opeth signaled to a man at the top of the tower, and the alarm bells began to ring a low, high, low triplet of tones.

  “Forgive my presumption, is this perhaps a job for your not-sword?” Opeth gestured one hand toward the oncoming machines.

  “It would stop one, perhaps both,” Kirrah replied. “But those are made of very heavy wood, so it would leave me little reserve if our ‘stone surprise’ fails to work exactly right. I prefer we defeat the rams by other means, if we can. If the oil arrives in time.”

  “Perhaps I can buy us some time,” said Irshe, who whistled sharply and gestured to the faux-farmers to head for the gate.

  “What…” Kirrah started, as he turned and dodged into the tower’s door and down its inside ladder. She watched, dreading some kind of heroic one-man sacrifice. Not that one man! wailed some inner voice, as he dashed out the gate in time to meet the others returning from the fields at a run, hoes and shovels still in hand. With a quick few words, he organized them into a crew that began attacking the road’s stone surface, about five meters outside the gates. Soon one after another of the half meter square paving stones were coming up, and rolled or carried inside the gates. As soon as the column of Wrth riders escorting the rams saw what was happening, they surged forward in a gallop.

  “They’re coming!” she and several others yelled. Irshe and the men looked up and redoubled their efforts. The stones across two thirds of the road’s width were out, and the men with shovels were throwing the newly exposed gravel in all directions. Turning to the lieutenant beside her on the wall, Kirrah said:

  “Rash’koi-sana'tachk! Tell the wall-archers, use the longbows first! The surprise is not as valuable as the time we can buy for Irshe!” The man whistled and made hand-signals, and sixty bowmen changed to the new weapons. On his mark, they nocked arrows and stood ready. The Wrth group escorting the approaching wheeled rams, about sixteen hundred riders, had split in two, about four hundred remaining with the wagons and the rest now pouring down the road, straight at the open gate. They made a weird, ululating wailing cry as they charged. Twenty sweating men continued to tear at the road. The leading Wrth closed at a gallop, three hundred fifty meters, three hundred… at two hundred fifty, Rash’koi shouted “Fly!” and sixty of the deadly new arrows leapt from the walltop. Sixty-one, Rash’koi had found a bow of his own. Too soon, Kirrah thought, they’re still too far out…

  “Fly!” he called again, and another sixty shafts leapt into the air. Not too soon, you just have to allow for the lead, Kirrah realized, as the charging column was abruptly severed about five units back from its leaders. Horses and riders spilled in all directions, those behind piling up on the carnage and adding to it. The head of the column, some twenty or thirty riders, continued their charge, unknowing. The second flight of arrows landed long, taking down the rearmost few men. The third flight struck the leaders squarely, turning the road into a bloody screaming mass a bare hundred yards north of the gate.

  “Hold!” the lieutenant called. Below the gates, all the stones were removed in a meter-wide ragged strip across the north road, and the ditch was expanding steadily under the enthusiastic attack of six or seven shovels and a dozen hoes. Up the road, a few dazed Wrth scrambled to their feet, some clearly hurt. Beyond the carnage, the main column was bunched between the buildings lining either side of the road, and blocked by the carpet of dead and dying men and mounts at the site where the original flight had fallen. But not for long, thought Kirrah. Even as she watched, orders were shouted, fallen men and horses dragged to the side like so much litter, and the column began to pick up speed.

  “Irshe! Come inside now!” sh
e yelled over the resurgent Wrth war cry.

  “Just a little deeper!” he called back up, his face lit with the mischief he was causing.

  “Now!” she screamed. “You will ruin my surprise!” He whistled and all the men looked up to see the leading element of the Wrth, over a thousand mounted raiders, bearing down on them at a full gallop a hundred fifty meters up the road. Without further encouragement, they raced inside the open portal. Irshe paused and made a show of pulling on one of the pair of massive wood-and-iron doors of the gate.

  “They are already convinced! No more acting! Inside!” she called frantically. Behind the walls, the twenty-odd men ran a few paces down the city street, into a small residential door with a large white X painted on it, and slammed it shut behind them. With the lead raiders fifty meters out and closing fast, Irshe abandoned the futile attempt to move one of the huge gates, and dodged into the small man-door at the base of the tower, just as the guards started pulling up the inside ladder. He scrambled up the ladder while the head of the triumphantly screaming Wrth horse column thundered across the shallow ditch, through the open gates and into the city. The first three cross-streets being blocked on left and right by Kirrah’s new stone walls, the column drove straight south along Falling Ash Road, which stretched unimpeded before them to the palace walls. I hope they get this right, Kirrah thought…

  Exactly on cue, a triple rank of pikemen and a row of archers stepped into the intersection three blocks south and laid their lines across the only way forward for the Wrth. The alarm bell sounded a dozen high chimes, and another hundred forty longbowmen rose from behind new wooden palisades on the rooftops lining the central avenue, seventy on each side of the three block stretch. As the head of the Wrth column impaled itself on the first row of pikes, Kirrah shouted “Now!” and Corporal Prax’soua and three other burly soldiers standing on the wall, heaved at levers under a two tonne stone block balanced precariously on the wall’s inside edge, directly above the gates.