Demontech: Gulf Run Read online

  The point rider disappeared for a moment, then reappeared on the straight of the road; others soldiers began crossing the break. The second Jokapcul followed thirty yards to his rear. The remainder were at five-yard intervals. The point man stopped halfway to the cut and signaled for the officer to come forward. The officer was easy to spot when he appeared—his helmet was topped by a golden plume, and the polished metal rectangles on his armor glittered where shafts of sunlight struck them. He stopped alongside the second man in the column and examined the cut. After a moment he quietly ordered the second man to join the point and for the two to scout ahead. The second man readied his bow as he trotted forward. When he was nearly on the first, the first advanced his horse at a walk.

  Haft looked to his right. He couldn’t see all of his men. Those he could see looked like they were well-concealed from view from the road. It wasn’t long before the scouts disappeared from his sight, hidden by the cut’s rising bank. He listened carefully and heard the soft clops of their horses walking through it. His breath caught when the clopping didn’t stop right away—would they go far enough to see where his squad had left the road? The Jokapcul outnumbered his men, and not enough of them were within range for his men to turn the odds in their favor with their first arrows.

  No. It sounded to him as though the scouts had stopped about halfway from the top of the cut, where he and his men had left the road. He hardly dared breathe as he heard them return. They stopped before he could see them again. Evidently they had signaled “all clear,” because the officer now signaled the column to move out.

  But the officer didn’t move when Haft expected him to. In every small Jokapcul cavalry patrol he’d ever seen, the officer was positioned near the front of the column, no farther back than the fifth man, often closer to the front. Haft counted: the two scouts, then a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth man. The officer remained at the far side of the road, watching his men troop by.

  Haft straightened his fingers, moving them away from the demon spitter’s trigger. Move! he thought. You’re supposed to be up near the front of the column, where my men can kill you, not at the rear. He wanted the patrol’s leader taken out with the opening shot, but the officer was far enough back that even a broadhead arrow from a long bow might not kill him, and horsemen were passing between him and the ambushers.

  The fifth man in the column was a sergeant. Against soldiers from another army, he’d settle for shooting the sergeant first. But the Jokapcul weren’t like other armies—their sergeants were little more than disciplinarians and relayers of officers’ orders; they had no leadership function. Taking out the sergeant first would do little more than setting off the ambush by shooting a private. Haft glanced to his right. The first soldier behind the two scouts was already nearing the place where the cut would take him out of his sight. In only a moment or two the front third of the column would be beyond the ambush. The last men were passing through the transverse section of road, and he knew he had to have the demon spit now if he wanted to hit the rear of the column.

  He lightly tapped the side of the tube near the demon’s door to let it know he was ready, carefully aimed at a horseman passing his front, then squeezed the lever.

  The demon spat with a thunderous crack. A second later a Jokapcul and his mount vanished in a burst of fire and smoke. To his sides, Haft was aware of arrows zipping through the air. He heard thunks as they struck leather, and the pings of arrowheads striking and glancing off the metal plates that studded the Jokapcul armor. He swiveled to aim at the officer—but couldn’t see him; someone must have shot him.

  In seconds half a dozen Jokapcul were down, arrows sunk into chests, bellies, thighs. As Haft looked back to the transverse section of road, a horse staggered and went down on its hindquarters with an arrow sticking out of its chest. Another, struck by an arrow that glanced off its hip, reared violently and threw its rider. The tossed Jokapcul rolled over and started to rise, then dropped back down when three arrows hit him—one glanced off, another pierced his armor over his chest, and the third found its way between the protective neck flaps of his helmet.

  A roaring voice drew Haft’s attention, and he saw the plumed officer’s head alongside a standing horse that strained against its tightly held reins—the officer had dismounted and was hiding behind his mount. Before he could aim the demon spitter, its door popped open and the demon gave him a sharp rap just below his eye.

  “Hey!”

  “ ’Ey oozeph! Ook!” The demon pointed a gnarly arm at the road where it came from the trees.

  Haft looked and swallowed a gasp as he swiveled the demon spitter away from the officer—the demon had spotted a dismounted Jokapcul aiming a demon spitter at the ambush! The other demon spat even as Haft was sighting. Thunder erupted fifteen yards to his right and twigs and clods of dirt rained at him through the brush. The Jokapcul with the magical weapon darted to another position, but Haft followed his route and was able to fire before the other could begin to take aim once more. The enemy with the demon spitter disappeared in a thunderous gout of flame.

  Haft gave the field a quick glance but didn’t see any other demon weapons, then looked again for the officer. The tall golden plume was right where he’d last seen it, sticking up behind the shoulder of a struggling horse. Haft sighted on the horse’s shoulder and fired the demon spitter again. The horse erupted in blood and gore; when the smoke cleared, the officer wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but his plumed helmet hung from a nearby tree branch. Then yells and the clatter of galloping horses came up the road. The few remaining Jokapcul were fleeing.

  “REPORT!” Haft bellowed.

  “One, got mine!” called Hunter from the first position.

  “Two, mine’s dead.” That was Archer in the second position.

  “That was too close, but I’m all right,” someone called out—the Jokapcul demon spitter hadn’t caused any casualties.

  In seconds all of the ambushers reported they were all right and that each had shot a Jokapcul. The enemy hadn’t had a chance to fight back.

  “There are two more down farther back,” reported the former Border Warder named Tracker.

  Haft looked to his left. Wolf wasn’t there. “The beast probably ran away when the fighting started,” he muttered. He breathed deeply. Not bad. They’d taken down thirteen of the fifteen Jokapcul in less than a minute and suffered no casualties of their own. The remaining enemy was in flight.

  “Let’s secure the bodies, see if any of them are still alive.”

  Hunter and Archer went down the back side of the ridge to check on the scouts, while Haft and the rest went down the front. He shouted orders as they went, and five of his men ran ahead beyond the farthest Jokapcul body for security while he and the others checked the bodies. Not all of them were dead yet, though only three were likely to survive their wounds.

  “Bandage them,” Haft said of the three who had a chance. “Gather all weapons and any horses that haven’t run off.”

  He looked up at the sound of men and horses screaming in the distance. “Hurry up!” He didn’t know why men and horses were screaming on their back trail—might there be bandits attacking the Jokapcul survivors? If there were, he didn’t want his small band caught in the open were the bandits to come this way.

  Haft looked up and down the road and saw that his men had collected weapons and six horses along with other supplies. Someone brought him the demon spitter used against them. Its tube was split along most of its length and the signaling mechanism was badly bent. The demon’s door was missing and the demon itself was nowhere to be found. He tossed the broken tube aside.

  “Let’s move out,” he ordered, pointing his right arm up then swinging it forward in their direction of march.

  Even though they now had horses, they went on foot. They left the wounded and dying in place. They’d barely made it through the cut before Wolf broke out of the trees beside the road to walk next to Haft. He looked up at the man.

  “Ulg
h!” Wolf’s muzzle and chest were bloody.

  “Did you get all of them?” Haft asked, not believing the wolf could actually understand his question.

  “Ulgh!” Wolf nodded vigorously twice and gnashed his jaws together with each nod.

  Haft shuddered.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Wheels rumbled on the road. Overladen wagons and carts creaked and groaned as they dipped and yawed over the rutted, uneven surface. Weary feet tramped and thudded alongside and between the wagons and carts. Curses and shouts came as people urged recalcitrant draft animals to haul when they wanted to stop, or dealt with dangerously shifting cargoes. Children shouted in play, or sobbed in fear and were hushed by fearful, tired, or exasperated parents. Babes cried until given breast. An infrequent echo reverberated, shocking in the confines of the forest that muffled and dulled most sounds. Sunlight splashed here and there, wherever it could break through the overarching foliage of trees that grew to the road’s verge and made a tunnel of it. Flying insects buzzed about the human and animal banquet that moved through their territory; people waved and swatted at them, and horses and oxen twitched their ears and whisked their tails. Unmindful of its casualties, the insect horde continued to dine. Only the occasional eddy that made its way down to the surface from the breeze that ruffled the high leaves disturbed the massed fliers.

  Spinner endlessly rode the two miles from the head of the column to its tail and back again, offering words of encouragement and an occasional helping hand, urging laggards to close growing gaps.

  They’d started out from Eikby with more than two thousand people under his and Haft’s protection. Most of them were the remnants of the town’s once-thriving population. Close to two hundred others were refugees from elsewhere in the Princedons, Zobra, Skragland, Bostia, or other countries in the conquered lands. Few more than one hundred were trained soldiers from a variety of armies, and a few hundred more were hastily trained soldiers who, a couple of weeks earlier, had been farmers, apprentices, tradesmen, or craftsmen. These disparate people all had two things in common: they were refugees, fleeing the invading Jokapcul, with nowhere to go, and they would go wherever Spinner and Haft led them.

  Many of the trained soldiers were deserters, men who had run from the field of battle or fled the approach of the Jokapcul. Others had moved purposefully in small units in search of their own armies, their own command, to continue the fight or flight, or to surrender, as ordered by their generals. Whether they had fled ignominiously, remained cohesive, or were newly trained and still uncertain about themselves as soldiers, they had fought and defeated two Jokapcul forces that outnumbered them just days earlier, and they would follow Spinner and Haft into whatever battle came.

  A couple hundred more refugees had joined them during the march northward, nearly eighty of whom were soldiers or former soldiers. A score of the soldiers were Conquestors from Penston under the command of a lieutenant. The officer of the Conquestors—a grandiose name for a military that was little more than a local militia—and his men as well, had been so demoralized by the ease with which the Jokapcul had invaded and conquered Penston on the ocean side of the Princedon Peninsula that he gratefully accepted Spinner and Haft’s command—even though he knew they were low-ranking enlisted men. Spinner and Haft seemed to know what they were doing. And the soldiers already with the two Frangerians told him that they’d never lost a battle against the Jokapcul.

  Spinner, however, if not Haft, didn’t see all of their encounters with the enemy as victories.

  They were three days gone from the charred ruins of Eikby, traveling north across the Princedon Peninsula, headed for the city state of Dartmutt. There, the people hoped for refuge. For Spinner and Haft, the salvation they sought was shipping that would take them down the length of Princedon Gulf, across the Inner Ocean, and around the southeast corner of the eastern continent, Arpalonia, to the archipelago nation of Frangeria, where they would report to Headquarters Marine Corps for debriefing and reassignment.

  “Debriefing.” Yes, Spinner was sure he and Haft would be quizzed at length about how they escaped the Jokapcul invasion of New Bally, and their transcontinental trek across Nunimar to the Inner Ocean. Headquarters would want to know everything they knew about the Jokapcul, and probably ask for everything they thought or could guess. He was sure that under the circumstances they wouldn’t be court-martialed for desertion in the face of the enemy.

  Fairly sure. After all, they were the only Frangerians not killed or captured when the Jokapcul surprise attack swarmed over New Bally.

  As for the refugees, Alyline, the Golden Girl, would go with them, of course. Silent, the giant nomad from the steppes, had said he’d like to cross the ocean to see a new land. Maybe Haft would take Maid Marigold with him, the young woman he’d hooked up with in Eikby. The others? Perhaps they could find safety in Dartmutt. Not that Spinner thought Dartmutt was strong enough to resist the Jokapcul. He’d never visited the Gulfside city states of the Princedons, but from all he’d heard, they were smaller and weaker than those on the shore of the Southern Ocean. His hope was that Dartmutt, at the head of Princedon Gulf and abutted against the bottom of the Low Desert, was too insignificant for the Jokapcul to bother with.

  That was something he didn’t want to think about too hard.

  He knew other refugees were streaming in large numbers toward Dartmutt, and many of them were soldiers. With the influx of new people and soldiers, the city state should be stronger than it had ever hoped to be. If there was room to hold everyone. If there was food enough to feed them. If there was enough potable water. If—

  Spinner cut off those thoughts. He and Haft were just very junior Frangerian Marines. How could they possibly be responsible for so many people? They had to get the refugees to Dartmutt and let the earl there take care of them. That’s what princes and earls are for, isn’t it? he thought.

  Three days gone on a journey over and around the foot of a mountain range, a journey that wagons should be able to cover in a week or not much longer. But that was only a few wagons with an armed escort to protect them from bandits, not a caravan of nearly two and a half thousand people, most of them walking, many of them children or elders unable to maintain the pace for an entire day. And they were pursued by the Jokapcul—and likely flanked by bandits biding their time to strike, rob, and run. Did they even stand a chance of reaching Dartmutt without suffering serious losses?

  He was three-quarters of the way to the rear of the column, headed to its end. He stopped and looked at the people plodding by. Some looked frightened, some too numb or defeated to do anything more than put one foot in front of another until someone told them to stop—or they fell from exhaustion. Yet others were warily aware of their surroundings. Only a few looked alert and determined. He vaguely recognized one of the latter and edged his gelding toward the man.

  “Lord Spinner,” the man greeted him.

  “I’m not a lord,” Spinner muttered with a grimace. But so many of the refugees insisted on calling him and Haft “lord” that he no longer objected as strongly as he once did. “I know you,” he said in a normal voice.

  “Yes, lord. I’m Postelmuz, I was an attendant at the inn where you and Lord Haft stayed the night after you defeated the bandits in their lair.”

  “Yes, Postelmuz, I remember you. And I’m just Spinner, I’m not ’Lord’ anybody.”

  “Yes, of course, lord. How can I be of service?” Postelmuz’s eyes sparkled with eagerness.

  Spinner swallowed his groan. Postelmuz was obviously one of those who believed the Jokapcul would have killed all the people of Eikby if he and Haft hadn’t led the town’s defense. Spinner himself wasn’t convinced the Jokapcul would have done any worse than enslave some of them if they hadn’t been there to organize them to fight. Instead, more than half of Eikby’s population died in the battles. “I’m leaving the road,” he said. “If anyone comes looking for me, tell them I’m inspecting the left flank.”


  “You’re inspecting the left flank. I’ll tell them, lord.”

  Spinner swung his leg over the gelding’s hindquarters and dismounted. “Will you hold my horse for my return?”

  “I’d be most honored, lord,” Postelmuz said, reaching for the reins.

  “Thank you.” Spinner spun about and headed into the trees before Postelmuz could “lord” him again.

  There hadn’t been much direct sun on the road; the trees to its side were tall and lush and threw boughs and branches across it, casting most of the road into shade.

  There was no sunlight away from the road; except where an aged or lightning-wounded tree had fallen, the trees were too lushly foliated to allow the sun to see the ground. In the dimness, few weeds or bushes dotted the ground, and those were pale things that needed little sun. They were sickly looking, unappetizing, as though they held no nourishment for man or beast—yet most of them were nibbled or chomped, and nearly all were home to crawling insects that lived and survived on them. Despite the presence of numerous tracks, there were few animal sounds other than the squees and chitterings of treetop dwellers and the caws of forest birds. A short distance from the road, even the sound of the refugee parade was almost completely absorbed. The ground was soft and damp underfoot, coated with a layer of rotting leaves that gave uncertain footing.

  In all, it reminded Spinner of the forest where Bostia came against Skragland, the forest where he and Haft were attacked by a gray tabur, a very large cat that had been imported for unknown reasons from his homeland of Apianghia.

  The scar on his calf, the result of a swipe from the gray tabur’s paw, twitched at the memory, and he limped for a few steps. His skin crawled at the thought of encountering another big cat. He looked closely at the ground but saw no pug marks, nor were any tree trunks marked by cats sharpening their claws; he forced himself to relax. The trees were closer together here than in the Bostia forest, and there were fewer treetop dwellers, and none of them threw slops down at him. Neither did anything slither through the mulch on which he trod. This isn’t like that forest at all, he assured himself. He came close enough to believing his assurance that after a time the remembered pain in his leg faded away.