The Torian Pearls

As Blade ran across the fort the logs of the gate gave inward with an uproar of thuds and crackings. The women and workers trying to brace fresh logs in place scattered, leaping over the brush-filled ditch dug in a semicircle around the gate. The Torians followed them, scrambling over the fallen logs, coming on with shouts and screams, scenting victory.

Then Rehod threw a lighted torch down into the brushwood that filled the ditch. The naphtha-soaked wood exploded into a wall of flame that ran completely across the gate. At the very ends of the semicircle there were gaps, where the ditch was cut short to keep the wall from catching fire. Solid clusters of Kargoi with spears and swords ran into position behind those gaps. Meanwhile, every Kargoi within range who had a bow and arrows let fly.

The first few Torians could not draw back in time as the flames roared up. They tumbled straight into the ditch. The screams were indescribable, and Blade saw hardened Kargoi warriors turn white and vomit at the sound. Arrows rained down on the Torians who escaped the flames, and the head of the attacking column went down as if a machine gun had gone to work on it.

The spectacle of the dying Torians drew all of Rehod's attention. He stood at the edge of the smoke cloud around the fire-filled ditch, waving his sword, with no eyes for anything to his flanks or rear. Blade sprinted up to Rehod, pivoted on one foot, and wheel-kicked the baudz in the small of the back. Rehod was in the flaming ditch before he realized that he was falling. He did not scream long, but he screamed louder and more horribly than anyone else who'd died in the ditch. Blade could ignore those screams. Naula was now thoroughly avenged, and the danger of civil war or intrigue among the Kargoi greatly reduced.

Only a few minutes after Rehod's death, the attack through the gate collapsed. Again the Torians left several hundred dead and dying on the ground before they gave up the struggle. Between the two attacks, they'd lost more men than the whole strength of the garrison of the West Fort, without inflicting more than a hundred casualties on the Kargoi.

Blade kept his doubts about the future to himself. Apart from the lurking threat of the Menel, the Torians would certainly come again. They were intelligent as well as brave, and they would certainly learn valuable lessons from this repulse. When they came again, they might not be so comparatively easy to stop.

He wasn't even sure that the Torians had finished with this attack. The fort was dangerously short of both arrows and naphtha. If the Torians pushed home another assault, they might lose another thousand men, but they would probably have the West Fort when the battle was over.

Blade didn't relax until dawn the next morning showed empty plain where the Torian camp had been. Even then he was cautious about letting parties out of the fort to scavenge up the fallen weapons and collect the bodies for burial in a mass grave. The parties worked armed, with mounted scouts out in all directions.

That evening Paor appeared with five hundred mounted warriors and a long wagon convoy of supplies. Now the fort could hold out against any attack the Torians could launch for quite some time.

«Where's Rehod?» was Paor's question, after inspecting the fort.

«I killed him,» said Blade quietly. «He shot at me with a Torian arrow, to make it look like the work of the enemy. Naula died taking that arrow. I came down, caught Rehod by surprise, and pushed him into the fire ditch. No one could even recognize which body was his after the fire died down.

«Did anyone see you do it?»

Blade shook his head. «Let us say that if anyone saw it, they have said nothing to me about it. They know they will not raise Rehod from the dead, and they may perhaps join him if they offend me.»

«My sword would be with you in that,» said Paor.

«Good. It seems to me that we have now found as much of a new homeland as we are likely to have until we make peace with the Torians. That may be a long time. With Rehod dead there is less danger of plots and intrigues. Perhaps it is time that we consider making you High Baudz.»

Paor stared, then shook his head. «I-the gods only know whether I am worthy of this.»

«I know that you are worthy,» said Blade. «So do many of the other warriors, and neither I nor they are gods.»

Paor laughed weakly. «No, I suppose not. But I-Blade, I need time to think upon this. Can you give me that?»

«Certainly,» said Blade. «But do not ask for too much time. The Torians will not give it to you.»

Chapter 21

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and the Torians did not come. Blade suspected that when they did come east again, they would come with fourteen or even forty thousand men, and they would be a great deal harder to defeat or discourage.

Meanwhile the Kargoi did what they could to prepare. The West Fort was repaired and a second fort was built and garrisoned. Five hundred mounted warriors camped on the edge of the forest, ready to move out to the aid of either fort. The rest of the warriors camped wherever they could get food and avoid the Hauri. They spent much of their time making fifteen-foot pikes and practicing using them, in lines, squares, and columns. Blade watched them with growing confidence. If the Torians were too slow in launching their next attack, they might face a pike wall that no cavalry charge could break. That might be enough to give the Kargoi the victory they needed. Hopefully they would not need to march two hundred miles to Tordas, storm its walls, and put Queen Kayarna to the sword in her own palace before the Torians would agree to let the Kargoi use the plains!

The truce with the Hauri held firm. The Kargoi still did not entirely trust the fishermen of the villages, while the Hauri did not wish to seem too friendly to the Kargoi, in case the Torians won the next battle.

Yet slowly the wariness and suspicion faded. The women of each people began to find the men of the other interesting, and the men did the same with the women. The Kargoi developed a taste for eating dried fish and wearing necklaces of polished shells. The Hauri found it agreeable to feast on roasted drend meat and wear garments of drend leather or armor of reptile hide.

The Hauri and the Kargoi were still not one people. That would take generations, if it ever happened at all. They were two peoples who had begun to trust each other. That meant a good deal. The Kargoi could face the Torians knowing that their rear was safe, and the Hauri could go about their lives as they had done for centuries.

After a month or two the Hauri began to invite Blade and other high-ranking warriors of the Kargoi to their villages. The visitors ate fish and oysters roasted on driftwood fires and strong-tasting stews of clams and seaweed. They slept in the grass-roofed huts with the chocolate-colored Hauri women. They even sailed in the Hauri's outrigger canoes, far out on what had been open sea even before the ice melted and the water rose.

Blade was happy to go on those fishing trips. He could do nothing against the Torians for the moment, while far out to sea he might again encounter the Menel.

There were whitecaps on the sea, and the sail of the big canoe was filled out round and firm.

«Like the breast of a fine woman,» said Fudan, as he put the helm over. The canoe heeled sharply; it would have capsized without the outrigger. The sail swung around with the mast and rigging creaking under the strain, and the canoe settled on its new course. Now they were heading straight toward a low rocky island that reared up out of the depths and sheltered a stretch of water three miles long. They could anchor in the lee of the island, safe from most storms but within easy diving range of a particularly rich pearl bed.