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"Oh?" The prince finished capping the cylinder and swung it back into place and looked up inquiringly. The humans' toot translations were usually excellent, but they made a hash of jokes . . . which had been obvious in the case of Pahner's statement.
"You just have to make a terrible pun out of it, and it's really quite fu
"Ah!" The Therdan prince gave a grunting laugh. "Har! That's pretty good, actually. Feel better?"
"No," his cousin said. "I have princely arseburns. I have armor chafe. I have dry-slime. And I think my legs just fell off."
"Nope," Rastar said with another grunt. "They're still there. Hey, think of how the civan must feel."
"Pock the civan," the cavalry commander said with feeling. "When we get back to K'Vaern's Cove, I swear I'm going infantry. If I never see another civan again in my life, it will be too soon. I'm going to personally eat every one of them I've ridden in the last three days. It'll take a couple of seasons, and I think I've already killed two the cooks didn't get gathered up, but I'll get all of the others. I can do it. I have the determination."
"We have lost quite a few," Rastar said softly. "A lot more than I'd like, in fact. But as long as they hold up for the last run, we're golden."
"Not necessarily," Honal said, finally sitting up with another groan. "One of my scouts caught a group on our back trail."
"Now you tell me?"
"They're a few hours back," Honal told him unrepentantly. "But we do need to ready a reception."
* * *
Dna Kol paused at the edge of the clearing. The spot was a regular stopping place on the Sindi-Sheffan caravan trail, an open area created by a thousand years of caravans' cutting undergrowth for firewood, and a medium-sized, fordable stream ran through it. A heavy rain was falling, reducing visibility, but it was still clear that more iron head cavalry than he ever wanted to see again waited on the far side of the clearing.
"Crap," he snorted. "I think we've been suckered."
"There's more of them moving off to the right," one of his followers said. "Let's hammer this group before the others get into position."
"I think we're the ones who're going to be hammered," the subchief said. "But that does seem to be the only option."
* * *
Rastar gri
"Load up, but hold your fire!" he shouted as he spurred his civan into the clearing. "I want to try something."
He drew up, turned his civan to present its flank to the barbarian line, and pulled out four of his eight pistols as the Boman charged to get into throwing ax range. His true-hands pointed right and left, to the outside of the charging barbarian line, while the false-hands pointed at its center. He let all four eyes defocus, drew a deep breath, and opened fire.
The astonished barbarians' charge shattered as all four pistols blazed simultaneously and the accurate, massed fire piled up a line of bodies for the following warriors to stumble over.
The prince's grin was a snarl through the thick fog of rain-slashed gunsmoke as he spun his civan and galloped back through the positions of his waiting cavalry.
"Okay," he called, smoking pistols held high, "now you can try!"
He holstered two weapons and started reloading the other two as the cavalry about him began to fire.
"Wyatt who?" he grunted.
* * *
"Are you going to get all the supplies out?" Roger asked over his helmet com.
"I sure hope so," Pahner replied with a snort. "Although, we're retaining a good bit more than I'd originally pla
"I'm surprised the troops are staying in hand so well," Roger said, studying the video feed from the captain's helmet and taking in the orderliness of the city's occupiers.
"Me, too," Pahner admitted. "I'd assumed at least a twenty-five percent loss rate from AWOLs in the city, but we're at nearly one hundred percent present as of the morning report."
"That high?" Roger sounded surprised, and Pahner chuckled.
"Bistem Kar gave them an incentive," the Marine explained. "Before he released the troops to glean, he paraded them in front of the huge piles of stuff from the main storerooms and promised each of them a share on return. Some of them never even left—why go hunting through the city, when you can be handed a bag of gold and silver for staying put?—and the rest came back soon enough."
"That Kar is one smart cookie," Roger observed with a chuckle.
"That he is," the captain agreed. "And there's an important lesson here, Roger. Smart allies are worth their weight in gold."
"So what's the game plan at your end?" the prince asked.
"Rus's people are recovering from their engineering efforts. As soon as they have, I'm sending half of them back to Tor Flain to man the D'Sley defenses for him and help Fullea cross load the Sindi loot from the river barges and caravans to the seagoing vessels for transit to the Cove. The other half will move over and begin helping to load the barges from this end."
"And Bistem and Bogess?"
"I'm putting half of their people on the stores, and the other half on security. We're going to have Boman filtering back from the north soon, and I want a good security screen dug in to deal with them until we're ready."
"And after that, we wait," Roger said.
"And after that, we wait," Pahner confirmed.
* * *
Kny Camsan's head went up as he heard the firing to the north.
"Another skirmish, while all the time this group gets smaller and smaller and further and further away," he growled.
"What else can we do?" one of the subchiefs asked. "We have to run them to ground."
"Of course we do," the war leader said, "and we can. I have yet to find a group of civan that can outlast the Boman over the long run. But they're scattered all over the landscape, and we've been letting them dictate where we go by chasing directly after them. No more! Tell the warriors to spread out and head back towards the southeast. Instead of chasing them, we'll sweep on a broad front while the other clans join up with us. When our full strength is assembled, we'll be a wall, moving through the jungle, and whenever we encounter one of these accursed groups of theirs, we'll hammer them into the earth!"
"That sounds better than chasing along their back trail day after day," the subchief agreed. "But we're ru
"We are the Boman," Camsan said dismissively. "The host can go for days without, and when we've run them down, we'll fill our bellies on the meat from their civan and go back to Sindi in triumph."
"Some of the host have tired of the chase. They're already going back to Sindi."
"Fine by me," Camsan grunted. "I didn't want to chase these shit-sitters in the first place, but be damned if I'll head back now until I have that Therdan pussy's head on a spear!"