The Torian Pearls

Chapter 19

Blade stood on the wall of the West Fort and looked out across the plains of Tor. To the west they stretched away to a green horizon as featureless and nearly as level as the sea itself. Mounted scouts of the Kargoi were out there beyond that horizon now, and no doubt so were the riders of Tor.

The West Fort had been finished for ten days now. A double log wall twelve feet high enclosed a square two hundred feet on a side. The two walls stood eight feet apart. The space between them was filled with earth, and the top of the outer wall set with a waist-high railing of sharpened stakes. Inside were huts, stables, and storehouses holding drend meat and kaum. Two wells of sweet water were dug at the opposite corner of the square from the stables.

The West Fort stood ready, a base for the scouts and the permanent home of a garrison of four hundred Kargoi warriors. That was too many for the Torians to leave in their rear if they chose to ride east. They would have to eliminate the West Fort before they could feel safe, and Blade knew the fort's garrison could hold it against any army five or six times their strength if they had to.

So far the Kargoi and the Torians had both been sending out their scouts and nothing else. Little skirmishes flared across fifty miles of plains, with blue horses and drends both dashing off riderless afterward. So far honors were about even.

Sooner or later the collision would come. The Kargoi and the Torians could not ignore each other this way much longer. The Kargoi needed to move well out onto the plains to graze their drends freely; the Torians needed to protect their eastern borders.

Even if the Kargoi were willing to give up their drends, Blade wondered if there would be peace between them and Tor. The Hauri certainly would have something to say on the matter. So far the fishermen were keeping the truce Blade had offered them. So far they were also expecting to see the Kargoi move on to the west and fight the Torians. It didn't matter greatly to the Hauri who won that fight, as long as the Kargoi went west. If the Kargoi showed signs of actually settling in the land that had been theirs for so long, the Hauri might start having second thoughts about the truce.

How far west the Kargoi would be able to get was still very much an open question. Tordas was nearly impregnable behind its walls, and so were most of the other towns. The farmlands of Tor were largely intact in spite of the rising waters. So was their army of horsemen that could maneuver as freely across the plains as a ship on the sea. If the Torians wanted to fight for every mile of plain, they were more than strong enough to do so. From their Queen Kayarna on down, they were a proud and determined people, who would almost certainly choose to make that fight.

So the Kargoi and the Torians would meet in all-out battle, and then what? The Kargoi were confident of the outcome-more so than Blade was. He knew the Kargoi would be badly outnumbered, and their drends could never match the nimble-footed horses of the Torians. The line of spearmen might stand against Torian charges, but they could hardly attack. There would be a whole new set of military skills for the Kargoi to learn, and perhaps not enough time for learning them.

Perhaps the Kargoi would not learn fast enough. Then they would find only a grave instead of a home in this land. Blade knew the Kargoi did not fear that. They had come far, and now they would rot give up their drends and their way of life merely because the Torians could ride circles around them.

From inside the fort Blade heard the sound of the gong beating out the call to dinner. From their huts the women ran to the cook shed, carrying pots and bowls. Blade saw Naula among them. He waved to her, to make certain she knew where to find him, and saw her wave back. Then he turned his eyes back to the western horizon-and stiffened.

Since the last time he'd looked that way, the horizon had sprouted two thin columns of dark smoke. As he watched, a third column curled up to join the first two. The sentries along the wall saw the smoke too. One of them leaned over the inside railing and shouted. He was answered by the sound of the gong and the signal drums. For a moment everyone Blade could see stood in frozen silence. Then chaos seemed to descend on the West Fort, as everyone dashed to his post, grabbed up his weapons, or simply got out of the way.

The smoke to the west meant the Torians were at last coming in force. Blade knew the drend-mounted scouts might not be able to escape from such a force after they detected it. So he'd worked out a code of smoke signals. The distant scouts could alert the fort, whether they lived or died.

As the sunset flamed in the sky, two of the scouts rode up to the waiting fort. One of them was wounded in the arm, the other on the thigh, and both their drends were staggering with exhaustion. Blade had them fed and their wounds cared for before he asked for their reports.

Three thousand Torians at least were coming, all Mounted, with a number of wagons that seemed to be carrying siege equipment. That was no surprise. The Torians would not be sending three thousand men to merely ride around the walls of the fort and hurl arrows and curses at its garrison.

It was more than two days before the men on the walls of the fort saw Torian banners lifting over the western horizon. The garrison had plenty of time to finish preparing a proper reception for them.

There was also time for Kargoi reinforcements to arrive-three hundred mounted warriors. The men were welcome, although there was no room for their drends and these had to be turned loose, to take their chances with the Torians, A great deal less welcome was the leader of the reinforcements-Rehod.

Some of the scouts had obviously ridden straight off to the man, to warn him that the Torians were coming and the West Fort needed help. If he could get there in time, he would be able to share with Blade the glory and honor to be won in the coming battle.

Blade wasn't too happy about this. It suggested that Rehod was finding at least some warriors of the Kargoi who would neglect their duty and disobey the orders of the High Baudz himself, to help him win glory.

Blade didn't mind it that Rehod would have another chance to make a hero of himself, one he didn't really deserve. He did mind not knowing how far Rehod might carry his rivalry, or how many of the three hundred warriors he brought with him were his personal followers. In the middle of a desperate battle, Blade didn't want to have to worry about getting men under him to obey his orders, or about guarding his back from anybody except the Torians.

Rehod's men settled in, the sun went down, and the night passed, hour after hour of uneasy watching the darkness. No one slept very well. It was like some of the watchful nights by the shore, with one great difference. Whatever else might be said against them and however formidable they might be, the Torians were human.

Dawn came, with the usual display of colors spreading across the eastern sky. They were just starting to fade when suddenly the horizon was dark with the banners and the horses of the Torians.

There were almost four thousand of them, with a hundred wagonloads of gear and several hundred head of cattle. They settled down around the fort and the garrison settled down inside it. Torian archers rode in to within bowshot of the walls and sent their arrows whistling past the sentries. The sentries returned the favor. Few men on either side were hurt.

Night fell again. Blade considered launching a quick raid, to take the Torians by surprise. He decided against it. He had too few men to spare a strong force, and the Torians hadn't shown what tricks they might have up their sleeve.

Instead, Blade simply doubled the guards on the walls and set lighted torches on the railing every twenty feet. The torches were made of drend-hair rope, soaked in naphtha from a pool the Kargoi had found in the forest and wound around a wooden shaft. There were hundreds of the torches ready and many more gallons of the naphtha in bags made from the intestines of the sea reptiles. The Hauri used the naphtha in their lamps, but had never thought of using it as a weapon. Blade expected it would be a disagreeable surprise for the Torians.

The next morning a convoy of empty wagons rumbled off from the Torian camp under heavy escort. The day passed with more exchanges of arrows, and the night passed with more watching by torchlight from the walls.

In the morning the wagons returned. They were piled high with brushwood and several of them carried heavy logs. Blade could see the Torians fitting the logs with crude handles, tying the brushwood into bundles, and unloading dozens of scaling ladders.

The coming battle would be a straight, head-on collision, in which fighting ability, courage, and sheer stubbornness would mean more than any tricks or surprises. It would also be a bloody shambles, but Blade was confident the Kargoi would hold on no matter how bloody the fighting became. The only thing he had to fear was sheer weight of numbers-and perhaps Rehod's treachery.

It was not pleasant, to realize that he could be more sure of the enemy's tactics in the battle than of a comrade's loyalty.