She knew who they were. How had they entered Mak'loh? The question screamed itself in her mind, and she wanted to scream it out loud. She forced herself to keep silent. She had to get away from the Shoba's men and bring warning of their attack to the city. That meant getting to Paron's flyer. If she failed….
If she failed, the Shoba's men might swarm across the land of Mak'loh and arrive at the city's wall before anyone knew they were coming. What would happen then, she asked herself? She remembered what Blade had said once about the soldiers of the Shoba.
«If they come to Mak'loh, they will be deadly enemies. We have stronger weapons, but theirs are not weak. They are also brave men, and far more skilled in many kinds of fighting than our people or even the soldier androids. A battle against the Shoba could be Mak'loh's last battle.»
Sela remembered that the weapons of the Shoba's men could not hit a moving target as well as the shock rifles of Mak'loh. So she ran as fast as the bushes and the ground underfoot would let her, although her legs and feet began to ooze blood from thorn scratches and sharp roots.
She plunged between two trees and came out into a small clearing. Three worker androids were running across it. Two of the Shoba's men were on their heels, waving swords that already dripped with silver-tinged android blood.
Sela let the androids pass and fired at the first swordsman. He went down in midstride, sliding several yards on his face. Before she could aim at the second man, he swung his sword. It caught her rifle with savage force, knocking it out of her tingling hands. The swordsman raised his weapon, ready to take her head off or lay her stomach open. Then he realized that he faced an unarmed, naked, lovely woman. Lust flared in his eyes, and the sword wavered for a moment.
That was all the time Sela needed. She closed and leaped high, driving one foot in past the man's sword to smash into his chest. The metal rings of his armor bruised and gouged her foot, but the man went down. Sela landed, whirled, and stamped her other foot down on the man's upturned face. He screamed and clawed at his smashed nose and teeth. Sela snatched up her rifle and darted across the clearing into cover again.
Sometimes running, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling on her belly like an animal, Sela crossed the camp area toward the flyer. There were soldiers of the Shoba all over the place. Many of them were dead or dying, but far too many were alive and on the prowl. However they had crossed the Wall, they had done so in force, and they had certainly won their first battle.
There was no doubt of that. All the androids Sela found were dead or crippled. Their armored vests would keep an arrow or a musket ball from penetrating, but not from knocking them down. Once they were down, the Shoba's men would close in firing at the android's heads, hacking or thrusting at their arms and legs. Sela found several androids dying slowly in whimpering agony and used nerve pinches to give them a silent and merciful death.
She saw other ugly sights too and had to slip by without doing anything about them. A man pinned to a large tree by knives driven through his hands, while the soldiers shot at him with arrows. A woman spread-eagled naked on the grass, while a soldier hammered himself into her and thirty more waited their turn. Sela's stomach churned at the thought of this sort of thing happening in every street of Mak'loh.
The last body Sela found before reaching the flyer was Paron himself. Mad as he was, he'd died fighting. Six of the Shoba's men lay dead around him, and his hands were locked tight on the throat of a seventh. His body a mass of gashes and bullet holes where it didn't bristle with arrows.
Paron was dead and the last danger to Mak'loh from him gone forever. In his place, a new and far worse danger had sprung up. Paron would at least have preserved much of the city's knowledge and therefore much of its future. The Shoba's soldiers would only kill, loot, and destroy.
The flyer lay on the near side of a wide clearing. Sela peered through the trees and sighed with relief. There were none of the Shoba's men in sight, and the machine itself appeared to be completely intact. Perhaps the enemy hadn't come this far. She ran forward, out into the clearing.
As she did, several enemy soldiers emerged from the trees on the far side of the clearing. Sela leaped for the flyer, at the same time aiming her rifle. The soldiers grabbed arrows, and both sides let fly at the same time.
Sela's aim was good, but the range was too great for the beam of her rifle. The white fire crackled out of existence, well short of the unharmed soldiers. She screamed in frustration, then screamed in pain as one of the plunging arrows sliced into her thigh. She dropped the rifle, heaved herself into the seat of the flyer, and started the fans. More arrows whistled down about her, but this time all of them missed. Before the archers could fire a third time, the flyer was lifting off the grass. It shot straight up, hitting an overhanging branch so hard that Sela nearly lost control. Then she was climbing up and away.
She kept climbing until she was certain that nothing from the ground could hit her. She climbed even farther, until she could see the towers of Mak'loh in the distance. She firmly put out of her mind the arrow in her thigh, the pain it was causing, and everything else except reaching those towers. Then she set course for the city, as fast as the flyer would go.
Chapter 20
It was impossible to keep secret Sela's arrival, wearing nothing but an arrow in her thigh and the blood of her victims. Rumors ran around the streets of Mak'loh, and after the rumors came panic. Even many of Geetro's old supporters seemed confused and uncertain, while those who had only left the Houses of Peace a few days before were half out of their minds with fear.
The moment he was sure Sela was in no danger, Blade took off in a flyer and headed toward where Paron's camp had been. This lay well off to the north of the city, along a stretch of the outer Wall invisible from the Warlands plains below. It was just possible that the Shoba was only launching a raid, or even an exploring party. It wasn't likely. The Shoba's commanders had been intelligent enough to notice that the Wall was no longer defended by the various force fields. They would almost certainly be intelligent enough to realize this situation might not last forever. An attack over the Wall would have to be delivered with all the strength at their command, trying for a single knockout punch. They would not risk throwing away the advantage of surprise by making small raids.
Before nightfall Blade returned to Mak'loh, knowing he'd guessed right. From the air he'd been able to see the Shoba's whole army spread out below him-at least forty thousand men and more than a hundred guns.
From the air Blade could see that a narrow valley led west, along the northern Wall of Mak'loh. Ten miles up the valley was a place where the Wall stood on top of a gentle slope gentle enough for drun cavalry, artillery, and even supply wagons, as well as infantry.
With the force fields down, it had been easy enough to approach the Wall, send scouts over it, then blow three great gaps with gunpowder. Now the Shoba's army was marching in an endless stream through those gaps. Ahead of it went a screen of mounted archers and working parties to chop a road through the forest.
Where were the Watchers? Blade saw many of them lying smashed on the ground along the Wall. A few were surrounded by a ring of corpses. Some had fought and given a good account of themselves. Apparently most simply couldn't react correctly without the warning of the Entesh Field and with their programming so unreliable. They'd attacked hesitantly and piecemeal, and been smashed by musket fire. A Watcher would be a target that even a black-powder matchlock could hardly miss. They'd gone down, and without noticeably weakening the Shoba's army.