Cut, and a section of the wicker shield spun away. Strike up from the follow-through, and her blade met the descending arm, already weakened by the first cut. This time the edge jarred solidly into meat, and she pivoted from the hips, a snapping twist that grated the blade into bone and past it. The follow-through sent a fan of red drops across the grass, and the sword seemed to fly of itself back into the high-stroke position for the killing blow.
"Quarter!" the Zarthani yelled, falling back and putting up a hand against it in a futile warding gesture. "I yield!"
For a long moment Swindapa stood, feeling fire torrenting through her blood.
"I won't let you down," she whispered, in her lover's tongue.
The Zarthani swarmed into the breach howling, striking at Americans still dazed on the ground, or still cumbered by their long spears. The bang and clatter and crash of hand-to-hand combat sounded all around them, like a load of scrap metal dropping on a concrete floor.
"Follow me," Alston said firmly, as Swindapa dashed off to bring the Fiernan reserve into action.
The standard-bearers fell back a little as the command party moved forward, and the dozen sword-and-shield guards closed up in a blunt wedge behind her.
"Rally!" she shouted. "Rally, there!"
The American line was starting to reform, yielding flexibly without breaking ranks, rallying about the flag. But too many of the barbarians were through; a knot of them hacked and trampled their way to the rear of the formation. Alston led her band directly at them, forcing them to turn and meet her. At their head was the chieftain with the chain-mail hauberk; he carried a small shield painted with paired thunderbolts and a long steel-shod spear whose head was surrounded by a collar of white heron feathers. Armored, he still moved lightly, a lithe fast knot of bone and gristle and tough muscle.
The spear punched at her. Worry fell away; you couldn't think, not in a fight. You reacted. He leaped backward frantically as her katana slammed down in a blurring arc, but the tip still burst links; without the armor it would have gashed his shoulder to the bone. Pale eyes went wide… and he'd gotten his first real look at her face.
"Night One!" he said in his own tongue.
Beside her one of his followers struck, and the ax boomed off an American shield. That trooper stepped in, stabbing and punching the shield forward. The whole wedge of guards was pushing forward, stepping into place and sealing the breach in the line.
Alston thrust two-handed at the chief's face, shrieking the kia. He yelled back and caught the blade on the face of his shield, short-gripping the spear and stabbing underarm. The point skittered off the lower part of her breastplate and the thigh guards. He backed again, but she followed closely, keeping herself too close for his longer weapon to be fully useful. The brass cap at the base of the katana's hilt punched up at his face, taking him at the angle of his jaw. Bone broke, but the Zarthani's shield edge whipped around and struck her across the head and shoulder. She tasted the iron and salt of blood in her mouth and went with the stroke, letting her right knee loose. Weight and momentum pushed her down on one knee, and the long curved blade took the warrior on the back of the leg, just above the knee. He fell backward with a scream, one that ended in a gurgle as the katana came down across his neck.
Alston spat blood and came to her feet. The fight was ending, knots and clumps of the Zarthani turning and running lest they be caught between the Fiernans swinging in from the right and the Nantucket line. Training pays off, she thought, dragging her mind back to the chessplayer's state a commander needed. True for the Romans, true for us.
"Shall we pursue?" Lieutenant Nyugen said.
"No," she replied.
No point; they couldn't possibly chase down unarmored men, not without cavalry, and those took years to train.
She shook her head. "Let the locals do it."
The Fiernans were hallooing off across the stretch of pasture, spearing running Zarthani in the back or wounded ones on the ground with the ruthless enthusiasm bred by old, old scores that they'd never had a chance to pay off before. That reminded her…
"See to the prisoners." Where the Fiernans had passed, there simply weren't any-which was a pity but also a load off her mind; there weren't any facilities for them. "We'll need a few for interrogation."
Stretcher-bearers were taking the wounded off to the circle of wagons where the doctors waited. There were already birds circling above, ravens and crows, waiting for the living humans to get out of the way. And…
Swindapa. For an instant she could be an single human being, not the head of a hundredfold body. Fear and love roiled under the shell of control. The Fiernan girl wasn't far away, cleaning her sword and standing over an enemy prisoner. As Alston came up she pushed back the cheek-pieces and removed her helmet, turning a wondering look on the American.
"I beat him. He gave up," she said. "I beat him, and he gave up."
Alston put an arm around her shoulders. The armor made it like embracing a statue, but she squeezed anyway. "Damn right," she said, grinning in relief and fierce pride. "I didn't waste all that teachin' time."
"I didn't let you down."
"Never."
The Zarthani warrior lay not far away, rough field dressings on a couple of bad wounds on his right arm. His look of sullen fear turned to amazement, doubled as Alston bared her head to the cooling breeze and his suspicious eyes studied her throat.
"Women?" he blurted, horror in his voice. "I surrendered to women?"
Alston and Swindapa looked at each other for a long moment. Then they began to laugh.
"Here they come," Ian said.
"Get down from there," Doreen said nervously, pulling at the back of his bush jacket as he stood above her on the floor of the wagon.
"I really don't like battles," she said.
Ian nodded, climbing down, his eyes still glued on the onrushing… barbarian horde. A real, live, very ugly barbarian horde.
He didn't like battles either. He remembered the one with the Olmecs all too vividly-in dreams, at times. Not that he'd seen much of it, from his post well to the rear, but he'd seen the aftermath close up… and smelled it. Right now all he could smell was his own sweat, the fairly powerful odor of the threescore Fiernans massed in the forward part of the ring of wagons, and the strong disinfectant the medics were getting ready.
The doctors and orderlies were pulling their steel-tube folding tables out of the supply wagons and setting up, lighting a fire to heat the pressure cookers that would sterilize their implements. The Arnsteins helped them; it felt rather odd, since the orderlies were in armor.
"Periods all jumbled up," Doreen said, holding the platform of a table while an orderly spun the wing nuts that secured it to the frame.
"Bronze Age, medieval, twentieth," Ian agreed.
"Excuse me, sir," a petty officer said. "Is that loaded?"
"What loaded?" Ian said.
"The gun, sir," the noncom said, her voice heavily patient. "The one you're wearing slung across your back."
"Oh, that gun," Ian said.
It was a 12-gauge double-barrel model, cut down. He clicked open the breech; empty.