"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.
"You should load it, sir. We're not supposed to need 'em here, but you never know."
The shells were double-ought buckshot, and had an unpleasant weight and solidity as he slid them into the breech; the snick and click as he closed the weapon had an evil finality to it. He could hear the crossbows firing now, and the shrieks and screams of the enemy were much closer. Stretcher-bearers came trotting in with the first of the wounded, an American with an arrow through the biceps and into the bone. He was cursing, a steady flat-toned stream of obscenity and scatology, until the painkiller took effect. As he went limp an orderly cut the shaft of the arrow off an inch above his skin with a pair of pruning shears. The surgeon pulled an instrument from a tray, one Ian recognized-an arrow-extractor spoon, an ancient model that probably hadn't been used in centuries… or wouldn't be invented for millennia, depending on how you looked at it.
He looked away, himself, as the doctor's intent face bent over the wounded man. As he did there was a long whirring shoooosshh sound from the east-facing side of the wagon fort, underscored by a flat twanging. Bows, he realized; he was hearing massed archery. Here and there a slinger stood in a circle of open space, flicking his leather thong around his head with a one… two… throw motion; he'd seen Swindapa do it, in practice. The lead eggs the Americans had provided their allies as ammunition blurred out almost too fast to see. From here he couldn't see the action, but he could still hear the steady metronomic whunnng sound of the crossbows volleying. Then he couldn't, and a few seconds later there was a long rasping slither, a deep shout, and then a frantic multiple clang and thump and snarling brabble of voices.
"And the din of onset sounded," he quoted to himself. He was coming to have a deeper appreciation of Homer than he'd ever imagined… or wanted.
The Fiernan archers standing on the wagon beds were still shooting, but carefully now-picking their targets, holding the shaft, and then loosing. Occasionally one would stop to yell a taunt, or pull up his tunic and slap his buttocks at the enemy.
What do I do now? The answer to that was "nothing"; he couldn't even shout for news, his Fiernan wasn't up to it and it wouldn't really be tactful to use the Sun People tongue right at this moment. Casualties trickled in, not all that many of them; more than half came from the Fiernans fighting along the forward edge of the wagons. Amazing how important armor is. The noise grew greater, and there were high-pitched screams, piteous and astonishingly loud. Wounded horses. Somehow they sounded even worse than the human beings; their pain was without comprehension or recourse.
"Look out!"
That was the petty officer who'd reminded him to load the shotgun. Ian whipped around. A couple of Zarthani were climbing through the wagons almost directly behind him, trampling Fiernan corpses.
The battle suddenly seemed very close indeed. The non-com and an orderly snatched up their big oval shields, and Doreen reached for her oak staff. One of the Zarthani made a flying leap and hit a shield feet-first. The sheet metal boomed under the impact of the callused heels and the collision sent them both down. Less burdened, the barbarian was back on his feet first; his spear slammed down, scoring the enameled eagle on the shield. The American had no chance of getting back on her feet, not with the armor on. Instead she curled up under the shield as she'd been trained, keeping it between her and the barbarian with the tip of the gladius ready around the edge if his unprotected legs came too close. Screaming frustration, the warrior danced around his prone opponent, his spear darting out like the flickering of a frog's tongue. The fallen noncom's companion was backing up himself, desperately trying to fend off two Zarthani who were edging out to take him in the rear, their axes moving continually in blurring, looping arcs. The edges glinted, razor-sharp. Even if they couldn't cut through steel, they could still break bones under mail.
"Oh, shit," Ian muttered, looking frantically around.
Nobody else here but the doctors and nurses, so frantically busy with the wounded that they didn't even look up. The rest of the stretcher-bearer-cum-orderlies were back along the line, bringing in more wounded. Nobody else in reach.
Doreen had come to the same conclusion a split second earlier. She swallowed, took a firmer grip on the bo, and stepped forward.
"Wait!" Ian croaked, hands fumbling on the shotgun.
Goddammit, this isn't my field!
The Zarthani didn't seem to consider any of that important. He caught the movement of Doreen's staff out of the corner of his eye and struck, turning almost as fast as the outflung head of his long tomahawk. The axhead sliced through the upper part of the bo, but the staff saved Doreen's life even as a third of its length went flipping end over end. Deflected, it was the flat of the ax rather than its edge that glanced off the side of her head. Blood welled up from a torn scalp, and she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. The barbarian crowed triumph and swung the bronze ax up again.
Everything seemed to move very slowly after that. He took two steps forward. The Zarthani turned toward him, lips peeled back from his teeth, the ax whirling. For an instant his ringer froze on the trigger. I'm not a killer. He never knew just what it was that released him; perhaps it was the crooked cross painted on the man's shield. The barbarian wasn't a Nazi, but he was near enough to an original-article Aryan as no matter.
Thudump. He'd fired at less than four feet distance, with the butt of the shotgun clamped between elbow and ribs. Recoil spun him around and wrenched at his arm, nearly tearing the weapon away. He turned back with desperate speed, bringing it up to his shoulder. His finger tightened even as he saw the chewed red ruin the deershot had made of the man's chest. Thudump. A bruising, hammering blow to his shoulder, and the muzzles twisted skyward. Momentum had put the barbarian's contorted face less than a yard from the business end of the shotgun. He flipped backward, his face splashing away from the shattered bones of his skull. Bits of it struck, spattering on Ian's face and chest, a lump of something gelatinous slapping into his open mouth. He dropped to his knees and vomited in uncontrollable reflex, shuddering and spitting to clear his mouth.