"They're a little late," Gerrard said wearily. "Nothing left to take."
Atalla shrugged. "They could always take you."
Behind him, Tahngarth sounded a call-to-arms through his cupped hands. The loud hooting rang through the camp. Men and women leaped to their feet and raced to the brow of the hill.
Across the flat, dirt-covered plain, the dark shapes rapidly advanced. They shimmered in the heat rising from the baked earth. There were hundreds against Weatherlight's two score crew.
Tahngarth barked orders. "Form a semicircle here, two lines. Get your arms ready." The minotaur thrust Gerrard and Hanna to one side as he prodded the crew into place, almost tripping over Squee.
Gerrard spoke to them next, his tone soft and confident after Tahngarth's barking roar. "All right, listen. This would be a battle better not fought. We're outnumbered five to one, and we've got more important things to do than bang swords. Don't make a move unless you hear a specific order.
Let's find out if these people are friendly-"
Atalla hid a small smile behind his hand.
"-and if not, let's find out how to make them friendly-"
"-and if not that either," Tahngarth interrupted, "then we fight."
"Just so," Gerrard affirmed.
The faint sound of tinkling harness bells intruded on the conversation. Soon the tintinnabulation was drowned out by the thunder of clawed feet on dry earth. The bounding Jhovalls flung up dust. Grit clung to tawny, matted fur on the beasts' flanks. The six-legged tiger-creatures looked miserable in their cerements of dust.
The riders were little better off. Dust dimmed their saffron-yellow riding cloaks and the red and blue uniforms beneath. Their long, steel tridents glimmered only where sweating hands had grasped them. The lead rider's pennant streamed behind him, its white dimmed to dun, its blue to brown. He and many of the other soldiers were corpulent. Jowls waggled with each bound of their mounts. Almond eyes watered, bloodshot. Noses were red from sneezing and sun. Sloping foreheads and sunken cheeks wore dirt as thick as face powder. As they arrived, the soldiers brought the dust cloud with them, and also a faint stink that did not smell like Jhovalls. The riders, more than two hundred of them, surrounded the Weatherlight party and halted.
Tahngarth hastily directed the crew to bend their line into a complete circle, swords held in a thicket outward.
Gerrard and the bridge crew stood outside the circle, just before the lead rider. As the Mercadians arrayed themselves, Gerrard noted the clumsiness of their maneuver, the unkempt state of their uniforms and animals, and the rust on their weapons. The tridents, Gerrard observed hopefully, were still held skyward.
There was a short silence, and then the leader spoke in a long string of syllables that tripped out unpleasantly.
Gerrard shook his head. "We don't understand you," he said.
The leader repeated his statement with an air of irritation.
"He speaks High Mercadian-I think," Atalla offered. "All the nobles do. They think it's the only language worth speaking."
"You mean, he understands us?"
Atalla shrugged. "I don't know, but you better act like he does."
Takara tugged Gerrard's sleeve. "I think I know what he's saying. Their language is similar to some dialects spoken on Rath."
"Interesting," Gerrard said, his eyes narrowing. "1 wonder what connection the two places have. Can you interpret for us?"
"1 can try," Takara said.
Turning to the leader, she spoke a sentence or two in the same curiously dissonant flow of words, ending in an abrupt crescendo. The leader uttered a reply. They exchanged a few more words, anger rising.
"They claim our ship as property of the Chief Magistrate of Mercadia, gods bless and keep his name in their eternal roll of glory." She couldn't entirely remove the sarcasm from her voice. "1 told him he was too late, that the Cho-Arrim had already taken the ship. He then declared us under arrest and commanded us to lay down our arms and surrender."
"Arrest? On what charge?" Gerrard hissed.
Takara spoke once more to the soldier, who replied with an imperious air.
She translated, "The charges include-but are not limited to-invasion, illegal migration, arms smuggling, trafficking with the enemies of Mercadia, refusal to speak High Mercadian"
Gerrard raked his sword from its scabbard. "Better damned well add resisting arrest! Attack!"
He vaulted directly toward the lead Jhovall. His sword slashed down.
The Mercadian captain hauled hard on the reins. His cat mount reared back, mouth gaping to lunge for Gerrard's head. Before it could, he sliced downward, cutting the beast's halter. Leather traces dragged across the cat-creature's face, yanking it aside. Reins suddenly went loose. The rider tumbled back in the saddle. Gerrard lunged beneath the rearing beast and sliced the saddle strap too. He scrambled out from beneath the Jhovall even as its rider spilled to the ground. "Understand me now, Captain?" Gerrard growled, leaping at him.
He never reached the man. Mercadian troops surged into the gap. Jhovalls hissed and nipped. Tridents jabbed. Dust flew.
Gerrard found himself facing two troopers. They thrust inexpertly at him with their forked pikes. His sword parried the stroke of one guard member, while he caught the weapon of the other and pulled it hard, yanking the soldier off-balance. The man flopped in the dust beneath his Jhovall. The other soldier stabbed at Gerrard again. The master-at-arms beat back this blow too, but pain erupted in his shoulder.
The man's Jhovall sank its jaws into him and lifted him from the ground.
Gerrard roared, thrusting his sword directly into the flank of the tiger-creature. The Jhovall released him and reared away, blood gushing from its teeth. Eyes rolled and ears flattened in pain, it rose again, almost hurling its rider loose.
Gerrard pursued. "Mean puss, aye?" He stabbed the feline's heart.
With a magnificent roar, the Jhovall crashed lifeless to the ground, its rider pinned beneath it.
Protected on one side by the fallen creature, Gerrard knelt to rip loose a hunk of shirt and stanch the blood flow from his shoulder. There was no question these Mercadians were poor fighters. Their weapons were badly tended and poorly wielded. Nonetheless, their sheer numbers had broken Weatherlight's line, and these Jhovalls were fierce beasts.
Even now, Karn the pacifist wrestled one of the tigercreatures. It was not fighting. The silver man could not have been truly injured by the monstrous feline, nor would he do anything to hurt the beast. Even so, he wouldn't allow teeth and fangs to tear his friends apart. It was an impressive tussle, solemn and quick like cats rolling in an alley. Matted fur and gleaming silver entwined. Razor claws screeched across impassive metal. Vast, stubby fingers clutched masses of hair. The Jhovall gnawed hopelessly on Karn's head. For Karn, this tumbling match was play, but the cat meant to dismantle the silver man. Karn made himself a distracting-and maddening-cat toy.
Despite his efforts, the rest of the crew had their hands full.
Tahngarth was doing the best of any of them. His curved blade slashed one Mercadian, dropping him at the minotaur's feet. He caught a second with a swift elbow to the eye and bulled a third onto his craggy horns. Tahngarth lived to fight. He would say he lived for honor and loyalty, but for Tahngarth, honor and loyalty invariably led to fights. A fourth Mercadian found that out when Tahngarth butted heads with his Jhovall. The tiger staggered and slumped. The minotaur charged on, clambering up the beast's neck and attacking the man in the saddle.
If all Gerrard's crew could fight like Tahngarth, they would win. Takara and Sisay came damned close, with three fallen Mercadians at each of their feet. Hanna did her best with a trident she'd wrangled from her single victim. Squee darted about, tripping any Mercadian he could reach. But the rest of the crew were falling like grass.