“Is it true?” asked the Asian warrior monk after taking a careful look around.
“Yes,” Nimmy told him, “if you got it from Aberlott.”
Gai-See nodded grimly and crawled away by the same route.
Now something would happen, he thought, but it did not happen immediately.
The sun was scorching in early August, but by midafternoon a light westerly breeze came up. Blacktooth noticed that the restless Grasshopper had moved again. The Nomads had re-formed and split into three groups, positioned to the north, west, and south of the wagons. They were still out of range, visible against a background of smoke, but the groups to the north and south were in place for a flanking attack against either the Hannegan or the cardinal.
The fires seemed to be moving slowly eastward. They marked the probable confines of the battleground and defined the possible lines of advance or retreat for the Nomad groups who had likely set them.
Soon afterward, during an assault on the second berm, while trying to shoot over a man’s head Nimmy shot him down. Facing Blacktooth, the Texark trooper lay on his back on the sandbank just as he fell when shot. A glep, a glep in Texark uniform, with Hadala’s dappled skin and the rather common hairy ears. He stared up at the former monk, trying to see him against the smoke-blurred orb of the sun. His hands were raised toward his face and they hung limply from the wrists; he looked like a puppy begging for a morsel. Why surrender with a ruined abdomen? He clenched his lids, waiting, hoping to be shot again. But Blacktooth dared not to waste ammunition on pity, or even take time to reload, because Ulad was watching him with deep suspicion. Every time he felt such tension, Wooshin’s face and words came to his mind.
“Life is a dewdrop and a flash of lightning—that’s the way to look at it, Nimmy.”
Touching the point of the bayonet to the man’s throat, Blacktooth severed the carotid artery. A blade of lightning, a drop of red dew. The drop became a spurting stream. He stepped back, looking around. His throat hurt and was dry; it was a hot day and the air was full of smoke from burning grass.
“Each man, each being is a world. There are innumerable worlds, my friend. Each world of this innumerable array contains and inter penetrates all the other worlds throughout the myriad cosmos, for there are no barriers between the worlds.” Metaphysics from an executioner? For the Axe, religion was a martial art. He wanted to talk to Gai-See or Woosoh-Loh about it, but they were always with the cardinal and the officers, and he was made afraid by Gai-See’s crawling to him in a ditch.
It’s just that I have cut my own throat somehow, he thought, looking at the corpse. So murder feels like this to the murderer. Holy Mother of God, forgive me, but I don’t feel very much.
Sergeant Ulad was still watching him from the left, shaking his head. He must be careful not to waver or hesitate. Ulad was suspicious of his piety. He could see two men beyond Ulad. Corporal Victros had climbed to the top of the berm. He motioned the attack party upward.
The sandbank flanked a scythed and well-hoed—but useless— firebreak. Blacktooth climbed the berm and cautiously peered beyond, but the patrol had fled. Why? It was the best place to stop and fight, unless they thought the Valanans’ firepower overwhelming. Or, more likely, they might know that greater safety for them lay ahead, and that the glep guerrillas must be prevented from seizing their artillery. Standing atop the berm, he looked back toward the wagons. What had happened to the men guarding them? He could see Nomads in the distance, but no militiamen with the wagons. Without horses to draw them, they were lost anyway.
Somewhere to the north the tall grass was burning faster. They had been crosswind of the fire whose smoke veiled the foothills in the northeast, but they were almost downwind now and still the breeze was changing. He began to smell the smoke, and could see to the north distant horseback warriors moving west out of the fire’s path. If the wind kept veering, the wagons would be in danger. He motioned to Ulad that the enemy had fled. They went over the sandbank and continued their cautious advance, camouflaged shadows flitting from knoll to knoll in the great ocean of grass.
Watching from a distance on a hillcrest south of the battle, the Grasshopper sharf could see some of the fight going on around the Texark artillery pieces. Texark was temporarily in trouble, and he was pleased. Demon Light hoped to influence the outcome of the battle by moving warriors about in a menacing way from time to time without actually exposing them to fire. His only intention at the moment was to keep the wagons from being captured by anyone except himself, although if he got them, the Grasshopper had no pressing need for extra ammunition, and the horde’s arsenal was already wealthy in new guns. He was not opposed to giving the gleps guns, if it became possible. Now it seemed it might be possible. It was clear that the Texark force was being harassed from the rear. The fact surprised him as much as it did the Texarki.
Demon Light had warned them of Hadala’s expedition, but they had trusted him only enough to send two companies of cavalry, two of light horse, and a few artillery pieces to the region where he told them the townsmen would try a border crossing. Surprising to Eltür was the fact that many of the Texark troops were gleps, drafted from the Valley. They had not expected a glep attack from the rear, and had not come well prepared. They would regret not having taken him seriously enough. Such regret might incline them to trust him more next time. When he sent them amessage under a white flag, they had listened politely to the messenger as he laid claim to the contents of the wagons, and if this claim were honored, there would be no reason for hostilities. He had also warned the Texark commander that he was about to steal the townsmen’s horses. About the wagons, the commander gave a polite but evasive answer, and he smiled on the horse-theft project. In this situation, Demon Light was reluctant to attack his hereditary enemies except to prevent seizure of munitions.
Nothing prevented his enjoyment of the conflict unfolding before him except a report by a scout from his southwest detachment that a band of motherless ones had approached but stopped a few minutes’ ride away and occupied a hilltop there. To Bråm, they were a damn nuisance, and they too wanted the guns. He was aware that many of the motherless ones in the south part of the Wilddog lands had been armed by Dion and sent against the enemy in the Province, but these outlaws were far from that battle, and if they were able to get their hands on the new weapons, they were as likely to shoot at his people as at the Texarki, but they were even more likely to sell the fancy guns to the Hannegan, who had been slow in getting them.
Though it would spoil his view of the fight for a time, he decided to withdraw his detachment from the north where the fire was beginning to crowd his rear, then to skirt around the townsmen’s position and join all his forces together again between the militia and the outlaws. It would give other commanders something to wonder about, and the fires had become the Grasshopper’s allies, as the Grasshopper sharf knew they would when he practiced his family motto and set them. As he rode between the Valanans and a group of his own men to the west, he noticed with approval that the horses stolen from the wagoneers were being kept out of sight beyond a ridge. None of his warriors’ mounts were broken as draft horses, so seizing and keeping the grass-eaters’ animals was essential to his plans. He sent a messenger to tell his cousin to the west of him to post enough men to guard the horses and join the rest of the detachment with Eltür’s main force.
Sundown was approaching when the enemy resumed fire, and Cardinal Hadala was among the first to fall. Elswitch Gleaver rushed to his side, inspected his wound, which he seemed to find in the back, and turned to look around at the men. This time Blacktooth saw Gai-See lift his pistol again and shoot Major Gleaver in the forehead. At the same time, a high-pitched scream came from the rear. Ulad’s voice. The blade of Woosoh-Loh’s sword rose bloody into the air and fell again. Junior officers were shouting angrily.