And I lost four good men doing it, he thought but didn't say.
That was a cost of doing business, and everyone in the Villains knew they took the most dangerous jobs. That didn't make watching an old friend die by inches of a punctured gut much better, or make it easier to make yourself give them an end to pain as the last gift.
"I have written instructions and the Bossman's au thority," Kuttner said, running a hand over his close-cropped hair.
"Yeah-" Ingolf began.
The sound of drumming hoofbeats interrupted them. They could see a fair way down the roads to the south, littered with the rusting vine-grown heaps that had been cars and trucks. Kaur and Singh were coming along at a gallop, riding on the sandy median strip. The hard drum beat of the hooves echoed through the woods, setting birds to avalanche loud flight; it wasn't a sound anyone around here had heard for a long time.
Just when they'd broken free of the narrowest section something flashed in the sunlight, and Singh's horse stumbled, then went down by the stern with a short thick throwing spear in its back near the spine just be hind the saddle. It began to shriek, enormous sounds that sounded like a woman except for the volume.
"Shit," Ingolf said, and looked around. "We're getting short of horses."
Jose had the section on guard, and he was already on it, leading his five riders towards the pair at a round trot. Kaur stopped, shooting over her brother's head into the woods; something screamed there. Singh crouched with his shield up and another javelin went bang off the surface, and a third hit the horse again. When Jose's men joined in the shooting he came erect and gave the wounded beast the mercy stroke, then started salvaging his gear; that meant that there weren't any more of the natives close enough to see.
"Everyone keep an eye out all 'round," he snapped.
A few started guiltily; everyone had picked up their weapons at the alarm, pikes and broadaxes, crossbows or bows, but a few had been staring at the action rather than their assigned sectors. Kuttner had his shete out and was looking around without more than a tightening of the lips.
Singh dropped to the ground from where one of the rescue squad had taken him up behind. "Ranjeet was a good horse," he complained to the air.
Then to Ingolf: "Captain, the woods are thick with them already. More coming from the direction of Inns mouth. I saw no bows… but we did not stay to be sure."
"About what I expected," Ingolf said, and looked at the circling woods, all beyond throwing range. "Good work. Cut a horse out of the remount herd."
Kuttner had the grace to look a little abashed. The captain of the Villains went on to him: "There were bound to be a bunch of them in Innsmouth; they like to lair up in ruins when they can, and it's a good place for them-water, fishing, hunting here in the brush. This is the best spot to take them on. Without we give 'em a good hiding right away, we'll have little ambushes every second hour."
"They'll attack?" Kuttner said, peering at the woods.
Nothing was visible, though they both knew that red hating eyes were studying them. These were the ones who'd lived, or more likely their children by now.
"They usually do. But they'll come at night. Couple of hours past midnight. That's how they remember doing it, or how their daddies told 'em to do it."
Kaur woke him by cautiously nudging his booted feet with her shete and stepping back as he uncoiled with steel in his hand. It was very dark, moonless, with the stars hard and white above; the walls of low forest around them were inky black, and only a faint red glow came from the campfires. The night had a dense green smell to it; the air was a little cooler, coming from the south. Lightning bugs blinked on and off, giving the illusion of little lamps as they drifted through the scrub.
"They come now," Kaur whispered, squatting and leaning on the sheathed weapon. "Many, Captain. They took the dead horse a little while ago, and now they come for us."
" How many?"
She shrugged; the brother and sister were good scouts, not magicians or witches. "Twice our numbers at least. Not more than ten times."
"Get everyone up-but quiet."
Her smile showed white in the darkness, and she ghosted away. He shrugged into his padded jacket, wriggling to get the mail shirt down and into place, and slid the carrying strap of his round shield over his head. He heard the howl of a coyote now and then, and the occa sional whit-whit whit of an owl; the preparations of his own folk were a little rustling and chinking only. He'd come a long way from that hulking clumsy nineteen year old who'd ridden off to make a name in the short glorious war against the Injuns.
God, I was useless. We all were. Everyone here now knows their jobs, though. Even the new ones hired for this trip.
The night was loud: wind in the trees, bullfrogs, cicadas, creak and rustle and groan, now and then the call of some foraging beast, once a distant squall of triumph as a catamount made a kill. Ingolf reached his commander's battle station, in front of one of the loopholed board barricades between two wagons. Jose the Tejano was there too, cradling a crossbow. He was a good few years older than Ingolf, old enough to have some strands of white in his black mustache, and he'd fought in most mix-ups between the Llano Estacado and the Red River of the North over the past ten years.
They looked out into the darkness, not straining their eyes, just waiting; he counted down internally, timing his breath to it and using that to calm himself. More mos quitoes bit, but he couldn't slap at them; the chance of the natives noticing it and learning their prey was onto their attack… was small but not zero. One thing he'd learned long ago was that mistakes could kill you, even little ones.
Of course, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time could kill you, even if you were an expert and careful as hell. A sudden high-pitched shriek of surprised pain came from out in the darkness.
"Now!" he shouted.
A deep tunnng sounded from the center of the en campment, where a man pulled the lanyard on a small heavy machine of springs and levers. It threw the dart shaped projectile upward nearly a thousand feet; there was a sizzling popping sound, and the magnesium flare burned with explosive brightness-as close to an explo sion as you could get in the Changed world, that was. He didn't look up; the spot of fire would kill his night vision, and hopefully a lot of the attackers who weren't expecting it would look, by reflex. From overhead it lit the clearing with a pitiless blue-white radiance, the huge shadows jerking and twisting; the flare swung and twisted beneath the parachute as it drifted down.
The crink-crink-crink of the winch's gearing sounded as the crew wound the thrower again, ready to launch another flare before the first hit the ground. The Boss man of Des Moines really had laid out for the very best on this trip, including choice items from his own armory. For some reason Kuttner seemed to find the sound disagreeable.
Out in the clearing the light showed a carpet of dark ragged furtive crawling movement, studded with gleams from eyes and teeth and ancient knives. His mouth went dry; there were a lot more of them than he'd thought there would be, at least a hundred and maybe twice that, eeling towards the circle of wagons on their bellies. A half dozen bands must have gotten together for this, a rare degree of cooperation among the wild men, who in variably hated one another with the malignant loathing born of a generation of stalking and eating the unwary, often starting the process of eating before death.
But then, an intrusion by outsiders was rare too. Apart from the meat of men and horses, their well-made gear and weapons would be a prize beyond price. None of them could let their rivals gain such strength.