A massed squealing arose, an endless AitAitAitAitAit-AitAitAit Some part of him realized that it was a word, or had been once: Eat.
The natives rose and rushed forward in a wave, like rats exploding out of a neglected grain bin when you opened the lid and shone a lantern inside. Seconds later about half of them started hopping and screaming, where they'd run into the mesh matting his people had spread around right after they camped. Lying flat and artfully camouflaged with soot and sand and pine duff, the nets were studded with upright razor-edged three-inch spikes.
Some of the enemy fell onto the points and slashed themselves open as they tried to roll away. Others just kept coming, hitting the bare patches by luck or in a frenzy great enough to ignore the pain.
A couple of the squad leaders shouted, Fire! Ingolf didn't bother, since everyone knew what to do and he personally had always disliked someone bawling at him in situations like that. He just drew to the ear and shot into the mass of them and reached for another arrow; there were boxes of them on the inside of the prefab barricade. The snap of bowstrings and the tung! of cross bows sounded, and shouts and curses of the salvagers, and the unearthly throbbing squeal of the wild men. Even as he drew and loosed, he realized…
"They aren't stopping for shit! Ready for it, you Villains! " he roared.
A whistling, and he ducked as a shower of little throw ing spears came down out of the night, driving into the sandy ground with a dry crunch, or into wood with hard cracks; the ones that hit the triple ply canvas of the wagon tilts made a drumhead sound and hung there like porcupine quills. One went into the barricade next to his eyes, and he could see that the head was a ground-down table knife. He used the moment to slide the shield from his back and run his left arm through the loops, and then the luckiest or fastest of the natives were at the barri cade. This was the south facing edge of the wagon-fort, and they were thickest here.
"Richland!" he shouted as he surged up.
He wore his shete over his back when he was on foot, the hilt jutting up by his left shoulder. He swept it out and cut with the same motion. A snarling face with a shock of greasy blond hair and a human finger bone thrust through the septum of its nose fell back in a splash of red. An ancient shovel crashed down on his shield, bang, and a kitchen knife probed at his armor. He jerked the shield downward and broke both the savage's arms; then he thrust across the thrashing body with his shete, the blade skidding on the wood of the shovel handle and taking off the fingers of the wielder…
A long snarling scrimmage around the edge of the wagons, steel glittering in the light of the second flare, gasping breaths, banging and rattling and shrieks. The horses in their paddock snorted and reared against the ropes; the half dozen spearmen of the reserve came pelting up in a line where some of the savages had gotten onto the top of a wagon's cover, and thrust them back with their long weapons. A few more minutes, and the attackers realized what the odds were of storming what amounted to a fortress held by men with real weapons and good armor, trained in fighting as a team.
Then they ran; Ingolf stuck his shete point-down in the sand and snatched up his bow again to shoot at their running backs, and so did everyone else except the wounded.
Kill enough and the rest would hide safely far away.
Silence fell as they waited to be sure the enemy would keep running, deep silence except for the pop of another parachute flare going off, panting breath, and the moan ing of wounded savages. Then the night sounds slowly began to return, which meant that there weren't any humans running through the woods.
Men went around outside the wagon circle with spears and crossbows and lanterns, making sure of any enemy still moving; their two medics switched weapons for kit and went around inside, bandaging and cleaning-nobody seemed to be dead, or to have a crippling in jury, but a couple had nasty bites that would fester if not swabbed out carefully. That included himself; he hadn't noticed it at the time, and swore mildly at the sharp hard sting when the doctor irrigated the little wound on his neck with disinfectant.
A few wild men had been caught in the razor wire under the wagons and had to be finished there. In golf sprang up to the bed of a wagon and looked out carefully.
"They won't try again tonight, or anytime soon," he said.
"You think, Capitan?" Jose said. "They were pretty fierce, this bunch."
"We probably killed off half the swinging dicks in three or four bands-and all the stronger ones. They'll be fighting each other for weeks, settling who eats who."
" Si. Good thing we were ready for them, though."
The commander of the Villains nodded; if they'd got ten right up to the wagons where they could use their numbers, everybody in the Villains would have died. Quickly, if they were lucky.
"Hey, maybe you'd better look at this, though," Jose went on.
Ingolf turned and waved to the thrower crew so they would stand down; they didn't have so many flares that they could keep lobbing them indefinitely. Then he vaulted over the barricade and followed his second-in-command a short way into the dark.
A wild man lay there; there was a bolt through his thigh, his feet had been slashed to ribbons by crossing the spikes, and he was trying to crawl away around them. As they approached he turned, glaring. He had a finger bone through his nose too, and one through each earlobe; on his body was an ancient threadbare pair of jeans, loose on his skinny shanks and patched with rabbit skin. A cloak of the same had been about his shoulders, and from the smell roughly piss tanned. There was a big gold necklace around his neck, lying on the bare chest and glittering with diamonds. It was all pretty fancy, by local standards.
What really caught Vogeler's eye was what Jose had noticed, the weapon near the man's hand.
"Probably their jefe, their bossman," Jose said. "That's funny that he has a shete, isn't it, Capitan?"
"Damned odd," Ingolf agreed, his eyes narrowing. "It's not a machete-that's new work."
The modern weapon was longer and thicker at the back of the blade than the pre-Change tool which had inspired it.
"Want to try to get the story out of him?"
The wild man snarled at them and barked, an ough ough-ough sound, snapping with little lunges of his brown-yellow teeth, his hands scrabbling for something to throw.
"No, I don't think this one's a great talker."
" Si, he doesn't look like it, does he?"
Jose shrugged and brought the crossbow to his shoul der and aimed carefully. Tunngg, a flash through the dark, and right beneath it a meaty whack. The scrawny body jerked and went slack; Jose bent, set the span ning hook on the string, and cranked the crossbow taut again.
"You've got the watch until dawn," Ingolf said to his second-in-command, kicking the mysterious shete farther away from the body before picking it up.
He didn't want to go near the dead man; the lice and fleas jumped ship when a man died, and these probably carried disease. Safer to leave the burial detail for a day or so. Which reminded him…
"If they try to drag the bodies away, let them."
"Capitan?"
"Don't want them stinking the place up." Any worse than it is now, he thought.
Smell was inevitable when you cut men's bodies open. At least the sandy soil would sop up the liquids; it would be safer to bury any remaining tomorrow.
"This is the most defensible campsite we're going to find around here, I think, so you'll be stuck in this location for a while."
He took the captured shete back under the lamps-not much point in trying to sleep more tonight-and as he cleansed his hands and arms with sand and then water, he studied the weapon.
It was a fairly typical example of what horsemen used everywhere he knew of, from the Big Muddy to the Rockies and south to the Rio Grande; a yard long piece of slightly curved steel, three fingers broad at the widest spot near the tip, sharpened all along one edge and four inches down the other from the point for a backhander. The hilt had a simple cross guard and a full-length tang, with fillets of wood on the grip and a wrapping of braided rawhide that was coming loose in one or two spots; the pommel was a plain brass oval.