More beasts arrived, monstrosities with boar heads, scorpion tails, and snake teeth. They rode horrific, sixlegged tigers and bore swords and crossbows. As they filed into the clearing, the brutes hoisted their wicked bows.
"Left wing, pivot. Archers, loose!"
The battle commands, familiar and yet remote in Orim's memory, made her freeze. There was a whir from the line of beasts. Shafts streaked through the air to punch with deadly precision among the crowd of Cho-Arrim. The front ranks staggered and fell in disorderly rows. Tribesmen behind turned with a shout and hauled forth weapons, only to fall to a second volley of quarrels. Then came a third hail of deadly missiles.
Dimly, Orim heard Is-Shada shout something and run toward her.
Several of the crossbowmen pivoted toward the motion, bows at the ready.
Orim threw herself to the ground and felt the volley pass over her head.
Is-Shada ran across the clearing. Several of her playmates kept pace. She had almost reached Orim when an angry hiss sounded. Is-Shada stopped suddenly, staring at Orim. Two black-feathered shafts protruded from her chest and shoulder. She looked stupidly at them for a moment, and then fell face forward. Companions on either side caught her as she fell. One of them twisted and screamed in agony as a quarrel sprouted from her knee. She staggered and dropped Is-Shada, whose body bumped against Orim.
Orim wrapped the girl in her arms. The breath was already gone from Is-Shada's punctured lungs, the blood from her pierced heart.
Hands seized Orim and drew her away. She heard a voice shrieking and realized with astonishment that it was her own. Her lungs felt raw, her cheeks wet with tears.
"Is-Shada," Orim sobbed out, "O-reem 'stva o'meer. IsShada., O-reem 'stva o'meer."
Ta-Karnst's firm hand was on her elbow, and he pulled her rapidly back toward the lagoon and the complex of huts that extended over the water. Wordlessly, the two healers ran up the causeway. The wickerwork strained beneath their pounding feet.
Another volley of quarrels whizzed overhead. Orim looked up and caught her breath. Before her, a wrinkled old woman slowly sank to the wooden platform. Three quarrels bristled from her chest, and another had pierced her leg.
The healers reached her. "Don't move," Orim commanded harshly. "We'll get those things out of you."
The old woman's fierce brown eyes, seemingly all dark pupils, glared at her. "Svascho.' Traitor! You have betrayed us all! Rot forever in the Nine Circles!"
"No," whispered Orim. Then louder she cried, "No!"
The dying woman's face wrinkled up into a terrifying rictus meant as a smile. "You will never win, Svascho. We are Cho-Arrim. We are…" Her voice was drowned out by a stream of blood gushing from her mouth. Her old eyes clouded. Her head slipped sideways from Orim's lap.
"You must leave the dead," Ta-Karnst said urgently, "and tend the living-" He rushed off in the direction of fresh screams.
"Yes," Orim said, laying the old woman down gently.
A sudden cry came from a nearby hut. Is-Meisha stood in the doorway. In her arms was a tiny, wrapped bundle.
Orim raced up the causeway. A quarrel skimmed her leg and struck die wall. Ignoring it, Orim thrust the young mother back into the comparative safety of the hut. Another flight of quarrels smashed into the side of the structure. They were tipped with burning pitch. The forest was damp and would not easily burn, but the smoke would drive the Cho-Arrim from their huts. Already, the fire spread.
At her wits' end, Orim slammed her shoulder against the rear wall of the hut. The thick grass reeds swayed and bent. Orim struck the wall twice more and then, casting her eyes about the smoke-filled room, saw a thin stone knife lying near the empty cooking pot. She grasped it, slashing at the reeds. They yielded, and in a few moments she had a hole carved in the wall, overlooking the water.
"Come on," she gasped. "Through there, quick, or we'll suffocate."
"My baby," Is-Meisha wailed. As if in sympathy, the baby had begun crying.
"You'll have to swim," Orim said, panting. "Come on! You can do it. It's your only chance." There was a shout from below. A reed canoe passed beneath her, packed with tribesmen. "Hey," Orim called.
The paddler looked up. "Orim!"
"Wait." She bodily dragged Is-Meisha to the opening. "Look. You can go in the canoe. But hurry."
The paddler shook his head. "No. We will sink. There is another close behind. Take that one." He bent forward for another stroke.
Is-Meisha, with a shriek, stumbled to her knees. A bolt protruded from her chest. The quarrel had also pierced the baby's arm, and the child added her wail to her mother's dying gasps.
Orim tore the bloodied baby from Is-Meisha's arms and thrust it at the paddler. "Take the child!"
He did. "Where is Ta-Spon?"
Orim shook her head. "I do not know."
One of the other men in the canoe turned back. "Ta-Spon is
…" He stopped, and Orim could see the unspoken words in his eyes. "He fell in the front lines, along with the archers and skyscouts and wizards. Along with Cho-Manno."
Orim reeled, almost falling through the gap. "No… he isn't…"
The canoe was already beyond reach of her words. Its paddlers propelled it rapidly away from the burning village.
Orim dropped to her knees and clutched the ragged opening in the side of the hut. All around her, flames crackled. One wall of the hut was a solid mass of fire. Smoke stung her eyes and raked her throat raw. She didn't care.
"Cho-Manno is dead…"
Surrounded by killing fire, she felt only his warm arms around her. Despite roars and screams, she heard only his tender words in her ears. Through blinding smoke, she saw his smiling face, lit by the Fountain of Cho-by belief in the Uniter…
"Cho-Manno is dead…"
If Mercadian monsters filled the forest, Weatherlight was lost to them. The Uniter was lost. And if Cho-Manno lay dead in the woods, Orim would lie dead just here.
"Cho-Manno, Orim 'stva o'meer."
Aback a new Jhovall, Gerrard and Takara rode into the clearing and saw the atrocities performed by the caterans. "How could they…?"
Women and children-human women and children-lay slaughtered everywhere. There were hundreds torn apart by cateran claws and fangs, pinned to ground by cateran quarrels, burned alive by cateran torches. Human flesh like so much refuse, human blood like so much sewage… Already the flies were gathering. The nearest corpses were missing hands, ears, scalps-trophies gathered. Surely those visceral cuts could only be for cateran blood rites.
"How could they…?" Gerrard repeated, white-faced.
"The Cho-Arrim were human after all," Takara hissed.
Sisay rode up behind, turned in the saddle, and vomited.
"A massacre," Tahngarth gasped.
The survivors of the Mercadian Fifth Regiment flooded into the space as well.
Takara spoke a dread whisper in Gerrard's ear. "You ordered them to do this, Gerrard. You ordered the caterans to kill everything between you and Weatherlight. They followed your orders. Unknowing, you killed every man, woman, and child in this clearing."
"It must stop!" Gerrard shouted, standing in the saddle. "Forward, all of you. Fight the caterans. Kill them, if you must. Stop the massacre!"
Orim was nearly dead in smoke and flame when she felt ChoManno's hands upon her. She could not have spoken to him. Her lungs were suffused in smoke. Nor could she see him, but his rescuing arms were sure as they wrapped her and lifted her and carried her alive from the pyre. He strode from the oven-hot room and across wicker causeways.