And her father and her brother lay out for ravens to eat—Lockridge exploded into motion.
9
Withucar stood next to him. Lockridge whirled and drove a fist into the leader’s belly, just below the rib cage. Tough muscle resisted his knuckles, bruisingly, but the man lurched and went to the ground.
The freckled lad who held the torch dropped it and whipped up his axe. Lockridge’s Marine training responded. One step brought him close. He chopped at the throat with the edge of his hand. The Yutho uttered a croak, crumpled, and lay still.
Before he could grab the other’s weapon, Lockridge sensed a body at his back. Reflex brought his wrists to his neck. Arms closed around it. He felt their hairiness, snapped his wrists apart again, and broke the stranglehold. Turning, he put a leg behind the warrior’s ankles and shoved. One more down!
The men around the fire howled and surged against him. Lockridge swept the torch off the earth. A comet’s tail of fire blazed when he swept it at the nearest pair of eyes. That attacker stumbled back before he should be blinded. Two others fell over him in a tangle of limbs and curses.
Lockridge leaped over the fire. Thuno stood there alone, gaping. But as the American came upon him, he let go Aim’s leash. His own axe was not quickly reachable, but he yanked out his flint dagger and rushed in with an overhand stab.
Lockridge blocked that with one wrist. The sharp edge slithered along his forearm. Blood ran from the gash it left. Lockridge didn’t notice. He brought his knee up. Thuno shrieked and reeled away.
“Run, Auri!” Lockridge bellowed.
He had only disabled two out of ten. The rest charged around the fire. He couldn’t win over so many, but he could gain her time. He pelted off. A hurled spear smote the ground beside him.
He stopped, pulled the weapon free, and faced the attack. Don’t try to stab with this thing, he thought amidst the hammering in his temples. Got better uses for a long straight shaft. He held it in both hands near the middle, balanced on his toes, and waited.
The mass poured upon him. He went into a rage of quarter-staff play. Wood smote solidly on a head, broke fingers that held an axe, rammed a solar plexus, darted between legs to trip, whirred and clattered and thudded home. The night turned into blows, grunts, shouts, where firelight made teeth and eyeballs flash.
Suddenly, fantastically, Lockridge stood alone. Three Yuthoaz writhed groaning in the shadows that wove about his feet. The rest had scattered. They panted and glared at him from near the fire. He saw their hides gleam with sweat.
“Maruts snatch you off!” Withucar roared. “He’s only a man!” Still his four hale followers remained at bay. They did not even string a bow.
With his wind back, the chieftain advanced by himself. Lockridge swung the stick at him. Squint-eyed, Withucar had been watching for that. He parried with his tomahawk. The violence rang through Lockridge’s bones. His weapon fell from numbed hands. Withucar kicked it out of reach, bawled victory, and trod close. And now, from other camps, others who had heard the racket came running.
Lockridge jumped to meet the Yutho. Again he blocked a downward blow. His shoulder thrust against Withucar. Dimly, he felt a beard bristle cross his skin. He got an arm lock. A heave, cruelly deft—bone snapped with a pistol crack—Withucar floundered off, wheezing through tight-held jaws.
A big man from another fire was almost upon Lockridge, ax aloft. He wore a tunic. Lockridge braced himself, swerved from the attack, took its impact on his hip; his fingers grabbed coarse cloth and a single judo manoeuvre turned motion into flight. The big man crashed six feet away.
The night burst with howls. Men drew back, shadows in shadow. Lockridge seized Withucar’s tomahawk, whirled it on high, and let loose a rebel yell.
Like lightning, he realised what had happened. However total their victory, the invaders were inwardly shaken by the forces they had seen today. Now one man had beaten half a dozen in as many minutes. Darkness and confusion made it impossible to see that he had simply used tactics unknown to this era. He was a troll broken free, and terror seized them.
They didn’t run, but they milled beyond his edge of clear vision. The diaglossa hinted what to cry: “I will eat the next man who touches me!” Their horror winded through the night. Sky Father’s worshippers still feared the earth gods, for whom, further inland, a human being was devoured every harvest.
Slowly, Lockridge turned and walked off. His back ached with the tension of awaiting a spear, an arrow, a skull-crushing axe blow . . . and not looking behind. He saw the world through a haze, and his heart kept sickeningly missing beats.
An oak reared gnarly before him. The leaves whispered. Somewhere a nightjar echoed them. Lockridge passed into the dark of the far side.
A hand plucked at him. He recoiled and struck out. His fist brushed softness. “Lynx,” quivered her voice, “wait for me.”
He must husk several times before he could speak, dry-mouthed: “Auri, you should have run off.”
“I did. I stopped here to see what befell you. Come.” She pressed close, and the universe was no longer a fever dream. “I know ways to the forest,” she said.
That is well.” Self-possession returned to him, like a series of bolts snicking home. He could think again. Peering around the tree bole, he saw fires scattered wide across the fields, figures that flitted among them, a rare gleam of polished stone or copper. The bass babble was just too distant for him to make out words.
“They will soon get back their courage,” he said, “especially after Brann is told what happened and reassures them. The woods are not close, and they will search for us. Can we stay hidden?”
“She of the Earth will help us,” Auri said.
She urged him out into the open and went on all fours. Weasel slim and supple, she traced a winding path where the grass grew tallest. Lockridge followed her more clumsily. But he had stalked this way before, ages ago, in that unborn future when he was a boy.
Beyond enemy view, they rose and loped south. Neither spoke; breath was too precious. Lockridge’s pupils expanded until he could see how the grass rippled in a breeze and how the copses stood pale on top, solidly black below, under the high constellations. Through foot-thuds, he heard a fox bark, a hare scutter, frogs chorus. Auri was a moving slenderness beside him, her mane white in the star-glow.
Then a wolf howled from the woods that began to show darkling ahead. As if it were a signal, the bison horns moaned, and he heard men yelp in pursuit of him.
The rest of the flight was a blur. He would never have escaped without Auri. Running, twisting, dodging, she led him through every dip of ground and patch of shadow that her Goddess afforded them. Once they lay behind a boulder and heard men go past, a yard away; once they got up a tree just before spears went bobbing underneath. When finally the forest enclosed him, he fell and lay like one whose bones had been sucked out.
Awareness returned in pieces. First he noticed glimmers of sky overhead, where the leaves left small open spaces. Otherwise he was nearly blind in the night. Bracken rustled and brushed his limbs with harsh fronds, but the ground was soft damp mould, pungent to smell. He tingled and throbbed. Yet Auri was curled against him, he felt her warmth and breath and caught the faint woodsmoke odour of her hair. Everything had grown most quiet.
He forced himself to sit up. She awakened when he moved. “Did we really get away?” he mumbled.
“Yes,” the girl said, her tone more level than his. “If they follow, we will know them by their trampling—” a note of scorn for all clumsy heath dwellers “—and find concealment.” She hugged him. “Oh, Lynx!”
“Easy. Easy.” He disengaged her and groped for the axe. Wonder touched him. “I never expected we both would escape.”