‘Shit!’ said Cale. They had started to turn and split up when a silent arc of arrows rose into the air in a majestic curve and in less than two seconds rained in on the scouts taking all but one of them off their horses. The survivor raced off to the south followed by another flight of thirty or so arrows. Cale gasped with irritation. The arrows were a waste for just one man even if they could take a single target moving away at the rate the terrified scout was going. Clearly Gil had the same idea. His shout to hold fire drifted lazily up towards the rise. Gil had the sense to realize that there would be no more surprises and no more tightly packed groups of fifteen to make an easy target.
Thirty minutes later a thick mortar arrow shot up almost vertically into the air from the shoulder just a hundred feet or so below the tabletop mountain. It landed about ten yards from the trenches manned by the Redeemer cassocks stuffed with prairie grass. By the third shot the mortars had got their range and a barrage of arrows and their twelve equally murderous bolts scoured the trenches for another hour. The idea of the fake defenders had been that of the sniper on the tabletop mountain, for which he’d been rewarded by the insulting promotion. It had been successful, and out of all proportion. Not only had they wasted an enormous number of mortar arrows but it was clear the Folk still hadn’t caught on and were clearly convinced, though for good reason, that the Redeemers were following the same dismal chain of tactics they had shown at Duffer’s Drift and elsewhere on the veldt. A large body of them were crawling up the south side of the hill in order to take the high ground and fire down at the men in the riverbank who had killed so many of the Folk in the first volley. While this was happening, Cale spotted two groups of perhaps a hundred men each galloping away to the east and west. Cale’s guess was that they were heading for the river some distance away on either side. Once they’d got down the bank, they’d make their way along the river from either side and try and get close in to attack the archers during the night. He was reluctant to give away his own presence but finally ordered one of the Redeemers to sneak down to the west side of the U and fire a blunt arrow with a warning message but not to do so until just before the light failed so the arrow would not be seen so easily and their presence hinted at.
During the remainder of the day there were a number of light skirmishes from the attacking Folk as the guerrillas moved forward trying to provoke a response in order to best map out the shape and numbers of the defenders. But the Redeemers were not inexperienced, even if unfamiliar with this kind of informal warfare – and Gil from the occasional if undecipherable shouts clearly had them under control. Besides, Cale had ordered passages to be cut between the small ravine-like raggednesses of the far riverbank so that the defenders could move with relative ease across most of the U. In this way the defenders gave the impression that their numbers were greater than they were. With luck, if the Folk thought the river was so firm-handed they might be discouraged from attacking that night along the river bed.
There was a thin new moon that evening with the old moon in her arms, giving poor light and often obscured by clouds. It was nervy stuff waiting in the dark like that. The black night, instead of being something surrounding you, seemed to fill the inside of your head, all sense of being inside or out slowly being lost unless a cloud passed away from the thin moon and illuminated a distant tree or the side of the table mountain. Then the black space your senses told you was only inches away now revealed itself as miles in the distance and not even where it should be. A dead white tree on the prairies – just caught in the light of the moon – seemed to Cale to be stranded above him in mid-air when in fact he knew it to be on the flat almost a mile away. With even the most basic senses being all higgledy-piggledy it was a bad experience to be waiting in the coal-black night for someone with murder in their heart to come and get you. In the dark and even for those with good nerves the veldt at night became an implacable enemy waiting, mocking, for you to make the first move. A wild dog or night deer trotting along became twice its size and its speed like three ordinary living things. The sound of a hedgehog snuffling about became as loud as a lion grumbling before a leap. What if the creeping crawling thing making that scraping sound just outside your trench had a deadly bite or sting? The night was an unpleasant alchemist for ordinary things – it made a bush into the man who was waiting to kill you if you even breathed too loud. Still, it would be worse if you were doing the getting. Imagine trying to move in this. And, of course, with no way of checking, time vanished. Two hours passed which might have been four or five minutes. Odd thoughts began tormenting you. What if tonight the sun went down and didn’t come up. Something you would never have bothered thinking about, on a night like this seemed possible. ‘Never shall sun that morrow see’, a phrase he had heard Lord Vipond quoting from somewhere, kept coming back to him. ‘Never shall sun that morrow see.’
Then at once there was a flare of light from what looked like a point way up in the clouds. Then another. It was Gil lighting up the river bed with fire arrows – one after the other, beautifully cupped by the shape of the river. After the seventh or eighth Cale heard screams and shouts. The arrows had caught the Folk trapped on either side by the steep riverbank. You could not see the volleys of unlit arrows rasping in on the attacking Folk, but there was little cover for them and no chance of rushing the Purgators because Cale had placed a deep line of staked thorn trees across the river and several more lines of sharpened stakes.
It didn’t, or didn’t seem to, last for long even though there was one pause before a second attack. This was much briefer than the first. Then nothing until the first lightening of a beautiful rose-red dawn.
The sun came up after this gentle start like a clap of thunder and by seven o’clock it was already too hot. Down in the riverbank, the far side he could see at any rate, the dead and dying numbered thirty-three. Perhaps half as many again were obscured by the near bank. The men were trying to crawl back down the river bed but not quickly. One was so badly injured he was crawling, equally slowly, towards the Purgators he wanted to escape from.
One of the retreating wounded was beginning to make progress and an arrow from the Purgators lashed out fast as a heron and struck the wounded man.
‘About time they showed some mercy,’ said Guido Hooke, gravely. ‘No one should have to die so slowly in sun like this.’ Cale laughed. ‘Did I say something to amuse you, Mr Cale?’
‘If they put the poor bastard out of his misery, it was by accident. They’ll be wounding him again to try and encourage his friends to do something heroic.’
‘Scum.’ Hooke looked at Cale, trying to read him. ‘You think me weak?’
Cale considered this carefully for a moment.
‘No. I think it’s surprising.’
‘That someone should have some feeling for a suffering human being?’
‘That you would expect anything else from the Redeemers.’
‘You can still disapprove of something you expect.’
‘Why bother? Will it make any difference?’
‘You must have been brought up very careless.’
‘I was.’
‘Why so cynical?’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Cynicism is -‘
‘I don’t care what it means either.’
Miffed at this rebuke, Hooke didn’t reply. After a few minutes it was Cale who spoke.
‘A friend of mine used to say it was a waste of time blaming people for their nature.’