But the senior was having none of it. “You miserable excuse for a creature of the People. There are Kessentai ahead of you — in every way ahead of you — missing eyes and limbs and still fighting. There are Kenstain standing bravely beside their leaders. And you sit there whining over a widdle bitty burn. Cowardly puke!”
Stinging under his superior’s tongue lashing, Guanamarioch lowered his head and began to struggle to his feet. A nearby cosslain helped him up, albeit a bit awkwardly. Head still down, his band in tow, the junior Kessentai without so much as a tenar to his name began to shuffle gingerly toward where his clan was still locked in mortal combat with the threshkreen of this place.
Chapter 14
The river ran east-west for three hundred meters before turning abruptly to the north. There was a road, potholes interspersed with boulders for the most part, paralleling the east-west portion of the stream before meeting the bridge that spanned the north-running section. The road turned south as soon as it crossed the bridge.
South of the river, there was a well-treed, low-lying ridge. Along this ridge Digna had dug in most of her force, including half her artillery.
Digna had stopped smiling as soon as her son, Roderigo, went off the air. From the firing, barely perceptible at this distance, he and his crew had to be about four miles away from the bridge that led into Bijagual.
Instead of smiling, Digna sat her horse stoically, nudging it along the fighting line behind the ridge using only her knees. From this position she could see her descendants and followers, as well as the near kill zone on this side of the river and the far kill zone on the other.
“Hold your fire,” she intoned. Her voice was a falsely confident and icy calm. “Hold your fire until they’re across the bridge and into the near kill zone. Keep low until they’re well into the open area. I’ll give the command. Then blast them with everything you have.”
Four of Digna’s militia’s 85mm guns sat well-spaced, dug-in and camouflaged covering that kill zone and the further one, an area of about twenty or twenty-five hectares. Each gun, firing canister, could spew about four-hundred 15mm balls with each round. Moreover, they could do so at twenty-five rounds a minute… for one minute, anyway. Even with a third of the balls going too high, another third going too low, the remaining third — grazing low — should be enough, so the woman hoped, to scour the kill zone free of life after a few volleys.
Digna stopped at one gun crew just to look into the faces of her great-granddaughters. They looked scared, yes, but determined. No worries here. They’ll do their duty by their clan.
The firing from four miles away stopped abruptly. Digna kneed her horse in the direction of her command post, taking care not to gallop lest the horse’s speed infect her clan with fear.
These thresh just don’t fight fairly, the mid-level Kessentai, Filaronion, mourned as he surveyed the damage to his oolt from the last ambush he had led them into. Normals lay crumpled in every manner of undignified death. Some bled from multiple wounds; others lay as if asleep. More than a few still kicked and struggled, bleating like thresh themselves to be put out of their pain.
No, it just isn’t fair, he thought bitterly. They wait in hiding as if for death, enticing us in to reap the harvest. Then they set off those horrible explosive devices to rend and tear. Any Kessentai accompanying the forward elements are singled out as targets.
Filaronion contemplated one nearby tenar, holding a dead God King slumped over the controls. The tenar hovered over a single spot, slowly spinning in place and dripping dull yellow blood to the ground.
Worse, after they attack us they have neither the decency to come out and put the wounded out of their misery nor the courage to stand so that we may take revenge. Instead they just melt away on those quadrupeds, fading into the low spots. Those we can barely catch sight of as they gallop to the rear.
There was something decidedly unnerving about thresh, even threshkreen, who could move along the ground as fast as could one of the People. Filaronion knew about the threshkreen’s armored vehicles. These, more road-bound than cross country capable, were seen as a minimal threat, overall. But for the thresh to move so quickly across broken land; that was truly odd and strangely disquieting.
This Kessentai was one of the brighter of his type, he knew. He had tried, earlier, to spread out, to avoid being the mass target which these vile threshkreen seemed to prefer. Yet this had made forward progress slower. His senior in the clan had tongue-lashed him viciously for his supposed cowardice, insisting that the forward oolt stay on the road and press ahead with all possible speed.
But Filaronion was one of the brighter of his clan. Even while he partly obeyed his elder, lashing the bulk of his oolt on, he sent two swinging pincers out to either side of the main column, driving their own Kessentai ferociously to sacrifice everything for speed, to trap and finally eliminate this infuriating group of threshkreen who had bloodied the host again and again.
There would be no more artillery support from Edilze, Roderigo knew. The guns were certainly still there, at least he had no reason to believe they were not, but the radio was little more than a smoldering chunk of metal, glass and plastic. The last ambush had cost them heavily.
Roderigo gently closed the surprised looking eyes of the radio carrier who had ridden with him since they had first ordered fire down on the demonlike horde of invaders.
Leaving the trash of the radio, sighing, the uncle heaved his teenaged nephew’s corpse across the saddle of his horse.
Each loss of a son or grandson, or of a nephew, had been like a knife in Roderigo’s gut. Five times along the road home they had turned at bay against the enemy. Five times they had bloodied him badly. Yet, each time the enemy had pressed forward and each time Roderigo’s men had barely escaped with their lives.
Many, of course, had not escaped with their lives. A dozen saddles were empty now. Nearly twice that number carried wounded men either slumping upright or draped across. When Roderigo considered the number of horses they had lost as well… well, that was too painful.
I’m too old for this, he thought. And, unlike Mama and Hector, they did not rejuvenate me. Then again, if they had I would be, instead of here defending my home, in some other place defending someone else’s. Perhaps it was not such a bad trade. If I have to die…
Roderigo looked over the line of wounded, horse-borne, relatives. The horses hoofed the ground nervously at the smell of coppery-iron blood. He could see no use keeping them here. He detailed off a couple of younger grandnephews to guide the wounded back home and guard them on their way.