Eight of them were swimming a small river, pushing bundles of reeds that floated their equipment and boots. Helmets and mail had been abandoned; they’d kept only harness, swords and packs. Sabri felt soft mud with his toes, kicked a few strokes farther and waded ashore.
As a horseman he’d been lean; after four days on foot he was leaner. A man could eat rotting horse-meat, but he ate no more than he needed, and maybe less. When all had reached the bank he led them slopping through the tall reeds, carrying his boots. Black muck coated his legs halfway to the knees.
Reeds gave way to waist-high grass, and muck to springy soil. Not far away, carrion birds took flight and he angled toward the spot, the others following. Five orc bodies lay there, just starting to swell. The arrows had frugally been cut out of them and their skulls had been peeled.
It was good, he thought. If Northman searchers had passed through already, perhaps they were safe for a time. The eight sat down, wiped the mud from their feet and ankles with grass, put on their boots, and left.
A trickle of water seeped from the slope. One of them had scooped a hollow with his tough fingers. They were drinking and filling their canteens when they heard the shout from behind. Ten Northmen were on a low rise. They jogged their horses forward, stopping forty meters away with arrows nocked. Boys they were, snot-nosed punks maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, with the visible beginning of beards on a couple of them.
And they were grinning! Sabri gripped his sword, a snarl twisting his face, and started toward them, but for only a few steps before he fell.
XXIX
The edge of night had passed the Balkans, twilight darkening the Mediterranean as far as Sicily, when Beta floated through the gaping portal and settled gently into her cradle. The doors came together slowly and perforce quietly behind her, shutting space outside. Air bled back into the hangar.
When their gages indicated pressure and temperature ship-normal, Willi, Alex, and Nikko got out. Ram was waiting for them, and they walked together toward the briefing room.
“What’s the word on Matt?” asked Nikko.
“Jomo says he may have to go in after some tissue and regenerate a new kidney,” Ram answered. “He’ll know in a day or two. Not that there’s any danger—there’s not—but I think you’d better stay aboard tomorrow. What’d you find below?”
The quick change of subject did not escape Nikko. He hadn’t wanted to give her time to disagree about staying on board.
“Things weren’t much different than yesterday,” she replied, “but we have a fuller picture now. And a few more magazines of video tape. The Northmen took a prisoner for us—a centurion who speaks Anglic. Apparently all their officers do. Did. He said the army he was part of was the orc Third Legion. They were supposed to destroy the Northman villages while their warriors were away. A legion is 3,000 men, incidentally. After two nights of air attacks, they were in pretty poor shape, and then the irregular army of mounted farmers and adolescents began hit and run attacks, and finally mop-up operations. He was pretty bitter about Alpha—said if it wasn’t for her they’d have cleaned out the Northmen. As it was, he doubts that more than a couple hundred mounted orcs reached the forest, and by that time no one knew where anyone else was.
“He got there with a band of six other men, and when he told them they should try to join up with others and find the villages, they refused. Said the only sensible thing to do was get out of the country. He was pretty bitter about that, too.”
“How about the men on foot?”
“The same picture as yesterday, only worse. They’re scattered all over the prairie, heading south. But they’re a lot fewer today. There are whole troops of freeholders and kids on horseback out hunting them. The kids are the worst—hundreds of them, all would-be warriors eager to take an orc scalp while there are any left. And lots of them have, I guess, some of them three or four. Some fifteen and sixteen-year-olds got carried away with themselves and dismounted, to take on a band of orcs sword to sword. Sten says they didn’t do too badly, considering, but several were killed. He seemed to think it was mildly amusing.