Pizi overheard the exchange and glanced at them anxiously. “But your experience of war will be invaluable to us. We know little of war in Ti-Ra’-Wa. We Wolf Soldiers have not had to fight in over a century, mebbe longer.”
“I thinkI fearyou may make up for a hundred years of lost bloodshed before this night is over,” Doc said bleakly.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The whole sky over the ridge was a wall of black smoke laced with livid, bloodred flame. The flames were eating through the forest and scorching their way up the hill. Smoke rolled densely, blotting out the stars. The air was thick with it. Panicked animals, like running shadows, streamed over the ridge.
Pizi, Ryan, J.B. and Krysty stood at the firebreak the people of the encampment had been digging for hours. It was a ragged, hundred-foot lane, cut only a few yards from the riverbank.
Krysty groaned. “That’ll never stop a forest fire.”
“We’ve got to get a backfire going,” J.B. said. “Stop it before it jumps the river.”
Pizi reluctantly gave the order. The Wolf Soldiers and the people of the encampment didn’t like it. A few of them argued, and Pizi shouted at them in furious Lakota.
With Pizi translating, Ryan and J.B. supervised the task of starting the backfire. Their torches kindled the dry brush all along the ridge facing the fire lane. Undergrowth, cedar and fir blazed up, and the edge of the lane became a new wall of flame moving up the hill toward the oncoming wall of fire.
The wind was against them. Burning twigs and leaves whirled across the lane to land and ignite new fires at the edge of the riverbank. Half-stifled by smoke, sweating and coughing, Ryan, Krysty and J.B. stamped and beat out each new spark. The wind was like a living, malignant demon, taking delight in hurling fresh fire across the gap.
Yet through smoke-stung, watering eyes, they saw that the backfire was steadily if slowly creeping up the ridge to scorch a belt across which the giant firestorm couldn’t leap.
Coughing, sounding half-strangled, Krysty said, “Let’s get across the river, see how Mildred and the others are doing.”
They made their way through the smoky haze toward the massive log bridge. As they were crossing, Pizi in the lead, they heard a distant crackle. At first they all assumed it was from the flames. But Pizi grunted, caught at his midsection and stumbled and slid toward the edge. Krysty managed to grab his arm and prevent him from pitching into the river. Then she saw the streaks of crimson on his rib cage.
She wrestled the man down to the smooth surface of the log, shouting, “Pizi’s been shot! Somebody’s shooting at us!”
Ryan and J.B. fell facedown, and they felt the wood beneath their bodies shudder beneath multiple impacts. Looking upriver, Ryan saw the first of a score of bark-and-hide canoes, loaded with warriors, emerging from the pall of smoke. In the prow of one of the lead canoes was Joe, his automatic rifle at his shoulder.
Ryan clenched his teeth so hard they squeaked and grated. He should have realized that Joe’s only possible strategy was to use the river as a safe highway behind and past the conflagration he had set. He had probably seen them setting the backfire and swung through the screen of smoke while they were occupied.
Ryan unholstered his blaster and began to squeeze off shot after shot, all the while yelling at Krysty to get herself and Pizi to safety. J.B.’s Uzi stuttered, but the range was too long for handblasters to be very accurate.
Still, miniature waterspouts spumed in front of the canoes, and the flotilla was rowed toward the bank.
Krysty had managed to edge the wounded Pizi off the bridge and onto solid ground. She tried to support him as they ran toward the encampment.
“Get the Wolf Soldiers!” Ryan shouted at her back.
J.B. and Ryan kept up a sporadic fire, hoping to keep Joe and his warriors from leaving the sheltering foliage at the edge of the river. From the direction of the Wolf Soldier village came a multitude of howls, roars and screeches.