Red Read online

  They also knew that, of them all, Thomas was the least likely to lose a leg or any other body part in any fight. This even though he was forty and many of them in their twenties. What they knew, they’d learned mostly from him.

  Although he’d not once dreamed of the histories for the past fifteen years, he did remember some things—his last recollection of Bangkok, for example. He remembered falling asleep in a hotel room after failing to convince key government officials that the Raison Strain was on their doorstep.

  He could also recall bits and pieces of the histories, and he drew on his lingering if fading knowledge of its wars and technology, an ability that gave him considerable advantage over the others. For in large part, memory of the histories had been all but wiped out when the black-winged Shataiki had overtaken the colored forest. Thomas suspected that now only the Roush, who had disappeared after the Great Deception, truly remembered any of the histories.

  Thomas transferred the reins to his left hand and stretched his fingers. “William, you have the fastest horse. Take the canyon back to the forest and bring the reinforcements at the perimeter forward.”

  It would leave the forest exposed, but they had little choice.

  “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” William objected, “but taking them here will end badly.”

  “The high ground at the Gap favors us,” Thomas said. “We hit them there.”

  “Then you’ll engage them before the reinforcements arrive.”

  “We can hold them. We have no choice.”

  “We always have a choice,” William said. This was how it was with him, always challenging. Thomas had anticipated his argument and, in this case, agreed.

  “Tell Ciphus to prepare the tribe for evacuation to one of the northern villages. He will object because he isn’t used to the prospect of losing a battle. And with the Gathering only a week away, he will scream sacrilege, so I want you to tell him with Rachelle present. She’ll make sure that he listens.”

  William faced him. “Me, to the village? Send another runner. I can’t miss this battle!”

  “You’ll be back in time for plenty of battle. I depend on you, William. Both missions are critical. You have the fastest horse and you’re best suited to travel alone.”

  Although William needed no praise, it shut him up in front of the others.

  Thomas faced Suzan, his most trusted scout, a young woman of twenty who could hold her own against ten untrained men. Her skin was dark, as was the skin of nearly half of the Forest People. Their varying shades of skin tone also distinguished them from the Horde, who were all white from the disease.

  “Take two of our best scouts and run the southern cliffs. We will join you with the main force in two hours. I want positions and pace when I arrive. I want to know who leads that army if you have to go down and rip his hood off yourself. In particular I want to know if it’s the druid Martyn. I want to know when they last fed and when they expect to feed again. Everything, Suzan. I depend on you.”

  “Yes sir.” She whipped her horse around. “Hiyaaa!” The stallion bolted down the hill with William in fast pursuit.

  Thomas stared out at the Horde. “Well, my friends, we’ve always known this was coming. You signed on to fight. It looks like Elyon has brought us our fight.”

  Someone humphed. All here would die for the forests. Not all would die for Elyon.

  “How many men in this theater?” Thomas asked Mikil.

  “With the escorts out to bring the other tribes in for the Gathering, only ten thousand, but five thousand of those are at the forest perimeter,” Mikil said. “We have fewer than five thousand to join a battle at the southern cliffs.”

  “And how many to intercept these smaller bands of Horde that intend to distract us?”

  Mikil shrugged. “Three thousand. A thousand at each pass.”

  “We’ll send a thousand, three hundred for each pass. The rest go with us to the cliffs.”

  For a moment all sat quietly. What strategy could possibly overturn such impossible odds? What words of wisdom could even Elyon himself offer in a moment of such gravity?

  “We have six hours before the sun sets,” Thomas said, pulling his horse around. “Let’s ride.”

  “I’m not sure we will see the sun set,” one of them said.

  No voice argued.

  2

  CARLOS MISSIRIAN stared at Thomas Hunter.

  The man lay on his back, sleeping in a tangle of sheets, naked except for boxer shorts. Sweat soaked the sheets. Sweat and blood. Blood? So much blood, smeared over the sheets, some dried and some still wet.

  The man had bled in his sleep? Was bleeding in his sleep. Dead?

  Carlos stepped closer. No. Hunter’s chest rose and fell steadily. There were scars on his chest and abdomen that Carlos couldn’t remember, but no evidence of the slugs Carlos was sure he’d put into this same man in the last week.

  He brought his gun to Hunter’s temple and tightened his finger on the trigger.

  3

  A FLASH from the cliff. Two flashes.

  Thomas, crouched behind a wide rock, raised the crude scope to his eye and scanned the hooded Scabs along the floor of the canyon. He’d fashioned the spyglass from his memory of the histories, using a resin from the pine trees, and although it hardly functioned as he suspected it should, it did give him a slight advantage over the naked eye. Mikil kneeled beside him.

  The signal had come from the top of the cliffs, where he’d positioned two hundred archers each with five hundred arrows. They’d learned long ago that their odds were determined by the supply of munitions almost as much as by the number of men.

  Their strategy was a simple, proven one. Thomas would lead a thousand warriors in a frontal assault that would choke the enemy along its front line. When the battlefield was sufficiently cluttered with dead Scabs, he would beat a hasty retreat while the archers rained thousands of arrows down on the crowded field. If all went well, they could at least slow the enemy down by clogging the wide canyon with the dead.

  Two hundred cavalry waited with Thomas behind a long row of boulders. They kept their horses seated on the ground with gentle persuasion.

  They’d done this once before. It was a wonder that the Horde was subjecting itself to—

  “Sir!” A runner slid in from behind him, panting. “We have a report from the Southern Forest.” Mikil shifted next to him.

  “Go on. Quietly please.”

  “The Horde is attacking.”

  Thomas pulled the scope from his eye, then peered through it again. He lifted his left hand, ready to signal his men’s charge. The runner’s report meant what?

  That the Horde now had a new strategy.

  That the situation had just gone from terrible to impossible.

  That the end was near.

  “Give me the rest. Quickly.”

  “It’s said to be the work of Martyn.”

  Again he pulled the glass from his eye. Returned it. Then this army wasn’t being led by their new general, as he’d suspected. They’d been tracking the one called Martyn for a year now. He was a younger man; they’d forced that much out of a prisoner once. He was also a good tactician; they knew that much from the shifting engagements. And they suspected that he was a druid as well as a general. The Desert Dwellers had no declared religion, but they paid homage to the Shataiki in ways that were slowly but surely formalizing their worship of the serpentine bat on their crest. Teeleh. Some said that Martyn practiced the black arts; others said he was guided by Teeleh himself. Either way, his army seemed to be advancing in skill quickly.

  If the Scab called Martyn led his army against the Southern Forest, could this army be a diversion? Or was the attack on the Southern Forest the diversion?

  “On my signal, Mikil.”

  “Ready,” she replied. She slipped into the saddle of her seated horse.

  “How many?” Thomas asked the runner.

  “I don’t know. We have fewer than a thousa
nd, but they are in retreat.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “Jamous.”

  He jerked the lens from his face and looked at the man. “Jamous? Jamous is in retreat?”

  “According to the report, yes.”

  If such a headstrong fighter as Jamous had fallen back, then the engaging force was stronger than any he’d fought before.

  “There is also the warrior named Justin there.”

  “Sir?” It was Mikil.

  He turned back, saw movement cresting the swell a hundred yards ahead, and took a deep breath. He lifted his hand and held it steady, waiting. Closer. The stench from their flaking skin reached his nostrils. Then their crest, the bronzed serpentine bat.

  The Horde army rose into view, five hundred abreast at least, mounted on horses as pale as the desert sands. The warriors rode hooded and cloaked, grasping tall sickles that rose nearly as high as their serpent.

  Thomas slowed his breathing. His only task was to turn this army back. Diversion or not, if he failed here, it made no difference what happened at the Southern Forest.

  Thomas could hear Mikil breathing steadily through her nose. I will beg Elyon for your safety today, Mikil. I will beg Elyon for the safety of us all. If any should die, let it be that traitor, Justin.

  “Now!” He dropped his hand.

  His warriors were moving already. From the left, a long row of foot soldiers, silent and low, crept like spiders over the sand.

  Two hundred horses bearing riders rolled to their feet. Thomas whirled to the runner. “Word to William and Ciphus! Send a thousand warriors to the Southern Forest. If we are overtaken here, we will meet in the third forest to the north. Go!”

  His main force was already ten yards ahead of him, flying for the Horde, and Thomas wouldn’t allow them to reach the battle first. Never. He swung into his saddle and kicked the stallion into a gallop. The black leaped over the boulders and raced for the long line of surprised Desert Dwellers, who’d stopped cold.

  For a long moment the pounding of hooves was the only sound in the air. The sea of Scab warriors flowed down into the canyon and disappeared behind the cliffs. A hundred thousand sets of eyes peered out from the shadows of their hoods. These were the very ones who despised Elyon and hated his water. Theirs was a nomadic world of shallow, muddy wells and filthy, stinking flesh. They were hardly fit for life, much less the forests. And yet they would likely defile the lakes, ravage the forests, and plant their desert wheat.

  These were the people of the colored forest gone amuck. The walking dead. Better buried at the base of a cliff than allowed to roam like an unchecked plague.

  These were also warriors. Men only, strong, and not as ignorant as they had once been. But they were slower than the Forest Guard. Their debilitating skin condition reached down into their joints and made dexterity a difficult prospect.

  Thomas pounded past his warriors. Now he was in the lead, where he belonged. He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Forty yards.

  His sword came free of its scabbard with the loud scraping of metal against metal.

  Immediately a roar ascended from the Horde, as if the drawn sword confirmed Thomas’s otherwise dubious intentions. A thousand horses snorted and reared in objection to the heavy hands that jerked them back in fear. Those in the front line would surely know that although victory was ultimately ensured today, they would be among the first to die.

  The Forest Guard rode hard, jaws clenched, swords still lowered by their legs, easy in their hands.

  Thomas veered to the right, transferred his sword to his left hand, and raked it along the breasts of three Scabs before blocking the first sickle that compensated for his sudden change in direction.

  The lines of horses collided. His fighters screamed, thrusting and parrying and beheading with a practiced frenzy. A pale horse fell directly in front of Thomas, and he glanced over to see that Mikil had lost her sword in its rider’s side.

  “Mikil!” With her forearm, she blocked a nasty swipe from a monstrous Scab sword and twisted in her saddle. Thomas ripped at the cords that held his second scabbard and hurled it to her, sword and all. She caught it, whipped the blade out, twirled it once through the air and swung downward at a charging foot soldier.

  Thomas deflected a swinging sickle as it sliced for his head, jumped his stallion over the dying horse, and whirled to meet the attacker.

  The battle found its rhythm. On every side blades broad and narrow, short and long, swung, parried, blocked, swiped, sliced. Blood and sweat soaked man and beast. The terrible din of battle filled the canyon. Wails and cries and snorts and moans of death rose to the sky.

  So did the battle cries of one thousand highly trained warriors facing an endless reservoir of skillful Scabs.

  Not three years ago, under the guidance of Qurong, the Horde’s cavalry never failed to suffer huge losses. Now, under the direct command of their young general, Martyn, they weren’t dying without a fight.

  A tall Scab whose hood had slipped off his head snarled and lunged his mount directly into Thomas’s path. The horses collided and reared, kicking at the air. With a flip of his wrist, Thomas unleashed his whip and cracked it against the Scab’s head. The man screamed and threw an arm up. Thomas thrust his sword at the man’s exposed side, felt it sink deep, then wrenched it free just as a foot soldier swung a club at him from behind. He leaned far to his right and slashed backward with his sword. The warrior crumpled, headless.

  The battle raged for ten minutes in the Forest Guard’s unquestioned favor. But with so many blades swinging through the air, some were bound to find the exposed flesh of Thomas’s men or the flanks of their horses.

  The Forest Guard began to fall.

  Thomas sensed it as much as saw it. Two. Four. Then ten, twenty, forty. More.

  Thomas broke form and galloped down the line. The obstruction from fallen horses and men was enough. To his alarm he saw that more of his men had fallen than he’d first thought. He had to get them back!

  He snatched up the horn at his belt and blasted the signal for retreat. Immediately his men fled, on horse, on foot, sprinting past him as if they’d been firmly defeated.

  Thomas held his horse steady for a moment. The Scabs, hardly used to such wholesale retreat, paused, apparently confused by the sudden turn of events.

  As planned.

  The number of his men among the dead, however, was not planned. Maybe two hundred!

  For the first time that day, Thomas felt the razored finger of panic slice across his chest. He whirled his horse and tore after his fighters.

  He cleared the line of boulders in one long bound, slipped from his horse, and dropped to one knee in time to see the first barrage of arrows from the cliff arc silently into the Horde.

  Now a new kind of chaos ensued. Horses reared and Scabs screamed and the dead piled high where they fell. The Horde army was temporarily trapped by a dam made of its own warriors.

  “Our losses are high,” Mikil said beside him, breathing hard. “Three hundred.”

  “Three hundred!” He looked at his second. Her face was red with blood and her eyes shone with an unusual glare of defiance. Fatalism. “We’ll need more than bodies and boulders to hold them back,” she said. She spit to the side.

  Thomas scanned the cliffs. The archers were still sending arrows down onto the trapped army. As soon as the enemy cleared the bodies and marched fresh horses up, twenty catapults along each cliff would begin to shower the Horde with boulders.

  Then it would begin again. Another head-on attack by Thomas, followed by more arrows, followed by more boulders. He quickly did the math. At this rate they might be able to hold off the army for five rounds.

  Mikil voiced his thoughts. “Even if we hold them off until nightfall, they’ll march over us tomorrow.”

  The sky cleared of arrows. Boulders began to fall. Thomas had been working on the counterweight catapults for years without perfecting them. They were still u
seless on flat ground, but they did heave big rocks far enough over a cliff to make good use of gravity. Two-foot boulders made terrible projectiles.

  A dull thump preceded the ground’s tremor.

  “It won’t be enough,” Mikil said. “We’d have to bring the whole cliff down on them.”

  “We need to slow the pace!” Thomas said. “Next time on foot only, and draw the battle out by withdrawing quickly. Pass the word. Fight defensively!”

  The boulders stopped falling and the Horde cleared more bodies. Thomas led his fighters in another frontal assault twenty minutes later.

  This time they played with the enemy, using the Marduk fighting method that Rachelle and Thomas had developed and perfected over the years. It was a refinement of the aerial combat that Tanis had practiced in the colored forest. The Forest Guard knew it well and could play with a dozen Scabs under the right circumstances.

  But here in crowded quarters with so many bodies and blades, their mobility was limited. They fought hard for thirty minutes and killed nearly a thousand.

  This time they lost half of their force.

  At this rate the Horde would be through their lines in an hour. The Desert Dwellers would stop for the night as was their custom, but Mikil was right. Even if the Guard could hold them off that long, Thomas’s warriors would be finished in the morning. The Horde would reach his undefended Middle Forest in under one day. Rachelle. The children. Thirty thousand defenseless civilians would be slaughtered.

  Thomas searched the cliffs. Elyon, give me strength. The chill he’d felt earlier was spreading to his shoulders.

  “Bring up the reinforcements!” he snapped. “Gerard, your command. Keep them on that line, by whatever means. Watch the cliff for signals. Coordinate the attacks.” He tossed the lieutenant the ram’s horn. “Elyon’s strength,” he said, holding up his fist.

  Gerard caught the horn. “Elyon’s strength. Count on me, sir.”

  “I am. You have no idea how much I am.” Thomas turned to Mikil. “With me.” They swung into their horses and pounded down the canyon.

  His second followed him without question. He led her up a small hill and then doubled back along the path toward an overlook near the top.