Masood's Charge (I)

— Masood —

Masood drove the spearmen like he would a pack of loabeasts, the big herbivores that briefly inhabited the desert each year. They came for the sudden surge of green grass fed by spring snowmelt on distant peaks, then left as soon as the grass turned brown. Instead of horns, today's quarry had spears but, unlike the meatier prey, their skin was thin enough to pierce with arrows. Ma'Tocha had drilled them endlessly on the correct maneuver, refining it for use against men. Masood's two hundred split into teams to cover three sides and drive the fleeing soldiers before them in a close group. The mounted hunters charged in small formations, got close enough to shoot arrows into the fleeing spearmen, then spun away to make room for the next attackers. Masood controlled his hunters with whistles, as every spear and hunter of Broken Ode learned to do. A twisting path of dead men lay in their wake, all of them Kashmari.

They were pathetic men, running, wounded, and scared. Some had blistering burns over half their faces, one eye cooked to whiteness. Others half-carried their comrades with cries of pain at every step. Only the mauls and few others had known what was hiding in Laggard's Shaft. Even fewer people knew about the fire stones: Masood's first clue was when he saw a white barrel in the air, tumbling as it flew toward the enemy. The effect had awed, frightened, and humbled him in turns.

Twice, the soldiers tried to form up a wall of spears (the few they hadn't dropped at Laggard's Shaft) to protect a small body of archers in the center to shoot back at him, but standing still was worse for them than running. Close-packed, lightly armored, and mostly shieldless, they were easy targets for Calique arrows, while the attackers were too swift, too scattered, and had a height advantage that let them see what they were shooting at. After the first half hour, Massood mostly stopped shooting at them. He kept them moving, drove them off-course so they'd never reach Bitter Spring, and had his hunters spear those who fell behind. Wood was hard to come by in the gardens, so why waste precious arrows on half-dead men?

Masood had thought he would relish the chance to punish his people's long-time foe, but the experience was unsatisfying. He had skulked through the wilderness for days, moving as ordered, hopping from one refuge to the next, never laying eyes on the enemy. The link on his ear decided what he should know. Two regiments went into the Riverlands, and Broken Ode didn't follow. The main force marched to Bitter Spring, and Masood's men merely shadowed them. The disciples were killed without any follow-up whatsoever. The trap in Bitter Spring was sprung while Masood's two hundred slept. The garden was burned without reprisal. He was elated when the silver earcuff told him to rally his hunters near Lagard's Shaft, but the orders to fight never came. The enemy was here, they were wounded, so Masood did what any hunter should: he hunted. And when the earpiece told him twice to back away, he pulled the chatty thing from his head and tossed it to the ground.

The disciple assigned to him was shocked he showed such irreverence to the Pasha. To practitioners, the boy was a holy person, a saint. She tattled on him right away, gave him a final warning he scarcely heard, and broke away with her bulwark. When he looked for her again, she was nowhere to be seen.

Shortly after the disciple took her silent leave, Masood saw something better than weeping foot soldiers. A few dozen mounted Kashmari were on his flank, pacing him distantly, unwilling to risk a confrontation against poor odds. Their thick hide and flashing bronze breastplates marked them as Chargers, elites, the very forces Phillip insisted were too strong to face without practitioners to aid them. A prince rode in the lead, marked by his full leonine head and face. He was watching Masood as Masood watched him. Kashmari liked to say a Charger was worth twenty men, and a prince was worth fifty Chargers. There was a man worth killing!

Masood whistled orders to his men to break off pursuit and gather around him. He formed them up and led them in a charge against the unknown prince, who promptly fled. They'd have to chase this one down.

"Masood, stop!" The disciple was back, somehow riding next to him. Her shouts were thin over the thudding of appalons' feet. "This could be a trap! Don't you know when you're being bated?"

"What would you know of it, woman? This is men's work! Do something useful, or get out of my way! Make us stronger!"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She muttered something under her breath, then began touching them without stopping or slowing down. She started with Masood, reaching out for his arm as they rode next to each other, then dropped back and did as many other men as she could. Every enhancement took up a share of a disciple's power, and the men of Broken Ode were uncommonly large. She soon tired and dropped away into her kind's peculiar invisibility again.

The mounts were blowing hard, so Masood pulled back the pace a little. This would be a longer pursuit than he had hoped. Desert mounts had superior endurance and could run the enemy to the ground if they didn't lose track of them first. Masood's hopes rose as he realized the prince must be lost: he was leading his forces toward the river instead of Bitter Spring.

A streak of white and dark cream zoomed along the desert floor on a collision course with Masood's lead position. His stomach turned as he realized who it must be: Parsa. The embarrassment got ahead of him, changed course, and slowed, to let the maul's appalon catch up. When Masood was abreast of the boy, he saw he was wearing that gaudy chest plate of bronze scales, and he had tipped his twin horns in the same.

"Get out of here, boy! This is no place for messengers." He was ashamed the other hunters could see him like that, all flight and no fight, preening in his Nexus finery, a dancer among warriors. Others of his kind, full jimala who could become animals or humans at will, were broader in the chest and thicker of skin. Where this frail, flighty thing came from was anyone's guess.

Tonk! The boy ran with a board clenched between his teeth. Tonk, tonk! The jimala bounded high enough for Masood to take the message from his mouth, but Masood failed to reach for it. It was obvious who the message was from, and the maul didn't want to read it.

Tonk! Parsa's tone was emphatic, but Masood still refused to take it.

"Go home! Tell the Pasha he's a frightened old woman!"

Parsa lept yet again, but this time he went higher, clicked his hooves together, spun around, then landed backward.

Tonk TONK! Now the boy was running in reverse, pacing the appalons as if they were barely walking. Masood felt like hitting him with his riding crop, but he realized there wasn't any point to that. The boy wasn't Broken Ode's problem anymore, not since he'd moved to Pashtuk. And his new garden had loaned him out to the Pasha. He wore the silver earcuff so he could follow his master's orders. The shame was on them now, not Masood.

Tonk Tonk! Tonk tonk tonk, tonk!

"Fine!" Masood shouted, "Give me the board!"

Parsa pronked, back arched, all four feet together, and still going backward. It was a wholly unnatural maneuver for any normal animal, but it put the boy's head close enough for Masood to grab the message from his mouth with ease. The wood was inked in large black letters.

> RETURN NOW

Disgusted, Masood threw the board aside. He would have said something to Parsa about the fears of children and old men, but he was already speeding away, too weak to stick around for a fight. A flash of cream tail and a dust trail was all there was to see of him. That's all there would ever be to see.

The enemy tried ducking down into one of the bowed lakes flanking the Great River. It wasn't a terrible idea. If it was one of the smaller, narrower ones then it would mitigate Broken Ode's numerical advantage. Maybe the prince wasn't as lost as he seemed, but he was still making a mistake: this particular lake was too wide, and Masood could surround his smaller force with the garden's larger one.

He called for ready spears as they followed the Chargers down a steep slope and onto the lake's powdery floor, where dust kicked up by appalons turned his prey into shadows. Any second now, they'd have to turn and face him, or get overrun from behind as they tried to climb their way out. He pressed his mount into a final burst of speed, spear tip set firmly forward, while he whistled commands to Broken Ode's two hundred hunters, the largest and strongest hunters of all the gardens, to do the same. Ma'Tocha had refined the cavalry charge for them and, although their formation was somewhat lacking after the long run, nobody would want to be on the receiving end of it.

The shadows before him grew solid as he bore down on them, coming at him. Masood grinned in joy. This was the meaning of life, to pit oneself against a worthy foe, something or someone who would fight for their lives with every ounce of themselves until whatever end might come. This was a virtue the old man had forgotten, and priests would never know.

The shadows became men. In the space of one stride of an appalon's feet, the few dozen men became a few hundred. The prince wasn't lost after all. He hadn't chosen his lake poorly. The fleeing force would rest while hundreds of fresh troops did the fighting.

The Caliques' mounts were tired, sluggish, and they faced greater numbers on fresh mounts and even ground. Ma'Tocha had warned them many times not to try the Charger's own tactics against them: as none of his men had fought this way before. They had their weeks of practice, and that was all. But hesitation now would only bring greater disaster.

"Broken Ode!" His call was picked up by the others as they aimed to drive through the enemy ranks.