The Red Sun

 

Smoke turned the sky dark at midday, and it turned the sun red as blood.  Jaya looked out from her hillside vantage and saw the line of fire stretched across the countryside, and she tasted the smoke of the ruined farms and the slain Utani.  The Mordani, the giants, were on the move, and they came with fire and steel.

She had expected they would react to the destruction of the manor house and the slaying of their elder, but their wrath was greater than she had foreseen.  She had not thought them foolish enough to raze the very farms and plantations that made them lords.  That their rage would cause them to scourge the land itself in the hopes of driving her out of her forested sanctuary.  Now they beat the bush and the scrublands, driving all before them, and by tomorrow morning they would reach the edges of the forest itself.

Her one-eyed messenger came through her assassins and bowed low.  “One has come who says he is known to you.  He has the marks of an Ekwa raider.”

Jaya felt her heart leap, and she smiled.  “Bring him, bring him quickly.”  She had not dared to hope that Dhatun had survived the wreck, all those years gone.  She wondered if it would be him, or another of his kind come to seek her out.

It was him.  He towered above the smaller Utani, lean and hard and marked by the intricate tattoos of his people.  He wore his long hair in a nest of braids, but they were no longer limed white and stiff.  She realized he must have been here since they wrecked, and not returned home to his people.  Yet he still carried himself stiff and proud as he walked, and smiled his tight-lipped smile when he saw her.

“My chief,” he said, and gave his small tilt of the head that was all the bow an Ekwa would grant.  “I never doubted that you lived, and when I heard the tales of this uprising, I knew it must be you.”

She smiled and then embraced him, glad of the feel of his solid, sinewy muscle.  “I am glad to find you alive as well.  There is no other I would rather see today.”  She looked at him.  “You have not returned home.”

He shrugged.  “My people are much feared here, I have lived on the wild coasts, spear-fishing and stealing from the dirt-grubbers.  It is a long voyage home, over uncertain seas, almost impossible alone, in a hide boat.  I awaited a sign, and now I have one.”

“Seeing you again is a sign from the gods of the sea,” she said.  Looking south, she could just see the glint of the water and it tugged at her, reminding her forcibly of her home, far away.  “I have been away from the sea for far too long.  Now my path leads me back.”

“If the sea calls you, then I bring another sign.”  Dhatun held up a leather string, and on it hung the shark-tooth amulet given her by the sea demon in what seemed to her a memory another life.  She took it, feeling the gold hoop that enclosed it warm to her hand.

“Another sign indeed,” she said.  “It seems I have too long been away from the waters, and now they remind me where my heart was born, and where my future lies.”

Dhatun turned and looked toward the rising smoke, the line of smoldering fires that stretched from one side of the view to the other.  “The giants come.  I have hunted those I could find, but have stayed away from their places of power.  Now they come against you.”

“Ten days ago we destroyed their greatest fortress in the upper country, and we slew their leader there and hung his head from a tree-bole.”  She gestured to the oncoming line of destruction.  “I expected some retaliation as we moved closer to the city, but now they have gone mad.  They are burning every village, raping or killing anyone they take captive.  They are driving the Utani before them, seeking to force me out into the open.”

Dhatun showed his sharpened teeth.  “And so they have made you allies where before you had only refugees.”

“Indeed, they have stoked the resistance of the Utani into a flame of hatred.”  She lifted her arm and pointed to a glint of silver that snaked along the edge of the jungle hills.  “I am gathering all there, within the trees, and when morning comes the Mordani will try to cross the Basu, and I will meet them there with my full force.  There will be a battle that will stain the waters red.”

“The giants are well-versed in such frontal battle,” Dhatun said.  “I have watched them.  They will gather their thunder weapons into a great line and shatter your army if you give them a mass to aim for.”

“I am not so foolish as that,” Jaya said, laughing.  “I have learned much of them as well, and I know how they will attack, and how they will expect to be attacked.  I will trap them, I will break them, and I will kill so many of them that they will fear my name for a hundred generations.”  She touched his arm, glad of his presence.  “I will give them a battle such as none of them have ever seen.”

o0o

Dawn came like a gleam of silver, filtering down through the high clouds that towered over the fields and forests.  Out over the sea, thunder stalked and lightning flickered, and yet the first great storm of the year hesitated, as if gathering itself.  The winds shifted restlessly from point to point, and Jaya sniffed the air and knew this would have been a poor day to trust the sea.  In her mind she could see the choppy waves crossing over each other, the sails flapping and dragging as the breezes backed around the horizon.  Today was a day to stay on land, and here she would face a test such as she never had upon the deep.

The Basu was not much of a river, more a wide stream, often shallow enough to be waded across.  The banks were thick with bamboo and reeds, and the trees overhung the waters as they foamed over rocks and swirled in the undercut banks.  The waters were muddy so it was hard to see where the shallows lay save by where the reeds-stalks stood in the current.  Overnight Jaya had sent her men into the river to uproot the grasses and plant tall bamboo stakes that jutted up from the water, making it seem as though the water was deep where it was shallow, and shallow where it was deep.

She kept her men in the trees as the day broke, hiding them from sight.  The Mordani were coming, the smoke and dust of their passage heralding them, though she knew they would seek to find a flank to her line.  Their mounted warriors had a mobility and weight she could not match, and so she planned to deceive them.

Her disciples ranged through the tall grasses and the fields, watching and measuring the enemy as they approached.  She knew the giants had more than five hundred men on foot, most of them with long spears and steel armor, but with a cutting core of gunmen with their heavy weapons in the center.  A hundred guns all together would blast a hole in any battle line, and that was why she did not intend to give them a target.  A hundred horsemen rode out on the flanks and followed behind, ready to be sent charging into her lines, but here she would deny them that.

The ground on this side of the Basu was thick with low trees, the branches laced overhead so that nothing could get through.  The earth was rocky and rose up from the riverbank, knotted with roots and vines.  Horses could never charge through such ground.  Let them seek a target in vain.

Jaya’s own army was just over four hundred strong, most of them farmers and fishermen driven from their land and haunted by the slaughter of their wives and children.  The women who came to her she had gathered and taught to wield the guns she had managed to steal.  She had just less than fifty of them, but she had taught them to shoot in a way unlike the Mordani.  Her war daughters would not stand in a stupid line and fire all at once.  She had taught them to take cover behind trees and rocks, to pick their targets and fire when they knew they could kill.

The rest of her men were not soldiers, but they did not have to be.  She had armed them with lances, throwing spears, sword and daggers.  They would meet the attack inside the trees and kill as many as they could, keep the larger enemy at bay with the good ground, and perhaps rout the entire force.  The Mordani must attack her, and if they refused to attack, she must provoke them to it.  A frontal attack upon armored, experienced soldiers would be a slaughter.

She watched them come, the long line spread out from side to side, marching all together with the smoke rising behind them.  They were burning everything – every village, every field, every grove of trees – all in the fever to root out the rebellion and extirpate it.  Jaya had not expected such blind, murderous savagery.  This land had made them lords, but they seemed to care as little for it as a beetle ground underfoot.

Scouts on horseback rode ahead of the line, the riders with long lances or the heavy crossed bows they used in place of guns.  She watched them ride back and forth on the far side of the stream, looking into the trees.  Jaya looked to her left where a pair of her gunners were crouched, their weapons across branches for steady aim.  She nodded.

One of them fired and missed, the second one fired and a rider cried out and fell, crashing to the earth as his steed danced sideways and screamed.  Gunfire began to crack and snap up and down the line, and three more scouts went down with their beasts before the rest fled back out of range.

Jaya waited.  Now they would wonder if this was a small ambush, or a full battle awaiting them.  Now they would probe.  She watched as the horsemen gathered and rode off to her left, seeking a flank, while the footmen moved into line with their small steel shields held up to guard them, heads down so all that could be seen under their helms were their eyes.  They approached, and Jaya held up her hand for the gunners to wait.  The women took the opportunity to reload and settle themselves in place.

The Mordani gunners moved up in a mass, and the smoke from their lit matches drifted in the still morning air.  Jaya watched as they came closer, and closer, until they were almost in the shallows of the river.  They raised their weapons all as one, and fired in a single mass.

The blast was deafening, and the bullets hummed and whined through the air, thudding into trees, shattering against rocks, splintering bark.  A few of her men cried out, as she had instructed, and then everything fell silent.  The enemy gun men knelt and reloaded in the haze of the powder smoke, and Jaya gave the sign.

Again fire came from the trees, but rather than a mass all together, her sisters fired singly, picking their targets, and the enemy soldiers cried out and fell.  The mass of them loaded and fired another blast, but Jaya’s people were well-sheltered and she knew they were protected from the volley.  Bullets hummed past her and she smiled as the enemy gunners fell back, and the foot soldiers advanced in a line, spears lowered and shields raised.  Now the true bloodletting would begin.

The spearmen waded into the river, splashing into the shallows, and her men waited.  All along the line she sensed them gathering themselves, clustering in knots, readying for the first strike.  She had given the command that they must wait until the first Mordani set his foot upon the near shore, and so they awaited the moment.

Before they even reached the bank, the enemy line was fraying apart.  Men stepped into deep hollows where they had thought the water shallow, some of them screamed as they were impaled on bamboo stakes.  The formation began to tatter, and then the center pushed through and waded ashore, and her men met it with a hail of thrown spears.

Even at close range, the Mordani armor stopped many of the slender fishing spears, but men went down, wounded and bleeding in the muddy water.  Her gunners opened fire, and so close the bullets could not be stayed even by steel plates.  Spears rang from shields and helms, and then the greater force of the line struggled ashore, and her men met them hand to hand.

The line of the forest dissolved in a screaming battle, men hacking and flailing with swords and spears and axes.  There was the rattle of wooden hafts and the clangor of steel on steel.  Men cried out and fell, the wounded foundering in the water as it began to stain red.  The enemy gunmen opened fire, shooting high over their own men, blind into the trees.  Jaya heard the bullets sing as they slapped through the leaves and tore the bark.

The enemy gathered, hurled themselves ashore, and were driven back again, leaving the shallows choked with the slain and the dying.  Jaya smiled.  One more rush and they would fall back and try something different.  The water’s edge was a trap she had made for them, and they would not be so accommodating as to keep throwing themselves into it.

Suddenly a terrible detonation blasted through the air from the left flank, and then another.  Jaya heard screams, and from her vantage point she could see trees falling, branches torn and splitting apart.  She cursed and drew her sword, raced through the forest, dodging around the trees as bullets tore the air around her.  She felt the spirit of her army begin to waver, and she gave a great cry of fury as she raced through the jungle.  With her sword up she gave them something to see, something to stand with.

On the left flank smoke was boiling up from the trees, and when she reached the hillside she saw Utani lying scattered and bleeding among the splintered branches.  Those who lived or were only wounded were already falling back, blank-faced and terrified in the smoke.  Jaya called to them and stopped a few she saw were not hurt, pushed them forward to the line.

Another thunder seemed to split the air, and Jaya ducked as a spray of shot lanced through the air, tearing off tree limbs and gouging the soil underfoot.  It sounded like a swarm of giant wasps blazing past her, and she hissed at the memory.  She ran forward through the smoke and destruction, ducked behind a tree as another blast tore at the jungle, shredding smaller trees and sending those not slain fleeing to the rear.

Smoke boiled across the front, and she peered through it and saw what she had feared.  Two light cannon were arrayed on the far side of the Basu, even now men working to reload them.  It was what the Mordani called pepper-shot – fistfuls of heavy leaden balls fired from the gun all at once, used for killing men on shipboard, and now used to break her line.  She had not known they had such weapons on the trail, and realized her scouts had not known what such devices were.  Had not looked for them.

Her men were streaming back from the front, desperate to escape the next rain of fire, and she saw the Mordani were also drawn back.  She saw then that the guns were a weakness as well as a strength, as their men had to stay out of the line of fire, lest it kill them as well.

She heard horses – the screaming calls, the thunder of the hooves as they tore the earth.  She looked through the smoke and saw the enemy riders come through the lines, charging for the river.  At the head of them was the armored form she had seen before and knew now as though he were a lost friend rather than a deadly enemy.  The one called the paladin, the man with the sword of white flame.

Jaya felt rage boil inside her.  If the riders gained the bank they would press her line back until it either broke, or there was time for the Mordani to get their footmen across the water, and then the battle would be a death grip.  A steel-on-steel battle that her ill-trained and -armed men must lose at a cost of blood.  She had to stop it here, and she had to do it with her own hands.

She sheathed her sword and took up a fallen gun from the hands of a dead sister, her eyes staring and blood-filled.  Jaya snarled an invocation to the gods of vengeance and saw the weapon was loaded.  She checked the pan, blew on the match, and took a place beside a splintered tree, resting the heavy barrel on a broken branch.

The paladin came forward, splashing through the water that rose chest high on his steed.  Other riders foundered in the deceptive stream, some fell from their mounts and struggled in their armor, some turned back on beasts that refused to press forward, but the rider came on undeterred, his white robe gleamed in the morning sun, a red sign blazoned on it, his sword held up and a long shield on his left arm.  Behind his helmet, his face was hidden, implacable, and fearless.

Jaya fired, pressing the match into the pan.  It hissed and sparked, and then the weapon bucked in her grasp.  A red weal slashed across the chest of the fine steed, and it went down with a howl, hurling the paladin to the torn and bloody earth.

She cast the gun aside and drew her sword, went down to meet him as he struggled up, mud-smeared but unhurt.  He saw her and lifted his blade, white fire coursing over it.  Other riders surged ahead but he stopped them with a single command.  They drew back, uncertain, and the smoke cleared a little as a breeze sprang up.  The white rider came to meet her alone, and Jaya drew her long dagger for her left hand.  She sensed her own people watching from the trees, heard the crack of gunfire as the battle went on.  He meant to kill her himself, one against one, and that was in her mind as well.  Steel against steel, blood against blood.

o0o

He closed on her, chanting something in a strange tongue that was not the speech of the Mordani.  All she could see behind his helm was the glitter of his cold eyes.  This time she marked the places where he was not protected by the hard steel shell.  His neck was open, even if it was a small target.  The insides of his arms and under his shoulder, and the backs of his legs.  Those would have to be enough.

His blade swept down and she evaded it, shifting to the right to put his shield between them.  It guarded his entire left side, but it also blocked sight and motion.  He rushed her, trying to batter her down with the broad wooden guard, but she danced back.  He tried to flank to her right but stumbled on the broken ground.  She darted in and cut at his arm but he recovered quickly and almost cut her in half.  His tumble had been at least partly a feint, and that pleased her – it meant he respected her skills, whatever he might pretend.

But she saw the disadvantage his armor gave him.  His vision was restricted, and on the rocky hillside among the shattered trees, he was at danger of losing his footing.  He likely pretended to lose his balance so she would not fully trust any genuine stumbles.  He was a wily fighter, with stratagem within gambit within stratagem.

He lunged with his shield extended, then pivoted and swept it outward to try and trap her sword away from her body, but she was too quick for that, and she sidestepped to evade the sword-stroke he brought sweeping down.  Before he could recover she cut at the back of his leg and opened a cut through his robe.  He hacked at her and she parried, steel on steel, and stabbed him on the inside of his sword-arm with her dagger.

She drew the point back blooded and he turned and rushed her with his shield like a ram, and she dropped and hooked his leg with her own, twisting to bring him down.  He tried to keep his feet, but a fallen branch turned under his heel and he fell, the rattle of his armor echoing through the smoke.

Jaya was on him in a moment, stabbing down with her keen dagger, seeking a weak point in his armor.  He twisted and threw her off, too strong for her small size.  The white sword lashed for her and she barely evaded it, feeling the heat, the edge leaving a black weal on the earth.  He wrenched it free and struggled to stand, but as he did he gave her his back.

She struck like a cobra, her sword slashing across the back of his knee, bringing a jet of blood.  His leg collapsed under him and he cried out as he fell again.  Jaya pounced like a tigress, Stabbing her dagger down toward his face, seeking the visor so she could blind him.

An explosion thundered and then the ground to her right was torn apart, sending earth and wood fountaining into the air.  She heard the hum of shot in the air and then something punched through her back, filling her chest with agony like fire.

The paladin tried to throw her off, but she clung with her legs and stabbed down, her blade going through the slot on his helm.  She felt it bite and he screamed, and then weakness washed over her and the world spun.  Her mouth was full of blood, and she was on the ground, spitting it forth, a black torrent she coughed out through clenched teeth.

She saw the paladin rise, staggering on his wounded leg, blood running down his helmet, and he reeled away from her, using sword and shield to prop himself up.  She looked through the smoke and saw the cannons had been wheeled in close, and for a moment she was sure she was about to be blasted into pieces, and the only consolation she had was that her enemy would die with her.

But then she saw the furious combat swirling around the guns, heard the crack-cracking of the riflemen and saw spears and swords flash in the muted light as her own people swarmed over the gun crews and hacked them down.  All along the battlefront, the Utani were surging into the enemy, killing and dying, leaving the river choked with bodies and with blood.  She saw Dhatun among the warriors who seized one of the cannons and turned it around.  When it fired, smoke came roaring out, and that was the last thing she saw before the dark closed in around her.

o0o

She woke after nightfall, pain still on her like a shadow that blotted the light.  She closed her eyes and focused her concentration inward, set her body to repairing itself.  Vadir had taught her the way, all she needed was time.  When she looked up, she saw stars and realized she was in the forest, sheltered half beneath a lean-to and with a fire burning close by.  She turned her head and saw her disciples crouching around the fire, at the edge of the darkness, guarding her.

Dhatun was closer to hand, tending the fire.  He saw her stir and smiled his tight-lipped smile.  “I told them you would not be so easily slain.”

She swallowed past her dry throat.  “What happened?”

He shrugged.  “We won, though the cost was not light.  While you fought the armored one, we charged and took their cannon, turned them on their gunners and blasted their formation apart.  The riding beasts panicked and then the rest of the army followed.  We pursued them into the fields and cut down many.  I would guess we slew half of them, fewer of the riders, as we could not catch many of them.”

“How many did we lose?” she said.  She knew better than to try to sit up.  Her voice had no strength and she could not get enough breath.

“Almost two hundred,” he said.  “Perhaps a third of those are wounded who may live.  But we slew two for every one, and broke the myth that the Mordani are invincible.  You defeated their champion and sent him fleeing the field.  You became a legend today.”

She closed her eyes, seeing the paladin with his white fire sword and the blood rushing down the front of his helm.  She would see him again, she knew that.  “I will die and be a true legend if I do not heal myself.  Give me quiet.”  She folded her hands and cast her eye inward, seeking the piece of metal embedded in her sunken lung.  She folded her mind around it and grimaced as she felt it move.  “Give me quiet until morning, and then I will rise again.”