These lines were beginning to do what Blade had hoped they would. Where they found the lines across their paths, the sea reptiles were slowing down. Sometimes they would stop or even draw back when they felt a dozen spear points pricking their snouts, stabbing at their nostrils or eyes or into their open mouths. Others would press on, snapping and clawing as ferociously as ever. With warriors all around them, they did not last long. There was always someone ready and willing to strike when a beast was stopped. They struck with spears at the brain, down through the eyes or up through the open mouths. They struck from beneath with whatever weapon came to hand, ripping through the lighter belly scales. They struck at the necks, the flanks, the legs, even under the tails. They struck everywhere they could find a target. Blade heard a continuous drum roll of metal and wood pounding on scaly skin and slicing deep into the flesh beneath it. He also heard the bellows and roars of monstrous beasts in mortal agony. The warriors of the Kargoi were still going down, but now so were the attackers.
Once or twice a reptile plowed clear through a line, to break into the open beyond it and go rampaging among the tents. Blade heard screams as women who hadn't fled in time died in those tents, and hoped Naula had run fast enough and far enough.
Other beasts had the good luck or the good sense to find open flanks where the sections of line hadn't linked up. They plunged on toward the tents and the wagons, heads down and feet churning up the ground.
One of these beasts got as far as a trio of tethered riding drends. With a bellow, one of the drends broke its tether and charged the oncoming reptile. They met head-on, the drend's long horns hooking wickedly, driving the reptile's head to one side. Before it could recover a second drend came lumbering in and butted it in the flank. A full-grown riding drend weighed nearly a ton, and the impact shoved the reptile bodily to one side. Then someone dashed up and drove a cooking spit into one eye, deep enough to reach the brain. The beast slumped down into death and the drends lumbered off, bellowing in noisy triumph.
Blade realized it was time he got into the fight. He'd done about all he could do by standing on the back of a drend and shouting orders at the top of his lungs. Besides, his voice was completely gone.
So he leaped down from the back of the drend and ran forward. A dead reptile lay in his path. He swerved, ran across a patch of ground turned into mud by the beast's blood, leaped over its outstretched tail, and found himself in the rear of a line of warriors. He ran along it until he came to the right flank and stepped into place.
Several of the warriors recognized him and shouted greetings, bared teeth startlingly white in blood-smeared faces. Shouts from farther along the line told of another reptile making its charge. As spears rose into position, it slowed but did not stop. A warrior ran out of the line with a spear and thrust at the beast's eyes. The fanged head swung sideways, knocking the man down. He was unhurt. Before the jaws could close on him, he rolled clear, leaped up, and returned to the attack. Blade dashed forward to join the man.
Blade had to hear what he did after that from other people, who saw it all and marveled at it. He was never sure how much of what they said was the truth and how much of it just a good tale they enjoyed telling about a hero.
The Kargoi said he killed seven of the reptiles himself, helped other warriors kill five others, and drove half a dozen more back into the sea. He was willing to believe them. Certainly by the time he became aware of the world around him again, all his weapons were blunted and he was exhausted, aching, horribly thirsty, and covered with blood from head to foot.
He was less willing to believe that he'd strangled one of the beasts with his bare hands and lifted another completely off the ground, to drop it on its head and break its neck. Other tales of what he'd done were even less believable. It was, however, believable that the Kargoi had won. In fact it was certain.
Except for a dozen of so that had made their way back into the sea, all of the beasts were dead, more than two hundred of them. So were nearly three hundred warriors and a hundred women and children of the Kargoi. A hundred drends were dead, and a thousand more scattered all over the countryside by stampedes. Twenty wagons were smashed to splinters. Blade's idea of forming lines hadn't prevented a considerable toll of casualties, but it had certainly prevented disaster.
The drends were rounded up and harnessed; one by one the wagons rolled out of their circle and headed south. Blade bathed in the sea and climbed into his wagon, quite content not to be asked for any advice at the moment. The only thing he would have advised, the Kargoi were already doing-getting out of here! He fell asleep with his head in Naula's lap as the wagon creaked into motion.
Chapter 12
Blade rode out with the scouts that afternoon. They spread in a line five miles wide, stretching across the front of all the wagons. Blade rode within sight of the water.
The scouts beside him rode with one eye on the land and the other uneasily turned toward the water, waiting for whatever might come out of it. Fortunately the sea reptiles, like the bat-birds, seemed to be creatures of the night. Once Blade saw a dark head and back rise from the waves a few hundred yards off shore, then sink down again after a minute or two. Otherwise the water shone in the sun, kicked up into whitecaps by a brisk wind. It rolled in peacefully on the shore, with no sign that it had ever spawned last night's horrors. Yet the reptiles were still out there, and so were their masters. They would come again, Blade was certain.
Once they'd made the new camp, Blade planned to ride back to the dead reptiles. He wanted to study them, learn more about what they could do, what could be done to them while they lived, and perhaps what could be done with them after they were dead. He might also find some clues about who their masters might be. At the moment this was such a total mystery that Blade refused even to guess.
The Kargoi made camp late that day, under the glaring sunset sky with the shadows already stretching far across the beaten-down grass. They made a camp huddled close against the foot of the hills and as far from the water as possible. The wagons of all three Peoples were drawn into an immense triple circle and all the warriors took up positions between them and the water. Except for the warriors no one left the wagons. No tents were pitched, no fires were lit.
No one in the whole camp slept that night except out of sheer exhaustion. All the wakefulness was unnecessary. Nothing came out of the sea or down from the sky.
At dawn Blade rode back to the battlefield. He would have preferred to ride alone, but that wasn't possible. The moment he mentioned he was going to ride back, Paor insisted on coming with him. Then Naula swore she also would come and share his danger. Several other warriors immediately decided that they would be shamed if a woman went where they would not. They insisted on joining the party. In the end Blade rode back at the head of fifty warriors.
That was far too many witnesses for much of what Blade wanted to do. So far no one among the Kargoi had the faintest notion that the attacks of the bat-birds and the sea reptiles were anything but more monstrous freaks of nature, like the volcanoes or the rising sea. Blade desperately wanted them to stay ignorant as long as possible. He suspected that not even the courage of the Kargoi would survive the knowledge that the bat-birds and reptiles were being directed by some unknown intelligence greater than theirs. He also suspected that if warriors like Paor watched all he did on the battlefield, they would begin to wonder what he was looking for and then ask questions to which he could give no safe answers.