Free Allies of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page A

suddenly appearing demons in the rear...
    “Steady!” Tyfar stood up, not so much fearless as indifferent to anything but holding his men. “Face front! You — face rear—” he bellowed in a voice that astonished me. He sorted the men out even as the two sides sought to close upon us and crush us in the jaws of death.
    As for me — the Krozair brand leaped like a live spirit. The wildmen, hairy and shaggy and nasty, bore in with skirling bravery, scorning cuts and bruises, only dropping when some serious portion of their anatomy was chopped away, only dying when not enough remained of that anatomy to sustain life. Dust puffed under stamping feet. Sweat shone briefly, and the dust covered the sweat and caked men’s faces and arms. That peculiar haze of dust and sweat hovered above the battle as brings back the memories to an old fighting man.
    Jaezila swirled splendidly, her sword wreaking devastation upon the hairy skin-clad host. Diplomatically I left Tyfar and Jaezila to work out a modus vivendi between themselves. Contenting myself with keeping my own skin unpunctured I could watch out for them and knock the odd persistent fellow away and still let them fight on, back to back, defiant and splendid. And, by Vox! The fight was warm, exceedingly warm. We were overmatched in numbers. The very animal vitality of the moorkrim astonished by its ability to sustain damage and to leap from rock to crag to boulder, swinging sword or thrusting with polearm all along the way. It was like fighting a collection of Springheeled Jacks.
    In the midst of the fight, Jaezila and Tyfar kept on at each other. Back to back for much of the time, they each made lurid guesses as to the activity of the other: “Have you untangled your feet yet, Ty?” and: “I should have worn a thicker backplate with you there, Zila,” and so nonsensically forth. Tyfar’s axe, dull and fouled with blood, cut mercilessly down with massive sweeps. No one was getting past him to sink a blade into Jaezila’s undefended back.
    For a moment or two it became vitally necessary for me to leap and skip about as a dozen or so scuttling horrors plopped down from a cliff-edge hole. They came for me as a target. These were the caving experts of the moorkrim, often called moorakrim, swarthy of skin, bent of back, grimed with the marks of soil. Their fingers were long, bony and taloned, and their hands formed scoops. Like all the wildmen, they were bandy. Without doubt once the Hamalese had been killed these two sorts of moorkrim would fight among themselves for the spoil.
    They hurled javelins at me, they threw stones, and the stones were more dangerous than the javelins.
    Great displeasure is taken by a Krozair of Zy if he is forced to beat away flung stones with his Krozair longsword. Beating away arrows and javelins is one thing; driving off a stone over mid-off is quite another. I felt the chunks of stone cracking against the steel.
    “You mangy pack of powkies!” I yelled, and started off for them, howling all manner of abuse and swirling the sword, as much to scare them as to bash away their stones. They hesitated. One or two hopped about from one bandy leg to another.
    “Schtump!” I bellowed and ran faster, and caught the two nearest fellows, the two bravest or more foolhardy, I dare say, and swept them into four. I shook the Krozair brand at the others and charged at them, thinking among all the scarlet flashes of annoyance how my Krozair brothers would frown at this wanton display of vanity.
    But the wildmen scuttled back on their bandy legs and with swinging skins about their shoulders disappeared into a hole in the cliff. To let them go was no decision. I started back to Tyfar and Jaezila and saw one of the commanding officers of the regiments fall. The Jiktar simply fell straight down. His helmet was dented by a thrown rock — a very large rock.
    Up on a ledge over our heads a group of the moorakrim worked busily at what was — what had to be — a