Free Allies of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page B

catapult.
    I stared up. The suns were slipping down the sky and the light lay full on the cliff face. The wildmen up there did have a catapult, a small affair with a squat beam and a narrow twisted sinew spring. But it could throw.
    The arm came over and the clang distinctly preceded the arrival of the stone. That one missed.
    Then a wildman tried to spit me and I parried and riposted and looked up at the ledge and that catapult.
    “Cover me, Deldar!” I said to the neatly groomed officer — he had a spot of dirt on his cheek and his right shoulder arm-piece was cut through — who staggered back with half a dozen of his men. They recoiled from an advancing line of wildmen, moving now with purpose as they sought to clear the platform.
    There was no time for question and answer. I stuck the longsword through my belt, not in the scabbard, and shoved it back out of the way. The Lohvian longbow came off my shoulder sweetly to hand. The arrow nocked as it seemed of its own accord. Brace, push, pull, bend — shooting in a longbow demands skill and skill I had been taught by Seg. The first rose-fletched shaft skewered the wildman about to place the next stone. He fell back, the shaft through him, and before he hit the ledge his comrade started to fall beside him, feathered through the chest. His arm struck the release latch and the arm, missileless, slapped forward. The whole catapult jumped and a crack of an exceedingly rich and juicy sound floated down.
    “Bad cess to you,” I said, loosing again and taking a wildman in the rump who was trying to take cover.
    The very neat Deldar had formed his handful of men in a line among the boulders and we were separated by a short open space from Tyfar and Jaezila. I shot again. Tyfar and Jaezila fought on, and I switched my aim and was able to take out a couple of moorkrim and so assist my comrades. I reached for another arrow and — lo! — the quiver was empty. So much for hotheaded intemperate rushings after people; Seg would be scathing with me for so glaring a dereliction of the archer code.
    Dealing with the wildmen who lined out after us was not as difficult as I’d expected, for the neat Deldar was neat in swordsmanship and neat in his handling of his men. When we straightened up after that small affray within the larger, we were down two men and the wildmen, those still alive, drew back.
    I said to Deldar, “Your name, Deldar?”
    “Fresk Thyfurnin, notor.”
    “If all the swods fought like your men, I’d be easier.”
    “I think, notor,” said this Deldar Fresk Thyfurnin, “that this is our last fight.”
    “I’ll not have that kind of talk—” I started to bluster. Thyfurnin simply pointed along the cleft of the Pass of Lacachun.
    They flew up and they seemed to fill the air between the two rock faces. The cliffs echoed to the rustle of their wings. The mist drifted past, very high, shredded now for some time to allow the radiance of the twin suns to burn through. Below the mist they flew on, hundreds and hundreds, it seemed, drawn to the pickings to be found at Laca’s Jaws.
    “Well, now. Deldar Fresk. I still do not think you right. We will have to pull back to the caves and defend ourselves there.”
    “Of course, notor. And guard our backs against the moorkrim creeping along their holes in the cliffs. Our wounded were lucky to have escaped them. But we will fight.”
    Tyfar and Jaezila dispatched the last of their opponents and walked across the open ground toward our group. Everyone looked depressed. The darkness in the air shadowed from that enormous flying host was enough to make a laughing hyena weep. We gathered together before the entrances to the caves.
    “We’ve won this fight.” Tyfar sounded as though he would burst a blood vessel. “No one thought we could win; but we did. We beat ’em. And now we have this whole new force to reckon with.”
    “How many men do we have?”
    Deldar Fresk, it turned out, was the senior surviving officer. All