Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

Corbett left the two bodies where they lay, taking only enough time to strip them of their weapons and ammunition before setting the column back on the march toward their doom.

In a short stretch where rocky walls made the track too narrow for a double column, the end trooper simply disappeared, without a sound, apparently plucked from his saddle as he rode. His eyeless, tongueless head, impaled on a sharpened sapling, confronted the vanguard a few kilometers farther south.

At the next fairly open spot, Corbett halted, had each rider fill his canteen and his mount’s waterskin, then dumped the remainder of the water. The supplies were portioned out as far as they would go, then the thin reserves of ammo were equally divided, and he gave his final orders to his force.

“They’ve trailed us and harried us, gentlemen; their next move will likely be a full-scale ambush or even an open attack, depending on how many they number, and it could come at any time now. According to the prisoner, they never fight in the dark, so if they don’t hit us hard today, expect them at dawn.

“If it is an ambush, ride for your lives and don’t take time to shoot unless you have a clear target and no option; it would seem that guns don’t scare them, for some reason.

“If, on the other hand, they confront us in the open, immediately assume a wedge formation—wounded and noncombatants in the center—and we’ll do our level best to blast our way through them. Once we are through them, Sergeant Gumpner and Corporal Cash will be responsible for continuing on with the noncombatants and the wounded, they and one squad. Sergeant Cabell and I and the rest of the force, will turn back and hold off pursuit as long as possible.

“Sergeant Gumpner, choose your squad now and keep them together when we resume the march. You’ll also take the only still-loaded animal—that’s the medical supplies—and all of the spare animals, too. Remember my earlier orders and the priorities they contained.

“Good luck to you all, gentlemen, and God bless and keep you. In almost a thousand years of soldiering, you men were the finest command I ever had.”

Corbett reined about and kneed his tall horse in close to Braun’s mule. “Do you think you can stay in your saddle unaided, Doctor, at a fast gallop? Or would you prefer we tie you to that kak?”

Braun was sweating profusely; knots of muscle were working at the corners of his jaw, and the hate-filled eyes he turned to meet Corbett’s were bloodshot and teary.

“You goddam sadist! You know I can’t sit a saddle well or securely with a goddam broken leg. Of course 111 need to be tied on, you nitwit bumpkin! And don’t you think for a minute I won’t tell Sternheimer and all the rest how you and that bitch have tortured me in every nasty way you could, either. You may be the big dog, here and now, but just you wait until we all get back to the Center, you—uneducated ape!”

Corbett called over a pair of troopers to see to strapping the infuriated scientist safely into the war saddle. Taking one of the spare sabers, he had the men buckle it in place on the mule’s harness, then loaded and armed a pistol, before slipping it into Braun’s empty belt holster.

“Dr. Braun, you may say anything you wish of me to the Director or anyone else. Those who know me—and you— well will recognize them for the peevish lies they are. Your difficulties with Dr. Arenstein are between the two of you, have been for centuries, and I want no part of them or of her or of you, once this present mess is concluded. If I am an uneducated ape to you, Doctor, you are to me an overeducated ass and utterly despicable. Despite that, I wish you sincerely the same luck I just wished the troopers.”

Late in the afternoon, as the blaze of sun was just touching the western horizon, the van debouched into a small valley bisected by a broad but shallow stream. Milling on the near side of the stream was a mob—it could not, by even the loosest interpretation of the word, be called a formation—of at least two hundred Ganiks. All were, with their beards and uncropped hair and furs, as shaggy as their runty ponies, and even from more than fifty meters, the combined stench of them was gaggingly indescribable.

As the veteran troopers rapidly formed their wedge for the charge, the Ganiks began to screech and shriek and howl like the wild beasts they shamed in both filth and savagery. They lengthened their mob along the stream, readied darts and waved rude clubs, few seemed to bear swords or real spears.

At the point of the wedge, Corbett remarked to Gumpner, “The bastards are making their line shallower, which will make it easier for us to break through them. If they had any sense, they’d have massed on the other side of that brook, and let the water absorb some of our impetus before we struck them. We’ll commence firing at twenty-five meters, concentrating around that big, red-haired bastard there, the one on the piebald pony, with the old saber; the brook looks shallowest directly behind him, and that’s where we’ll break through them.”

“Sir,” said the stocky sergeant, a bit hesitantly, “not that I mean to question the major’s order, but…”

Corbett smiled and turned in his saddle to lay a hand on the bridle arm of the graying noncom. “Then don’t do so, Gump. You’ve been given your orders, you have your responsibilities. Cash and I will fight the holding action… but I deeply appreciate the offer, old friend.

“Now, are we all formed up? Then let’s go !”

Corbett had been secretly worried that the troop horse he now rode might panic when he began to fire a pistol from off its back, but the beast behaved well enough, galloping flat out with bared teeth that bespoke some measure of war training.

The Ganiks had seemingly expected their prey to try to bypass them, ride around them, not charge directly into the thickest part of the mob. Nor had they expected the firesticks of which their ancient legends told to begin to kill at such long range. As the wedge scattered the mostly riderless ponies, trampling the victims of their fusillade and then splashing through the stream, precious few of the flanking Ganiks were close enough to do more than cast darts and howl in frustrated fury, so the wedge rode on unscathed.

They had time to climb the farther hill and start through the narrow defile at its summit before the bemused Ganiks had regrouped and set about a pursuit, in numbers now reduced by a good quarter part of the original mob.

Corbett had several of his best shots dismount and clamber to positions high up the two walls of the gap and set the rest to dragging up any debris they could find to partially block that gap and provide cover for the other riflemen. While they frantically labored, he rode on to make certain that Gumpner’s party was safely on its way.

And it was well that he did so. He came up behind the tiny column in time to pistol down two Ganiks who, afoot, had just succeeded in dragging from his saddle a wounded trooper and were about to slash his throat. By the time Gumpner and two troopers came pounding back, sabers out and ready, Corbett was off his horse and helping the wounded man to remount.

Jay Corbett gasped, “Damn it, Sergeant, keep this column moving forward, southward; the tail end will just have to look out for itself. The amount of time that a bare score of us can expect to hold that mob back there is very limited, and you and yours are no longer strong enough to stand and fight them. You’ve precious little chance as it is now—don’t lessen even that!”

He remounted, rendered an abbreviated horseman’s salute, then reined his armored horse about and rode back toward the booming cracks of his men’s rifles, where they were holding the mouth of the gap against vastly more numerous forces.