Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

Their reply, transmitted by the eumale, was short and to the point: no.

"I have no time for foolishness!" whispered Guo.

"It is our duty," replied the eumale. "Besides, with two maces you will be shieldless. We will protect you from the Utuku pipers."

Again, astonishment. It was Kiktu custom for a mother's consorts to serve as her personal squad of pipers. But it was an entirely ceremonial custom. Mothers did not fight in battles, and, in any event, the weak siphons of males could not expel darts with any force and distance.

She was about to enforce her command physically (or try-the agile males could have easily evaded her clumsy grabs) when the Utuku vanguard began entering the clearing. All thought fled in a rush of rage. Her every attention was focused on her tympani, waiting for the signal to spring the ambush.

The fabled Utuku discipline, she saw, had already become eroded by their short contact with the swamp. The Utuku warriors lurched into the clearing in ragged files, swearing, covered with mud and slime up to their underbellies. Their heavy armor had, indeed, been a liability in the swamp. And Guo saw that many had lost their shields. (Kiktu warriors, like those of most tribes, did not use shields; preferring, instead, the greater finesse of the fork.)

The clearing was soon packed with Utuku. Battle leaders were attempting to bring order and discipline back to what was now not much more than a mob-with only limited success.

And then, before the Utuku leaders could overcome the chaos and confusion, Kopporu issued the first of her battle hoots. The Utuku were suddenly attacked-from the other side of the clearing, the side nearest the plain.

It was a suicide mission, Guo realized. Only a handful of Kiktu were conducting the attack-more could not have waited in ambush while the Utuku passed by them.

They would not survive long, and Guo paid silent homage to their honor. But they had succeeded in carrying out Kopporu's stratagem. The Utuku warriors, hearing the sound of unexpected combat to their rear, had all spun around and were now facing south, away from the mass of the Kiktu forces who were still lurking in ambush.

The Utuku battle leaders realized almost at once that they had been duped. But it was too late-too late by far. Guo almost whistled with glee, watching one of the Utuku drummers pound on a mud-splattered drum. The soggy signal could not even be heard above the hoots of the confused Utuku warriors.

Kopporu's next signal came. Guo almost lunged out into the clearing, before she realized that she had not heard the signal for the battlemothers to advance.

A mass of Kiktu and Opoktu warriors (and swamp-dwellers, Guo noted with surprise) flooded out of the cycads surrounding the clearing. From everywhere except the very northern edge of the clearing, where Guo and the other battlemother still lay in waiting.

Kopporu's plan was flawless, Guo saw. The Utuku had now lost every trace of rank, order and discipline. They were rapidly being crushed into the center of the clearing, into a struggling mass of flesh. And toward the north, toward an innocent looking patch of cycads where there seemed to be no Kiktu warriors.

They were being forced toward Guo and Loapo, after being compressed into a formation which was ideal for the simple tactics of battlemothers.

Crush. Crush. Crush. Crush. Crush.

The signal finally came, and Guo surged forward like a titan, two maces held high.

Later, she herself remembered almost nothing of the battle that followed. Except, oddly, the role of her male companions. Perhaps it was because of the oddity of this new thing which had come into her life. Whatever the reason, there was some detached part of her mind which noted (with great surprise) that the childcluster was quite effective in protecting her from Utuku pipers.

True, the Utuku pipers were at a great disadvantage-squeezed, as they were, into a struggling mass of warriors. Still, there were many who managed to free themselves enough to raise blowpipe to siphon. But few of them were able to fire an effective shot, for they were almost instantly the target of a volley of small darts blown from the malebond riding high above the battle, atop Guo's cowl. It was the eumale, Guo noted, who always called the command for a target.

True, none of the darts carried the same force as a dart blown from a female piper. But her male preconsorts were amazingly accurate in their aim-and there were always six darts in that counter-volley. Guo saw more than one Utuku piper hoot with agony, its eyes a sudden ruin.

Nevertheless, she was struck by several darts. Two of them caused painful wounds within her mantle. But her eyes were never hit-and Guo, fighting without a shield, had fully expected to be blind within a few minutes. She had not cared, for she thought it was to be her death battle.

For one of the males atop her cowl, it was. She glimpsed an Utuku dart sailing above her cowl and heard a sudden hoot of pain. Thereafter, there were only five darts in the counter-volleys.

One of her unknown future husbands, she realized, was dead or badly injured.

Of the rest of that battle, Guo remembered nothing to the day of her death. She heard about it, of course, many times. Within not so many years, the Battle of the Clearing would become a stock in trade of chantresses across half a continent. They would tell, in traditional cadence and meter, of the day the horrible Utuku were hammered into a mass of slugflesh, until their bodies could not be distinguished from the muck of the swamp. The chantresses would even claim that, to this day, the blood of the Utuku still seeps from the soil of that clearing. Guo's Clearing, as they called it. Or, simply: the Crushing Place.

(It was not true, of course. The scavengers of the swamp are extraordinarily efficient. Within a few eightdays, there was little trace of the Utuku disaster in the clearing, beyond a few scraps of utterly inedible weapons and armor. But who would ever go into the swamp to see for themselves? The chantresses continued the tale, and were never challenged.)

When the signal came to disengage, Guo did not hear it. Only the insistent rapping on her cowl by her malecluster finally brought her back to consciousness from the mists of her battle fury.

"We have been ordered to withdraw," said the eumale.

Guo stared at the few Utuku survivors who were still in the clearing. All of them were maimed and crippled. She yearned to end their suffering, and then charge forth into the plain itself to continue the slaughter. But Kopporu's stern discipline restrained her. She turned and entered the cycads to the north.

Now that the battle was over, exhaustion threatened to overcome her. Exhaustion, and misery. After hours, the kuoptu which had flooded her mantle faded, replaced by brown grief. The same color, she noted dully, dappled the mantles of all the warriors within eyesight. The Kiktu had inflicted a terrible defeat upon the Utuku in the clearing. But they knew that, even at that moment, their tribe was being butchered and enslaved on the plain to the south.

Guo was so tired that she did not even wonder where she was going. At first, her vague supposition was that Kopporu was leading them to the east, to a part of the swamp from which they could issue forth in a hopeless attempt to rescue the tribe's mothers.

She held that thought for some time. It was difficult to determine direction in the gloom beneath the overhanging cycads. And there were more than enough dangers in the swamp to keep her mind concentrated on the few goa ahead of her. Patches of bottomless mud; clumps of dangerous-looking plants, their purple spines glistening with what might well be poison; predators-small predators, for the large ones had fled the sound of battle-but even the small predators of the swamp could be deadly: she saw the bodies of several gana, and one warrior, covered with venomous slugs and snails.