Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

“About time!” Ord’s voice rang in my earpiece.

“Sergeant Major?” I looked away from Jude, toward the tree line.

Leaves parted, twelve feet above the ground, as a hundred crimson snouts scented blood.

The Marini carnosaurs stalked into the meadow, crushing saplings and tearing tree limbs like spider webs. Black-armored charioteers clung to the two-wheeled carts that the monsters dragged behind them on rigid booms. Infantry, rifles at port arms, trotted in the chariots’ wake.

The carnosaurs stalked only as fast as a man jogs, heads turning left and right. The pins that had clamped shut the iron muzzles now dangled from chains beneath the animals’ jaws, and the beasts flashed dripping teeth, and bellowed as they advanced.

“Wronnkk!”

No wonder Casus called them wronks.

The Slug Heavys lifted fire from us, shifted, and rounds began falling among the onrushing chariots. The respite we got was the first dividend paid by the suddenly-two-pronged human attack.

My clenched jaw relaxed one millimeter, and I stopped aiming at Jude’s duckbill.

We were upwind of the onrushing chariots, but Rosy reared and squealed when she heard the wronks bellow.

I reined her in, hard, until she settled and stood fast.

Howard’s mount squealed and reared as it dashed alongside Rosy and me, while Howard clung to his saddle.

Howard said, “This ends the debate.”

“Debate?” I said. About my leadership abilities?

“Whether tyrannosaurid carnosaurs were predators or scavengers.” He pointed at the advancing chariots. “They’re too slow to chase down prey.”

“They look plenty predatory to me.” With their lumpy red heads, slobbering jaws, and teeth like rusty cutlery, they looked as unfriendly as eight-ton buzzards.

“Mean isn’t necessarily predatory. Big, ugly, and grumpy scares competition away from a carcass.”

The first chariots reached the Slugs’ flank.

Green-dripping armor crunched, then flew like crawfish husks. The carnosaurs rolled up the Slugs’ lines, open-mouthed heads scooping like bulldozer blades. Warriors that didn’t get bitten in half got trampled beneath clawed feet bigger than they were.

The Casuni pulled back before the wronks, but humans and duckbills that moved too slow got mangled as thoroughly as the Slugs. So did Marini infantry who came within range of their own carnosaurs’ jaws. The beasts were more unguided missiles than smart bombs.

As more Slugs turned to battle the Marini attack, the Slug ranks broke, and Casus’s cavalry were able to slash through formations, pistols ablaze. Then the cavalry reloaded, wheeled, and slashed through again.

The only things that slowed the plodding wronks were themselves. Every few seconds, one would pause, drop its great head like a power shovel’s bucket, and tear at a downed duckbill, a human corpse, or a limp Slug.

The halted wronk’s charioteer would jerk the chains joined to the rings mounted in the beast’s skull, and it would growl, raise up, and stalk forward, devouring the next animate object that came within reach.

Within fifteen minutes, the Slugs withdrew. I had never seen Slugs withdraw.

Marini infantry trailed after the chariots, shooting or stabbing anything that twitched.

The chariot force had split as it advanced, bypassing and ignoring us, and the few Casuni cavalry around us. So a column led by chariots had swept by our position on the upslope side, and another on the downslope, isolating us in between.

Across the barrier created by the advancing Marini infantry, Casus looked at me, twirled his sword above his head, and pumped his fist.

I saluted him.

Ten Marini chariots, these pulled by duckbills smaller than the ones the Casuni rode, peeled off the upslope column, and rumbled toward the four of us, low-drifting gunsmoke swirling around their wheels.

The chariots wove around heaped Slug carcasses and dead Casuni duckbills. As the chariots drew closer to us, they swung wide around a wronk bleeding buckets from a neck wound. The beast lay on its side, its flank heaving, its chariot overturned behind it, with a wheel still revolving slowly in the wind. The monster lunged at the Marini as they passed, and a Marini fired a pistol round into the dying monster’s eye.

Ord said, “Sir, those chariots are coming after us.”

“Yeah. But why?”

The chariots approached in a line, then circled the four of us, while black-armored marksmen in nine of the chariots aimed outsized pistols at us.

When the chariots had surrounded us, they stopped, their duckbills panting.

We raised our rifles, and I felt the selector switch to be sure I was on full automatic. The four of us were outnumbered, but hardly outgunned. We could easily have mowed down the lot of them, while their handful of rounds would have pinged off our Eternads like beebe shot.

But the rest of the Marini army, not to mention their monsters, were more than we could handle.

I said into my mike, “Hold fire.”

The brown-helmeted passenger in the tenth chariot stood, his shoulders crooked, and laid his gloved hands on the chariot’s woven wood rail. He blinked his eye, and stroked the black silk patch that covered the other. “May I invite you four to accompany us, Jason?”

“What if we say no, Bassin?”

“You wouldn’t get your questions answered, would you? And neither would I.” He craned his neck, visored his hand above his helmet, and scanned the smoke-stained sky. “Where is that marvelous insect of yours? Where did your weapons and armor come from? Where did you come from?”

I glanced at Casus, who eyed us across the battlefield through his spyglass. “You may have trouble kidnapping us if Casus wants us to stay. He’s curious about us, too.”

Bassin shook his head. “Casus knows the law. Someone else outbid him fairly for you, and for your goods. Not even a Clan head who hates the Marini will interfere with the movements of another’s property.”

“Another? You. The law protects you, even though you Marini sleep with the devil?”

Bassin rolled his eyes. “Yes, even though.” He sighed, then motioned to the riflemen in the chariots to lower their weapons.

I nodded to Ord, Jude, and Howard, and they followed suit.

Bassin reached inside his tunic, withdrew a folded parchment, then held it over his head in two hands. He pointed at two of his riflemen, who nodded. “As for kidnapping”—Bassin tore the parchment in two, and let it slip away on the wind—“I owned no slaves before today, and by this Act of Emancipation Before Witnesses, I hold none once again. Jason, you and your friends may accept my invitation — or do as you please.”

Jude’s whisper sang in my earpiece, as he pointed at the soldiers who still surrounded us. “Some invitation. He’s a phony.”

Howard whispered, “But I’m curious.”

Ord said, “Your call, Sir. The devil you know, or the devil you don’t know.”

THIRTY-THREE

JUDE WAS RIGHT. Bassin was a phony who had fooled me once. If he fooled me twice, shame on me. But Bassin had also saved me — and the people I was responsible for — once. And that made me as curious as it made Howard. Curiosity won.

I turned to the other three Earthlings, and waved them toward Bassin. “Let’s go sleep with the devil we don’t know.”

I patted Rosy good-bye, then the four of us got loaded one-each into chariots, and Bassin’s little caravan bounced downslope toward the river.

The Marini chariots were built of light woven reeds, for speed. Their solid-axle suspensions were for durability, not comfort.

I clutched the side rails as we bounded along, and shouted to my driver, “Why do you carry a marksman along in each chariot? He can’t hit anything from a platform this unstable.”