The sky brightened for an instant, well before dawn.
It was a flash of blue and green, lighting the sky to the watery horizon, and many seconds later rolling thunder filled Kati's ears, startling her horse to a gallop. She reined him in and looked back toward the mountain peaks to see a shimmering green tendril of color stretching high into the sky, as if a meteor had fallen, fading rapidly until nothing was there. The eastern horizon beyond the peaks did not yet show the first red hues of morning, and the stars still twinkled, Tengri-Nayon outshining them all.
Kati urged the horse to a trot. She'd run him the entire length of the plateau, and mountain horse or not, he was now tiring. The sky was paling as she passed the trail leading down into the canyon where Festival was held, and she wondered if it would happen again; if a little Tumatsin girl would ever again receive her first horse at that place.
An hour later, there was heat on the back of her neck; the orb of Tengri-Khan had now risen above the peaks. She wanted to feel the heat on her face, and twisted in the saddle to look eastward.
And was nearly blinded by a series of three, closely spaced flashes of light coming down from the depths of space to strike beyond the mountains. The visor of her helmet darkened, so that there were only the flashes of green and blue, and Tengri-Khan was gone.
The thunder came with the return of her sight of Shanji's sun, long rolling peals of sound that seemed to surround her, and finally she understood. Weapons of light on Mandughai's orbiting ships; they'd opened fire on ground targets or flyers.
The attack had begun.
Her horse was exhausted, breathing heavily, but responded to the press of her knees and was trotting again along the broadening trail into a shallow valley of dry grass and over a hill, the sea close, now, and spreading north and south from her.
More. A little more. You're a good horse, a strong horse.
She topped a second hill and saw the border: the fence, the little buildings spaced along it, figures scurrying like ants in confusion. Much closer, a rider was heading towards her, a trooper in helmet and armor. When he came closer, she saw he was Moshuguang, one of the elite. She charged towards him and he turned around, heading west, slowing his mount until she'd caught up with him. The flanks of their horses collided as they rode close together at a slow gallop, shouting.
"They were moving before dawn! The nearest ordus had been evacuated, and they burned them to the ground! The Tumatsin home guard has fallen back to a point just north of us, and we can reach them within half an hour if we ride hard! I sent most of the unit ahead!"
"Are you the commander?"
"Yes! The others are not to open fire until we reach them! Mengmoshu's orders!"
"You heard from him?"
"He tried to send out a flyer to give us air cover, but it was shot down from space! He wanted to know if you'd arrived!"
The fence was coming up fast and men were leaping to their horses, trotting them through the gate and forming up on the other side.
Kati pointed. "How many here?"
"Fifty! The rest should be getting into position now, on a hill where we can shoot down on them!"
Her horse was wheezing, and she wondered how much further she could push him. "My animal's exhausted! I need a fresh mount!"
"I'm sorry. The spare mounts went with the others! It's not far now!"
They slowed when they reached the gate, and she felt her horse falter, agonizing for rest, its sides heaving. "One minute! Give me one minute!"
She vaulted from the horse before it had stopped, and grabbed its bridle. Good horse. Strong horse. Hold still, now.
The animal's mouth was open, sucking air, thick tears like mucus beneath its eyes. She did not draw from the gong-shi-jie, but used the light of Tengri-Khan, energy flowing from the crown of her aura and out through hands stroking a muzzle, massaging a neck, shoulders, caressing flanks. She released the bridle, but the little horse stood firm, still panting, and groaning when he first felt the heat from her hands. She worked the legs, then the ankles, spending an extra few seconds there, then ran both hands along his belly. The horse coughed, then sneezed and whinnied, shaking his head.
A little further, and you rest, and there will be more of this for you.
She cleaned the mucus from his eyes, and held his muzzle with both hands. You're a Tumatsin horse, now! You carry me fast!
The horse rolled his eyes, and nickered.
Kati vaulted into the saddle. "Point the way!" she shouted, and the horses bolted together, heading north. She sprinted to come alongside the commander. Laser rifles clattered against the chest armor of helmeted troops, but something was missing.
"Where are your bows?!" she shouted. "You have only swords and laser weapons!"
"Useless!" he shouted back. "They're sure to be armored, and arrows will be ineffective, even in close!"
It made her angry. Hadn't Mengmoshu told him anything? The battle was to be as traditional as possible; that was the agreement. Flyers would be met by fire from space, lasers met by lasers, leaving only the bow and the sword to honor the ancient ways. And if—
A sudden, horrible thought came to her. Lasers meet lasers. And her people, the Tumatsin, had them, a few stolen from the Emperor's troops when her mother was a girl, like the weapon Da had hidden beneath the stove. If the home guard had them, they would be used, and how would Mandughai's forces react? One laser burst, or four or five, to be answered by a thousand?
The Change intensified within her in an instant. Her horse seemed to sense it and ran like the wind as the first growl escaped her. They ran over undulating hills of dry grass, and in the distance was a plume of black smoke. Waves crashed on sandy beaches less than a kilometer to their left, and riders were racing along water's edge, heading north. Tumatsin riders.
How many home guardsmen can we count on?" she shouted.
The commander narrowed his eyes, noting The Change. "Less than a hundred. We've only heard from the northern ordus, and there aren't many. I don't know if the rest are even moving yet. They might keep their forces close to home!"
Let there be no lasers among them, she thought. She looked west, but the riders along the beach had disappeared. For some reason, that bothered her. There was a kind of presence, a tension, tugging at her mind, but she had no time to pursue the source of it.
The hill ahead of her gleamed as if covered with crystals, a long line of them just beneath the brow, and then she saw horses tethered in a great mass at the base of the hill. Troopers, hundreds of them, lay close together, sighting their rifles from the top of the hill to a target beyond it. The line stretched for a hundred meters, and a man was running down the hill towards them as they came to a halt and dismounted.
"They're coming in! The Tumatsin are just sitting there, waiting for them. They don't stand a chance!"
The troopers who'd arrived with Kati were running up the hill to find places in the line of defenders. Kati followed the commander and his subordinate, taking bow and quiver, but leaving her sword on the saddle. They climbed to the brow of the hill, and stood behind the line of prostrate troopers to look north.
Below them, by fifty meters to the left, four lines of mounted Tumatsin waited quietly at the edge of an alluvial fan formed by a small river which was now little more than a creek running into the sea. The sea was a hundred meters to their left, and the sandy beach only meters away. Soft sand, she noted, and difficult for a horse to run in.
The alluvial fan reached east to a cliff of sandstone running north from near her position, connected to it by a ridge. North of the fan was a broad, grassy slope leading up to a plateau, and if there was grass there it was now totally obscured by the wave of enemy soldiers descending it on foot and horseback, a solid mass of fighting men with gleaming armor, flowing like water. They came forward leisurely, like a crowd of invading pests bent on destroying everything in their path. It was Mandughai's horde, highly trained, bioengineered for war, and facing them were perhaps a hundred fishermen and herders of sheep, who had never known battle.
The invaders' infantry was crowded to the front, cavalry at the back, and more horses appeared at the edge of the plateau as Kati watched in horror. The cavalry moved down the slope, and laterally as the first infantry reached the soft earth of the alluvial fan. The cavalry was forming a crescent behind the wedge of infantry, reaching to the cliff, moving into position to charge the right flank of the defenders, so painfully few in number.
The Moshuguang commander ran along the line behind her, repeating his orders. "At first laser-burst—fire at will. At first laser-burst—fire at will."
He was meters from her when Kati stepped between two men, and stood on the brow of the hill in full view of the invaders. A trooper grabbed at her ankle. "Get down! They'll see you!" he whispered.
"Let them," she growled. She looked down at the mounted Tumatsin, and one of them saw her. Even at fifty meters, she saw him smile, and then he took something from a saddle scabbard, something that glinted metallically in the morning light. The other men in the front line of Tumatsin did the same. The things she saw were not swords. They were laser rifles. It was as if the sight of her had been a signal to the men. The one smiled at her, then raised his rifle, carefully aimed it, as did his comrades, and together they fired a single volley into the ranks of the invaders, now only two hundred meters away from them.
The return fire was instantaneous, and blinding, a thousand lasers aimed at the men and their horses, and they all went down in smouldering messes of burned flesh.
The rest of the Tumatsin turned their horses and fled, heading south along the beach and out of Kati's sight.
"FIRE!" screamed the Moshuguang commander behind her.
Bursts of laser fire streamed down from the hill and into the ranks of the invaders' infantry, bursts accurately aimed by hundreds of the Moshuguang elite. Fierce-faced men went down, others staggered backwards against their fellows in surprise, and the wedge of Mandughai's infantry faltered, but only for a moment. Now there was a chorus of howls that echoed from the cliff. The infantry were coming on again, at a run, firing as they came, and the line of cavalry was circling to get around them.
One burst of laser fire, met by thousands. Kati looked down at the smoke and steam coming from what had once been Tumatsin men, lying there now alone, abandoned by their companions.
Kati felt rage, felt it rise in her like an animal, a cold, killing thing. Laser fire still tore into the invaders, but now they were moving fast and spreading out, firing as they came. Kati had not left her exposed position and now flashes of fire burst rock and soil, moving up the hill towards her. Men fired from horseback, and she heard an agonized cry from her left. There was no time for consideration of any act, no time to debate the fairness of it. There were only the invaders who had come to kill her people and burn their homes.
Mandughai's infantry mass flowed towards them, breaking into two fingers like a hand opening, one heading towards where the surviving Tumatsin had fled, the other charging the hill, firing wildly to provide cover for the circling cavalry. Their howl was continuous and shrill, like wounded shizi; short, stocky men with red, blazing eyes in dark faces, canines like tusks thrust down from their open mouths. They came on like a wave, and the Moshuguang cut them down, but as their ranks thinned, each man ran a zig-zag path, making a difficult target. Now infantry were on the hill, charging up towards her like mindless beasts. Laser fire splattered the ground right in front of Kati, and she screamed, a horrible, guttural thing, holding out clenched fists in front of her, watching them turn green in the sudden blaze of light from her eyes.
And the light of creation followed those eyes.
A soldier of Mandughai raised his rifle and aimed it at her, and there was a flash like purple lightning, leaving nothing of him there. The atmosphere in front of her ignited in a wall of violet, red and green, and she felt white heat on her face, smelled singed hair, scorched leather. She pushed, and the roiling wall of gas, burning like a sun, swept down the hillside like a great wave, igniting the air as it went, rolling out onto the alluvial fan with a mind-numbing roar to drown out the screams of men and horses standing in its path. A column of burning nitrogen and oxygen rose upward with tornadic force, towering far up into a great anvil, but the sound of the lightning strokes within it could not be heard as the roiling wave moved on, scouring the fan to a fine surface of glassy pebbles mixed with the ashes of flesh and bone, and up the grassy slope beyond. The cavalry remaining there turned, and fled, but for many it was too late as the wave overtook them, reducing their bodies to elementary particles.
Kati screamed again, closing her eyes, the sparkling, purple matrix in her mind opening to receive the light.
And the wave was gone, leaving behind a fluorescent glow of green and red that lingered there for a moment, while lightning thundered in the great cloud overhead.
It began to rain, a light sprinkle at first, then a torrent, falling in sheets before her over the area of her destruction. Kati kept her eyes closed, and felt a kind of peace from the sound of the rain, but then someone called out.
"They're moving east! All cavalry! They're heading east from the plateau! They've broken off the attack!"
Kati's eyes snapped open. "They'll join the force attacking the city! Get after them! KILL THEM ALL!"
There was terror in the eyes of those who dared to look at her, and then they were all running down the hill to mount frightened horses jerking hard on their tethers, rearing and shrieking. Kati was the last to leave the hill. She'd seen a group of riders top a rise near the beach, and watched until she recognized them as Tumatsin, perhaps the same group of cowards who'd fled the action. Now she ran hard to catch up. A trooper held a fresh mountain horse for her, her saddle and swords in place. She reached it as the Tumatsin drew near, and she saw her old horse grazing contentedly nearby.
She vaulted into the saddle, knocking mounted troopers aside to ride at the Tumatsin. They halted when she screamed at them.
"YOU! I saw you down there! You ran at the first burst of fire! You left your comrades to die!"
One man stepped his horse forward as she reined in, her Changeling face flushed and gaunt with fury.
"NO! You don't understand! It was a trap! We were to provoke them, get them to chase us along the beach, stringing them out along the narrow strip of firm ground this side of the beach!" He pointed back towards the sea. "Short, box canyons all along there, our people hidden, waiting for them to nearly pass, then charging out to cut their ranks to pieces we could deal with! Everyone's down there, but I've called them out! They're right behind me!"
"Everyone? How many is that?"
"As many as we could muster. I've seen what you've done. As few as we are, we're all ready to fight for you! We couldn't be sure you'd come! We planned our own defense, and those who died knew the certainty of it! They knew you were here! They died for you!"
She could not speak, for her eyes had detected movement beyond these men, riders appearing at points along the last hills leading down to the sea. They came over the hills from ascents of steep canyons, riders in single file from countless points south as far as she could see. As they reached flat ground, they galloped to join lines, trickles streaming into a growing mass of cavalry until the roar of hoofbeats came to her ears, louder and louder. They streamed over the hills like an army of ants, more trickles coming from the beach to join them until the grass was covered with a black mass of riders and the ground trembled beneath her feet.
She remembered the Tumatsin propensity for understatement.
The man who'd spoken to her didn't look so afraid, now. "We're here! You tell us what to do, and we'll do it!"
The thunder of approaching horses made it necessary for her to shout. "We follow the force that attacked us, and hit it from behind, destroy it if we can, and continue on to the city! Moshuguang in front, with lasers, but after what we've been though, the weapons will soon be spent!"
She looked at the Moshuguang commander for a reaction, but he only nodded.
"The Moshuguang drop back, and we go in fast with bow and sword! We don't have heavy armor to slow us! We have to move! The enemy isn't waiting for us! Now!"
She turned her horse, and climbed up the hill, the Moshuguang commander going with her, his troops following, then the great mass of Tumatsin home guard riding hard to catch up. They went over the hill, and down through the lifeless area scoured by cosmic light, the towering cloud still above them, still releasing wet mist to cool earth now turned to glass. The devastation she'd wrought continued up the far slope, extending many meters out onto a small plateau and the broad valley heading southeast.
There were bodies there: men and horses, scorched black, the smell of cooked meat in the air. Kati felt sorry for the horses. Further up the valley were a few more bodies of fang-toothed men only partly burned, but dead from shock, their horses gone. She rode hard, outdistancing the Moshuguang with their heavy armor and large horses not bred for the mountains. It wouldn't do, and then she began noticing the curved, sparkling sheets of thin-filmed metal scattered to either side of her, growing in number until she suddenly stopped with the realization of what she was seeing.
"They've taken off their armor so they can ride faster!" she shouted, as the Moshuguang caught up to her. "Take off your armor, and let the Tumatsin get in front! We have to ride even faster now!"
They lost precious minutes in getting the Tumatsin moved to the front, but it was a welcome rest for the horses. Kati reared her horse.
"Now! As fast as we can ride! If we get close enough, use your bows! For SHANJI!"
Her horse leaped forward, and the men howled behind her. They thundered up the valley at a gallop. How long? An hour? Four? The Tumatsin mounts were relatively fresh, and again she was on a mountain horse. She hoped it was like the dear one she'd ridden from the city: a good horse, an incredible horse, willing to put out full effort for her. But for how long?
There were enemy riders along the rims of hills to her left, appearing, then disappearing in groups of four or five. She worried about a trap, if they were being enticed into a flank attack from above, but then she saw the dust ahead, dust kicked up by many riders where the valley began curving south towards the city. She waved an arm and pointed, hoping the others would see the dust and know they were rapidly gaining on the ones they pursued.
Riders within the dust cloud were moving at a trot, and her force was rapidly closing in on them. The sound of Tumatsin hoofbeats was a dull roar in Kati's ears, and she saw a soldier of Mandughai turn in his saddle to see them. He waved his arms wildly, shouting ahead. She was now a hundred meters away, closing fast, and saw a few figures visible in the cloud of dust. The enemy horses were already tiring; their stamina was poor, perhaps due to many weeks in transit to Shanji.
Kati turned to see the front rank of packed Tumatsin only a horse's length behind her. She grabbed bow and quiver, and held them overhead. "Shoot into the cloud! As deep as you can!"
She wrapped the reins loosely around the saddle horn, and made a knot, then nocked an arrow at full gallop, pressing tightly with her knees. She fired her arrow in a high arc, well into the dust cloud, and used her bow to beckon the others to do the same.
Shouts behind her, then a long pause. She nocked another arrow, and drew her bow as there was a commanding shout behind her.
A yellow cloud that was a thousand arrows arched high over her head and fell into the swirling storm of dust.
She heard horses scream, and men, and then another cloud of arrows was on its way, and then another. Kati fired with them as fast as she could, her arrows flying blindly into the cloud without a target. Shower after shower of arrows arched into the cloud, and then dust was swirling around her, her vision suddenly limited. Ahead, a horse had fallen, bristling with arrow shafts. Its tusked rider charged her on foot, sword raised, and she fired her last arrow through his throat.
Fallen horses and men were everywhere, and men stumbling towards both sides in panic. One dared to meet her, sword arm cocked defiantly. She rode him down, but felt the pain of a sword-slash deflected from the saddle to her leg as he fell beneath her. She threw down bow and quiver, unsheathed her sword, and screamed as she raised it.
The sound of her people thrilled her, the screams of a thousand shizi.
She rode into the scattered, fallen soldiers of Mandughai, slashing left and right. Most of them escaped her blade, only to be crushed by the wave of horses behind her, and then suddenly they were running on grass, and the dust was gone. She was ten meters behind the remainder of those who'd escaped her by the sea, and a last volley of arrows from her people shrieked by her head to strike them. Men went down by the dozens, but the others charged on, and now she could see why.
Far ahead, the dome of the Emperor's city glistened, and they were heading down a final slope to the broad valley of plowed earth and barley stubble now covered with horses and struggling men, black smoke belching from the ruins of three downed flyers. As far as she could see, horses were charging each other, men fighting hand-to-hand, blades flashing. She caught up to a dark man who turned to slash at her. She parried his move, then stuck him in the throat and pushed him from his horse with her foot. She was riding among Mandughai's ranks, slashing and parrying, not wondering where her terrible strength came from. Her people were piling in behind her, enveloping the invaders like an amoeba encountering a bacterium, absorbing them, cutting them down, crashing straight through with the weight of their numbers, then charging down the slope to the stubble fields, Kati waving her sword, hoarsely screaming the word that empowered them all.
"SHANJIIII!"