“ARROW!” BULAN SHOUTED.
But even as they yelled, they knew.
The arrows were all gone. They had used up their entire supply, including the twelve quivers they had bought to resell at Reygar, where white arrows made with Aqron elm timber sold for a pretty premium.
A deadly silence fell over the camp.
It wasn’t a silence, strictly speaking.
The wordless roar of the attacking deadwalker hordes was still frighteningly loud, filling the desert and hanging over the camp like the billowing dust cloud, which now equaled any firestorm Bulan had seen.
But in the camp itself, there was silence.
The crossbows had fallen quiet.
The whickering arrows were all finished.
And none of the travelers had anything to say.
Bulan lowered their crossbows, feeling the leaden numbness seep through their arms and back and even their four legs.
They had put all their effort and concentration into firing without a minute’s respite, doing the work of not just four militia at once, but four times four. The Vanjhani did not stop fighting until their enemy was down—or they themselves were down. That was the Vanjhani way.
The enemy was down and yet not down.
Bulan alone must have shot a few thousand deadwalkers. Their crossbows were twice as large as the crossbow most mortals could handle, and the arrows proportionally thicker and longer. Each arrow shot by their bows had downed four or a half dozen deadwalkers at a time, and they had tumbled like twelvepins when Bulan fired their two crossbows at once, aiming at a mass of oncoming deadwalkers a dozen yards wide or more. The enemy had fallen in greater numbers than Bulan had ever downed before, even in the worst bandit raids they had encountered some fifty odd years ago, back when they were just another Vanjhani mercenary for hire, traveling as bodyguard to a rich Janshswarthian merchant.
And still they were coming.
Charging at the camp like an unstoppable force.
“Seven hundred yards and closing!” the lookouts shouted.
Like a river of mad blood.
This was the stuff of myth and legend, come alive.
The only problem was, there were no stone gods in this one.
Just regular mortals.
Thirty-five thousand besieged souls, every one of them under Bulan’s watch and care.
Only about four-thousand-odd were trained militia, including the reserves.
Perhaps fifteen thousand more could fight well enough to defend themselves and their families. Not soldier smart in battle, but enough to hold their own against evenly matched odds.
The rest, some fifteen thousand or so, were old, infirm, sick, injured, very young, or not reliable enough in a real fight. Sure, they could be pressed to fight in a pinch—when the chips were down, everybody had to fight—but they wouldn’t survive against strong, determined, able fighters.
So Bulan had maybe twenty thousand halfway decent fighters, only a fraction of which they would want to watch their backs in a pitched battle.
And none of them were equipped, trained, or prepared mentally or physically to fight a thing out of myth and legend.
Definitely not deadwalkers.
Why, Stone Father prove me wrong, I don’t know ifI’mprepared to fight deadwalkers.
“Six hundred yards and closing!” cried the lookouts.
What the fuck were they to do?
“Master?” asked one of the Vanjhani near Bulan. Subed, the colonel of the militia. Both their narrow faces looked worn and harried—almost fearful, if Vanjhani could ever look fearful. They still held their empty crossbows, raised as if planning to throw them at the oncoming deadwalkers.
Fat lot of good that would do.
“Five hundred yards and closing!”
The deadwalkers’ attack, finally allowed to roll on uninterrupted by arrow volleys, was surging across the red sand. The first deadwalkers were more clearly visible now, their crazed skeletal faces, bugged-out eyes, and spindly limbs rendering the nightmare all too real. As more and more emerged from the billowing clouds of sand dust, Bulan goggled. Their numbers were staggering, as was their frothing hunger-lust. It was as if all the million or two arrows fired by Bulan and his people made not the slightest bit of difference.
Makes sense, they thought. If those are deadwalkers, as they appear to be, and if the myths and legends are right, then they don’t have the capacity to think rationally anymore. All they can smell and see is live flesh and hot blood. A great fat supply of it. They’re not living soldiers, who would have been daunted by the sheer scale of slaughter of their comrades, if not scared shitless. They’re just corpses. Moving, hungry corpses, but corpses nevertheless. They can’t feel fear, they can’t feel emotions, they can’t feel, period. They just want. Flesh. Blood. To feed.
At least they could be downed. The arrow volleys had proven that. And they were fairly easy to kill—at least at a distance. The arrows had torn through their soft, putrid bodies like a sharp blade through fatty meat.
“Four hundred!”
A thought struck Bulan.
“Poles,” they said, mostly to themself.
The thought took root.
“Poles,” they said aloud to the next in command.
Subed stared with four uncomprehending eyes. “Sir?”
“Poles,” Bulan repeated, then turned and held up their hands to draw the attention of the dazed militia. “POLES! FETCH POLES!”
Their coordinated voices boomed across the circle, carrying to the neighboring circles as well.
The order was passed on like an echo down a subterranean cavern.
“Three hundred!” the lookouts shouted.
Every wagon had at least one pole. They were essential for correcting the course of the wagon when the uks team veered too far to one side or to help maneuver through the narrow canyons of Jardakh. Most wagons had two and some, like the Vanjhani, had four. What was the point of having four arms if you didn’t use them when they were needed most?
Bulan pulled out their poles, passing them from hand to hand until they had one in each of their four fists. They held them high, over the heads of the other militia as well as the other Vanjhani—being tall for one’s race had its advantages—and looked around the circle.
“Two hundred!” the lookouts called.
Several hundred sweat-limned, scared faces looked back at Bulan.
“Point, thrust, withdraw,” they said, matching action to words with all four poles at once. “Point! Thrust! Withdraw!” they repeated loudly, repeating the actions as well to make sure everyone understood.
Eyes lit up with comprehension. Voices were already passing on the order.
“One hundred!” the lookouts called hoarsely, some sounding panicked, others simply despairing.
The sound of poles knocking against wagons resounded through the circle and the camp. Everyone was glad to be doing something other than simply gawking at the oncoming flood of certain death.
Bulan crouched, bunching their powerful legs and back, and leaped over the interlocked tongues of the wagons. They landed with a puff of sand outside the outermost circle.
“Fifty yards and closing fast!” the lookouts screeched, sounding nearly hysterical now.
The other Vanjhani immediately imitated his example. Other militia did the same, stepping out of the Perfect Circle, exposing themselves to the oncoming enemy without anything to protect them from the ravenous teeth and clawing fingers but the five-yard-long wooden poles they carried.
Forty yards.
“Vanjhani!” Bulan cried, using the deep sonorous tones that their people used at such times.
“VANJHANI!” came the answering response from three hundred and fifty pairs of throats around the Perfect Circle.
Thirty yards.
They were joined by other war cries and clan calls from the various races, castes, and denominations among the militia, as well as the journeymen travelers.
Most used the simple appeal to the oldest, greatest gods of all in the world.
“Stone Gods!”
Twenty.
Bulan could see the madness in those eye pits now, the bloodshot—or blood-filled—eyes gaping wider than any living person’s because of the decayed muscles and depleted flesh. Many were little more than skeletons with rags of skin and flesh hanging from their legs and torsos, while a few were puffed-up bags of bloated skin, heaving and mottled with mortal injuries and missing chunks or limbs.
Ten.
The air to either side of Bulan bristled with poles now.
They could feel the pounding of hundreds of thousands of running feet even through the sand. They had thought the sand absorbed all impact and sound. Apparently, it wasn’t true. Put enough bodies and weight and move them fast enough, and you could feel the sand shifting and trembling under your feet. Not the shivering, thudding impact that horses and dromads made on the packed sand of the cities, or the booming reverberation of a charging cavalry force on solid land. But still enough to be felt.
Bulan aimed each of their poles at four targets, crouching low and bending forward, bracing themself for the impact that would come. They hoped the non-Vanjhani would do the same. This was not a fighting technique or weapon they had trained for, but it was not all that different from fighting charging infantry with pikes, and they had done a couple of drills with poles during the militia training, even though they had no pikes, nor expected to ever need any. Who charged full tilt in the desert, under a brain-blasting sun? Not even the most desperate bandits were that insane.
Then the first of the raving hordes came within pole reach and Bulan had no time to think of anything but the task at hand.