Chapter-1-4

⁠—⁠—⁠— IV ⁠—⁠—⁠—

“Riyaad… Riyaad!”

The wildling Siba called to Guin several times before the leopard-headed warrior took notice. “Siba? What is it?”

The combined army of the Sem had come to one of the few oases in Nospherus, this one several leagues from the Devil’s Anvil. They were camped now on the shore of the broad pool of open water at its center.

“Were you thinking of something, Riyaad?”

The reverie faded from Guin’s bright eyes, and he turned to look at the diminutive warrior.

“Garu’s men who took the children and elderly to the north have returned,” the Sem added.

“I see.”

“Riyaad…” A trace of concern had crept into Siba’s voice. His furry face, looking as much like a monkey’s as a man’s, wore an expression of unease that somehow made him seem all the more like a beast. “Is something wrong, Riyaad?”

“I am sorry, Siba. It is nothing.”

Guin stood up and stretched to his full height, gazing out over the oasis. It was a strangely quiet, almost peaceful, scene. Improbably peaceful—for here was an entire race caught in a last, tragically desperate fight to survive against an enemy many times greater in numbers.

The oasis was a rare, dramatic accent on the landscape of Nospherus. It lay tucked in a gentle depression in the desert, which was otherwise featureless and flat for miles in all directions save for a few meager rocky hills scattered to the north and east. No trees of any great height grew here, but low shrubs and moss were plentiful. They sucked up the moisture from the air around the pool and grew thick at its edges. It was beautiful, an otherworldly mirage, a cool refuge from the glaring sheets of white sand through which the wildling army had been moving.

Nearly five thousand Sem were newly gathered in this mirage-land, clumped loosely into tribal divisions. They clustered by the water’s edge, sipping straight from the pool and stuffing their cheeks with the rich and succulent moss. Once they had quenched their thirst and hunger, they turned their attentions to tending the wounded and fixing broken arrows, mending stone axes, and re-applying poison to their weapons. All were completely engrossed in preparing for the next battle that was sure to come.

“Morale remains high,” remarked Guin.

“Of course, Riyaad,” Siba replied proudly. “The Sem are a race born to fight. No matter what tribe, no matter man or woman, there is none among us who will cease our struggle. Not until we fall dead in battle.”

“That can be a curse as well as a blessing,” Guin observed, too softly for Siba to hear him.

“Nospherus is our Mother,” the little Sem added. He looked over at his fellow Sem milling about among the shrubs at the edge of the oasis as though they had known no other home from the day they were born. “As long as we are in Nospherus, no matter where we go, or what we leave behind, the Sem are not sad. This, all this, is our land. It doesn’t belong to the oh-mu. The Mongauli oh-mu cannot survive here.”

“The humans know this too, but still they come. Siba, humans may fear death, and they may long for their homeland, but sometimes they are driven by something stronger than any of those things.”

“This I cannot understand,” said Siba, shaking his furry head. He looked up to see Rinda approaching, followed closely by Suni. In her hands the princess carried a simple earthenware bowl. She seemed happy that Guin had returned.

“Guin! I brought your supper. I mashed and stewed it myself!” Rinda held the steaming bowl out with no little pride.

The leopard-man thanked her gruffly and took the bowl, using his fingers to scoop the gruel into his mouth.

“Guin, tell me, when do you next leave camp?” Rinda shot a furtive glance over his muscular body as she spoke, looking to see if any new scars had left their tracks there. Guin grunted, too occupied with his food to answer. Rinda rested her hand lightly on the warrior’s elbow. “Guin! I’m part of this army, too, you know. While you’re out there fighting, I’ve been with the Tubai and Rasa women, and they’ve taught me how to boil the poison and make arrows, and how to tell the herbs and mosses that mend wounds. But I want to go with you! If they’d just make me a bow the right size, I could go out with you and fight the Mongauli!”

“The battlefield is no place for children.”

“Now you’re sounding like Istavan!” Rinda pouted.

“Where’s the prince?”

“Remus is with Loto and the others. He’s learning the Sem tongue much faster than me, I’m afraid, and he’s having a grand old time.” Rinda sighed, but she seemed to have completely forgotten her request of moments before. “Speaking of Istavan, Guin, where has he run off to? You’ve gone on raid after raid, and he still hasn’t returned!”

“Ah, you’re worried about him,” Guin chided. “He angers you when he’s here, but as soon as he’s gone, you’re lonely?”

“Well, I-I never! He can go get swallowed by a sand worm for all I care!” Rinda’s cheeks turned beet red; her head drooped.

“I’ll bring some wine,” she said, and walked off without even so much as a backward glance. Suni tottered along behind her. Watching her leave, the faintest shade of worry seemed to come over Guin’s leopard features.

He is late. Too late. What could he be doing?

Guin’s yellow eyes flared. Siba looked up, sensing something. Of course, the wildling had no way of knowing what went on in that leopard head, but of all the Sem, the young Raku warrior had spent the most time with Guin, and he had an inkling of the weight that rested on those broad shoulders. “Riyaad,” Siba began—but Guin’s thoughts were elsewhere. A low growl spilled from his mouth and he set down his bowl.

“Siba, where are Loto and Ilateli?” the leopard-man asked. His voice was calm, betraying none of his concerns.

“I will fetch them, Riyaad!” Siba exclaimed, springing up to summon the chieftains, but Guin stopped him.

“No, I will go to them,” he said, walking briskly down toward the oasis pool.

Cries of “Riyaad! Riyaad!” went up from the Sem as he walked among them, and all stopped their preparations to look up at him. Their eyes shone with a childlike, unsullied trust and a faith in Guin that was complete.

Loto, high chieftain of the Raku, Ilateli of the Guro, Tubai of the Tubai and Kalto of the Rasa were gathered on the spread skin of a desert wolf in the shade of a bush, engaged in vigorous debate, but they stopped and stood as soon as they saw Guin approaching.

“Riyaad,” spoke the white-furred Loto in a solemn tone, “thanks to you, we Sem have won victory upon victory.” While most Sem voices were high-pitched and sharp to the ear, Loto, who was Suni’s grandfather, had a voice that was gravelly and surprisingly deep for one so small.

“But, Riyaad,” said Ilateli of the Guro, “these orders that you give, to withdraw each time so soon after we taste battle, they leave me hungry. If we only kept fighting we could drive the oh-mu demons off our sands forever!”

It seemed that the chieftains had been debating the merits of Guin’s strategy of repeated surprise attacks and retreats and that they were not all of one mind on the matter.

Ilateli had been wounded in the fighting before, but seemed to pay his cuts no mind. To the contrary, he seemed the liveliest of the bunch, and the fur on the stump that was his tail—the result of an old battle—bristled with excitement. He was large for a Sem, standing nearly as tall as Rinda and Remus.

“Ilateli, you are looking at the sand beneath your feet without pausing to consider the horizon. It is because of Riyaad’s leadership that we have come so far,” spoke up Kalto of the Rasa.

His strong words came out rather meekly; his tribe was the smallest among those gathered there, and he knew it.

“But we must not forget the Tubai’s use of the yidoh. Without the victory of the yidoh, we would have lost long ago!” shouted Tubai of the Tubai.

“This is no time to argue amongst ourselves,” said Loto sharply.

“You are right,” Ilateli replied. “But I must be allowed to say this one thing. What do we fight for if not to destroy our enemy? With these little raids and retreats we are like a mouth-of-the-desert that sticks the tip of one tentacle out of its sandy lair only to draw it back in again. We will never grab our prey, never drink of its sweet juices!”

“You are wrong, Ilateli,” began Loto, but Guin interrupted him:

“No, he is right. It is as Ilateli says!” the leopard-man’s booming voice rang out, drawing yelps of surprise from the Sem.

“Riyaad!” Even Siba looked at him amazed.

“Listen to me. I have thought much about what will come next. This strategy I have taught you is meant to chip away at the enemy, but if we go on like this much longer…”

All the Sem chieftains waited in silence for his next words.

“If we go on like this for even three more days, the Sem will surely lose.”

Kalto screeched in disbelief. Loto and Ilateli’s eyes stabbed at Guin. Their ears perked forward, not wanting to miss a single word.

From behind them, Rinda came carrying a jug of wine, followed closely by Remus and Suni. Sensing the tension on the air, the princess set down the jug and took her brother’s hand. Silently they stood, staring at the leopard-headed warrior.

“You say the Sem will lose. Why, Riyaad?” Siba demanded. His shrill voice broke through the veil of silence that had settled upon the chieftains. “You were the one who told us that we should fight this way—your way. We are hurting the army of the oh-mu, you said. The oh-mu are only a few times our number. If we keep hitting them, soon, they will have no more than us!”

“Yes, Siba, we are hurting them—but we are losing our own too,” Guin replied curtly. “I’ve thought about what we must do, and I’ve done all I could to ensure we will have a chance of dealing a death blow to our enemies. But even if all goes perfectly, the Sem army lacks a trump card!”

For a moment there was quiet. Then Siba spoke up worriedly. “What is a ‘trump card’, Riyaad?” While the Sem language was amenable to simple logic and concepts such as honor, it was not well suited to abstraction, and certain human idioms did not translate well.

“I mean that, if we continue merely to throw dust in our enemies’ eyes as we have been doing, we will lose what advantage we have within three or four days at the most,” Guin explained. “We have been on the offensive till now, and our enemies are on unfamiliar territory. They are confused, and their spirit is beaten. However, if we keep fighting them in the same way, we will become predictable, and they will be able to adapt. They will seize on the facts that their losses are light and that the Sem army is still fewer in number, and they will realize that our feints are meant to conceal this from them. Then we are finished. They will go on the offensive, down to the last man, and we do not have the strength to repel a full frontal attack by ten thousand elite soldiers. If we had that kind of power, we would have already crushed them in the raid this morning.”

The Sem chieftains exchanged looks.

“But, Riyaad,” Siba pleaded, “I do not understand all that you say. Before, when we gathered in the village of the Raku, you told us that if we did what you told us to do, if we followed your strategy, we would win! You told us that Nospherus was our ally!”

“Yes, and it is because we have Nospherus on our side that the battle has gone favorably for us, so far,” Guin replied. “But the yidoh were a one-shot trick, and the enemy is no longer surprised by our surprise raids. Ideally, the timing is right for us to attack with our hidden main force—to deal a crushing blow. But we have no main force. That is the trump card, the secret weapon, that we lack. If the conflict continues as it has, then even if the plans I have laid pay off temporarily—no, especially if they pay off—the Sem will lose.”

“What of the secret plan for which Istavan now prepares the way?” Loto demanded. “When you told us of that, you said it could save us!”

“It could, for a time. It could deal a terrible blow. But we need no less than complete victory, and we have nothing yet that could give us that.”

“So we will lose?” screeched Ilateli, slamming a fist on the sand.

Guin’s feline eyes turned and met the wildling’s. His gaze was imperious.

“No! To lose would mean death. And that is not an option. What I have been considering is how big a gamble we must make in order to give ourselves a chance of victory.”

“A gamble?” asked Loto.

But at that moment a young Sem of the Raku came running into the midst of their gathering. “Riyaad!”

The youth, a scout, clutched a rolled sheet of coarse reed-paper in his hand. “Riyaad! We did as you said, and went out when the oh-mu marched again, and in their abandoned camp we found this under a cactus!”

“You found it!” shouted Guin, snatching the paper from his hand. He read it intently, and a fire kindled in his eyes. “Excellent!” he growled, and tossed the sheet aside. Then he slapped his knees and stood. “Chieftains of the Sem, preparations have been made. Keep to yourselves all that I have said here.”

“Of course, Riyaad,” Ilateli replied stiffly.

Rinda and Remus exchanged curious glances. Then as one they bent down and snatched up the discarded paper. Spreading it flat, they saw that it was marked with a string of mysterious words written in crude hen scratch letters:

“Preparations / finished / await signal / smoke”

Below the letters was a half-legible mark that looked something like two snakes intertwined.

“Guin…” began Rinda, thinking to ask him what it meant. But her words failed in her mouth as she looked at the leopard warrior.

He stood near her, one hand at his waist, his body still as the carven sculpture of a giant. And suddenly it seemed as if his mighty figure emitted a white blaze of fire, so bright it was hard to look at. For a moment Rinda was gripped by the irrational fear that if she touched him she would be burned.

Guin…

It was as though she could see his superhuman will, his decisive power, with her naked eyes, and the sight of it drove from her mind all thought of questioning him about his plans or purposes.

“Ilateli! Loto! Siba!” barked Guin. “You remember the preparations. You can carry them out, even if I am gone?”

“Of course,” Ilateli shot back.

“But, why, Riyaad?” ventured Siba.

“Listen to me, Sem warriors,” shouted Guin, sweeping his powerful gaze over all the tribesmen gathered around them in the oasis. “We are winning for the moment, but if we continue to fight as we have done, we will surely lose. Yet there is another path we might follow, one that will allow us to avoid this loss— and more. We can seize victory and drive the oh-mu from Nospherus forever!

“Do you have faith in me? If you have faith, then you will need to hold out for a full four days, and four alone. Listen…”

Guin began to tell of his plan. Before long the cries of the Sem rose around him in waves, full of amazement and surprise, but the mighty warrior’s voice only boomed the louder as he spoke on, explaining how they would defeat the army of Mongaul.