When all the lights but the watch-lamps went out in the Moaekod camp, Anen and his men looked out onto the plain, crouching, creping, stopping to look for signs they had been seen.  The rest of the men followed.  They heard nothing from the Moaekod watch, not on their side of the enemy camp, not far from Borizz's side.  A dark shape crossed the half-moon, its engine throbbing.  Anen looked up with hope.

"Bubov transport!" Yen Churkin whispered, and the news spread like wildfire quickly down the line of creeping men.

"Landing lights dropping south of Borizz's position, about a kilometer out of the plain," one of the enlisted me added, his voice speeding up with excitement.

"We're going to get them.  We're not alone anymore, let's go!"  Anen stood and ran toward the nearest barracks-dome.

He and his men surrounded the dome and zapped it, melting it and most of its sleeping occupants.  They moved quickly, zapped a second dome, and were heading for a third before Moaekod's watch raised the alarm.  The third dome was rousing when they hit it and the troop suffered its first casualty.  Across the encampment another dome's glowing debris showed where Borizz's men had entered the Moaekod camp.

"That most of four Millenniums, men!" Den cried.  "Kurharay lives!"

The troop joined the cry, voices high with excitement.  "Kuryaray lives!  Kurharay lives!"

Beacons flashed on and began sweeping the area.  Moaekod and Masxad troopers poured out of their barracks, still pressing closed their survival suits.  Some of the soldiers carried homing-beamers, which targeted body heat.  Anen's men huddled in the shadow of a dome.

"Fools!  Those homers don't know friend from foe!" Stanis snapped. The yellow track of a zapper flashed over his head.

"They'll see us! Melt down the dome," Anen shouted.  "We'll get away in its heat shadow."

The noise---shouting, firing, burning---was too loud for four of the men to hear Anen's shout; they continued to crouch against the dome.  Stanis dropped to the snow and snaked along the dome wall to them.  "We're burning this," he told them. "When it ignites, Lord Anen says to head for the main stairwell.  Benix's men should be coming now."

The men scrambled to their feet and ran. One stopped in his tracks and fell.  A companion bent, touched his throat pulse, sprang up, and ran after the others.  "Stunray, milord," he panted upon joining the group.  "We've lost Borhan."

"Stick together," Anen ordered.  "We'll all live longer that way."

A zapper bolt sipped into the group.  One man spat out an oath.

"Badly hurt?" Anen demanded.

"No, lord, just my cheek."

"If any of you are using zappers, be sure they're set on kill," Anen ordered the others, and checked his own.

"Da, lord," the men replied.

They burned the dome and escaped towards the main stair.  But Moaekod's forces were awake now and far outnumbered the two Kurharay troops.  Anen's men were pushed back to the edge of the circle of barracks by Masxad troopers, led by the Kererr Abdul Masxad himself, the striped triangular pennant snapping over Masxad's head.  The noise of battle suddenly rose near the center of the circle, but snow had begun falling again and it was the darkness hidden from Anen what was really happening.

"That noise must be Benix's men," a prefect of Purples shouted.   His gun swept sideways and zapped a Masxad troopleader, whose fall confused the men following him.

"They'll have to fight---their way over here---before---they can do us---any good," Den Churkin panted, finishing off a Masxad troopleader.  He pulled his knife from his opponent and wiped it quickly against his white pants.

"Watch out!" Anen cried.

Churkin dropped to the snow.  A heat-bolt zipped past him at waist level.  Two other Moaekod soldiers didn't dodge in time.

"Fire now!" Den's voice rang out over the screams of the dying men.

The front rank of Kurharay soldiers fired their zappers at once.  Most of two rows of Masxad men fell, but still the enemy came on.

"There's Kurharay, by the big pale one," Abdul Masxad shouted, pointing.  "Take him alive for me!"

Anen braced himself and steadied his stungun with his free hand, then fired.  Masxad looked surprised, then crumpled out of sight among the feet of his men.  His men stopped, the pennant dipped, then collapsed as the standard-bearer jammed its staff into the snow beside the dead Kererr.  The Masxad troops milled around until someone shouted "forward" and they began moving against Kurharay again, a few at first, solidifying into a wedge that shoved hard against the Kurharay line.  Anen's men fell back.  Soldiers at the rear of the Masxad force began falling to Benix's men, who were lying in the snow behind Masxad, firing long-range stunguns with deadly accuracy.  A man among Churkin's troop screamed and fell.

"Push them back!  Push them back onto Benix's guns!" Anen shouted.   He pushed forward into the Masxad line, plunged his knife into the first man he met, and used the man's body as a shield while he sprayed the man's neighbors with his stungun.  Don't think about the men on the ground, he ordered himself.  Don't think about their families.  It's your Family or theirs.

He plowed further into the Masxad ranks with Stanis at his side.  Now the two sides fought too close for anything but knives and narrow-beam stunning.  Anen heard thuds and cries of pain behind him, but the men with him continued to press close.

They follow me! he exulted.  Against these odds they follow me!  Elation swept him and he gave a great shout.  He felt power sweeping through him and roaring out through his voice.  Masxad's men felt it, too.  They hesitated, backed away from him, and Churkin's men smashed into the space.  Anen fought in a circle of Kurharay soldiers now.  Stanis lunged repeatedly into the enemy, breaking opponents with a wrestling hold long-barred from match-play on Raaros.

"Faster than a knife," said Stanis, panting.  He ducked deeper into the cluster of Kurharay men to take a moment's rest, then lunged back into the battle.  Anen's men shoved the enemy back onto Benix's guns until the Moaekods broke and ran.  The two Kurharay forces joined and fanned out, moving back towards the Moaekod domes.

"Bubov troopers comin' in from the far side, lord," one of Benix's men said.  "Saw them as we came over the barricade."

There was no time for thought about Bubov; a Millennium in Moaekod gold charged through a curtain of falling snow, smashing into Kurharay's right flank, scattering Kurharay soldiers in all directions.

"Keep together!" Anen cried to his men.

But only sixteen answered the call.  They edged towards the protection of a dome wall.  More Moaekod troops appeared, cutting between Anen's men and Benix's.  For a time, blowing snow hid the casualties of friend and enemy alike, then the wind died for a moment and Anen saw that more than half the Moaekod Millennium survived.  In seconds, the wind picked up again, hurling stinging, blinding pellets of snow at everyone and erasing sight of Moaekod's men and Benix's and the main entrance shelters.  They couldn't move without Stanis's sense of direction.  With it Anen knew they could fight towards the entrance shelter, a fight few would survive, or if they could use Stanis to retreat to the foothills and live to fight again.

He turned to the snow-whipped troop, his eyes searching out his large friend. "Stanis, I need you.  Lead us back to the trees."  Anen looked at the other men, eyes narrowed against the sharp, icy pellets.  Surely they would not consider retreat cowardice under such conditions.  Or would they?

"Just sixteen of us got no chance against what's left of that Millennium," a man at the back of the group said, hesitantly, and looked at the others as if to judge whether they thought his remark could be cowardly.

Several others nodded agreement.  Anen shut his eyes for a moment, clearly relieved, then motioned Stanis to lead.

The foothills were an occasional dark mound visible only for a second or two through whirling snow.  Behind the troop, Moaekod beacons fitfully swept the plain, but the light was smudged to uselessness by the blowing snow.  The troop lost four men to chance encounters with the enemy before they reached the safety of the hills.  They crouched against tree trunks, panting, and shaking with relief. They were still alive.

"What's visibility now, Stanis?" Anen demanded.

Stanis squinted into the snow.  He shut his eyes and brushed ice crystals from his lashes, then looked again.  "I'd say five meters."

Anen nodded his thanks and turned to his men.  "Who's hurt here?"

The lone prefect set up a light.  The trees caught much of the snow and broke up the wind, so visibility was much better than on the open plain.  Den Benix had a broken nose and a finger.  Four soldiers had injuries serious enough to make traveling difficult for them and one trooper had been so badly burned he would have to be carried.  Anen threw a glance around the survivors.  "Set up the litter from your medpak, Yen.  On the double. We're....."

"You're hurt, too, lord," the surviving prefect said.  

"Am I really?

"There's a cut on your shoulder and a bad slice on your right arm, lord."

Anen looked down.  His right sleeve was red with frozen blood from a cut on his upper arm.  "He must have had a very sharp knife, because I didn't feel a thing," said Anen, wonderingly.  He touched the place and winced.  "The cold has its blessings.  I haven't bled to death."  He stamped his feet to warm them a little.  "We're going back to the shelter while the snow's still falling."

"How---how will we find it, lord?" The youngest soldier's voice trembled just the littlest bit.  "The snow's coming down harder by the minute."

"Stanis got us here.  Stanis will get us there."  Anen glanced at the litter to be sure it was ready.  "Lead on, Stanis."

They had fought from darkness to just before dawn.  Morning was a faint gray light when the men began the climb back to the shelter.  The slope was steep, and the soldiers had to struggle through deep snow that, because it began to thaw as the day warmed, would not support a part of their weight as it had in the cold of the previous night.  Meltwater seeped through the smallest holes in boots and seams, wetting the men to the skin.  The litter's normal speed, which was slow by ordinary standards, was too fast for those conditions.  Finally, Anen had to set its controls to "hover only," attach a line between the litter and his belt and push the litter.  But even that cut in speed was not enough for the wounded.  Before the men reached the shelter, two able-bodied troopers were each carrying one of the worst of the four wounded ones.  They reached the shelter at sunset, twice the time it had taken to go down.  The group stumbled up to the closed door, tired, hungry, and soaked to the bones.

There was movement within.  "Who's there?  I have two zappers on you, whoever you are." The boy guard's voice was both shaky and determined.

"It's Anen Kurharay and what's left of our men.  Open the door."

"Prove yourself.  Tell me, how old am I?"  The boy's voice was stronger and more confident.

"Fifteen winters." Anen was bone-tired, shaky, trembling with cold.  His words crackled with impatience.

"What's my mother's trade?"

The boy's only doing his job, the way he's supposed to do it, Anen reminded himself.  "She's a shrubber," he answered, with a little more patience.

The boy swung the door open, throwing a rectangular box of light on the ground.  "Welcome back, lord."

The men piled gratefully into the warm, windless interior of the shelter.  A fast questioning showed Stanis had the most medical knowledge of the group, so Anen handed him the medpak and let him set the bones and tend the burns.

"Your arm first, Anen."

Anenn shoved Stanis's hand away irritably.  "Take care of the burned one first.  My cut hasn't thawed yet."

When tended, the men dropped into sleepbags and slept like the dead.

Anen awakened late, according to his chrono.  He sat up, focusing his eyes with difficulty.  The boy was sleeping, sitting up, against the door.  Anen's nightbag rustled as he got to his knees.  The boy sat bolt upright and both zappers targeted Anen.  Anen froze, poised on his knees with his right hand against the shelter wall.  The tensed muscles caused the wound to throb.  Hot, sticky blood began trickling down his arm.

"Oh! Milord!  I'm sorry!" The boy neutralized the zappers and put them on the floor by his side.  "I--I wasn't really awake, lord."

Anen used his left arm to push himself the rest of the way to his feet.  He looked down at his bleeding arm and then at the frightened boy.

"I... I...." The boy stuttered into silence, horrified.

"What's the matter?" Anen demanded.  "It's not your fault I'm bleeding."

"I--I was asleep on duty, lord.  The old Kererr, your sire, milord, he zapped my father for falling asleep on duty in the castle, lord.  He died, my father.  I thought that with the fighting going on..." The boy's voice trailed off.

Anen sighed. "I'm not my sire. And I surely don't shoot boys, especially boys who have done such a good job of defending our supplies."

The boy sprang up.  "Oh, thank you, milord!" He kissed Anen's dangling hand.

Anen felt suddenly weak.  He sat down on the dirt floor abruptly.  "Get Karzhov up," he ordered, his voice thin.  "I think I need him." Anen bent his head almost to his knees and held the faintness and nausea at bay.

"Anen?" Stanis touched Anen's shoulder lightly.

"I'm bleeding, Stanis, I..." Anen collapsed helplessly sideways, like an old rag doll.

"Too little sleep and too much blood gone," Anen heard Stanis say curtly to someone, then the details of what was going on around him got kind of fuzzy.  A sharp smell pinched his nose.  He opened his eyes and looked up.  Stanis sat crosslegged beside him, winding up a roll of bandaging.  Yen Benix stood behind Stanis, looking worried.  The three unhurt troopers, in various stages of sitting up, watched from their sleepbags.

"Give me a stim-tab." Anen struggled to sit up, discovering his wounded arm was bound firmly against his ribs.  He managed to roll up onto his good elbow.  "We've got to connect with the Bubov...."

Stanis pushed Anen back down into a sleepbag that had somehow gotten under him and held out a drinking tube.  "You're not going anywhere until you can get there without drugs.  Here, drink this.  It'll help you get back on your feet, or so the med book says."

Anen looked doubtfully at the tube, then sipped.  "Ugh!  What is this?"

"Salt and soda in water.  People in shock need it.  Drink up."

"This?"

"Drink it all or I'll pour it down you!"

Anen put the tube back to his lips and drank.  The liquid tasted salty, metallic, and warm.  He closed his eyes and let himself drift.  When he opened his eyes again, only the other wounded and Yen Benix were in the shelter.  "How goes it, Yen?"

"We can't see anything out on the plain.  We know Bubov transports landed but..."

Anen pushed himself into a sitting position, but it made him feel so woozy he laid back down.

Churkin's forehead creased with anxiety.  "You haven't eaten since yesternight.  Do you want midday, milord?"

"What is there?"

"Egg soup and borscht.  Full ration.  'Doctor' Karzhov's orders."

"I'll try some."

Anen felt better for the food and walked around the shelter a little bit.  Stanis, Den Churkin, three troopers, and the boy blew in the door, white with snow and downcast.

Churkin came directly to Anen.  "We walked halfway down, milord, to see what we could.  Moaekod and Masxad have let their dead lie.  Most of their men and several transports are gone, but there's still a Millennium or so down there, waiting.  The sky will have to clear before we can be sure how many."

"It's going to be hellish outside if the weather turns colder," Stanis added.  "What's coming down now's thaw-snow.  If the surface freezes, nothing's going to move out there, and the sky's clearing over the mountains, which means cold weather's coming."

Anen's mouth tightened at the news.  Nobody in the shelter was strong enough and fast enough to get back to the plain before the snow glazed over, and if someone were strong enough, there was nothing helpful to do, not against most of two Millenniums.  They were trapped.

The rest of the afternoon and evening dragged.  Although the sky over the foothills cleared by sunset, a Thawtime ice-fog settled over the plain, wiping out all detail.  Ignorance created tension and tempers flared often.  Long after the others fell asleep, Anen lay awake, restless and tense.  He'd lost so many men, and to no apparent purpose.   Guilt and anxiety gnawed at him.  What should he do next?  What could he do next?  What about the wounded?  The same questions went round and round in different form, tormenting, unanswerable questions.

The fog cleared the next day. Anen spent hours outside the shelter, questioning the sentinel on the watch-rock.  Several troops and half-troops of men in Moaekod uniforms seemed to be patrolling the edges of the plain, tough for what purpose, the guard could not tell.  Bubov aircraft had clustered on the opposite side the castle; the Bubov camp showed little movement.  Impatient with questioning when he needed to see, Anen at last climbed the slope above the shelter until he could see the plain below.  The scene was as the guard had reported it. What did you expect? Anen asked himself scornfully, something completely different?  At least there's not been enough cold to glaze the snow.  I should have been grateful for that small blessing.

He stood for a long time on the side of the hill, looking without seeing, wondering what he could have done differently, what he could have done to drive Moaekod and his ally off.  Accusations and doubts chased themselves around inside Anen's head.

I should have waited for the Bubov warriorcarriers.  I should have waited.  I sent too few men, and now we're fewer still.  With us, Borizz, and Benix mainly on the northeast, the Purples at the other, two exits had to defend their backs against a Millennium apiece.  Most of the Moakeods are gone, but Gaito left searchers and we'll have to break through the patrols down there if we try to get the wounded back to the castle.  Will Benix take charge and do something?  Will the Baron?  Can I get a messenger to either of them, as thick as the Moaekod patrols are?  Can I get around the Moaekod patrols and if I try it, what do I do with the wounded?  The litter case isn't going to live much longer without the clinic.

Anen did not see the changes in the scene on the plain for a long time, though he was looking at them.  Then a bright flash to the east caught his attention.  It was sunlight on the wings of a Moaekod fighter which swooped suddenly over the edge of the foothills.  A heat-bolt shot out of one of the wing guns and the blue tracer showed the bolt's path into a snowdrift on the eastern edge of the castle grounds.  The fighter zigzagged close to the edge of the foothills and shot again.  Anen stood taller to see what the craft's target might be.  He saw a line of men in Moaekod gold following the fighter on the ground.   The men cast back and forth like hounds.

They're hunting someone.  Borizz's men.  They'll be easy prey for such a hunt and so will mine.  The thought was a bitter one.

A tan fighter zoomed down on the silver one, blue tracers spitting from it.  Sunlight caught for a moment on the bronze Bubov medallion on its side as it swooped in pursuit of the Moaekod craft.  Anen's stomach tightened in anticipation, but the bolt missed the Moaekod fighter.  There was help, but he could not attract the Bubov pilot's attention without attracting the Moaekod pilot, and Moaekod had men on the ground already, searching, while Bubov's men were across the plain, on the far side of the castle.  More soldiers in Moaekod gold appeared, nearer, sweeping the edge of the foothills.  Anen stood very still, watching the hunt and softly cursing Moaekod and clans and feuds and his own vulnerability, with just eight men still able to fight.

He walked carefully down to the shelter, for the snow's surface was starting to ice over.  He formed a tentative plan to save his remaining men as he went.  He didn't notice snow waws falling again until he reached the shelter.  He entered the building and stopped just within the door.  "Moaekod had fighters up, hunting," he said bluntly, "and soldiers are on the ground to flush out the game.  Us, and Borizz."

He had all the men's total attention.  "I can see no way for us to get into the castle and there's no way for the castle to get through to any other Holding or to Congress.  That's part of what those Moaekod soldiers are still here for, to keep the com dishes from being repaired.  This shelter will be found, eventually."  Anen took a deep, unsteady breath.  "I propose that Stanis and I and the three fit troopers circle around Moaekod to the Congress patrol hut in Tzinn and contact Congress from there.  Moaekod wants me.  I don't think he'll kill the wounded or the two Panshin men." Anen inclined his head a little towards Yen and Den.

"We can turn off the theromoes at night to hinder heatseekers.  We could hold out here, lord, until Bubov drives Moaekod off."  The boy soldier was eager and alert.

"Eight of us who can still fight, against even a squad?" Anen shook his head.  "If we're lucky, this shelter won't be found for three or four days.  If we're not....." Anen looked past his men to the farthest corner of the shelter.  "Stanis, the three troopers and I will cross the first ridge of the hills her and circle east.  We can follow the Taz River upstream, reach the patrol hut through the low pass, and have a direct connection to Congress in two or three days.  Moaekod and Masxad have broken siege laws again.  That should get us Congressional aid without argument.  We'll leave the boy and the Churkins here to protect the wounded."

Yen Churkin shook his head.  Anen looked at him intently.  "Is there something wrong with that plan?"

Churkin shook his head again.  "No, lord.  It's not that.  I just don't want to stay here if there's fighting to be done."

Anen looked grim.  "You're the ones most likely to contact Moaekod. I'd stay and send someone with a message to Congress if I thought Congress would take the word of anyone else but me."  He looked at the others who were to stay and went on in a confident tone, a confidence he didn't feel.  "It's snowing again.  We'll take empty food packages and some wastepaper with us and sweep away our tracks behind us.  Halfway down the hill we'll mark tent-squares, melt a few cooking circles inside the 'tent' area with thermoses, leave the trash, and make a wide, muddled trail away from that camp and this one.  If we make the campsite look real enough, searchers will never think of looking somewhere else."  Anen hesitated a moment.  "We could even leave one of the pack tents up, as if we'd left in a hurry. That should protect you up here, long enough for us to reach the patrol hut, anyway."

Stanis looked thoughtful.  Anen watched him with well-hidden anxiety.  Stanis, despite his joking comments about his marks, had been one of the best tactical planners at the Academy.  Stanis finally nodded, slowly.  "I don't see any other way with a hope of survivors, Anen.  A brave attempt to fight through to the manor would end up with everyone hear dead, and a dead Kererr is useless to your House."239Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFvFxsMrjAp