Life as a New Hire Ch. 38

"He's going to kill all of you," Aya snickered while she sobbed. "You are all going to die."

[Mandarin] "Mu, what is the little girl saying?" she asked Jian Bob – real name Mu.

[Mandarin] "She is stating her belief that Cáel will somehow kill us all," he and his sister shared the joke.

[Mandarin] "Let us see what her tune is when they start in on her left hand," the woman smiled at her sibling.

That implied they'd cut off her right thumb and fingers, digit by digit, until one, or both of us cracked. The man nodded and Aya's nub was burned again. Her scream was more of a cleansing shout.

"Cáel, do you think I will have a nice horse to ride when I join Epona's herds, or will I get a pony?" Aya whimpered.

"Not a clue," I began before Mu had the face-hugging guard apply a finger strike to my solar plexus. Alal's gift had allowed me to partially organize my brain functions. Coping with pain was a whole lot easier now, but I had to be careful to monitor it because pain was Nature's way of letting you know that there was something wrong with your body.

"What color would you like me to pick up and have waiting for you," punch, "when you finally take yourself to the cliffs?"

[Mandarin] "Again."

[Mandarin] "This is accomplishing nothing," the senior bald Mo-Fo grumbled. "He clearly cares nothing for the child and has been trained in counter-interrogation techniques."

[Mandarin] "There is nothing to indicate that," Mu bristled.

[Mandarin] "Xiàshì (下士), burn the tip of his left forefinger," senior necromancer commanded. The guy holding my face coordinated with the men holding my arms to free me of my bonds and wrestle my left arm forward. I didn't bother resisting.

It didn't take the commandoes long to figure I had stopped caring. On came the flame and the pain. Oh, I screamed. The pain was real. What had changed was my ability to shuffle it off to an isolated memory file to be tackled later. The bald creep stepped into my field of vision. His eyes were windows to the abyss. My "spirit" sight opened my eyes to the truly inhuman sections of his mind and soul.

[Mandarin] "See, normal techniques will not be affective. We will do it ..." and they realized the enormity of their mistake by assuming I was paralyzed by the pain. I broke free of the guy on my left and began twisting around the guy on my right. I wasn't getting away, I was going for his QCW-05. I knew their favorite martial arts styles and their weaponry now.

The guy I was rolling behind realized what I was doing (going for his gun), but mistook my intentions. I wasn't trying to get away, or steal the gun (still strapped to his body). That dickhead even helped me out by lurching ground-ward. I swung the gun up, hit the selector and fired two quick bursts.

The first three rounds hit Mr. Blowtorch in his right thigh, shredding it. The second burst caught Mr. Knife guy in the crotch – a triple 5.8 X 21mm castration. Had Blowtorch Guy not been busy trying to keep the strands of his right hip connected to his right leg, he could have stopped the blood fountaining from his buddies shattered groin. That was the end of my joy.

I was born to the ground and the guy whose gun I'd borrowed pulled away. I hit the concrete surface hard. That was only the beginning of my issues. Radiating from the floor was cold beyond cold. I had the sensation of falling into the heart of a cold, dead star. How I even knew what the felt like was an impossibility.

[Mandarin] "He feels very cold," protest one of the two guards pulling me back to my feet groused.

[Mandarin] "If your incompetence has led to his terminal condition," the male twin threatened. I felt the approach of the female twin – her reaching for me. A new intense pain seared me to the cores of my bones. Before she yanked my hair up, my body reignited.

I found myself stared into her pitiless eyes that regarded me with the casual callousness of a veterinarian preparing to put down some rabid stray dog. She ran three fingers over my cheek.

[Mandarin] "What are you babbling about?" she snapped at the two commandoes. "If anything, he is feverish."

[Mandarin] "Zhen, have him sedated," Chief Necromancer demanded. "Mu, now we will do this my way." Once more I was bound. Someone stabbed a needle into my right triceps. That was a mere discomfort. If I had any consolation, it was hearing Mu ordering the execution of the two men I'd shot.

They didn't have the time and facilities to tend to their immediate emergency needs and taking them to a trauma center wasn't going to happen. Those two went into body bags. I had to assume they would be joining us on the plane, though they'd be in the cargo compartment.

[Mandarin] "What are you smiling at?" I heard Zhen snapping before my world collapsed down to a pinhole of light.

"Lady, I don't know what you said," Aya declared happily. "You are probably angry that Cáel has already killed two of you and we haven't even got off the ground yet." I heard a sound I couldn't make out followed by another and finally a third. That resulted in an Aya-squeak. Ah, she'd tried to hit Aya and Aya had dodged the first two blows. Good girl.

"Cáel isn't going to like you doing that," Aya chirped.

"Aya's a winner," I mumbled. I wasn't in control of my senses when they dragged me onto a waiting jet. I wasn't worried. With Aya at my side, I was invincible.

{Dreaming}

I looked at her face, so youthful, beautiful in her own way, yet far from innocent. She bore a terrible weight. The armor she was wearing – that of a heavy horseman of the steppe, was a leather coat, chain links over her vulnerable regions (throat, underarms and skirt), with the rest being covered by darkened bronze plates.

Her iron helmet was open-faced with mobile plates covering her cheeks as well as the sides and the back of her neck; it bore a white horse-hair plume – it was the only feature of her panoply that would draw any special attention her way. She carried no shield. Instead, she wielded a powerful horn & sinew composite recurve bow. She used her knees to rise up on her mount and fire over the mare's head.

Similarly attired women rode close to either side of this young woman. Both were older; one in her early forties and the other ~ late thirties. The one to the left bore a lance, not in the couched fashion most people today are familiar with, but used in a double-handed over-head fighting style.

The woman to the right fought with a strange blade. It wasn't saber ~ an ancestor of that blade perhaps. It was about a meter long, no hand guard, single-edged except for the top 4 cm on the back side which was equally sharp. Her left hand remained free. I think I saw her purpose. If the young woman got into difficulty, her guardian on the right could pull her horse away and lead the woman to safety.

Behind and beside those three rode perhaps three hundred of their sisters. Those in the center were as heavily armored as those three. On each flank were the lighter, faster bow-women, on smaller steeds. The women in the center rode larger mounts that were good for carrying weight and pushing home a charge, while the flanking steppe ponies were virtually tireless.

In the center, identified only by her long golden-mane helm, was the Golden Mare ~ War Leader of the Host. The Amazons didn't fly pennants or carry banners. They judged the course of battle by that woman's head movements (the mane was quite long) and the shrill horn blasts unique to the Amazons.

Let the barbarians have the all too common deep booming horns calls and their totems raised high for the world to see. Let the Romans keep their trumpets and Legion standards. Amazons had been putting those fools in their graves from time immemorial. Right now, those horns had summoned the Host to a trot.

The Hun, Attila, had tasked the Sarmatian Chieftain, under whose banner they rode, to deal with another crisis – the third this short day. Once more, they directed their horses over Catalaunian Fields. The Ostrogoth had gotten themselves into a world of trouble, those filthy, stinking Germans (why was I even thinking that way?)

First the Amazons had ridden forth on Attila's right, reinforcing the allied Germanic tribes on the Right Wing in their attempt to force a wedge between Aetius' Romans and King Sangiban's Alans. They'd shown the fools the way, but the supporting Gepids cavalry was too timid and by the time they began to approach, the Golden Mare had been forced to sound 'retire'.

The Roman auxiliary cavalry, though of poor quality, had plugged the gap. The Host were too few and too valuable (in their estimation) to die holding a position that their 'allies' might not rescue them from. Next, they had been directed to attack the center of the Alan cavalry line in support of the Huns.

Despite the cowardice of their king, the Alans were hardy fighters and too accustomed to the style of steppe warfare that the Host practiced to be lured away from their position. Arrows were exchanged and brief, brutal skirmishes developed, but no advantage was gained. With their mounts exhausted, the Golden Mare had ordered the Host to retired to their camp to water their horses and refill their quivers.

That bit of common sense and tactical wisdom placed them in their present crisis. Their Ostrogoth allies had been beating themselves against their Visigoth cousins all afternoon, charging up the same cursed slope that any sane commander would have found a way to flank. No, the Germans had failed seven times using the same plan, so they tried an eighth.

Miraculously, they had gained a toehold on the ridgeline and killed the Visigothic King. Like a mob of mindless farmers, the Ostrogoths stopped to celebrate their 'victory' and taunt the Visigoths with the mutilated body of their fallen leader. The Visigoths had been properly incensed and counter-attacked. That's what Princes were for – to avenge their fallen Sires.

As the Host exited the Hunnic laager, they'd seen the calamity unfold. The wavering Visigoth infantry had stiffened their line. Believing the Ostrogoths would press forward, the Horse-tail banner of Attila himself broke away from the central Hunnic body, pivoted to his left and thundered into the Visigoth's exposed flank.

In the din of battle, it may have looked to the Great Warlord that he had a vanishing opportunity for victory. From the valley below, it was much clearer to the Amazons that the moment to break the Visigothic infantry had passed. The Huns were too tired; their mounts frothing from a long, hot afternoon of battle. Without a swift follow-through, the attack was doomed.

At that point, headlong flight for the Amazons wasn't possible. Their long term survival hung on the Hunnic King keeping his Germanic 'allies' in line. They were still somewhere in eastern Roman Gaul, with the Rhine to ford and a land thick with perpetually vicious, blood-thirsty, crotch-scratching, flea-bitten Germanic barbarians to cross before they saw the green rolling hills of home again.

No, the Golden Mare, and that young lady knew they had to do something to stem the tide of this disaster for another hour, then darkness would force the combatants to separate so they could try their hand at battle the next day. As the Golden Mare rode to the Sarmatian Chieftain, a rider came through the dust from Attila. The Visigothic cavalry had returned with a vengeance and the Ostrogoths were folding up.

The Sarmatians (with their attached Amazons) were to 'somehow' repair the situation. As the Chieftain, the Golden Mare and three Sarmatian tribal leaders hastily discussed the actions. They saw the Hunnic Right, under hard pressure from the Roman attack, beginning to disintegrate. Of immediate concern was the rift opening up between the retreating Hunnic Gepids and the Hunnic horsemen holding the center.

King Sangiban had finally discovered his manhood. The Alans attacked through that gap in the Hunnic lines and a rout was in the offing. The Sarmatian Leader decided he had to answer Attila's call. The Golden Mare offered to take her Amazons and whichever tribal leader volunteered first to ride with her against the Alans.

She drew her sword and held it aloft then motioned the Sarmatians to look at her shadow.

"We will hold them off until the length of our swords double (the shadow). Then we are all on our own," she offered. There was no further discussion necessary. There was nothing else to say. The Host and their allies had the fresher horses and full quivers.

The Alans had numbers but no heavy horse present – yet. The Host had answered Attila's call to war and now, nearly a year away from their homes in the forested steppe lands of modern-day Bukovina. At that moment they were wondering how few of them would ever see their horse herds roaming free this side of life.

That was where my vision came in ~ that woman was 'Ishara', the last of my major bloodline of the first Ishara and this was the last hour of her life. The other two women were the only other two members of that vanishing bloodline. One was her aunt and the other a cousin. Despite the dire peril to their lineage, they joined their sisters in battle.

Even though they were outnumber 2:1, the Amazons swept aside the first burst of Alans, scattering their bands and hunting the slowest of them down. Rushing alone to fill the gaping hole in the main battle lines was to abandon all tactical sense. Eighty Amazon heavy horse and perhaps twenty more Sarmatians ~ they were integrated now ~ alone simply weren't enough.

For the roughly 300 lightly armored horse-archers, it would be a pointless suicide and that was not the Amazon way. Instead, they scattered the initial Alan rush then gently trotted back down the slope. Of course, the Alans regrouped and followed. It was the battle pulse of steppe skirmishing.

By simply existing, they turned the rushing wave of that first Alan charge into a slowly strengthening tide. The Alans' mounts were tired and in need of water. Their quivers were nearly empty and some were seen at the top of the slope looting the quivers of the fallen. Whenever they could, the Amazons killed those clever souls.

Killing an archer closer to you who only had two arrows left wasn't as economical as killing the one who was both dismounted, thus an easier shot, and about to have fifteen bolts to use against you. Without the constant harassment, the Gepids were able to keep their retreat orderly. In turn, the other Germanics farther to the right kept their mobs relatively intact as well.

Their success earned them the inevitable enemy reaction. From his vantage point, the Roman Aetius saw the vulnerable and unsupported position the Amazons held. If he could push past the Amazon screen, he could still achieve a route instead of accepting a mere victory for his side. The solution was a force of over two hundred Roman Heavy Horse – many of them Sarmatians in Roman service. The troops may have been Sarmatians, but their commander wasn't.

Pro forma, when the larger Roman force advanced downslope, the Amazons obliged them by slowly zigzagging down slope away from them. To a warrior born to the steppe, the Amazons weren't running away, they were simply increasing the numbers of arrows they could fire before the final contest of arms began.

The Roman commander sounded the 'full advance' and obediently, his men rolled forward. The Golden Mare looked to the last Isharan and smiled. Surely the Seven Martial Goddesses (one of which was Ishara) had given them a great gift ... a stupid enemy. The Amazon light cavalry scattered to the flanks. The heavies bunched up tightly and went to a trot while still moving away.

By that time, they were on the flat, somewhat muddy floodplain and the Romans kept coming ... right along the stretch of ground the Amazons had been churning into mud with their own mounts. Belatedly, the Alan horse-archers realized the catastrophe the Romans were riding into but they hadn't the discipline to form up fast enough to do much good.

When the Romans had cut the distance between them and their targets in half, their commander realized that the Amazon heavies had bows and his men didn't. At that point, had he finally realized he was in trouble, there wasn't much he could do to save most of his men. He ordered the charge – full gallop. When the distance close to around twenty yards, the Amazon heavies broke into thirds.

Two groups kept retreating straight away, toward the Hunnic camp. The third broke off to the left at a 45% angle from the other two. The Romans kept their discipline. The commander was able to dispatch 70 of his men to chase down the third group. If this secondary Roman group noticed that when they left the already well-trodden muddy ground they picked up their speed ... there wasn't much they could have done about that as well.

As the distance closed down to those last ten yards, the first group turned rapidly, formed into a tight V-shaped formation and counter-charged into the main mass of Romans. They didn't have much time to build up momentum. They didn't care. In fact they wanted to keep their tight wedge. 130 tired Romans steeds collided with roughly 30 Amazons, my ancestor included.

The Roman Commander found that his men hadn't impacted Amazons hard enough to shatter them. His men surrounded their enemy quickly, but their preponderance of men profited them little. It was of great use to the Amazon and Sarmatians horse-archers now swarming in from all direction.

The Roman charge had ground to a halt and they made excellent targets with little fear of hitting the Amazon trapped in the middle. The second Roman group had something similar thing happen. The group of 35 they were chasing turned to face them. This group, though, formed up in a line, clearly intending to absorb the attention of as many of the Roman attackers as possible.

Charge met counter-charge. The fighting become confused with both sides losing some of their cohesion. The Romans were going to win this uneven struggle, given enough time. Less than two minutes after the first clash of arms, the 'missing third' of the Amazon/Sarmatian heavy cavalry slammed unimpeded into the second Roman group's rear, doing what Heavy Cavalry did best – running over things.

The second Roman group shattered on impact. Those small groups that recoiled from that initial shock began running upslope mistakenly thinking they were being allowed to escape. When they saw the enemies forming up and heading the other way – to the main body of Romans, they had cause to hope. Only when the Amazon horse-archers closed in on those survivors did they realized how wrong they were.

One Armored Roman was more than a match for any one, or two horse-archers, but FIVE? Due to the actions of a double handful of brave Alans, a few Romans managed to stagger back to the top of the slope that so many had advanced from less than 30 minutes earlier. For the main Roman body, there were no happy endings. The Roman Commander wasn't some Germanic hero. He was an officer and tactician.

He realized that the horse-archers were whittling away on his men on the outside faster than his men on the inside were crushing the group he'd 'trapped'. From his point of view, he'd accomplished his mission – driving the 'Hunnish forces' off the slope. He was wrong to believe that. He hadn't 'driven off' anyone.

Even as the Roman call to 'Rally' sounded, the victors of the 'secondary' fight rolled into his men. Within thirty seconds, the Roman rank and file realized they'd lost this particular fight and began to break off in the only direction left open to them – moving diagonally between the retreating Hunnic and Ostrogothic forces and the Hunnic laager.

Those roughly 50 men had to run a gauntlet of 25,000 enemies to make their exit from battlefield's farthest point. The Amazons didn't keep track of them. They reformed their ranks, tended their wounded and gathered their dead. After dark, they would return to those piles to give their sisters a proper burial. Currently they had to return upslope to continue screening their allies from the Alans as the Germans fell back.