The Stones of Nomuru

Soon the charge dwindled to a few survivors who fled back, mounted or afoot, the way they had come. The site of the ancient city was littered with the bodies of jutens and Choshas, some writhing, twitching, and squawking amid those that lay still.

Presently Pokrovskii ventured: "Think we can make dash for de car now; attack over."

"No; here comes another charge." Salazar's quiet voice rose to a shout. "Wait, you damned fool!"

Heedless, Pokrovskii hoisted himself out of the test pit and waddled ponderously towards the steam car. As he did so, the earth vibrated with the rumble of hundreds of jutens, charging the line of Rangers again. Salazar strained his lungs to scream: "Come back, Oleg!" Then he ducked down as the leaders of the second charge swept past.

One nomad caught Pokrovskii thirty meters from the pit and speared him with a lance. Salazar did not dare to shoot the Chosha lancer for fear of drawing fire from the barbarians swarming around them, thus dooming all those huddled in the pit.

Bergen, who had watched his friend go down, shouted in a strangled voice: "Those—fucking—animals, killing a human being—I'll show 'em!"

Red-faced and panting with fury, Bergen gathered his forces, laid his heavy rifle on the ground outside the pit, and sprang out. A few seconds later, a Chosha rider pointed a pistol at him. Bergen whipped up his gun and fired, catapulting the Kook over the tail of his mount.

Salazar opened his mouth to shout: "Come back, you idiot!" but checked the impulse. If the man whom he most hated, who had beaten Kara and had beaten, betrayed, and tried to murder him, wished to invite death at the hands of the Choshas, why should the archaeologist interfere?

As several Choshas converged upon him, Bergen, screaming an inarticulate war cry, swung his rifle right and left, firing and yelling as each Chosha or juten fell. When he had emptied his magazine, he began pulling cartridges from his bandoleer and shoving them into his gun. Then a Chosha rode up close, fired a carbine at him, and knocked him down. Other mounted nomads clustered around the fallen man, swinging sabers. A moment later, a Chosha rode off with Bergen's bloody head impaled on the point of his lance. Then the Rangers' borrowed rifles opened up again, and sheets of bullets felled Choshas and their mounts.

When the charge petered out, Salazar whispered to Kara: "Before they strike again, I must get back to my troops. Follow me, then crouch down behind that car!"

He boosted Kara out of the pit. Then, vaulting out, he ran back with her to his Rangers. Three of his Kookish bodyguards followed; the fourth lay in the pit, dying of a gunshot.

Arriving behind the line of riflemen, Salazar asked Kange: "How many casualties?"

"Sixteen or twenty; some dead, more merely wounded. Here they come again!"

On came another wave of nomads; but they came more slowly now as they picked their way among the bodies that littered the site. When Kange gave the order to fire, Salazar went down the line of Rangers, nudging each and shouting over the din: "You shoot too high! Keep your eye level with the rear sight ... You shoot too fast. Take careful aim, picking your targets ... You flinch when you fire. Pull the butt back harder against your shoulder ...Your gun is jammed from overheating. Let it cool down before you shoot again ..."

In general, the Rangers did better than Salazar expected, squeezing off shots one by one as he had taught them and stopping to replace clips of cartridges. The Kooks' stolid inexcitability made them excellent soldiers when properly led.

Glancing toward the steam car, Salazar saw Kara crouched behind it, holding her pistol in both hands and methodically firing across the vehicle. Salazar used his own rifle only once. Kara had emptied her magazine and was inserting a new clip when a saber-waving Chosha charged towards her afoot. Salazar shouted to the nearest Rangers to shoot the attacker; but the nomad survived the fusillade. When the Kook was within a few meters of the woman, Salazar brought him down with a single rifle shot.

Once more the nomad charge fragmented and fell back like a receding wave. Here and there a dismounted Chosha took cover behind his juten's body to harass the defenders with fire from flintlocks, but with little success. The greater accuracy of the Terran firearms took such a toll of these snipers that the survivors, bent low among the dead and dying, zigzagged back across the site to safety.

Through his binoculars, Salazar spotted small groups of Choshas still moving among the bushes and stunted trees at the far end of Nomuru; but they evinced no desire to attack again in the face of their devastating losses. Presently even these remnants vanished as squadrons of Feënzuo cavalry trotted across the site in pursuit. Salazar saw Pokrovskii crawling toward him trailing a pair of useless legs in bloodsoaked trousers.

As Salazar stood up to go to the Suvarovian's rescue, a flintlock, fired from behind a nearby juten's carcass, sent out a puff of sulfurous smoke. A heavy blow struck Salazar in the ribs, spun him around, and sent him sprawling. He was vaguely aware of a crackle of rifle fire around him and of willing claws carrying him. His side began to hurt abominably, and his daylight faded into dark.