Karux never quite had the chance to explain his strange questions to Theris, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt that Theris was exactly the right person to entrust with the elementals' power over the land. He just couldn't imagine how he could talk Theris into joining with them.
Karux and his reavers had not stayed in Theris' village long before more villages to the south reported similar attacks. Having recruited men for their tireav from all the surrounding villages, they set up a training camp in Korion-Athrion south of Korion-Sito. The men had barely learned the basics when the first warning cry came.
"A large group of reavers are approaching from the east," Macander called out.
Karux bolted to his feet. "How many?"
"At least a couple hundred."
Not good, Karux thought. They had less than half that number of barely trained men and boys. "Call out the spears and meet me at the east road."
Karux hurried out as Macander ordered the tacarchs to gather their men and arranged them before the korion's entrance in a defensive wall of men, wood and bronze. He paused just outside, straining for any sign or sound of the coming force, belatedly realizing he'd forgotten his own spear. It did not take long for the enemy reavers to trickle in. Scores of men strolled along the trail in no particular order, each man carrying his spear however it pleased him. They came within a stone's throw and paused, milling around as their fellows in the rear caught up.
Karux went out to meet them. Behind him, Macander called out "Ready spears!" and their own men raise their spears in unison, assuming a defensive stance as if they were prepared to stop a charge. They looked fierce, but knowing them as he did, Karux could detect fear in the looks they gave each other.
If only they'd had more time to train, Karux thought, hoping what little training they'd had would be enough. Few wolf skins remained with him and they had not fought in many months. None of the locals had ever fought anything larger than a fox or the occasional wild dog.
Slingers! Karux thought. How could we have overlooked something like that? Even a score of slingers could cast their enemies into confusion and allow his reavers to rush them. He thought of the surprise attack the farmers had made on the wolf skins. Theris had told him that if the farmers had only followed up on their simple attack of thrown rocks, the wolf skins probably would not have been able to defend themselves. A slung stone would strike with more force than a thrown rock and could even kill a man. A favored hobby of bored young herdsmen, he wondered if any of these farm boys had ever picked up a sling.
"Welcome, strangers, to Korion-Athrion. I am Karux. May I ask what brings you here?"
The strangers exchanged awkward glances, then a large man with a tall cone-shaped hat stepped forward. "I am Sabek, newly selected chief elder of Korion-Daikon. Our korion has suffered greatly from the blight and we have heard that you have stored up a great excess of grain."
Karux noted that Sabek the elder was barely in his thirties. He could only wonder what sort of upheaval the curse had caused in Korion-Daikon that one so young should be made chief elder. "Yes. We may have some small amount of grain that we could trade." Karux looked across the grim-faced mob of reavers. "What do you bring to trade?"
"I'm afraid we have nothing for trade. We have eaten all our own animals, even our seed crops and we've traded away everything of value for food already. Our women and children have begun to starve and we have nothing left but our own good right arms and these spears."
"Korion-Daikon? Did we not visit you, warn you of the coming blight and offer an alliance?"
Sabek looked questioningly to his men. One of the older men nodded his head shamefully. "It would seem that our prior chief elder did not possess the wisdom his gray hairs should have given him."
"It is too late in the season for you to grow another crop, even with the arts we might share. However, if you are still willing to form an alliance, we might be able to share some of our excess grain. There are larger threats than the angorym to come and we can use men who know how to hold a spear and which end to thrust with."
Sabek took a large breath, and blew it out thoughtfully. "How much could you share?" Some of the men standing behind him, relaxed.
Karux did a quick mental calculation of their stores. "We could give you fifty vadhs of grain."
Sabek lowered his head, leaning on his spear. When he raised it again, he looked genuinely regretful. "That wouldn't be enough. We would need more than twice that just to make it through the winter."
"We could help you hunt and forage," Karux offered. "I'm sure we could find a way to help you."
"Even the Keleos trees have dropped their nuts too early." Sabek looked up. "As for hunting, there are hundreds of koria in as bad a shape as we. Nothing lives that walks on four legs south of the mountains. No." Sabek readied his spear. "I'm afraid that won't be good enough. We're going to have to ask you to give us the rest."
"Listen, I'm sure we can find a way to help you. Just give us some time."
"No. I'm sorry."
"Well then the price of your blood will fall on your own head." Karux walked away
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Karux called back over his shoulder, "It means we will stop you." He stepped through the lines of determined reavers who closed ranks behind him. Behind the rearguard he turned and, realizing he couldn't see the enemy through his own forces, mounted the stairs to the flat roof of a nearby house.
The men of Korion-Daikon outnumbered the defenders by at least three to one and bore longer, heavier spears. They approached in a roughly S-shaped line, spears lowered, then charged across the short distance with a scream.
The men of Korion-Athrion stood their ground, unmoving, spears at the ready. When the forward part of the curve met the defenders, wood clattered against wood as the men of Korion-Athrion remembered their training, pushed the attackers' spearheads aside and stepped in, thrusting. A score of men from Korion-Daikon fell, pierced through. The rest of the attackers surged forward, most of them suffering a similar fate. A few defenders fell as well, struck by the longer spears thrusting from behind the first line, then all became a chaos of dust and screams and anger and pain.
Karux noticed the defenders rarely had a chance to use both ends of the spears. While the weapon was fine for fighting in small groups, these large tightly packed formations, made them less useful. Only their better training allowed them to stand against these farmers who had, at best, only used their spears for hunting wild boars.
They should probably be even shorter, Karux thought. The spear heads should be longer, like that angorym long knife, but at each end. Would such a weapon be too heavy? Ideally the whole thing should be one long sharp piece of metal with only a place to grip it in the middle, but such a thing would almost certainly be too heavy to wield. Perhaps, with training, their strength might increase?
As Karux watched and pondered the course of the fight, he noticed Macander surging forward ahead of his men. He had cleared a small space out in which he was able to use his weapon freely, and he was both a wonder and a terror to behold.
With a wide sweep of his weapon from which half a dozen enemies stumbled backwards, he slashed the throat of one man with his weapons' tip. The man dropped to his knees clutching his neck while blood sprayed out as from a cracked jug of beer. Macander thrust forward, spearing another man, then lunged backwards, gutting the man behind him with the back of his spear. He swung around again, driving back more men and bringing the weapon down on another man's head. Macander's blow staggered his man, but only bounced off his skull.
The double-headed spears had all been made to Amantis' design. Karux found himself wishing they had made more of flange at the widest point of the spearhead, then his blow might have penetrated the man's skull. At the same time, he began to wonder if some sort of defense might be fashioned to protect the head from such attacks.
A group of attackers pressed in on Macander and he blocked them with his spear's shaft, striking back with kicks, knees and elbows, moving with the grace of a deadly dancer and betraying no distress or hesitation. The attackers focused on him, pressing him in a coordinated fashion. Macander's own men rushed in to help as he pushed the attackers back and they were all soon swallowed up by the attackers' superior numbers. Surrounded, outnumbered and on the defensive, Macander's men soon began to fall.
Karux called out to Somek fighting nearby. Somek had kept his men together and moved back and forth behind them, thrusting his spear over their shoulders when a man became too hard pressed by the enemy. "Somek! Somek!" Karux cried out.
Hearing his name, Somek looked around and then looked up, appearing surprised to find Karux on the roof of a nearby house.
"Macander has gotten separated!" He pointed to the circle of enemy between them and Macander. "You need to break through over there."
Somek gave him a nod and shouted instructions to his men. They surged forward, struggling past their own opponents to attack those fighting Macander. Surprised to find Somek' spearmen charging them from behind, they panicked and fell beneath Somek' spears.
The side that Somek had protected staggered beneath a renewed assault. The men of Korion-Daikon's advance however faltered as their center, fighting Macander, collapsed under Somek's counter attack.
Karux could feel the tide of battle shifting. He had often noticed how feelings of fear, hatred and even joy could spread from man to man like a living thing. He shifted his attention to the world of the elemental shapes and tried to see if such things were represented there. If he could generate a spirit of fear or hopelessness in the enemy, the battle would end immediately. But as he looked, all he saw was a mad swirling chaos of potential patterns as schemas were formed, destroyed and reformed before any single pattern could be completed. The heaving semi-random mess of shapes gave him a headache and he gave up.
When those attackers at the edge of the fight first turned and ran, Karux knew the fight was over. The remaining attackers, seeing their support flee, turned and ran while the men of Korion-Athrion sent up a great cheer.
Karux bounded down the stairs and out into the field of battle. He found Somek next to Macander who was bent over a figure on the ground. "Are either of you hurt?" he asked.
"We're fine," Somek beamed, flush with the success of battle.
"Torval's not." Macander looked up with a pleading expression. "He came down with us from the hills. You've got to help him."
Karux remembered him as a friend of Macander and Bazma's. Torval's bland square face, covered in sweat, was cinched up in pain. He had taken a spear between the ribs and bright red blood bubbled out.
"I'll see what I can do." Karux pulled out his stone, set it on Torval's side and focused on the wound. He had found it surprisingly easy to dive in to the world of patterns that comprised Torval's flesh. He first worked on repairing the blood vessels, pulling the blood out of small air sacs and putting it back where it was supposed to go. He repaired the worse of the damage and started to knit up the skin, trusting Torval's body to finish the job. He was about to pronounce him "healed enough" when he noticed some strange shapes, dangerous looking schemas that replicated on their own, unmaking the pattern of his flesh.
Karux, never entirely certain of what the schemas he looked at represented, limited himself to repairing broken patterns he assumed belonged. These new schemas looked somehow wrong. With mentally crossed fingers, he unmade them and rose up. "I think that will keep him alive long enough to recover on his own. You'll want to take it easy until you finish healing."
"What about the other wounded?" one of the men of Korion-Athrion asked.
"Take those with lighter wounds back to the korion and clean them up. I'll tend to them later, take me to the most severely wounded now."
"What about this one?" another man of Korion-Athrion pointed his spear at a man lying curled on the ground. "He's from the other korion."
Karux walked over and examined him. He had a deep gash in his inner thigh. It didn't look too bad, but his face was very pale and he lay in a large pool of blood. Karux looked up at the man from Korion-Athrion. "He's a man isn't he? Would you feel right just leaving him to die?"
The man shook his head reluctantly.
Karux placed the stone on the man's leg and began concentrating.
"Wha-What are you doing?" the man called out hoarsely.
"He's healing you," Somek growled.
"He can do that?"
"Just wait."
Karux focused on the wound and was able to repair the most serious damage fairly quickly. He didn't waste much time fixing everything, but like Torval, he fixed the most critical parts and closed the flesh. "He should recover now. Take him and the other men from Korion-Daikon to Goltek's barn and set a guard over them until we decide what to do with them. Tell the elders I'd like to speak to them before decisions are made.
Moving from man to man, starting with the most seriously wounded, Karux found Eiraena shadowing him and watching his actions. At some point he rose, dizzy from healing another in an endless line of bleeding man, he notice Eiraena had disappeared. He looked around and found her tending someone else. He watched her, focusing his perceptions on the patterns she changed and decided she was simply following his example. She spent more time than he did and thoroughly repaired each part of the injury. He thought of trying to tell her to limit herself to the minimum necessary to save the life or limb, but how to explain that? Even if he could quantify what was basically guesswork, he doubted she would understand. He turned back to his work, grateful for the help.
He managed to save all the men from Korion-Athrion but four who had died in the midst of the battle. At least a score or more had injuries severe enough they would not have survived the night without his attention. The number of dead and dying from Korion-Daikon was at least five times that. A few died as the men of Korion-Athrion insisted he treat their dying first, but for the most part, Karux was able to treat them in order of their need.
A woman of Korion-Athrion brought him a bowl of beer and he paused in his work. As he rested, Goltek approached. "I have some men from Korion-Daikon who would speak with you. I also have elders asking questions about them."
Karux sighed, "Ask the elders to please wait patiently and I will speak to them as soon as I've finished dealing with the aftermath here. If you could see that the rest of these wounded are moved, I'll speak with the men in your barn."
Walking to Goltek's barn, a sudden weight of fatigue fell on Karux. He wanted nothing more than to just go to bed and sleep for a couple of days, but he knew the results of this conflict would keep him busy for at least that long. He gestured at the barn doors and one of the guards unbarred and opened them. Stepping inside, a score of startled men dropped to their knees. The nearest, a tall heavy-set young man with a scraggly beard, addressed him. "Thank you, merciful dra, for saving us. We know that many of us would have died without your holy intervention."
Uh oh, Karux thought. Who do these people think I am?
"Only because you are so generous and so kind, would we dare to ask one more boon," the man continued.
Suspicious, Karux frowned. "What is it?"
"You came to our korion and generously offered us an alliance. Our elders were not wise enough to appreciate the magnitude of your kind gesture, but we would still like to join with you."
"Join us? Do you speak for your korion?"
"No, alas, we cannot speak for our korion, but we have decided that we no longer wish to go back. We would like to move here and live among you."
The request stunned Karux. "Would you be willing to fight alongside us, and risk your lives to defend those men you were only moments ago trying to kill?"
"We have nothing against those men. It was only the desperation of our leaders and our stomachs that drove us to attack you. Please trust me when I say we have no ill-will towards any of you."
"I wish I could say the same. Several good men of our korion are lying dead out there because of you. Their families haven't even heard yet, their mourning has yet to begin. Others almost certainly would have died if I had not treated them, and some may yet still sicken. I doubt the elders will look too kindly on your request while we are still burying the men you've killed."
The spokesman bowed to the ground. "I know there is nothing we can do to repay you, yet we are all willing to do anything in our power to serve you and this korion. We are all willing to stand and fight in their place or perform any and every other service you would have us do. We only ask that you allow us, our wives and our children to live here among you and you may put us to any use you like."
His words sent a cold chill down Karux's spine. These men were inviting him to abuse them in whatever way he wished, to treat them as little more than animals to be harnessed. "I'll speak to the elders on your behalf," he said. Though he thought he might not use those same words.
"Thank you! Thank you!" they sighed and some openly wept in relief.
Karux could only hope they wouldn't regret their decision.