“Ohh-yee…”
“Aiieee!”
“Yeee-aaa…”
Voices calling out to each other echoed faintly around Devil Rock, which cast a long shadow in the fading light of sunset.
“Are you all right?”
“Did you get hurt?”
The Devil Rock was a large, strangely-shaped upthrust of stone that rose from the rocky lands near Dog’s Head Mountain, well to the east of the oasis where the battle had taken place. The Rock was not the only unusual crag in the area; other great formations crowded the desert there, rising in every sort of weird and fantastic shape, and now as the light of the sunset dyed them red they looked like a gathering of deformed giants. In the stillness they shadowed a more diminutive gathering that was assembling at their feet: limping, wounded, grief-stricken little ape-men, the survivors of the Sem, who were now utterly defeated.
“Where is Kalto? Was he killed?”
Under Loto’s orders, Siba of the Raku was trying to organize the defeated wildlings; they were walking among the remnants of each tribe to look for the chieftains.
“Tubai? Tubai of the Tubai?”
“Tubai was killed,” a young warrior from the tribe answered heavily. Tubai, the yidoh keepers, were decimated. They had been few in number even before the battle, and had suffered heavily in it.
“Kalto is here.”
“Oh, Kalto—you are all right!”
Among the Sem tribes, the Raku and the Rasa had always been closest. Loto heaved a sigh of relief and reached out to embrace his old friend.
“Kalto is safe. But many of the young of Rasa were killed,” Kalto said with his dirty, bloody head hanging.
“It is the same among the Raku.”
“The Raku have the fewest injured,” Kalto answered sulkily, unwilling to receive that sort of consolation. “The Rasa are totally destroyed.”
“That is not true! Some day, you can have more children and raise them up strong.”
Kalto would not listen. “Many of the Rasa’s women died.” The chief sat down behind a stone and began to grieve with loud, sad cries. “Everybody died!”
Siba shrugged and, leaving Kalto to abandon himself to his grief, went back to work.
“Guro? Guro?”
“Is Ilateli safe?”
“No,” a young, heavily-built warrior of the Guro tribe, with wounds on his hands and legs, spoke up as his fellows were wrapping his injuries with herbs. “Ilateli died. Oh-mu’s red devils and white devils split Ilateli’s head in half. Ilateli fell down, and a horse stepped on him. The white matter was running out of his head.”
“Ilateli has died…” Siba hung his head. The powerful, courageous leader of the Guro had been a source of inspiration to the rest of the Sem. “Tubai and Ilateli have both died.”
“For the Guro, Ilateli’s son will act as chief until we can choose a new chief at our next gathering.”
A very black Guro stood up beside the big wounded warrior. “I am he,” he told Siba. “I am Utari.”
“Utari. How many Guro were killed?”
“Many.” Utari spat out the word.
“I am still alive,” someone declared in a rough, commanding voice, and it made Siba lift up his head.
“Oh, Gaulo!”
It was the chief of the Karoi. He had been wounded in the shoulder, but otherwise he appeared to be in good health and high spirits, and his ferocity was in full flood. Siba was impressed.
“You made it through the army of oh-mu!” Siba didn’t like Gaulo, but he could not help expressing his admiration at the feat.
“We, the Karoi, have already destroyed one of the oh-mu’s castles. We didn’t consider this much of a predicament,” Gaulo replied with exaggerated self-assurance.
Siba counted the number of Karoi around Gaulo with his eyes and then returned to Loto.
“Ilateli and Tubai were both killed. Gaulo and Kalto are safe. Not even half of the Guro have survived. The Tubai are almost destroyed. The Rasa are down to the number of a single clan. The Karoi made it through quite well—and the Raku, too. Many have died, but many have survived.”
The Sem had only a vague conception of numbers, so Siba’s report was imprecise, but he had described the essential truth of the situation. Before the battle, the united tribes of the Sem had numbered roughly seven thousand. In the space of a day’s bitter fighting that number had been reduced to two or three thousand.
Loto nodded, and stared around Devil Rock in silence. They had made it past the stubborn pursuit of the Mongauli and escaped to this hidden meeting place; they were unlikely to be threatened again by the invaders’ army for a while.
“I wonder how many of the oh-mu have died,” Loto said in a low voice.
“Not even half of them. Only one oh-mu was killed for every three or four Sem.”
“Hmnn…” Loto sank into a grim contemplation of the situation. It seemed hopeless, and it was still getting worse.
The Sem had fallen into a state of abject misery. Two of the five tribal chiefs were now gone, and the losses among the warriors had been tremendous. Among the survivors almost all were wounded. They were disorganized and scattered now, resting here and there among the rocks. Even most of those who were moving around the gathering treating the injured warriors bore injuries of their own. The badly wounded were crying and screaming constantly, and when their cries grew too loud the healers stuffed their mouths with herbal medicine to quiet them, fearing that the noise would draw the enemy’s attention. There wasn’t enough water in the makeshift camp, for most of the wildlings’ water bags had been dropped or broken during the escape. There was no food. The Sem knew the desert as only lifelong desert-dwellers could, and some of the more vigorous among them had been given orders to go out and forage for things to eat, but there was little hope that they would find what was needed; worn out as they were, they could not travel far.
“Loto.”
“What is it, Siba?”
“Are the oh-mu looking for us?”
“Hmnn…” The aged, white-haired face of Loto held an expression of bitterness as he considered this worrisome prospect. With so few warriors left, it would be hard to form even a small skirmishing force to face the several thousand troops that remained to the Mongauli army.
“We must flee farther away!” another voice put in suddenly. Siba gave a start. Kalto, leading some of his best warriors, had appeared suddenly on Loto’s other side. He stared intently at the old chief. “We must split apart into five tribes again, and join up with the females and children who have been hiding in the mountains. Then we must find a way farther east, or north into the high mountains, and conceal ourselves somehow until the oh-mu have gone. There is no other way for the Sem to survive.”
“No! That is no good!” In spite of his low rank, Siba could not help blurting out a response. “The oh-mu have no intention of leaving any of us alive. They made sure to finish off everyone who had fallen. The oh-mu intend to eliminate all of the Sem and wipe us from Nospherus. If we divide ourselves, they will slay us one tribe at a time no matter where we hide.”
“Is this young one the successor of Loto?” Kalto asked with a grimace.
Loto nodded vaguely, and spoke with reluctance.
“Perhaps they do not seek to kill us all. I do not think they would kill those who surrendered, if it came to that. And Nospherus is huge. Once we are in hiding they will not be able to find us so easily.”
“Nospherus is vast. But even we Sem do not know every part; there are places where we, too, are strangers,” Siba pointed out. “The areas we know—they will be able to find us there eventually. The areas we don’t know are very dangerous. We don’t know every secret the land holds. Once we leave our territory, we won’t know where the colonies of sand leeches or the valleys of the yidoh are. Who can say how many Sem would be lost if we try to make a new part of Nospherus our home?”
“We can think about that later,” Kalto said dismissively. His foul mood was clear in his scowl. “Battle is sure to bring death, and the Rasa don’t want to add any more to the numbers of our dead. Rasa is a small tribe. If any more of us die, Rasa will be extinct. Loto, if you do not wish to hide or escape, what are the Raku going to do? You do not hope to fight with the oh-mu anymore—or do you? The Sem cannot fight any longer. The Sem don’t have the strength to fight even sand leeches, now.”
“I—” Loto had just begun to speak when he was interrupted by a sudden exclamation.
“We must fight!”
The voice was high, young, and female.
“Suni, dear one…”
Siba rushed to her side. The little Sem girl had accosted them unobserved, her head and shoulders painfully wrapped with herbal poultices. She had listened to the conversation in silence, leaning weakly against a boulder.
“This is Suni, my granddaughter,” Loto explained to Kalto’s subordinates. “She was stabbed by a red devil. We found her fallen, left for dead.”
“Grandfather, Rinda and Remus were taken by the oh-mu!” Suni’s high-pitched, birdlike voice was shrill with emotion. “Please save them. Before the morning comes, please go back to the oh-mu camp and save them!”
Siba caught the frail body of the Sem girl as she began to topple over, and helped her to sit.
“Little Suni… You are weak. You must be careful.”
“They saved Suni—this time, Suni must save them!”
“Suni…” Loto lifted his hand, discomfited.
“That’s right! Riyaad said the Sem must fight to survive. He said that we had to continue until the sunset of the fourth day, and we would survive. If we did that, he would bring reinforcements. And Riyaad doesn’t break his promises! He will come back by tonight. We need to fight a while longer and lead the oh-mu astray, to keep them confused until the day is over, until Riyaad is back. Riyaad will be back to save us!”
“Oh Riyaad…” Loto whispered, remembering.
Kalto was furious.
“You want the Sem to hold out even now, when the oh-mu hunt us? When the day has ended, the Sem will be gone from the face of the world!”
“Grandfather, please save Rinda! Siba, please save Rinda! I beg you!”
“Both of them are oh-mu—the sister and the brother,” Kalto objected. “Oh-mu don’t kill oh-mu. But oh-mu kill Sem. To save two oh-mu, is it right to kill many Sem?” He turned to the wildlings who stood behind him. “Tell me, is it right?”