35 - The mamokal

Some days later, as approaching dawn roused those who like to be up before reveille, the rumour went through our camp like wildfire, rousing even more: “The Lakans have monsters!” It would have been easier to dispel if it hadn’t been true.

“Back to quarters!” the general order was relayed through the crowd of warriors that stood at the edge of camp, on their toes to see over each other’s heads. “You heard!” I barked at those of my hundred who were there, but lingered myself, my only chance at my height to see.

Three hundred paces away, in the morning twilight, they looked like living black hillocks, except they moved, and had two gleaming appendages, like teeth extending forwards, that curved gracefully like sword-blades, except with a twist. The rising sun turned them red-brown, and made their legs and huge knobbed heads with long dangling noses come out clear, all covered with shaggy fur. They were three times as tall at the shoulder as a man’s head, and their blades looked at least two man-heights long. I counted fifteen of them, each with a tiny crenellated fortress on its back, to carry Lakans like a horse—except several at a time, I knew. I’d read about them.

“They’re not monsters, they’re…” I didn’t know how to pronounce the Lakan word, that I’d read transliterated into Enchian; I guessed, ‘mamok.’ They are natural to climes further north, and wild ones stay well away from anywhere people live, but Lakans have held them captive for a long time, centuries perhaps, based on their own tradition that they tamed a similar animal before the Fire. It was only a half century or so ago they’d hit on the idea of using them in war, more recently than we’d last been at war with Laka. I ran back to the tent, tore through my library for the book that had a chapter on them, and dashed to Emao-e’s tent.

“Mamokal, yes,” she said to me. “I’m not an entire ignoramus, lad; I’ve heard of them.”

“I bet you don’t have a book that tells how to use them tactically and what their weaknesses are,” I said, with a cheery grin. “I do.” She pursed her lips, but called council.

Each mamoka could carry six to eight people, one the driver and the others archers or javelineers—why not, when they were fighting from a living tower? The beasts were intelligent and trained to strike enemies with those blades, crush them under their massive feet or even seize and fling them with their long noses, which were prehensile. Killing one with a single thrust to any part of the body, even of a long spear, was impossible, since no arm could drive a spear that deep; their coats alone were two handwidths thick. To strike their eyes or heads you’d have to be able to reach that high, without their blades striking you. Horses, unless they were trained from foals, were so terrified of mamokal that they’d go nowhere near, so the beasts could be depended on to break a cavalry charge or sever cavalry lines. Whether people were terrified of them, of course, was more a matter of choice.

“But here are their weaknesses!” I said to the command council, the book in my hand, and read right out of it. “ ‘The wise tactician will keep always in mind the way these grand and noble creatures are disadvantageous. While the mamok is immensely strong and unstoppable in motion, he is slow; he cannot run, only walk, so he can be outstripped either by a horse or a man’—of course it’s a Lakan book, they say man because only men fight in their army, they don’t mean to say women can’t outrun the things because why couldn’t they?—‘In distress, he can become difficult to control, sometimes running (or more correctly, walking) amok, and making no distinction between friends or foes in his path. He gives away his distress easily by a high-pitched, sustained whistling sound that is unmistakable for those who know it. The long nose-tentacle is very sensitive, and vulnerable since the fur upon it is shorter than on the rest of the body; he is easily thrown into panic if it is injured. A mamok which has lost his driver will panic, especially if he was attached to the man, as they often are; he will become a danger to all in his path and can only be directed by the application of steel or fire to his posterior.’

“So we don’t try to kill them,” I said. “We kill the Lakans on their backs—driver first—then spear them in the nose, and when they turn, spear them in the butt and drive them back onto the Lakan lines.”

“I see you have it all thought out, lad,” Emao-e said, drily. “You make it sound easy.”

“Fifteen of them,” I said, “fifteen units of us, with twenty light-armoured but well shielded foot and ten archers in each unit. The footpeople screen the archers until they’re well within range, then all ten aim for the driver at once, until he falls. If one of the others seizes up the stick they direct them with, same thing; if not, they shoot the beast in the nose, and the foot drive him back at the Lakans with their spears.” I hadn’t thought of this on the way here; it came to me as I spoke it.

They sat thinking, no one ripping it apart; of course, on what experience could they base criticism? It was strong in the element the tactician seeks the most, setting strength against weakness, which they had to like. “We’ll do that if no one thinks of a better idea,” said Emao-e. “I was thinking, Kadrini, but against archers so close, they’d be deathly vulnerable, and they can’t easily evade if the mamoka advances and starts stepping on them. The only thing is, to get that close to the things would take a lot of nerve, Chevenga. I mean, would you aigh!”

I didn’t see it, but I think Hurai, who knew me better and was beside Emao-e, pinched her. Too late. “Of course I would, and I can think of fourteen others in my hundred, easy, who’d command a unit.” I could see Mana, Krero and Sach all saying, “You volunteered us for what?” No matter; I knew I could find the words that would make them all fall in love with the idea.

“Fourteen others in your hundred!” Hurai spat. “Eight or nine of them are your friends, I do not doubt, Fourth Chevenga, and has a single one of you peach-chinned striplings even hit eighteen yet?”

“Of course not, as you well know. But the only thing older warriors have over us is experience, and no Yeoli has experience in this. And you know how you’re always saying how we youths are brainless-fearless, believing we’re immortal? That makes us perfect! You want people who are too stupid not to do this.”

Emao-e pressed her brow into her hand, eyes closed. A few of the others were stifling grins. I knew what she was thinking—I can’t send the anaraseye into such danger—and prepared my usual argument in my mind, that in that case she ought to order me to go home and hang up Chirel on my mantelpiece.

We thrashed it out for a while. Of course Emao-e could not allow it without a decent amount of discussion, but, to my delight, the plan was left essentially the same. She ordered, naturally enough, that no one under the rank of dekakraseye could command a unit; inexperience in command could hurt us, of course. But that still let in Mana, who’d taken my place as deka when I’d been elected, and Krero, whom another ten had wanted to replace one killed in Elera’s folly.

“As for who’s going to lead this whole mad mission…” She pursed her lips and looked at me, and I tried to stifle my grin, and knew I was failing. “Well, I don’t see who else it can be, other than anaraseye Bookworm here.” Of course once we were fighting, each commander would be on his own; but it would be me who arranged it all, taught them everything, and led what drilling we could do, if we could think up a way to drill for this. Fifteen times thirty was four-hundred and fifty, almost half-way to milakraseye, and I’d got it without anyone being killed.

So I fairly ran out of Emao-e’s tent to put out the word to all the light-armed milakraseyel that I needed fifteen twenties of the kind fearless enough to face mamoka—some leaders believe it’s best not to be honest about such a mission, but I am not one of them—and Oteka, who was high commander of archers, that I wanted fifteen tens of her best markspeople. It had to be fast; the Lakans might deploy any moment.

As we assembled at the edge of camp, I took stock of their spirit; were they keen and brash, or grim and resigned? A little more the latter, I felt, though the younger ones, of course, were more the former, giggling excitedly. Once there was silence, I showed them the book.

“The first thing you should know about mamokal,” I said, “is that, if you must, you can outrun one.” That got a laugh, and eased the grimness a lot. “That means you can run in, strike and run out again. I’m sure we’ll soon get the feel of it. But understand, the animals themselves are not who we’ll set our minds on slaying; it’s the Lakans on their backs, starting with the driver.” I read the passage on the mamoka’s weaknesses to them, then the dangers—that we must avoid getting too near the blades, nose or feet—and then explained the whole plan. We would go across from wherever they deployed the beasts, and if they were the Lakan vanguard, we’d be the Yeoli. If in the end the Lakans fled, leaving them, we’d send for ropes and try to capture them.

Just as well I’d thought of no way to drill; we didn’t have time. The Lakans were dressing ranks; our gong signaling same would come in a moment. “No living Yeoli has ever fought these creatures before,” I said, to finish off. “We will be the first, and yet we fight knowing enough to win. We won’t just be able to brag about this for the rest of our lives, but books will be written and songs will be sung. Call us the Conquerors of the Mamokal.” They raised a appropriately fired-up cheer.

The day brightened and grew hot, the sky a cloudless steely blue, sun glinting on spear-points on the other side of the stubble-field. We formed each unit as three ranks of ten, archers in the rear, in front of the main lines. I kept my eyes on the cluster of mamokal, watching their riders mount, using ladders leaned against their sides, then arrange themselves in the boxes and string their bows.

Each driver took the sharp staff he would use to direct his mamoka and touched it to the beast’s head, setting it to walking. You are marked men, I thought. Arzaktaj was placing them across his centre, about twenty paces ahead of his front line and seventy-five paces apart, so I placed my units opposite each, taking the central position with my own thirty. Over the still distance we heard the Lakan horns blare advance. The mamokal began towards us in step, each leading with its tree-trunk-sized sword-side forefoot, like warriors.

--