The Kitzakk fort was situated on the heights of the cataracts at the mouth of the main pass, The Narrows. It was built of wood and designed in ancient fashion, like a butterfly. The head was the main gate, with the mouth opening on the pass. The front wings spread forward along the sides of the pass then fanned out backwards forming the main body of the fort. The hind wings formed forked fortifications to guard the rear gate.
At the very center of the fort, on a rectangular earthen rise, a red lacquered box rested on a shallow black altar.
Behind the box General Yat-Feng sat on his bamboo campaign stool watching the eastern horizon where the cool glow of dawn light promised to deliver the sun. Beside him, mounted on a red pole, two horsetails fluttered on the morning breeze, the insignia of his rank as field commander. Standing beside him were six greybeards, old campaigners wearing battered, unfashionable armor from forgotten wars. They also watched the horizon.
The faces of the old warriors were set with proud expectation. They had reenlisted to consult with Yat-Feng on the organization and training of new raider regiments and the tactics of the raids which were about to commence.
About the fort all human life stood waiting. Some at attention, others scratching, whispering: the regiments, mule skinners, drivers, animal and slave wranglers, cooks, skinners, armorers and general scavengers. Horses, oxen, mules, buffalo and camels, momentarily masterless, drifted about inside the stables and corrals, and wandered loose among a formation of large wagons, chewing grass and tent ropes.
A hush fell over the still camp as the white-gold eye of the sun appeared. When the light touched Yat-Feng’s flat brown face, he chanted, “Let the butterfly free,” and the others present echoed the chant three times.
The eldest greybeard kneeled reverently over the red box and removed the lid. Within the black interior poised a large yellow and black swallowtail butterfly. It remained motionless for a long moment, then fluttered, lifting itself out of the box into the white-gold light on wings of weightless beauty.
Gasps of exaltation ran through the crowd, then cheering broke out.
The communications sergeant in the wooden signal tower which stood at the highest point of the camp, lifted a huge yellow and black butterfly flag mounted on a long black pole. It danced with rhythmic sweeps in the air, and the thrill of proud memories played among the wrinkled features of the old campaigners.
The message, passing from the fort to the first flag tower, then from flag tower to flag tower, was carried across the high cataract, then down through the three selected passes.
The Hammer Regiment waited in Wowell Pass to attack Bone Camp. It was the home of the left-handed totem people called the Wowells. Among them were the witches who had manufactured the totems from the dead scouts.
The Spear Regiment was positioned in Snake Pass above Pinetree Bridge. Beyond the bridge was a log village of the Barhacha Woodmen.
The Black Hand Regiment waited in the pass above Short Crossing to hit the village called Coin, the home of the priestly Kavens, the money changers.
When the commanders of these three regiments saw the signal flags, they ordered their mounted troops forward, and they plunged, with trumpets blaring, down the three passes. As they did the first of two innovations which had been made in the day’s order of combat took place.
A desert people called the Feyan Dervishes had been enlisted as irregular troops in the Kitzakk Army. They were a tattered group of wanderers who were converts to the cult of the Butterfly Goddess. They had a fetish for pain and, when half-mad on drugs, an insatiable appetite for sacrificial death. These dervishes were to strike first from within the target villages where they had hidden themselves.
On hearing the regimental trumpets, the dervishes erupted from their hiding places screaming and waving daggers and torches. They were stark naked. Their flesh was stained with carmine from toe to forehead, and their hair and flesh glistened with translucent pitch. Noses bled, and trickled blood over foam-flecked lips. Their eyes were mad with drugs and death.
They grabbed the first available chief, magistrate or priest and stabbed them, then set their own bodies on fire. The thick pitch ignited instantly, turning them into living torches, and they raced screaming, throughout the three villages setting fires and spreading terror. Before the villagers could kill them, the dervishes flung themselves onto the nearest child or aging woman and clung on with teeth and nails. Both assassin and victim burnt to death before they could be pried apart. The grotesque beauty of the carmine bodies and the earsplitting discord of shrieking voices turned each village to mindless pandemonium.
Next came the attack, and here the second innovation in tactics occurred. Each soldier wore a regimental flag in the old style, mounted on the back of his armor. This added height, color and fluid, flashing movement to the regiments as they galloped down out of the cataracts toward the awestruck, disorganized villagers. Before the Barbarians recovered, the Kitzakks had crossed the gorge and dashed through the gaps in the unfinished walls of the villages.
The battle at each village was a routine Kitzakk job-of-work. At the points where the Barbarians were able to initiate significant resistance, the Kitzakks surrounded and contained them. Then, while the main body of Kitzakk soldiers swept into the village to bottle up the children and young women, a Company of White Archers was brought into action. Each soldier carried a long composite bow made of bone and bamboo that stood two heads taller than himself. Each was a veteran sharpshooter. They set up on rooftops and with deadly rhythmic accuracy shot down the small pockets of resistance.
The result was screaming surrender.
The women, children and surviving men were then herded into a long line stretching out of the villages and across the bridges. At the same time the Companies of Chainmen with their wagons of chains and cages rode across the bridges into the village to form two parallel lines. The Kitzakks chained and caged their living booty, then turned about and left in the same orderly manner in which they had arrived.
The remaining Barbarians were driven into the forest, and Companies of Engineers entered in large wagons. With fire, exploding jars of pitch, and rake, shovel and hoe, the engineers then leveled the mud, brick and stone villages of Coin and Bone Camp, and the log structures of the Barhacha.
The commander of each regiment entered his conquered village and measured the rubble of its body with his black ceremonial rope, knotted in three equal sections. No structure remained above its length.
The commanders folded their ropes neatly, tucked them inside their armor, and surveyed the scenes of slaughter and destruction with satisfaction.
Later, as the raiding parties retreated through the passes, the slavers forced their prisoners to shake their chains. Each chain was made with tuned metal, so an eerily beautiful harmony swelled like a chorus of temple bells and was carried by the wind back to the forests where the huddled, beaten barbarians heard them and wept.
Bounty hunters lying in wait also heard the music of the chains, and crept covertly into the forest on separate trails.