He clutched his shoulder, blood leaking between his fingers. "The children! " Luke gasped. "They were going for the children. " Ayanna looked up at the ridge, then back at him. She saw the truth of it. He had run into the fire for them, for her son's memory.
She ripped a strip of cloth from her skirt and jammed it into the wound. Luke cried out, arching his back. "Stay down! " Ayanna ordered, her voice shaking. "Do not die, Carver. I have not decided if I forgive you yet. " The tide turned, but the cost was high.
Nalin, seeing the soldiers wavering, had moved from her protected position to drag a young girl, Sani's niece, away from a ricochet zone. She was slow. Her bad leg dragged in the dust. A stray bullet, fired blindly by a panicked recruit, struck her in the side. Nalin fell without a sound.
The sight of their matriarch falling sent a shockwave through the women, but instead of breaking them, it solidified them. A terrible, keening cry went up from the canyon walls. A sound of pure, distilled rage. The women abandoned their cover. They poured fire and arrows down into the confusion with renewed fury.
The soldiers broke. Captain Thorne, wounded in the arm and seeing his command disintegrating under an assault from an enemy he couldn't see, sounded the retreat. "Fall back! " he screamed. "Fall back to the wagons! " The cavalry retreated in disarray, leaving their dead where they fell. They scrambled over the rockfall, dragging their wounded, firing wildly behind them.
The dust began to settle. The shooting tapered off into sporadic pops, then silence. The canyon was left scarred. Smoke drifted in heavy, acrid sheets. The bodies of horses and men littered the narrow pass.
The ground was black with blood. It was a victory. They had held the ground, but as Luke looked around, propped up against the boulder, it felt like no victory at all. The aftermath was a grim business. The women moved among the fallen, retrieving arrows and stripping weapons from the dead.
There was no triumph in their faces, only a hard, numb exhaustion. Five soldiers had been left behind, wounded, but alive. They were dragged to the center of the camp and thrown down in the dirt. They looked up at the women with terrified eyes, expecting the torture stories they had been told around the campfire to come true. Ayanna stood over them, her knife in her hand.
Her face was a mask of cold fury. "We should kill them all," she said. Her voice was flat. "Cut their throats and leave them for their friends to find. " Several of the women nodded, gripping their skinning knives. Sani was there, holding a heavy stone, her eyes filled with a terrifying vacancy.
"No," Luke said. He pushed himself up, leaning heavily on a piece of driftwood he was using as a crutch. His left arm was bound tight against his chest, the sling dark with fresh blood. He limped into the circle. "No killing. " Ayanna spun on him.