by Julian May
Up in the royal observation post on a nearby height, King Sharn chewed his lower lip as he watched the first company of stalwart gnomes, led by Pingol the Horripilant, begin their advance. Curses and catcalls came from the defending prisoners, but they held their fire. Some experienced fighter must have taken on the leadership, im parting a modicum of discipline to the demoralized crew. Their yells subsided, then rose afresh as a second and smaller contingent of Firvulag, warrior ogresses under Fouletot Blackbreast, started up the ravine on the left shoulder of the ridge. This route provided more shelter for the attackers, but was considerably steeper. To Sharn and Ayfa, watching the maneuvers from their vantage point half a kilometer away, the two assault forces looked like separate swarms of jet-black beetles, serrated pikes and standards waving like antennae under the blazing sun, creeping up on a gigantic exposed picnic basket.
"I still think it was a mistake to arm the prisoners with iron," Sharn said. "Just one scratch, and it's curtains for our folks."
"They've got to get used to the hazard," Ayfa retorted brutally. "Do you think Roniah will be defended with glass swords and bronze battle-axes? By rights, those prisoners should have stunners and laser carbines as well as arrows tipped with the blood metal. That's what our troops will be up against in a real battle. Look what happened to Mimee's outfit at Bardelask."
"Hell, they won, didn't they?"
"Only because the Bardy-Town defenders were vastly outnumbered and ran out of arrows. And if Aiken Drum's supply train had arrived with the futuristic weaponry, it would have been Goddess-Bless-Me-ere-I-Sleep!" The Queen frowned at the Firvulag forces creeping up the hill. "Our lads and lasses have to understand that mind-power is the only sure way to victory. Concerted mind-power—not our usual higgledy-piggledy uncoordinated individual efforts. That's why Betularn White Hand set up these maneuvers to give the Lowlives the tactical advantage—and why he put gonzo youngsters like Fouletot and Pingol in command of this first demonstration."
"Let's hope the prisoners put up a good fight," Sharn said, shading his eyes to peer at the now silent cage. "Be a pity if they funked out."
Ayfa snickered. "Betularn gave them his personal assurance that if they managed to hold off our troops until sunset, we'd set them free."
The King guffawed in appreciation of the jest. "Poor dolts! They never seem to learn that the solemn word of a Firvulag holds only when given to another Firvulag or a Tanu—not to a Lowlife. I mean, how can you make a pact of honor with a nonperson?"
"But they keep falling for it," Ayfa observed, shaking her sable-helmed head in wonderment. "Even the biggest Lowlife of them all!"
The King leaned forward in his seat, scowling. "Pingol's bunch is getting too damn close to the cage. Why doesn't he call up the defensive screen? Any minute now those prisoners— Tes tushie!"
At the monarch's exclamation of dismay a hail of iron-tipped missiles exploded from the cage and rained upon the frontal assault force. There were scattered screeches and wails and a tardy telepathic command. A sparkling barrier of mental energy sprang raggedly into existence, flickering here and there as some dwarf belatedly linked into the defensive metaconcert. The Lowlives bellowed in derision and sent off salvo after salvo of arrows. Most of Pingol's company held their ground and concentrated on shoring up the mind-shield, which steadied into a translucent bubble-section three or four meters high that hovered just ahead of the forward ranks. Even at a distance, Sharn and Ayfa could hear the sinister tinkle of iron points striking this barrier and falling away.
Well done! the King broadcast, by way of encouragement. He rose up and assumed his guise of a monstrous scorpion. A handful of gnomes raised a pro forma cheer, but most of them had all they could do to keep the great protective umbrella erected. For others, motionless on the rocks in tumbled and broken attitudes, the mental shelter had come too late.
"They didn't act together, and the screen's too widespread," Ayfa noted, glowering her disapproval. "And that turd-head Pingol waited much too long before giving the command—"
"Here come the big girls!" Sharn exclaimed.
Fouletot's ogresses were swarming up the defile to the left of the cage, a businesslike little screen protecting them in the steep terrain. A dozen or so of the giant exotics, perhaps one-fifth of the total force, fell back from the others and gathered into a close formation. An instant later a gout of blue flame soared up from their midst like a shot from a Roman candle. It arced high above the ridge and fell onto the cage roof, where it sank slowly through the heavy gridwork to the accompaniment of hideous Lowlife screams. Coils of greasy smoke seeped out around the rocks. After a brief pause, a furious shower of arrows descended upon the ogresses. One fell, howling, and the survivors hastened to expand their screen.
Downslope in front of the cage, the gnomish force was redeploying. A desultory discharge of arrows fell on them, to be mostly deflected by their mental screen. This was now much more compact and efficient, generated by a semicircle of creative stalwarts who slowly advanced up the hill. Only the occasional missile penetrated, but these were sufficient to bring death with the slightest wound. The humans inside the cage jeered and screamed at the top of their lungs every time an exotic fell.
Now Pingol's fighters left off waving their halberds and skull-draped standards and formed three bodies in close array behind the moving shield. Suddenly three glowing balls of energy, almost white beneath the harsh sun, flew up in cometlike trajectories and converged upon the cage. The structure burst actively into flame and the prisoners inside shrieked and leaped about, batting at the blazing timbers with their garments and dousing the more stubborn flames with their scant supply of drinking water. The storm of arrows abated only slightly, and within minutes was thicker than ever.
The smaller force of ogresses had attained a rocky platform, a stratum of denser rock that capped the top of the ravine about fifty meters below the end of the cage. The ledge was very narrow, little more than a sharp lip strewn with slippery scree from the precipitous slope above. Rather than attempting this, they strung out in a cordon, maintaining the mind-screen umbrella. At a farspoken signal, each warrior extended her black-glass sword and opened a slit in the screen. From the points of the weapons flowed individual corruscating rays that united, just before striking the cage, into a thick, twisted flash of lightning. It hit the cage squarely, and at the same time a blast of thunder reached the ears of Sharn and Ayfa and caused them to blink, so that they missed the beginning of Pingol's charge—then shouted in delight at the sight of the gnomes, still in their disciplined trifid formation preceded by the shielders, racing up the hill and bombarding the cage with a fusillade of small psychocreative bursts.
"Beautiful!" shouted Sharn, lashing about with his scorpion tail. He knocked over the refreshment table, but neither he nor the Queen seemed to notice that they were jumping up and down in a mess of spilled beer, hooby mushrooms, Danish cucumbers, slices of black melon, eel a la Flamande, and candied malmignattes.
Ayfa cried: Smite the Lowlife bastards! Arms united, minds united!
And the Firvulag soldiery responded: Yllahayl the Foe!
The thunderbolt generated by Fouletot Blackbreast and her platoon had knocked that end of the cage to flinders at the same time that it killed numbers of human defenders outright. The survivors now began to scramble out onto the rocks, brandishing their bows and arrows, long knives, and small tomahawks, ready to engage the advancing Firvulag hand to hand. More fireballs popped up from the dwarf attackers. The ogresses got off one last streak of lightning, completing the demolition of the cage. Then humans and exotics mingled in combat, the Lowlives diving under shaky mental screens or shooting arrows in high parabolas so that the missiles might strike the rear ranks of the enemy. Discipline among the exotics wavered, then collapsed. Both officers and troops forgot about working in metaconcert and reverted to the traditional fighting form. They bawled out the old battle cries, shape-shifted into monstrous apparitions, and fell upon the outnumbered Low
lives. Dwarfs hacked and flailed with serrated obsidian blades. Ogres thrust about, impaling bodies with barbed lances—or even snatched up disarmed humans to rend them limb from limb. The tumult reverberated throughout the fastness of Grand Ballon mountain. Plumes of smoke and steam rose as the odd stalwart remembered orders and used mental energy to annihilate the foe.
Sham and Ayfa, wearing their normal shapes and saying nothing, watched. The blinding disk of the sun descended behind the towers of High Vrazel and a cool wind swept away some of the carnage stench. Carrion birds circled and began to descend. Finally there settled over the rocky battleground a great stillness, and in the minds of the King and Queen rang the simultaneous farspoken voices of Pingol and Fouletot:
High King and High Queen—we proclaim a victory in Tés name!
All the dwarfs and ogres and middling monsters came together on the foreslope beneath the devastated cage, and with weapons and stan dards raised on high, shouted: "Praise and glory to Te, Goddess of Battles! And to Sharn and Ayfa, High King and High Queen! And to the Great Captains Pingol and Fouletot—and to all of us! Arms united! Minds united! Slitsal! Slitsal! Slitsal!"
Hearts full, the co-monarchs made the ritual response and declared the maneuvers at a triumphant end. After that they stood for some time watching as the stretcher bearers and healers and morticians and inspectors and talleymen and salvors and the other homely technicians of war's aftermath did their work. The mock battle had cost twenty-two Firvulag lives; only three were wounded. Every last human prisoner had been slain.
Sharn said, "It was well done. The other captains will profit by this demonstration to the death, and subsequent maneuvers can be bloodless."
"They'll jolly well have to be, now that the Iron Villages are nearly abandoned," Ayfa said. "We're smack out of prisoners—unless we want to unleash Monolokee the Scunnersome on Fort Rusty."
"Not yet. Mopping up the Vosges Lowlives can wait until Truce time. We'll have to concentrate on important business during the next three weeks. There's the Tourney practice in addition to the Nightfall preliminaries. And Roniah."
The Queen retrieved a golden goblet from the floor, tapped a fresh keg of beer, and resumed her seat. "Still planning to make a big deal of it? Full-scale assault, with Mimee and all?"
Sharn was still staring down at the battlefield, ham-sized fists resting on his ceremonially armored hips. "After seeing that we can really use metaconcert—I'm inclined to change the plan. Since Bardelask, the balance of terror has tipped nicely to our side; we won't need to labor the point at Roniah. As for Mimee, let him loot Bardelask and withdraw, so we seem to be caving in to Aiken's demands. Meanwhile, we take a force of stalwarts and infiltrate carefully along the east bank of the Saone, then make a lightning stab at the citadel from the river side after drifting down in decamole boats. Condateyr would never dream that we'd attempt a water invasion. Too unprecedented for the hidebound Little People! We whip in there fast as weasels, hit 'em with mind-power and blood-metal and high-tech zappers, raid the Milieu weapons cache—and streak out with the loot before the garrison can even pull its socks up." He turned around and grinned at his wife. "And if we strike just before the Truce, Aiken won't have any comeback."
"But the kid will be pissed to the wide, and he'll know who to blame—"
"True, but the High Table won't let him violate the Truce by mounting a counterstrike. He's constrained by his adopted Tanu ethics in dealing with us —but we're free to treat him like any other Low-life!"
Ayfa considered for a moment. "It would be easy to disguise our people as Lowlives for the Roniah action. A little shape-shifting wouldn't drain much energy from the offensive metaconcert. And the deception would be enhanced by our use of iron and futuristic weapons. Of course, we'd have to carry away our deaders and be careful not to leave any incriminating equipment behind."
"I like it!" exclaimed Sharn. He picked up his own goblet, gave it a perfunctory wipe with the brocade table-runner, and held it out to Ayfa for filling. After taking a long pull, he studied the jewel-eyed skull of the late Velteyn of Finiah and remarked, "This chap here was really our first fruits of Nightfall, Ayfe. It all began at Finiah, with that first victory after so many years of ignominy—and was well and truly launched during the Last Grand Combat, even though we were robbed of our rightful triumph. The first event lifted our hearts; the second confirmed our resolution." He looked upon the orange-haired ogress tenderly. "I've commanded Mimee to send up the skull of Lady Armida of Bardelask to make a new matching goblet for you."
She lowered her eyes, feeling a sentimental tear steal down her cheek, and then could not help but say, "Before the rains come, we might even have a whole set!"
Sharn roared in appreciation. The two royals toasted each other and refilled the goblets. Sharn said, "Too bad Aiken's such a shrimp. His skull's barely big enough for an eggcup."
"We can take turns at breakfast," said his wife. "By the way—what did he want this morning?"
The King waved a dismissive paw. "Some drivel about reparations for Bardelask, to be debited against the Grand Tourney prizes. I agreed to everything he asked for. Why not? We can take it all back after Nightfall!...He came up with one matter that was a puzzler, though. Do we know anything about a Lowlife named Tony Wayland?"
"He was that chap the Worm captured. The one who spilled the beans about the aircraft hidden in the Vale of Hyenas."
Sharn smacked the edge of the table. "That's right. I'd forgotten. Well—Aiken wants us to give the creature back. He claims this Tony is the bosom buddy of a great friend of his. Even offered to knock off a goodly portion of the reparation if we fork him over right away."
Ayfa scowled as she swirled the dregs of her beer. "Oh, he did, did he? Something stinks here, vein of my heart. Skathe took a fancy to Tony. When I sent her and Karbree down to oversee the Bardelask operation, they carried the Lowlife along. And they died, Skathe and the Worm, in a most mysterious way..."
The King nodded. "Lowlife treachery written all over the murders. Mimee was at a loss to account for it. The city was already taken when the half-sunken boat and the bodies were found. So you think this Tony might have—"
"Who knows?" The Queen's face within her lunetted helmet wore a terrible expression. "Have Mimee keep an eye out for him. Pass the word to the other Little People in the South. If this Lowlife did kill my friend Skathe and the Worm, let's not be in too much of a hurry to give him back to the Tanu."
"Well," said the King, "Aiken didn't specify condition of merchandise."
Ayfa leaned over and kissed his bearded cheek. "You always understand."
"Always!" he repeated, catching the gleam in her eye. He set down his goblet on the table and gently detached hers from her hand. Then the two monstrous armored forms came together, and the sun-gilded rocks echoed with the clashing consummation.
***
Secure in his redoubt of peanut sacks, Tony Wayland watched from the loft of a dockside warehouse as the looting of Bardelask wound down to its fatal finale.
The last packtrains loaded with goods were gathering along the quayside road. Gangs of human captives, half-dead after almost a week of forced labor, now brought up the few remaining treasures to be gleaned from the buildings along the wharf: kegs of oil, alcohol, and dyestuffs, bales of rare leathers, loaf sugar, silken cordage and fabric, coffee beans in jute sacks, and cases of processed spices and precious strawberry jam.
Fortunately for Tony, the Firvulag did not care for peanuts. And after eating little else for six days, he was getting thoroughly sick of the worthy legume himself.
Through his golden tore, he could hear the dispirited telepathic speech of the gray-torced prisoners. (Anyone torced with gold or silver had been summarily slain.) From Tony's point of view, there was good news. Instead of holding Bardelask and using it as a base for harrying shipping on the Rhone, the invaders had been ordered to withdraw. The leader of the Famorel Host, a malignant gnome named Mimee whose illusory aspect was that o
f a flightless roc, had exploded in a paroxysm of avian rage at being deprived of this additional source of booty, and had snapped off the heads of twenty-two helpless grays before recovering his self-possession. Somewhat later, Tony learned that Mimee had suffered a second fit of pique when King Sham canceled Famorel's participation in a projected assault on Roniah. This piece of intelligence helped Tony make up his mind to travel north, not south, when it was safe to leave his hiding place among the goobers.
Meanwhile, he used the time to get reacquainted with his tore.
The golden collar that the late Skathe had given him contained mind-expanding components precisely similar to those in the silver tore he had worn in Finiah. Unlike the silver, however, the golden tore had no slave-circuitry binding him to Tanu control, nor the tracking device that would enable gold-torced persons to locate him with minimal exertion of farsense. Wearing gold, Tony was free—but once again possessed of the wonderful powers that had made life so satisfying back in lost Finiah.
The enhancement of his modest psychocreative faculty gave him the ability to perform numerous small but useful energy-manipulative acts. He could extract water from the air for drinking, and remove it from his clammy clothing when the river mist enveloped his hiding place at night. He could roast the peanuts in their shells. When it was safe, he could strike a small light without recourse to a permamatch. He could zap fleas or other tiny vermin that dared to infest his person. When the loft grew stifling hot during the day, he could whistle up a cool breeze. If he became bored, the magic collar provided autoerotic amusement. It eased the pangs of physical fatigue, made injuries un- noticeable, sent him into refreshing sleep in a trice, woke him if any medium-to-large life-form approached within fifteen meters of his hiding place, banished anxieties, and cleared his head for fruitful planning. With it, he could speak, hear, and dimly see with his metasenses over a range of some 300 kilometers. (This last talent was none too common among silvers; but Tony had had eleven years of practice.) Since Finiah was a bit of a backwater, it had amused him to "collect" the mental signatures of certain Tanu notables whom he met at social occasions in the pleasure dome. Later, he would spy on them during their peregrinations in the open air. To his regret, he could not farsense through stone walls, but it had been diverting to see what the exotics got up to al fresco. Hunts were the least of it!