by Laurence Yep
[238] “Third rank, reload.”
The first two ranks were reloading feverishly, hands fumbling at the pouches in the bandoliers or using the keys to tighten the springs of the wheel locks. Suddenly a dozen sinha appeared at the barricade. Their armor was covered in blood as if they had crawled over the mounds of corpses.
“Good Lord. They’ll slaughter our men.” The prince pitched his empty pistol to his orderly. “Sound the retreat,” the prince ordered his cornets.
The harquebusiers began to withdraw even before the prince’s own cornets finished sounding the retreat. The harquebusiers fell back, cradling their guns in their arms, their faces drawn and tense; but they refused to panic as they trotted through the intervals between the columns of pikemen. Except for the bodies littering the ground, Sulu might have thought the withdrawal was only a drill.
From the shouting, it seemed as if there were breakthroughs in other areas as well. The prince pointed his sword as the sinha slashed at the backs of the last ranks of harquebusiers. “We have to cover their retreat.” With a quick flick of his fingers, he motioned for his banner man to lift the banner.
Licking his dry, cracked lips, Sulu drew his own sword and then they were running past the clinking harquebusiers straight toward the maddened sinha. Urmi touched Sulu’s arm and pointed to the prince’s right while she took up her position on his left. The sinha gave a hoarse roar when they saw the prince’s banner advancing directly toward them.
And it was all Sulu could do to defend himself as the sinha threw themselves at the prince’s party. The [239] prince’s orderly was the first to fall with a gash across his throat. A second later, the banner man tumbled backward over the orderly’s corpse.
“Don’t let the banner drop,” the prince shouted.
But Sulu was already reaching for it with his free hand. There was no telling how rumors of the prince’s death might affect his army and Sulu knew from his military history just how quickly wild rumors could fly through an army on a battlefield.
As he grabbed the staff, he parried a thrust and riposted, forcing his opponent to dance back. But the banner man did not want to surrender it and Sulu had to yank it out of the dying man’s grasp. But the distraction of taking the banner had made Sulu take his eye from his opponent.
“Sulu.” The prince stepped in and brought up his own sword to knock away a deadly slash. Sulu thrust past the prince, his blade taking the sinha in the armpit, which was not covered by the sinha’s armor. Then, trying to remember his Angiran anatomy, Sulu twisted the blade slightly to the left and downward into the sinha’s heart.
But even as Sulu was trying to free his sword, a sinha blade was slashing down toward the prince. “Duck,” Sulu shouted, and the prince automatically began to crouch as he brought up his blade. He stopped the sinha’s sword, but not before the tip clanged against his helmet. And even as the prince was falling, Urmi killed his attacker.
And then the harquebusiers were all around them, swinging their guns as clubs, and the sinha were beaten to the ground. “The prince is dead,” one of the harquebusiers cried. His voice had already taken on an [240] alarming higher note as he looked at the prince’s bloody face.
Urmi knelt and felt the prince’s throat. “No, he’s still alive.” She tore a patch from her sleeve and pressed it against a cut on the prince’s cheek. “This is only a surface cut. It looks a lot worse than it is. The blow just knocked him out for a moment.”
The groans seemed even louder now, as if there were more wounded heaped beyond the barricade. But though the thick, black smoke hadn’t cleared, Sulu could make out the sound of Rahu’s cornets blowing a third charge.
Somewhere in that smoke-filled field, Rahu’s warriors were advancing, their gear rattling, their armor blinking. Sulu thrust the banner into the dirt and looked about for Colonel Gelu or any staff officer, but he could only see a mob of harquebusiers around him. Colonel Gelu and the other senior officers were probably busy restoring order in the lines. But unless someone took charge right away, the battle might easily be lost and that left only Sulu.
All of Sulu’s reading and fantasizing had not prepared him for this. The musketeers only had to be dashing. They didn’t have to make command decisions. And as Sulu stared at the smoke and confusion all about him, he realized that someone was going to have to do something about ending this disorder—and soon. Their survival—and even the fate of a world—depended upon that happening.
And yet Sulu wasn’t sure if he was up to the task. It was one thing to risk his own life in a battle and quite another to risk the lives of others. Whether people lived or died would depend upon Sulu giving the [241] correct orders. And until now Captain Kirk or some other officer had always carried that weight.
Sulu raised his sword for a moment so he could stare at the bloody edge and feel its weight. He might be surrounded by the trappings of a musketeer fantasy, but this was the reality. Elan had its place in the imagination of a writer and a small boy, but not on a battlefield.
But did Sulu even have the right to take over? Sulu may already have defied the spirit of the Prime Directive, but he certainly would violate the letter if he took control of the prince’s army. Then, too, would it do any good? The weapons and tactics were so primitive and the conditions so complicated that Sulu wasn’t sure if he was up to handling them.
“Wake up,” Urmi was urging the prince.
Sulu looked down at his fallen friend and felt almost as if he were once again fighting for his balance upon the bridge. But this time he was fighting to stay upright within himself. After all, it was Sulu who had a hand in convincing the prince to fight for Angira. Or was he guilty of more than that? Had Sulu been fulfilling his own vicarious fantasies of creating a home world for himself? If so, he bore more than a casual responsibility for what was happening now. He simply couldn’t stand here doing nothing because of rules made light-years away.
Besides, if Rahu won, Urmi was right: That madman would spread murder and pillage across the entire world. Sulu sighed. He’d told the prince that one person could make a difference. Well, it was time to take his own advice. Sulu had to assume command even if it meant losing his commission. It was the right thing [242] for Angira—even if it might not be the right thing for Sulu.
He nodded to the young, frightened cornet who was still staring down at the prince. “Give the signal for everyone to take up their old positions.” And then he collared the nearest sergeant. “Get your men back in line.”
But the sergeant only blinked his eyes stupidly at Sulu as if he was trying to place the strange, alien face. “But the prince—”
“He’d expect you to do your duty,” Sulu said in his strongest drill-field voice.
The sergeant reacted as much to his tone as to his words, and he straightened, saluting Sulu awkwardly because Sulu still had a grip on his collar.
Sheepishly, Sulu let go while the sergeant began yelling orders. “Come on. Come on. You heard the woman say that the prince was all right. Get back to your posts.” And to Sulu’s relief, he could hear the other noncoms and junior officers taking up the command. And cornets up and down the line began picking up the signal from the first cornet.
“You’re a good friend to the prince.” Urmi unstrapped the prince’s helmet. She added, with an apologetic nod of her head, “And to Angira.”
Urmi didn’t know how much Sulu was risking, but somehow that didn’t seem important now.
Sulu squatted down and asked quietly, “Are you sure he’s going to be all right?”
Urmi threw the prince’s helmet to the side. “How should I know? I’m no healer.”
“But I thought you found a pulse,” Sulu whispered urgently.
[243] Urmi shot a sharp look at him. “I wouldn’t know where to find one even if it was marked with a dotted line. But I’m not about to lose this battle.” Taking the prince’s head upon her knees, she began slapping his uncut cheek. “Wake up, Your Highness.”
Sulu boun
ced back to his feet, looking again for Colonel Gelu; but there still wasn’t any sign of him. However, the harquebusiers had formed ragged lines.
Urmi lowered the prince’s head to the ground and crawled over to the orderly, snatching the small water skin from his belt. “Do you think they’ll have time to reload before Rahu’s men come?”
Sulu undid the chinstrap of his helmet and took it off. The air felt cool on his sweaty face. “Maybe. But there are so many variables. Can we assume a certain rate of speed? And did they start as soon as their cornets finished blowing?” He smiled ruefully to himself. What had ever made him think that warfare with swords was simple?
It was a relief to hear the prince spluttering as Urmi splashed water into his face. He would be all right after all. But how soon? Sulu still had to concentrate on the problem at hand.
While the harquebusiers went on with the complicated process of reloading, Sulu tried to work out the problem as calmly as Mr. Spock would have—even though he knew he was a poor substitute for the science officer. And there, in the midst of that primitive battlefield, he found himself wishing desperately for the Enterprise’s computers and sensors.
“He’s coming around,” Urmi said with relief.
Sulu glanced down at the prince, who was shaking his head groggily. It might be minutes or even hours before [244] the prince became fully functional; and they might not even have seconds.
Well, Sulu sighed to himself, he might as well give his court-martial board their money’s worth. Throwing his helmet away, he strode forward a dozen paces and turned a startled harquebusier around. “Is your weapon loaded?”
“Yes, but that’s my gun,” the man protested as Sulu grabbed it.
“Just shout ‘bang’ at them. They’ll never know the difference.” And with a determined yank, Sulu took the gun from the man. As he backed up, Sulu checked the gun to make sure it was ready to be fired. At least there was powder in the firing pan.
“You have to wake up,” Urmi was saying to the prince.
The clinking sounded very close now. Sulu ought to give the signal soon, but he could see that maybe a fourth of the harquebusiers were still working at reloading their clumsy pieces.
But even if the harquebusiers had all been ready, Sulu still couldn’t be sure if he had the right answer. And stopping the charge depended partly on the timing of the volleys. He stared into the smoke, praying for it to clear a little. But he couldn’t make out a single figure. He would just have to gamble that he was right.
Raising the harquebus, Sulu fired and was almost knocked down by the heavy weapon. In his hurry, he’d forgotten just what a kick the gun had.
The first rank fired blindly into the smoke, followed by a ragged volley from the second rank. But before the third rank could fire, a man in gilded armor burst through the smoke. Hundreds of grim-faced sinha [245] followed him. They ran low, squirming and wriggling their way through the stakes of the barricade.
The third rank fired when ordered, but whether it was nerves or bad luck or simply the fact that more men had forgotten one of the many steps necessary to load their wheel locks, the result was just as unfortunate. This time nearly half of Rahu’s men survived.
Some of the more reckless harquebusiers threw down their guns and drew their daggers; but they were no match for trained nobles with swords.
“Sound the retreat,” Sulu ordered the cornet and dropped his own wheel lock into the dirt.
“What—?” The prince was sitting up dizzily.
Snatching up the banner, Sulu reached down and grabbed the prince by the left armpit. “Help me get him out of the way,” he said to Urmi. She took the prince’s right arm and together they managed to hoist the prince to his feet.
The majority of the harquebusiers were withdrawing in reasonably good order. And in a moment, the pikemen would advance; but the prince himself was still in danger. Suddenly a sinha in armor with silver inlay charged at them.
“What happened to the prince?” Colonel Gelu and three aides came running up toward them.
“He’s been knocked out for a while.” Sulu surrendered his position to one of the colonel’s aides so he could draw his own sword and meet the new challenge. He was startled to realize that the sinha was sobbing as he ran.
“I’ve had enough of this nonsense.” Urmi snatched a wheel-lock pistol from Colonel Gelu’s surprised grasp and fired. The noble halted, staring at the person who [246] had shot him; and then, turning slightly on his toes, he dropped onto his back, the sword dropping uselessly out of his hand.
“You may have just written the epitaph for an era,” Sulu said as he watched her return the pistol to Colonel Gelu.
“Watch out.” Colonel Gelu shouted and the four of them pulled the prince hastily out of the way as the pikemen advanced toward the barricades. Sulu and the others withdrew until they were in front of the reforming harquebusiers. In the meantime, the columns of pikemen had swung to the side to form several long lines.
Frustrated, Rahu’s men threw themselves at the pikes, but it was like a thick hedge of long, waving thorns. As the prince’s own cornets sounded the advance, a few foolhardy sinha tried to stand their ground and were quickly spitted. But the rest of Rahu’s warriors backed up, waving their swords and shouting defiance as they made their way through the barricade once again. Still the pikemen moved forward to the steady beat of the drums. And the swordsmen disappeared back into the thick, billowing smoke. Even so, Sulu’s numbed ears could make out their challenges. They sounded now like angry, disembodied ghosts. And then even their voices faded away into the distance.
“I don’t know whether to thank you or not, Sulu.” The prince gingerly felt the edges of his wound. “You’ve saved the battle; but all the same, it’s rather uncomfortable to find out how unnecessary you are.”
Sulu handed the banner over to another of Colonel Gelu’s aides. “I just did what you would have,” Sulu [247] said. But in the back of his mind, he wondered if the court-martial board would see it that way.
The smoke had not yet cleared when the harquebusiers resumed their positions behind the barricade. The corpses of glittering, richly armored nobles lay with the bodies of the prince’s own men on their side of the stakes. And then the wind blew harder so that the prince’s banner flapped and snapped at its shaft. But even as the smoke began to drift away, they could hear the angry shouting coming from the direction of Rahu’s army.
“It sounds like they’re working themselves up for another charge,” Sulu said to the prince.
The prince resignedly held out his hand toward his new orderly who had taken the wheel-lock pistol from his predecessor’s corpse. “I thought they would have had their fill of this kind of fighting by now. I know I have.”
But as the smoke dissipated, they could see Rahu’s army beginning to unravel like the threads of a shining tapestry. Frightened soldiers were throwing away their weapons and helmets as they started to stream away. And, with a sudden flutter, Rahu’s banner was jerked upward and flowed along with them.
“We’ve won.” Urmi shoved her helmet up over her head and would have thrown it up in the air, but the prince stopped her.
“Not quite. There’s still Rahu,” the prince said. “Until we hunt down that wild animal, we’ll never have any peace.” He turned to motion Colonel Gelu to him.
Mr. Spock had never heard the sound before. It was almost as if a giant centipede were trampling past them, [248] but he knew it was only the sound of dozens of feet running through the grass outside the huge wagon in which he lay. The guards called out questions in a confident, easy tone and were answered by a frightened babbling.
Puga, his arms bound behind him, slid on his haunches across the wooden bed of the wagon. “Something’s wrong. It almost sounds like a stampede.”
The babbling increased in volume—changing to a series of wails. And the animals began to bellow and squeal. Their own wagon gave a kind of lurch and there was a whump as their yokes were thrown to the
ground.
Puga stood up with difficulty and then, his chains clinking, he tried to peer through the silk covering the front of the wagon. “The guards have taken the draft gaya and ridden away. And now Rahu’s warriors are running by. They don’t have shields or spears or swords.” Puga turned around and his feet did a little thumping dance on the wagon bed. “The prince confounded them all. He’s won.”
Mr. Spock turned his head to look around the wagon. “Then we must find a place to hide.”
“Maybe—” the old man began and then stopped when the wagon shook.
A warrior thrust his head through the slitted opening. His helmet was gone, but sweat had matted his fur into spikes and his eyes were wide with anger and fear. His armor bore the emblem of some noble’s house, so he must have been some lord’s retainer.
He stared at Mr. Spock as if puzzled for a moment, but then his eyes swept on as if searching for something else. His eyes settled on the trunk at the rear of the wagon. “What’s in that trunk over there?” When Puga [249] shrugged, the warrior jumped into the wagon and climbed between Puga and Mr. Spock. Slipping his dagger from his belt, he tried to pry the chest open.
The wagon quivered as someone else climbed up on the front. “I’ll look in here,” a second man said. This warrior had shed his chest armor but not his leggings so that he looked half-Angiran, half-insect.
The first warrior whirled around, still squatting, and raised his dagger menacingly. “I found this first.”
“But you won’t get to keep it.” The second warrior leapt into the wagon. Puga threw himself across Mr. Spock; but the second warrior ran past them as he pulled out his sword. A moment later, a third man followed him into the wagon.
The first warrior rose from a crouch, springing at the second warrior as his arm swept the dagger toward the intruder. The second warrior tried to bring his sword around, but the first warrior was already on top of him. The two men tumbled backward and the first warrior squatted on the chest of the second, trying to free his dagger.