by Julian May
Vanda-Jo was still overseeing the last wave of volunteers embarking from the staging area when Lord Velteyn and the Flying Hunt took to the air. Shouts of fear came from the crowd as they saw the glowing knights mount up from the city across the water. One man yelled, "The bleeders're coming for us!" and jumped into the Rhine. A fiasco was averted when Vanda-Jo tongue-lashed the outlanders for their cowardice, pointing out that the Hunt was circling high above Finiah, bent on some more urgent objective.
"So into the boats and quit farting around!" she bellowed. "You don't have to be afraid of Velteyn and his flying circus any more! Did you forget our secret weapon? We've got iron! You can kill Tanu now, even easier than you can kill those traitor human torcers that do their dirty work!"
Eyeballs rolled anxiously in the half-light. The Firvulag skipper in the two-masted shallop nearest Vanda-Jo glowered in dwarfish impatience. "Hurry it up, spiritless earthworms, or we'll sail to the war without you!"
Suddenly a column of emerald light stabbed down from apparently empty sky in the axis of the wheeling Hunt, striking a low knoll within the city across the Rhine. Orange-and-white fire fountained up at the point of impact, and seconds later, the sound of a rolling detonation sped over the river.
"The mine!" somebody shouted. "The barium mine's blowing up too, it looks like a volcano erupting in there!"
As if the bombardment had been a signal, another gout of flame belched up from the farthest reaches of Finiah, back where the peninsula narrowed to a small neck connecting the city to the mainland.
"See that?" Vanda-Jo was exultant "The second wave of spooks have landed opposite our main beachhead! That female Firvulag general named Ayfa is attacking from the Black Forest side. Now will you shitheads get a move on?"
The men and women on the dock hoisted their iron-tipped spears into the air and yelled. They pounded down the spindly gangplanks into the waiting boats so eagerly that the small craft rocked and nearly swamped.
On the other side of the Rhine, flames made a scarlet track on the dark water. The faerie lamps of blue and green and silver and gold that had outlined the splendid Tanu City of Lights began to wink out.
Velteyn, Lord of Finiah, pulled up the reins of his chaliko and hung in midair, shining like a magnesium flare. The nobles of his Flying Hunt, eighteen male and three female knights, all glowing red, drew in their mounts to surround him. His thought-thrust was nearly incoherent with frustration and rage:
Gone! The flying machine is gone . . . and yet my lightnings surely penetrated its belly. Kamilda! Send your farsense seeking it.
. . . It recedes from us Exalted Lord. Ah Tana at a speed unprecedented! It drops behind the brow of the Vosges and beyond my perception. My Lord if I ascend to a great height . . .
Stay Kamilda! More urgent threats confront us below. Look all of you! Look what the Foe has done! O the shame the pain the havoc! Down to the ground all of you. Each to command a mounted party of chivalry in defense of our City of Lights!
Na bardito taynel o pogekône!
The fighting moved steadily inland from the Rhineside break. Two hours after dawn, the western front was strung through the gardens of the pleasure dome, on the very outskirts of the Tanu quarter.
Moe Marshak had reloaded his quiver several times from those of fallen comrades. He had wrenched the gaudy crest from his bronze helmet early on and then rolled in filth to camouflage the shine of his cuirass. Unlike certain of his luckless fellows, he had deduced quickly that the Firvulag would be able to detect telepathic communication, and so he made no attempt to contact his officers for orders. Maintaining a quiet mind, he went his lone way, keeping out of monster range as he skulked Finiah's byways, potting Lowlives with cool economy while dodging hysterical ramas and noncombatants. Marshak had already taken out at least fifteen of the enemy, plus two bareneck civilians he had caught looting a gray-torc of its weaponry.
Now Marshak slipped into the long porch that formed the perimeter of the pleasure dome. Hearing one of the distinctive Lowlife yodels, he concealed himself behind thick ornamental shrubs and nocked one of the serrated war arrows in his compound bow.
In the next instant an unexpected diversion came from within the building. The stained glass from a pair of French doors perhaps five meters away from the soldier shivered to atoms from the impact of some heavy object. There were screams and a rumbling sound. Long hands all adorned with rings fumbled with the jammed catch. Other hands shook the bent framework. The angle was such that Marshak could not clearly see the people trapped inside, but their cries of terror and dismay reached both his mind and ears, as did the uncanny warbling of the thing pursuing them.
"Help! The door's struck! And it's coming!"
Help us! Helphelphelp us! HELP US!
The blanket coercive summons of a Tanu overlord clutched at Marshak's consciousness. His gray torc compelled obedience. Forsaking his hiding place, he ran to the door. On the other side, pressed against the mangled copper fretwork, were three female denizens of the pleasure dome and their tall Tanu client, whose handsome violet and gold robes proclaimed him an official of the Farsensor Guild. He presumably lacked the coercive or psychokinetic potential to fend off the apparition that was now poised in an inner doorway, ready to strike.
The Firvulag wore the appearance of a gigantic hellgrammite, a larval water insect with clashing razor-sharp mandibles. The brute's head was nearly a meter wide, while the long segmented body, slick with some stinking secretion, seemed to fill the corridor behind it.
"Tana be thanked!" cried the Tanu. "Quickly, my man! Aim for its neck!"
Marshak raised his bow, shifted position to avoid the struggling women, and let fly. The glass-tipped shaft sank for most of its length between chitinous plates behind the creature's scissoring jaws. Marshak heard the Firvulag utter a telepathic bellow. Without hurrying he drew two more arrows and sent them into the hellgrammite's glittering orange eyes. The insectile form wavered, became insubstantial . . . and then the awful thing was gone and a dwarf in black obsidian armor lay dead on the floor, throat and eyesockets transfixed.
The soldier used his vitredur short sword to pry open the ruined latch. Pleasure surges engendered by the grateful exotic throbbed along his pelvic nerves in the sweet, familiar reward. When the nobleman and his disheveled companions were freed, Marshak saluted, right fist pressed against his heart.
"I am at your service, Exalted Lord."
But the farsensor dithered. "Where are we to go? The route to House Velteyn is cut off!" His abstracted expression showed that he was scanning about with his mind's eye.
"Well, we can't go back inside," said the most petite of the pleasure dome inmates, a black woman of exquisite contours and sharp voice. "The damn muffers are crawling out of the woodwork!"
"Oh, Lord Kolitcyr," squealed a teary blond. "Save us!"
"Silence!" commanded the Tanu. "I'm attempting to, but no one will respond to my summons!"
The third woman, thin and empty-eyed, her provocative attire half torn from her bony shoulders, sank down on the pavement and began to laugh.
Kolitcyr gasped. "The dome is surrounded! I call, but Lord Velteyn's knights are in the thick of battle! . . . Hah! The invaders cringe and retreat before the coercive might of Tanu chivalry! The Goddess be thanked, there are many more powerful than I!"
A great jarring thump came from inside the pleasure dome. Distant cries became louder. More glass broke and a rhythmic pounding began.
"They're coming! The monsters are coming!" Once again, the blonde burst into hysterical tears.
"Soldier, you must lead us . . ." The Tanu scowled, shook his head as if to clear it. "Lead us to the Northern Watergate! There may be a boat . . ."
But it was too late. Across the garden, trampling flowerbeds and hurtling through the bushes came a force of twenty-odd Lowlife humans led by a half-naked red man of heroic stature.
Marshak's hand poised above his quiver, frozen. Most of the invaders had compound bows as good a
s his own held at the ready.
"Surrender!" shouted Peopeo Moxmox Burke. "Amnesty for all humans who yield freely to us!"
"Stand back!" cried the Tanu farsensor. "I, I will burn out your minds! Strike you mad!"
Chief Burke smiled, and his painted face, framed in straggling gray hair, was more menacing than the Firvulag phantasm had ever been. The exotic man knew that his bluff was useless, just as he knew there would be no amnesty for those of his race.
Commanding Marshak to defend to the death, Koliteyr tried to flee. The iron tomahawk spun and split the exotic's skull before he had taken two steps.
Marshak relaxed. He let the bow and arrow fall to the flagstones and watched the approaching Lowlives in numb silence.
The strategic importance of the barium mine had been made clear to Sharn-Mes at the Lowlife briefing session prior to the invasion. Humiliation of the hated Foe, the Firvulag general was made to understand, must take second place to the complete destruction of the mine and its trained personnel. It was vital to Madame Guderian's grand design that the supply of the precious element, indispensable in the manufacture of torcs, be cut off. Shortly before noon, when Sharn was taking a breather with Bles and Nukalavee in a makeshift command post well supplied with liberated beer, a Firvulag scout arrived with important news. The Mighty Ayfa and her Warrior Ogresses had made a successful thrust from the eastern breach and now invested the sector around the mine workings. They had ascertained that molten rock, triggered by Claude's blast from the Spear, had plugged the mine entrance, buried the main refinery and the complex that housed the human and rama workers, and flowed some distance into the streets of the upper city before congealing. However, the mine administration building with its store of purified barium stood firm. The place was completely surrounded by black and steaming lava, now sheathed in a clinkery skin of cooled rock except where cracks revealed the red glowing interior. There were still Tanu engineers in the building, and among them a creator of the first rank. Ayfa and her force had gleaned this intelligence when an unexpected bolt of psychoenergy zapped one of the investigating ogresses to a cinder, narrowly missing the Dreadful Skathe. She of the snaggleteeth and dripping talons had spun a psychic shield over the survivors that sufficed for a disorderly retreat out of mindbolt range.
"And so the Mighty Ayfa," the scout concluded, "now awaits your suggestions, Great Captain."
Bles uttered a hoarse bleat of ironic laughter. He tipped half a barrelful of beer into his maw. "Ahh, let's go help the poor little ladies save their honor."
"Honor, my left testicle!" hissed Nukalavee. "If the Foe-man's creative force strained the defenses of Skathe, then he is a worthy antagonist to any of us at a distance. We would expend our mind-power simply in the erection of screens and have little left for offense."
"Even the approach is fraught with danger," Sharn noted. "The crust of cooling lava, as this scout says, is fragile and may crack under the weight of a stalwart. You know our minds cannot penetrate dense rock deeply enough to strengthen the crust. And to fan through into the magma below is certain doom." He addressed himself to the dwarf messenger. "Pliktharn, how broad is the expense of lava that would have to be crossed?"
"At least fivescore giant steps, Great Captain." Pliktharn's face became eager. "The crust would bear my weight easily!"
"You could send me and Nukalavee to mind-guard him, along with Ayfa and Skathe," Bles suggested. "The four of us working together have the range."
"And what happens when our brave gnomish brother reaches the mine building?" Nukalavee sneered. "How will he attack the Foe through our own mental screens? Four-Fang, you've worn that reptile suit so long that your wits are shrinking to fit your illusory brainpan!"
"The Great Captain Ayfa," cautioned the scout, "has perceived that the Tanu engineers are calling upon Lord Velteyn for help."
Sharn smacked a great hand onto the table. "Te's tonsils! And when he responds, he'll airlift them out, barium and all! We can't take that chance. I hate like hell to resort to Lowlife tactics, but there's only one way to handle this."
"Easy does it, lads!" Ayfa called out "Don't lose your nerve now that you're almost there."
Homi, the Little Singhalese iron-smelter, clutched Pliktharn's neck tighter. The lava crust bent as the Firvulag approached the lee of the mine building. There the flow was thicker and had held heat longer, which meant that the skin of cooled rock might crack and let them fall through to the magma at any moment.
About the incongruous pick-a-back figures shone a radiant hemisphere, the mental screen conjured by the joint power of Ayfa, Skathe, Bles, and Nukalavee. The four heroes, and most of the force of Warrior Ogresses, were concealed behind the sturdy walls of burnt-out townhouses, well back from the edge of the lava flow and a full 200 meters from the mine headquarters. Energy bolts flung by the trapped Tanu creator blazed from an upper-storey window, disintegrating into a web of lightnings as they were neutralized by the screen's potential. At length, Pliktharn and Homi reached a lower window and climbed inside. Ayfa, who was strong in the farsensing talent, observed what happened next.
"The three Foemen descend to the lower chamber, armed with vitredur geology picks! One of them has considerable coercive power. He's trying to force Pliktharn to lower the screen, but that won't work, of course. The mindbolt flinger now gathers his strength for one mighty thrust at point-blank range! He uses steady pressure rather than abrupt projection. Our screen wavers! It goes spectral, into the blue! The yellow! It will surely fail! But now the Lowlife has his arbalest ready and aims at the creator. Ah! The missile of blood-metal passes through our weakening shield as through a curtain of rain! The Foeman falls! A second shot, and a third, and all of the Foe are downed!"
The four heroes leapt and the Warrior Ogresses whooped with joy in the triumph. All of their minds, even at the great distance, felt the death-flare of first one Tanu mind, then a second.
But the mindbolt flinger was strong even in the dying. Amplified, agonized, his thought thundered in the aether.
The Goddess will avenge us. Accursed through the world's age be those who resort to the blood-metal. A bloody tide will overwhelm them.
An instant later, his soul flickered out.
The Lowlife named Homi, having retrieved the three iron quarrels for reuse in his crossbow, appeared at the window and waved. Then he and Pliktharn set to work chipping and prying at the heavy milestone windowsill until its mortar gave way. The stone smashed the thin lava crust beneath the window, sending up a gush of smoke and flame. Before the fresh rift could heal, the human and the Firvulag were seen to toss certain small containers into the pit of molten rock, after which they climbed out a different window and made their way carefully back the way they had come.
A young girl clad in shiny black jogged in apparent tirelessness along the narrow Vosges jungle trail. Shadows grew deeper and a cool wind swept from the heights into the ravine that the footpath followed. Treefrogs were beginning their evening songs. Before long, the predators would awaken. After nightfall, there would be so many hostile creatures on the prowl that Felice would be unable to fend them off with her coercive power. She would be forced to bivouac and wait until dawn.
"And I'll be too late! The Truce starts at sunup and the war in Finiah will be over! "How far had she come? Perhaps two-thirds of the 106 kilometers that lay between Hidden Springs and the western bank of the Rhine? She had lost so much time this morning before getting started, and the sun went down at eighteen hundred hours . . .
"Damn Richard. I damn him for getting hurt!"
She should have insisted on going with them in the flyer. She could have done something. Helped old Claude steady the Spear. Assisted Madame's mental defense. Even deflected the globe of ball lightning that had blinded Richard in one eye and caused him to crash the flyer.
"Damn him! Damn him! The Firvulag will quit fighting when the Truce begins and our people will have to withdraw. Ill be too late to get my golden torc! Too late!"
She splashed heedlessly across a small stream. Ravens, disturbed in their feeding upon some otter's leftovers, rose squawking into the vine-hung forest canopy. A hyena mocked her, its mad laugh echoing from the ravine wall.
Too late.
The glass carnyx of a fighting Tanu woman sounded the charge. Armored chalikos, bearing knights who coruscated each in a different jewel-color, galloped down the corpse-strewn boulevard toward the barricade where the contingent of Lowlives was making its stand.
"Na bardito! Na bardito!"
There were no Firvulag allies at hand to dampen the mental assault. Images of brain-searing intensity whipped and stabbed at the humans. The night was fraught with unspeakable menace and pain. Plunging exotics in their sparkling harness seemed to be coming from all directions, gorgeous and invulnerable. The humans loosed iron-tipped arrows, but skillful psychokinetics among the Tanu turned most of the fusillade aside, while the rest clattered harmlessly against the plates of the glass armor.
"The spooks! Where are the spooks?" howled a despairing Lowlife. A moment later one of the knights crashed upon him, impaling his claw-torn body with a sapphire lance.
Of the sixty-three human beings who had made their stand in that street, only five escaped into the narrow alleys where hanging awnings, lines of washing, and crowded ranks of rubbish carts abandoned by panicked rama sanitary workers made it impossible for the mounted Tanu to follow.