The Many-Coloured Land

by Julian May

  A mammoth bonfire was ablaze in the Central Plaza of Finiah. Jubilant phantoms in a hundred hideous guises capered around it waving battle standards festooned with strings of freshly psychogilded skulls.

  Khalid Khan protested. "They're wasting time, Mighty Sharn! Our people are taking a terrible beating when they meet the Tanu unsupported by Firvulag mind-cover Even the mounted gray-torcs can cut right through our infantry. We've got to work together! And we must find some way to counter those chaliko-riders."

  The great luminous scorpion bent over the turbaned Pakistani, multicolored organs within its translucent body throbbing to the rhythm of the exotic war chant.

  "It has been many years since we had cause for celebration." The unhuman voice clanged in Khalid's brain. "For too long the Foe has lurked safely behind stout city walls, despising us. You do not understand how it has been with us, the humiliation our race has suffered, draining our valor and driving even the most powerful of us to hopeless inaction. But behold! Look upon the trophy skulls, and these only a small proportion of the total!

  "And how many of them belong to Tanu? Dammit, Sharn, most of the enemy casualties have been among the torced and bareneck humans! The noncombatant Tanu are all holed up in House Velteyn where we can't reach them, and only a handful of their mounted knights have been killed!"

  "The Tanu chivalry", the eerie voice hesitated and then made reluctant admission, "presents a formidable challenge to us. Armored war steeds with their minds held in thrall by the riders are not intimidated by our horrific illusions or shape-shifting. We must contend against them physically, and not all of the Firvulag company are of heroic frame. Our obsidian weapons, our swords, halberds, chain-flails, and throwing spears, are not often effective against chaliko cavalry in the Grand Combat. And the same obtains in this battle."

  "You need a change in tactics. There are ways for foot soldiers to put down charging horsemen." The metalsmith's teeth glittered in a brief grin. "My ancestors, Pathan hillmen, knew how!"

  The response of the Firvulag general was cool. "Our battle customs are fixed by sacred tradition."

  "No wonder you're losers! The Tanu weren't afraid to innovate, to take advantage of human science. Now you Firvulag have human allies on your side, and you stick one timid little toe into the battlefield and then mess about singing and dancing instead of going for the prize!"

  "Beware lest I punish your insolence, Lowlife!" But the furious retort lacked conviction.

  Khalid said softly, "Would you help us if we try a new tactic? Would you shield our minds while we try to knock those long-shanked bastards out of the saddle?"

  "Yes . . . we would do that."

  "Then pay close attention."

  The monster scorpion metamorphosed into a handsome young ogre wearing a thoughtful scowl. After a few minutes the hobgoblins left off their madcap dancing, changed into gnomish warriors, and crowded in to listen.

  Converting Sharn's lieutenants proved to be more difficult. Khalid had to engineer a demonstration. He rounded up ten volunteer Lowlives equipped with iron-tipped javelins and led them to the approaches of House Velteyn, where gray-torc and Tanu riders guarded the ultimate sanctuary. The paved avenue-was lit by widely spaced torchères. No other invaders were to be seen because of the heavy concentration of defenders. Sharn and six of his Great Ones lurked in the shelter of a deserted mansion while Khalid deliberately led his squad of spearmen into plain sight of a patrolling gray troop.

  The human leader, fully armored in blue glass, drew his vitredur blade and led a charge at the gallop down the cobblestone street. Instead of scattering, the Lowlives drew closely together, forming a tight phalanx bristling with four-meter spears.

  The patrol swerved to the right at the last instant to avoid crashing into the iron porcupine, individual troopers reining up and wheeling their mounts about so that they could strike with longsword or battleaxe. They were plainly nonplussed, since almost all of the antagonists they had encountered thus far had emulated the Firvulag maneuver of tossing their pole-arms and then fleeing. This pack of innovators stood their ground until the animals were off balance in the turn, then stabbed deep into the unarmored bellies of the huge clawed beasts.

  The hideous pain of disembowelment overrode the mind-control exerted by each rider upon his mount. Wounded chalikos stumbled and fell, or went careening off in a frenzy while the troopers hung on for their lives. Khalid's warriors pounced upon the unhorsed, dispatching them with spear or blade. Five minutes after the initiation of the attack, every member of the gray troop was either dead or had fled.

  "But will it work on the Foe?" inquired Betularn of the White Hand skeptically. With Pallol Battlemaster a non-participant, he was the doyen of Firvulag stalwarts, and his opinion counted for much.

  Khalid grinned at the beetle-browed giant while one of his comrades tried to staunch bleeding arm and leg wounds with torn strips of the dead captal's cloak. "It will work on the Tanu, providing we take them by surprise. We must assemble as many Lowlives and Firvulag as possible for a massed thrust against House Velteyn. Those of our people who don't have spears will improvise them from bamboo awning poles. We needn't use iron to gut the chalikos, but each human fighter will have to have an iron weapon to use against downed Tanu riders. And your people will have to be right in the thick of things beside ours, handling mind-defense and getting in whatever licks they can."

  The venerable warrior shook his head slowly. He said to Sharn, "This is contrary to our Way, as you know, Great Captain. But the Foe has defied tradition for more than forty years." The other five Great Ones growled assent. "We have prayed to the Goddess for a chance to recoup our honor. And so I say . . . let us essay the Lowlife tactic. And her will be done."

  Long after midnight, with smoke from the burning city blotting out the stars and the untended torchères guttering low, Lowlives and Little People gathered for the grand assault. In a rare display of cooperative virtuosity, the best of the Firvulag illusion-spinners wove a curtain of confusion to deceive the farsensing Foe. The Tanu besieged within House Velteyn knew that the enemy was up to something, but the nature of the assault remained in doubt.

  The Lord of Finiah himself, aloft once again with several of his most trusted tacticians, made pass after pass at low altitude, atempting to discern the plan of the invaders; but the meta-psychic shimmer was just dense enough to defeat his farsight. He beheld the Foe massed opposite the main portal of his palace. There were to be no feints, no multipronged storming of the several entrances, that much was self-evident. With typical Firvulag singlemindedness, Sharn seemed to be gambling everything on a last great frontal assault.

  Velteyn sent the telepathic order on the intimate mode to each knight commander, and these in turn transmitted the Lord's words to their subordinates:

  "To the forecourt! Let all the noble Tanu battle company, all of our adopted kinfolk of the gold and silver torc, all loyal and valiant gray soldiery attend! The Foemen gather for their final push. Let us destroy them body and soul! Na bardito! Forward, fighters of the Many-Colored Land!"

  All aglow and exalted with battle ardor, the Tanu chivalry charged in a mass against the indistinct, dense groups of advancing Foe. The screen of confusion snaped off in the last second before contact to reveal the deadly pincushions of spears, many of them iron. With mental weapons all but neutralized by the Firvulag, the Tanu unshipped their pennoned lances and sent their mounts caracoling about the flanks of the hedgehog formations, alert for the expected rain of flung spears. And thus the treacherous novelty caught them completely unawares.

  Velteyn, from his vantage point in the sky, could only far-watch aghast in those early minutes of slaughter. Then he dove his mount down, bombarding the enemy with all the psycho-energy he could muster. His mind and voice rallied the shattered ranks.

  "Abandon your animals! Let all fight afoot! Creators and psychokinetics, raise shields for your fellows! Coercers, compel all grays and silvers to stand fast. Beware the blood-met
al!"

  The vast courtyard and immediate palace grounds were now a surging mass of bodies. Dull-red flashes signaled Firvulag and Tanu mind-screens interfacing in mutual collapse, after which the antagonists might fight hand to hand, with perfidious Lowlives attacking with the iron at every opportunity. The merest prick from the blood-metal meant death to a Tanu. Human gold-torcs, of course, could be wounded by the blood-metal, but not mortally poisoned. Velteyn's heart warmed at the bravery shown by the gold adoptees, many of whom seized iron weapons and turned them against the Firvulag.

  Unfortunately, it was otherwise with the grays and silvers. The discipline of the torc faded in the face of diminished coercion from beleagured Tanu overlords. The lower echelons among the human levies were unmanned by the demoralizing sight of Tanu knights falling to the iron. Both Firvulag and Lowlives seized the advantage and decimated the ranks of the terror-stricken troops.

  For three hours, Velteyn hovered above the battlefield, invisible except to his own forces, directing the ultimate defense of his City of Lights. If they could only hold out until dawn, until the start of the Truce! But as the sky beyond the Black Forest massif paled, two powerful bodies of the Foe, spearheaded by Bles Four-Fang and Nukalavee, made a great press and reached the palace gate.

  "Fall back!" Velteyn cried. "Stand and defend the portal!"

  The jewel-armored knights did their utmost, wreaking a fearful toll of dwarfs and humanity as they laid about with their glowing two-handed swords. Sooner or later, however, an iron dart would find a chink of vulnerability at groin or armpit or the back of a knee, and another brave warior would attain Tana's peace.

  Velteyn groaned aloud, overwhelmed by sorrow and rage. The doors of his palace were giving way. There was no course left but the evacuation of the noncombatants via the roof with the help of the sad-eyed little human PK adept, Sullivan-Tonn. By Tana's grace, the two of them might save most of the nearly 700 trapped Tanu civilians while the knights staved off the invading horde in the stronghold corridors. If only he could die with them! But that release was forbidden to the humiliated Lord of Finiah. He was going to live on, and he was going to have to explain all of this to the King.

  Peopeo Moxmox Burke slumped against the roof parapet of House Velteyn, letting fatigue and reaction sweep over him. Gert and Hansi and a few other Lowlives beat the bushes of the roof garden and searched the ornate penthouse for hidden Tanu. But they found only the discarded baggage the fugitives had left behind, spilled pouches of jewelry, heavy embroidered cloaks and fantastic headgear, broken flagons of perfume, a single ruby-glass gauntlet

  "No sign of 'em, Chief," Hansi said. "Ganz ausgeflogen. They've flown the coop."

  "Get back downstairs, then," Burke ordered. "See that all the rooms are checked out, and the dungeons, too. If you see Uwe or Black Denny, send them to me. We'll have to coordinate the looting."

  "Check, Chief." The men clattered away down the broad marble stairway. Burke raised one leg of his buckskin trousers and kneaded puckered flesh around the healing scar. With the anesthetic of battle fury worn off, it hurt like hell; and there was a long cut on his bare back and about forty-seven bruises and abrasions that were also making themselves known But he was in pretty good shape, for all that. The rest of the Lowlife army should be so lucky.

  One of the fleeing evacuees had left behind a basket with wine and breadrolls. Sighing, the Chief began to eat and drink. In the streets below, Firvulag were gathering their wounded and their dead and forming long processions on their way to the Rhine watergates. Bobbing lanterns out on the river marked the position of small boats that had already begun the withdrawal in anticipation of the dawn. Here and there among the burning ruins stubborn human loyalists continued a futile resistance. Madame Guderian had warned Burke that the humans living in Finiah might prove less than grateful for their liberation. She had been right, as usual. There were interesting times ahead, damn it.

  Sighing once again, he finished the wine, gave his stiffening muscles a stretch, then took up a discarded Tanu shawl to wipe off his war paint.

  Moe Marshak shuffled a few steps forward in line.

  "Quit crowding, big boy," snarled the lovely dark-skinned woman from the pleasure dome. The other two inmates had not worn gray torcs and were long gone, led away to the sailing lighters that shuttled back and forth between Finiah and the Vosges shore. The promise of amnesty was being kept by the Lowlives. But if you were a human torc wearer, there was a catch.

  Marshak knew all about the activity of the drumhead tribunal, of course. He was in telepathic communion with all of the grays within his range who had not deliberately shut him out, as the black woman had. The Tanu, givers of delight and power, were gone. As they had wafted away to the east, they had reached out in poignant farewell, caressing and commiserating and sending a final warm surge flooding the neural networks of those who had been faithful, so that the gray-torc prisoners had an illusion of celebration in place of grief and despair. Even now, at the end, they could comfort one another. The kinship remained. None of them was alone, except by choice.

  The black woman stood before the judges, her eyes bright. When the question came, she almost screamed her reply: "Yes! Yes, by God! Do it! Give me back my self again!"

  Lowlifeguards led her through a door to the right of the tribunal. The rest of the grays, mourning the sister's defection but respecting her choice, reached out one last time. She defied them all, placed her head on the block. The great mallet smote the iron chisel and there was overpowering pain. And silence.

  Now Marshak's turn came. As a man dreaming, he told the Lowlife judges his name, his former occupation in the Milieu, the date of his passage through the time-portal. The oldest of the judges pronounced the formula.

  "Moe Marshak, as a wearer of the gray torc, you have been held in bondage by an exotic race and compelled to abet the enslavement of humanity. Your Tanu overlords have been defeated by the Alliance of Freeliving Humans and Firvulag. As a prisoner of war, you are entitled to amnesty, provided that you agree to the removal of the torc. If you do not agree, you will be executed. Please make your choice."

  He chose.

  Every nerve in his body seemed to ignite. Kindred minds sang as they gave consolation. Steadfast, he reaffirmed the unity and a great rejoicing flare obliterated all other sensation: the sight of the hollow-eyed judges, the pressure of hands that gripped and dragged him away, the penetration of his heart by the long blade, and the final cold embrace of the River Rhine.

  Richard stood in the dim little log chapel in Hidden Springs village where they had laid Martha out, seeing her in a swimming reddish haze even though Amerie had tried to reassure him that his right eye was virtually undamaged.

  He wasn't angry. Disappointed, that was all, because Marty had promised to wait. Hadn't they planned it all together? Hadn't they loved each other? It wasn't like her to let him down after all they'd been through together.

  Well, he would work something out.

  Wincing a little from the bandaged burns, he gathered her into his arms. So light, so white. All gowned in white. He almost fell as he pushed the door open. No depth perception with only one eye. "Doesn't matter," he told her. "I can wear a patch like a real pirate. Just you hang on."

  He went lurching toward the place where the flyer stood, covered by camouflage netting, one landing strut broken and one wing partly crushed by his prang-in. But a gravo-mag ship didn't need wings to fly. It was still in good enough shape to take both of them where they wanted to go.

  Amerie spotted him just as he was lifting Martha inside. She came running, her nun's veil and robes billowing. "Richard! Stop!"

  Oh, no you don't, he thought. I did what I promised. Now it's you guys who owe me.

  With the flyer tilted, it was tricky to maneuver Martha. He made her comfortable and tossed the Spear out, powerpack and all. Maybe some wisehead would figure out how to recharge it some day. Then Madame Guderian could get another flyer and go zap all the rest of the
Tanu cities and make Pliocene Earth safe for good old humanity.

  "Just don't call me to drive the bus," he muttered. "I've got other plans."

  "Richard!" the nun shouted again.

  He waved to her from the flight deck port and sat down in the charred seat close hatch. Light up. Juice to the external web. Camouflage netting burning away. Oh-oh, Environmental system in the amber. Shorted by the lightning, maybe. Well . . . it would last long enough.

  The soothing hum filled his brain as he brought the ship up level. He glanced back at Marty to be sure that she was still safe. Her form wavered, seemed to go red. But in a moment it was all right, and he told her, "I'll take us up nice and slow. We've got all the time in the world."

  Amerie watched the broken-winged bird rise vertically into the golden morning sky, following the first component of the sign she traced. The mist was gone now and it was going to be a beautiful day. Over in the east the smoke cloud was thickening but upper-level winds carried it in the opposite direction.

  The aircraft ascended until it was a mere speck. Amerie blinked, and the speck became invisible against the bright vault of the heavens.

  THE END OF PART THREE

  Book Two in the Saga of the Exiles entitled The Golden Torc, tells of the adventures of the other four members of Croup Green in the Tanu capital city, and of their reunion with the northerners in an attempt to accomplish the final phases of Madame Guderian's plan to liberate Pliocene humanity.