by Roland Green
As if the matter was settled, Chakfor turned his back on his companions and knelt by his cousin's body. Over his bent back, eloquent looks collided.
Hellandros's said that Chakfor was mad.
Elda's said that the dwarf asked too much of the sky-warrior, even if she was a friend.
Oh It's told them both not to expect good sense from those grieving.
Which did not answer the question of whether to urge the sky-warrior to honor Chakfor's request. Giving the dwarf one of the fire-throwers gave him the power of life and death over her, and her comrades.
Except that they were still seasoned warriors with their own sky-weapons, and four to his one. Also, the sky-warrior had to have seen that the companions' weapons were deadly against unarmored areas—and had taken off her helmet and faceplate as lightly as she might have taken off her socks.
Ohlt drew his dagger, cleared his throat, and handed it hilt-first to Chakfor. "This has never drawn blood unlawfully, I think, and the blade is dwarf-work."
Chakfor bowed ceremoniously, a gesture that he made eloquent in spite of his shortness. Then he looked at the sky-warrior.
"Give your friend honor, and cleanse him with fire, with the blessing of the Rael," the sky-warrior said. She drew the smaller weapon, and handed it to Chakfor with the angled rectangle— which must be the hilt—foremost.
Ohlt wondered how the—the Rael warrior had learned Common so well, so quickly. He hoped he would know, and soon. For now, he was content that the Rael were a folk who knew courage, honor, and trust. If they had that in common with the world's races, much might come from friendship with the Rael.
The Rael warrior was explaining how to use the "blaster" when Ohlt heard a distant sound. It seemed to come from the sky, and within moments it was no longer distant.
"Scatter and lie down!" the Rael warrior shouted. Her voice was high-pitched, but by nature, not from fear.
Now the sound seemed to be coming from all over the sky, and even from the mountaintops. To Ohlt, it sounded like a reef giant ripping a cog's mainsail in two with its bare hands, while screaming at the top of its lungs.
Ohlt went down because he tripped over something that had to be a corpse. Before he could think of rising, the ripping-canvas sound drowned out the scream, then fire and thunder were all around him.
He had just time to wonder if he would die by fire, by being crushed to death by the thunder that seemed to be as solid as a boulder, or, like Ithun, from being pierced by fist-sized chunks of metal hurtling faster than any arrow. Then the heat was fading, and so was the thunder.
It took a moment to realize that, because where there had been fire there was now smoke, as thick as if he were trapped in the hold of a burning ship. His ears were also not quite as they had been. It felt as if tiny dwarves were inside his skull, beating on his ears with not-so-tiny hammers, and blowing silver trumpets as they worked.
He was unsteady on his legs when first he rose, but he did not fall. As the smoke thinned, he saw the Rael warrior staring about her.
The spectacle would have made anyone stare. From where the iron cottage had been, and from the top of the cliff, plumes of smoke towered into the sky. The rock and the ground were seared black and gouged, as if by the fingernails of a dozen mad giants. At the foot of the cliff, dust rather than smoke rose into the dirty sky. Ohlt stared at the mass of tumbled rock—some of its boulders larger than the iron cottage—and all the scars and gouges in the cliff itself.
"The drone must have salvoed all its rockets on heat-seeking mode," the Rael said. At least those were the words Ohlt heard. I le imagined that they described what the enemy had done from the sky. Did they command dragons? Or did they make flying golems as well as those that walked and rolled?
"Time we were in the trees," Chakfor said brusquely. He held out the fire-thrower to the Rael. "I saw where the—what did you call them?"
"Rockets."
"Where the rockets struck. Ithun has had his fire, even if it was an enemy's. His spirit is his own again."
"You may carry the blaster to the trees," the Rael warrior said. "Only do not fire at the drone if it comes back. That will draw its fire, and we might not be so lucky again."
Considering that they had survived destruction enough to lay Aston Point in ruins, Ohlt could not but agree. "Elda, Brinus, take the lead," he said. "Warrior . . . have you a name?"
"Jazra."
"Jazra, I am Fedor Ohlt," he said, managing a smile. "Tell your comrades that we are friends, and wish to meet them, to know how we can help one another."
"It will help that, if I put my helmet back on."
"Ah, the message-sending spell is in the helmet?" Hellandros asked.
For the first time, Ohlt saw on Jazra's face something that he could call a smile.
"You might say that," she told Hellandros. "It is both more and less than that, but it is not a spell I could use against you, even if I wished it."
Hellandros seemed pleased, if still curious. Ohlt was less pleased. He doubted that there was anything of the Rael or the golem-makers that could not be used by both friends or foes.
Otherwise, would not the Rael have kept their enemies from learning the magic of the fire-throwers?
Or perhaps it was not magic, but knowledge that anyone could learn, as any man with good hands could learn to use a carpenter's tools to turn wood into either a baby's rattle or the handle of a battle-axe?
• • •
When the sound began, Gredin was in the stables, grooming a pale gray gelding whose owner had defiantly named Ghost. The horse was nothing of the kind; he seemed to eat and drink enough for two, and his manger was already half empty.
As to the gelding's owner, who could tell? He had gone up-country with a band of adventurers, leaving his mount because no one hunted treasure, or anything else in the mountains, on horseback. None of them had come back or sent messages yet— just like Erick's party of soldiers.
Gredin prayed that they all came home safely. She might have prayed for Erick alone, but she remembered her mother's tales about the fate of those who pray selfishly. She also remembered folk like Fedor Ohlt, that sturdy, quietly sensible ship's carpenter with troubles he carried all by himself.
It was then that the sound began. The sky seemed to be tearing open, and amid the ripping sound was a shrill scream. Gredin dropped her currycomb, and ran out of the stable in time to see a silvery bat-shape hurtle overhead like a bolt from a giant's crossbow.
Or, at least, it could have been a bat, if bats were the size of horses, and wore silvery armor like a paladin's, not to mention trailing fire from under their feet.
That was all she saw before the bat not only trailed, but spat fire. The fire seemed to come down all over Aston Point, and she heard screams from far off. For now, her only concern was that a cartload of dry fodder standing just outside the stable door had taken fire.
Without stopping to think, she snatched a bucket from a hook on the wall and dashed for the watering trough. She scooped the bucket full of water, ran back to the cart, and hurled the water. Smoke turned into steam, and crackling turned into hissing, but over only part of the load. More was still burning, and if the whole load went, the stable would go too, with the horses trapped inside. The cart was blocking the door.
Instead of running for another bucketful of water, Gredin ran around to the shafts of the cart. She was strong for her size, and she only had to pull it a few paces... .
This time the sound was that of all the thunderclaps since the world began sounding together. The horses were neighing in panic before the rumbling and echoes died away. Gredin could no longer think of the horses. The thunderclap had made the ground shake, and flung the cart forward. She lay, face down in the mud and straw of the stableyard, caught between the axle of the cart and a pile of firewood. She could barely breathe, and had no strength to push herself and the cart back from the wood. The flames from the burning cart no longer threatened the stable, but might work downwar
d to her before help came.
Gredin could swallow, and she did, to keep her cry for help from coming out as a hysterical scream. Erick would not like to know that she had begun like a soldier, but ended like a girl. He had said once that most girls were braver than men thought, which sounded nice if he meant it.
A spark fell through the fodder, and onto Gredin's back. She bit her lip to avoid screaming. The fire must be gaining faster than she had expected.
"Help!" she croaked. Then louder: "Help! I'm caught under the burning cart. Get it off me! Heeeelp!"
The ground seemed to shake again, and Gredin wondered if the iron bat was coming back to finish its work. Then a voice boomed from above: "Lie still, girl."
A moment later the pressure of the cart axle lifted from her back. The cart reared back with a crash, tumbling burning fodder into the stableyard. Gredin cautiously rose to her hands and knees—then large hands were slapping her on the back and buttocks.
"Who do you—?" she squalled.
The large hands slipped under her arms and pulled her to her feet. She found herself staring into the face of Big Bilton, Aston Point's blacksmith.
"You were smoking, all the places I slapped you," he said.
Gredin brushed her hands over her back and rear, and realized that the smith was right. Another few moments, and she'd have had scorched skin, not to mention clothes ready to fall off her the moment she stood up.
That did not matter, though. Enough fodder was still burning to endanger the stable. Gredin snatched up a pitchfork, and scattered the burning matter, while Bilton alternately fetched buckets of water, and stamped on sparks with his gigantic boots.
At last the stable was safe. Now Gredin realized that those of her clothes not scorched were soaked, and clinging to her like a second skin. She had not been so nearly unclothed out of doors since she was a babe!
Bilton saw her situation, and ripped the covering off a bundle lying on the ground, snapping stout rope like thread with his bare hands. It was dirty, sodden sacking, but capacious enough to preserve the modesty of three girls Gredin's size.
"Thank you," Gredin said, wrapping herself in the sacking.
"I came with the new bars your father ordered for the cellar window. Also, I bring a message from Seldra Boatwright."
"Is she well?"
"Unless the bat-monster hurt her," he said, "she ought to be. But she is putting together a patrol of the town's lawful people. The Lady Captain has given her blessing, or at least not said no. Seldra wants one fighter from each house."
Then I'll be the one from our house," Gredin said, standing as straight as she could. It was a little hard to keep a soldier's dignity dressed in dirty sacking over ruined clothing.
"I have to be," she added, answering Bilton's dubious look. "My parents are needed in the stable, and my sisters are too young. I can use a sword."
"You are not sixteen, Gredin."
"I am so. Your daughter can tell you that. She was at my naming-day feast. Sixteen is old enough to fight, when we have
to."
Bilton looked at the sky, then toward the mountains, and cocked his head. Gredin also could hear the crackling of flames, and the screams and moans of those too close to them.
"The gods know we must fight," the smith said at last. "1 wish
they would tell us who we fight against."
» « •
Jazra's first impulse when she saw Zolaris approaching with his old, sturdy stride was to run and hug him. His grin suggested that he might be feeling the same way.
"Welcome back from the dead, Commander," he said, saluting.
"If I'd been dead all this while, I would not be so tired," Jazra said. Zolaris led her to a convenient stump and helped her to sit down.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Setting up a diversion. The Director will think we're defending our main camp, and send the constructs here."
"Then we had best explain matters to the humans, and move on."
"If we can," Zolaris said. "Are we bringing the humans with us?" Jazra did not miss the ironic note in his voice.
"However did you guess?" She looked at the treetops, which revealed nothing, and said, "I think we need human help to survive, let alone stop the Overseer's attack on this world."
"What about their ... do they call it magic?"
"They do, and what about it?"
Zolaris, in turn, looked at the treetops, then shrugged.
"I have no answer either," Jazra said. "But perhaps the humans do."
"Commander Jazra," Fedor Ohlt said severely. "We have listened to you talking with your . . . under-captain, without understanding a word, save 'human', for long enough. If you want something of us, can you speak to us in Common?"
Everyone stared at Zolaris as he licked his lips and said, "Sorry . . . human commander. We talk . . . things ... of the Rael. Not to hurt humans." His grammar was awkward, his accent worse, but his decryptor had obviously been doing its work, and his wits theirs.
Ohlt raised his hand in a salute that looked very much like a Rael marine's, then said, "I beg your pardon, too, friends, but let us do things in their proper order.
"Have you anything that can help us heal Erick Trussk? I ask, because if your weapons are magical, perhaps your medicines are as well."
Jazra looked at the three marines. "Vorris," she called to one of them, "weren't you cross-trained as a field medic?"
"Yes, Commander."
"Then see what you can do about this young human. He was wounded fighting the Overseer."
Vorris reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a tube of burn ointment and a packet of wound spray. Hellandros examined them. So did M'lenda. Then she knelt, groped for a smoldering twig, and deliberately picked it up.
"Ho, Ranger Lady!" Elda shouted. "What are you—?"
M'lenda did not drop the twig. Instead, she drew a dagger with her free hand, and made a shallow cut across the back of the hand grasping the twig.
"Now, try your healing on my hand," she told Vorris. He did not understand her words, but her tone and gestures filled the gap. He unsealed the wound spray, and gestured for M'lenda to hold out her hand. She dropped the twig, and he sprayed the knife cut. He opened the tube of burn ointment, then turned her hand over and squeezed the ointment onto the reddened fingers.
M'lenda went through the same blessing ritual that Jazra had seen before, then held up her hand. She stared at it, bemused. When she shook it, Vorris glared at her.
She made a blessing gesture in his direction. "Thank you, healer. I could not by my oath let anyone use on Erick salves that might be dangerous. We do not look the same, so we might not heal the same. But my hand feels as if it were only scratched, and hardly burned at all."
Zolaris seemed to understand enough of this to laugh. "What are you waiting for, Warrior-Medic Vorris?" he chided.
Vorris kneeled beside Erick. Hastily, the wizard made a pass over the burned soldier with his staff, nearly banging one silver-weighted end into Vorris's head. Vorris ignored the staff, and set to examining the wounded man.
"Commander, this burn looks as if it were cooled and salved days ago," he exclaimed. "Whoever did that saved me a great deal of work, and probably saved this human's life."
Hellandros glared. He seemed to take Vorris's tone as one of reproach, so Jazra hastily translated.
While Jazra was mollifying Hellandros, Vorris was hard at work. He sprayed and salved Erick Trussk's burns and wounds, then pulled field splints out of his medical pouch and applied them. M'lenda stood over him all the while, by turns blessing him and simply staring silently.
At last Vorris popped the tabs on the splints, and they expanded into position. Erick's wounds and broken bones were now fit to endure the journey to someone who could speed his healing—or home, to let nature finish the work. He was young, strong, and seemingly healthy. If his people knew about infections and sterilization. . . .
"Gods, that feels good," Erick
murmured. The tightness of a man trying not to weep like a baby from the pain was gone from his voice. "Thank you. . . ."
"Vorris," Zolaris said, pointing to the medic.
"Thank you, Vossin," Erick said, giving another of those salutes. "And Hellandros, M'lenda—where's Chakfor Stonebreaker?"
"Here," the dwarf said. Erick used his good arm to grip the dwarf's hand, which he held for a long moment; then his arm dropped limply to the ground and his eyes closed.
The humans stared, then glared, then reached for weapons. Before anyone could draw, Erick gave a great, rumbling snore that sounded like an incoming flight of drone-launched rockets.
"That much medicine in anybody's system sometimes brings on sleep, even without a painkiller," Vorris said. "When it does, I do not give the painkiller."
Jazra's translation drew hands away from weapons, and smoothed out the humans' features.
"Thank you," Ohlt said. "Now, if you Rael will help us take Erick down to Aston Point—"
"If there is anyone there," Elda interrupted. "Everybody might have taken to ships and fled. Besides, that's quite a detour for us. We could end up either giving our enemy more time to regroup, or lead them right into town."
"What about Drenin Longstaff's grove?" M'lenda offered. "Others besides ourselves must be seeking him. They will certainly pass by there, and bring offerings to the druid, as is customary for many. Someone will be able to bring Erick home. Or Drenin himself might come down."
"If he yet lives," Hellandros muttered.
"Wait!" Jazra broke in. "He was alive the night Fworta crashed, if we are talking about the same man. Can he change himself into a—a large, fur-covered, four-legged predator—then back into a man?"
All six companions whirled toward Jazra, like robots under a single command. Jazra almost drew her blaster, and Zolaris did draw his.
"Tell us, please," Ohlt said. His voice was expressionless, whether with anger, or from trying to ignore the blaster pointed at him. Jazra saw Elda shifting position, trying to find an angle from which she could surprise Zolaris. Jazra made an urgent gesture, and, reluctantly, Zolaris holstered his blaster.