"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,
The beggars are coming to town.
Some in rags and some in riches,
And some in velvet gowns."
The Sylvan smiled in a polite but confused manner. "But is it not dangerous to have the puppy up here?"
Melville smiled sadly and replied simply, "He knew the job was dangerous when he took it." The bewildered Sylvan nodded and backed away. Then all the staff officers went to put out fires in the immediate vicinity.
Melville's dog looked at the death and suffering across the river with the kind of keen, contented pleasure that a hound would have as it watched a deer being gutted and field stripped. Melville and his monkey both echoed this look of remorseless satisfaction. As his fellow commanders gazed out in wonder and horror, Melville began to recite reflectively, quietly but clearly,
"He said: 'Thou petty people, let me pass.
What canst thou do but bow to me and kneel?'
But sudden a dry land caught fire like grass,
And answer hurtled but from shell and steel.
"He looked for silence, but a thunder came
Upon him, from Liège a leaden hail.
All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame
Till at her gates amazed his legions quail."
The allied leaders standing next to him on the ramparts looked at him with a kind of horrified admiration. Here was a new twist to the strange, savage, barbarian killer who was their new ally.
The crisis immediately around them had passed, the situation was now under control and their staff officers began to return. Broadax and Hans and their squad of marine bodyguards came staggering up after having barely saved one building. Broadax and Hans moved up to stand beside their commander. Both they and their monkeys were singed and smoldering in various locations. Melville felt guilty about not having gone into "harm's way" with them, but he had decided it was important to stay here with his allied commanders.
"Funny thing 'bout eyebrows," muttered Hans, as he and his monkey launched tobacco juice over the edge of the battlements. "Ya never miss 'em 'til they's gone." Looking out at the blazing cauldron of death and horror across the river, Hans chuckled happily. "Urban renewal," he muttered, "prob'ly an improvement." Then he recited an old sailor's ditty, "Red sky at night, sailor's delight."
"Hah!" chuckled Broadax, she and her monkey both smoking from several places besides her cigar, "Red sky at night, the whole damned city's alight! An' a whole bunch of them cur bastards with it."
The Sylvan and Stolsh commanders, and their returning staff, looked in consternation at the human warriors' frank pleasure. "Gentlefolk," said one Sylvan staff officer in a braided, forest green uniform, "dost thou feel no remorse, no empathy for the suffering we have inflicted here today?"
Melville looked at him with feral eyes, thinking of the row of graves on Broadax's World. "A great leader of ours, a man named Winston Churchill, in similar circumstances, put it this way. 'If you will not fight when you can easily win, without bloodshed, and if you still will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly, you may well come to the moment when you will have no choice but to fight with the odds against you, and you have only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, simply because it is better to perish as warriors than to live as slaves.' "
The staff officer looked at him with a puzzled yet kindly expression. "We know that a captain's communication with his Ship can have a powerful effect, and we know that war can scar a man. Please forgive me, captain, I mean no offense; but surely, sir, war and communion with thy Ship hast seared thy soul? Otherwise how canst thou say that anyone deserves that?"
Melville returned a flat stare. "They'd do the same thing to you, your families, and everything that you love, without hesitation. It does you credit that you have remorse, that's what makes you superior to them. But it also does you credit that you are willing to fight them with every means at your disposal. You didn't ask them to come here. You didn't invade them. People find in war what they seek. They sought death and destruction, and they have found it." Looking out across the river, he mused,
"Efficient, thorough, strong, and brave—his vision is to kill.
Force is the hearthstone of his might, the pole-star of his will.
His forges glow malevolent: their minions never tire
To deck the goddess of his lust whose twins are blood and fire."
There was a long silence, then he whispered, "Reap what thou hast sown, O enemy mine. Thou hast taught me to hate. Thou hast lusted for blood and fire, now slake thy thirst."
Everywhere thrill the air
The maniac bells of War.
There will be little of sleeping to-night;
There will be wailing and weeping to-night;
Death's red sickle is reaping to-night:
War! War! War!
Chapter the 12th
Siege: Smote, and Smote Again
So strong in faith you dared
Defy the giant, scorn
Ignobly to be spared,
Though trampled, spoiled, and torn,
And in your faith arose
And smote, and smote again,
Till those astonished foes
Reeled from their mounds of slain . . .
Still for your frontier stands
The host that knew no dread,
Your little, stubborn land's
Nameless, immortal dead.
Laurence Binyon
"To the Belgians"
Now the battle was begun in earnest.
Piers, with their access to Flatland and two-space, usually appear on high ground. Ambergris was an aquatic world with the Piers appearing on opposite ends of the world's one, long, low mountain range. Movement from the Lower Pier to the Upper Pier, here at AiEe, was mostly on high ground where the Guldur were at an advantage. Once they moved off this high ground they'd be in swamps, seas, and archipelagos where the aquatic Stolsh had an enormous advantage.
For hundreds of miles up and down stream, AiEe was the only point where the River Grottem was bridged, the only place where the river didn't have vast swamps on both banks. If the Guldur were coming across the river this was the only place it could be done without months of effort and vast amounts of engineering work to build roads and bridges in the swamps, where the Stolsh would be at a great advantage. The Guldur knew this, and they were not that stupid. So they selected the lesser of two evils and attacked head-on, struggling across the water and up the bluffs.
The low gray walls around Ai didn't so much loom over the river as lurk, clinging to the bluffs as though they were worried someone might try to steal them. Now their centuries of paranoid, stony diligence was paying off. They'd finally caught a thief, and they would make them pay.
It was like something out of a ancient epic poem. As Melville and his officers watched in amazement, the Guldur hordes attacked, and died. And died. And died.
A hundred thousand fighting men
They climbed the frowning ridges,
With their flaming swords drawn free
And their pennants at their knee
They went up to their desire,
To the City of the Bridges,
With their naked brands outdrawn
Like the lances of the dawn!
In a swelling surf of fire,
Crawling higher—higher—higher—
Till they crumpled up and died
Like a sudden wasted tide,
And the thunder in their faces beat them down and flung them wide!
The batteries of mighty cannons atop the walls roared out defiance and death for days on end. Their stockpile of shot, shell and powder was immense. But so was the enemy army.
Their packmasters moved immediately behind each wave of Guldur. These were huge, brutal curs with long whips, goading their troops into a frenzy of bloodlust. Little was known about the distant Guldur empire. Even the m
ost basic aspects of their culture and leadership were a mystery. The doggies who were now members of Fang's crew could do little but moan and hang their heads when asked about it. Clearly their leadership was brutal, goading the individual curs into acts that, without their leaders and ticks, they would ordinarily never be capable of.
The ticks were an even greater mystery to the alliance. They were foul-smelling little creatures with nasty habits, apparently not of basic humanoid stock. The Guldur leadership used them to control and incite the doggies, but exactly how this happened was an enigma.
Regardless of how they accomplished it, some highly effective combination of factors made it possible for the Guldur to goad their troops into endless, suicidal attacks. The Guldur hordes attacked in a rainbow of uniforms, each regiment dressed differently, with color-coordinated Goblan ticks on their backs. Each attacking figure needed to be killed twice, cur and tick. And they were. For all their pretty uniforms they died in great, horrid, ghastly gray heaps.
They had paid a thousand men,
Yet they formed and came again,
For they heard the silver bugles sounding
challenge to their pride,
And they rode with swords agleam
For the glory of a dream
And they stormed up to the cannon's mouth
and withered there, and died.
The might of a vast star empire was wasting away before their eyes. The Guldur members of Fang's crew couldn't bear to come to the ramparts and watch, as the others did on their off hours.
As the Stolsh defenders watched in horror, their resolution began to waver. Even the refugees from Scrotche, the Lower Pier city that had been conquered by the Guldur, were losing heart for the slaughter. Melville, Broadax and Hans found that even their fierce lust for vengeance was being fulfilled. The young captain was constantly busy in the councils of the allies. Encouraging them to fight and, yes, to kill their foes, now while they could. Churchill's admonishment was brought up again and again.
Fielder, self-centered as a tornado, as self-absorbed as a cat, was able to find complete comfort in his pragmatic, egocentric philosophy. "Do onto others before they do onto you" and "Better you than me," had served him well for a lifetime, and he saw no need to change now that a whole army was coming to kill him. But even he couldn't find delight in the enemy's slaughter. Only Ulrich, Melville's fierce coxswain, could continue to watch the enemy's death and destruction with undiluted pleasure.
The daylight lay in ashes
On the blackened western hill,
And the dead were calm and still;
But the Night was torn with gashes—
Sudden ragged crimson gashes—
And the siege-guns snarled and roared,
With their flames thrust like a sword,
And the tranquil moon came riding on the heaven's silver ford.
All too soon, the tide began to turn. Slowly but surely, inexorably, the enemy fought back. At great cost they emplaced siege guns. Vast batteries, battalions and brigades of siege guns, howitzers and mortars began to strike back at the besieged city. And the tide of public opinion began to turn. Each Stolsh soldier who died renewed the defender's determination, each civilian killed rekindled their hatred.
The curs had taught Melville to hate. Now they were teaching the Stolsh to hate. It was a lesson the Guldur taught well.
Each night the enemy attacked. Each night the assaults grew fiercer, ever more terrible and ferocious. The defenders' guns became worn, the crews grew weary, but the seemingly inexhaustible Guldur hordes attacked fresh each night.
* * *
What a fearful world was there,
Tangled in the cold moon's hair!
Man and beast lay hurt and screaming,
(Men must die when Kings are dreaming)—
While within the harrowed town
Mothers dragged their children down
As the awful rain came screaming,
For the glory of a crown!
The enemy counterfire became increasingly accurate. The defenders' guns were destroyed. Their crewmen died. Raw civilians filled the gaps and helped man the guns. Women bore ammunition up to the guns. Children carried water to their fathers and brothers.
Melville sighed and shook his head as he watched the defenders respond with shock and anger to their losses. It was as if they couldn't comprehend what their enemy would do to them. As though the reality of death and horror couldn't be grasped until it was upon them.
Early in World War II, back on Old Earth, Nazi Germany launched a series of aerial bombing attacks that became known as the Battle of Britain. These attacks on civilian targets accomplished little except to harden the hearts and steel the resolve of an entire nation, and it was this resolute determination which Churchill embodied in his famous speeches.
Islamic extremists made the same mistake early in the twenty-first century, launching attacks on civilian targets in the United States. These attacks unleashed the vast might of that huge, powerful nation in ways that the terrorists never dreamed possible.
Now the Guldur bombardment of the Ai population centers was having the same result. But the most resolute, determined people in the world could still be defeated. They just made the price higher. So they fought, and they died. And died. And died. Each day, as dusk fell, the ragged, exhausted, shell-shocked defenders wondered how they could survive another night.
It was then that the Honorable Milton Carpetwright chose to call Melville to his office. Closed curtains. No coffee. One question.
"Piss on golf?" a bemused Melville repeated.
"Yes. That's what he said. My marine detail seemed to think it was funny. Just what did he think he was doing, talking to me that way?"
Melville's brain spun, grasping for a way to communicate the concept. "Sir," he began, "you're from a mid-tech colony of Old Earth, so you may not understand the history behind the phrase. 'Piss on golf' is a term, a catchphrase, a political slogan. We studied this at the academy. The concept goes back to 1349 when King Edward III of England told the citizens of London that their 'skill of shooting' was being neglected, and he proclaimed that 'every one of the said city, strong in body, at leisure times on holidays, use in their recreation bow and arrows, or pellets or bolts, and learn and exercise the art of shooting . . . that they do not, after any manner apply themselves to the throwing of . . . handball, football, cambuck, or cockfighting, nor suchlike vain plays which have nor profit in them.' You see sir, the playing of such 'vain' pursuits is considered to be a sure sign of decadence in most worlds."
"Well," he blustered, "that's ancient history! None of the great leaders of any developed world would ever think that way!"
"Perhaps, sir. But many would consider Teddy Roosevelt to be one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, and he said, while he was President, that: 'We should establish shooting galleries in all the large public and military schools, should maintain national target ranges in different parts of the country, and should in every way encourage the formation of rifle clubs throughout all parts of the land . . . It is unfortunately true that the great body of our citizens shoot less and less as time goes on. To meet this [challenge] we should encourage rifle practice . . . by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving the peace of the world. Fit to hold our own against the strong nations of the earth, our voice for peace will carry to the ends of the earth. Unprepared and therefore unfit, we must sit dumb and helpless to defend ourselves, protect others, or preserve peace. The first step—in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come—is to teach our men to shoot.'"
The consul simply sat, with his mouth open, trying to digest this.
"Do you see, sir? In essence, what Teddy Roosevelt and King Edward III are saying is, 'Piss on golf.' " Melville continued, relentlessly, "most scholars believe that when the population starts playing games with no actual application to survival
skills, and when they displace swordsmanship and shooting sports, then that's a certain sign that they have become decayed and are deserving of contempt. That's why, when you asked Ranger Westminster what was his 'secret,' he said the secret was to 'piss on golf.' It might overstate the position for rhetorical purposes, but that honestly is the standard answer. If you spend most of your time and energy on such pursuits, then in the minds of many people, it is a waste of human talent."
"Well," said the little man with a self-deprecating smile and a wave of his hand, "in my case, I have so little talent when it comes to golf that I'm not really wasting all that much." For just a moment Melville found himself liking the diplomat, as he continued earnestly, "Do people really think that way? Do they think that we are decayed and worthy of contempt if we aren't into shooting or fencing?"
"Well sir, there is nothing wrong with any sport, but if you spend most of your leisure time and take inordinate pride in these trivial sports then, perhaps, yes. And if your culture considers these 'vain sports' to be a higher good, while suppressing or deprecating the skills that contribute to a society's survival, then yes, across the galaxy such a world is subject to a degree of contempt. You think the Stolsh, or Sylvan, or any other major society respect you when you take them out on the golf course? The truth is just the opposite. Anyway, sir, let us hope the Stolsh have been living by that standard, because very soon now, our survival will depend upon the shooting skills of the average Stolsh militia member."
So the morning flung her cloak
Through the hanging pall of smoke—
Trimmed with red, it was, and dripping with
a deep and angry stain!
And the day came walking then
Through a lane of murdered men,
And the light fell down before her like
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