Raw, demonic power seemed to pour from the black-robed man, and more and more voices from the crowd began to join in. Feet began to stomp on the paving stones of the plaza, a thrumming, echoing sound. Shoulders began to sway.
Kirk found himself caught up in tidal currents of building emotion that threatened to swirl him out of control. Bit by bit, his will began to ebb, surrendering to that hammering, hypnotic voice.
He dug his nails into his palms, hoping to use pain as a defense against the web of madness being woven by the Messiah’s siren call. The urge to join, to become one with the chanting, howling crowd, mounted to irresistibility.
He fought for control of his body as it tried to stamp and jerk in cadence with the rest of the puppets, whose movements were orchestrated by the wildly waving arms of the black-robed magician. In spite of the chill of the evening, sweat dripped from Kirk’s contorted face. His healer’s wand slipped unnoticed from writhing fingers and fell to the ground.
“Jim!” a voice called, seemingly from a great distance. A hand gripped his forearm in a vise-like grasp. He tried to shake it off, but it only clamped down harder. Kirk grunted in pain, pain which broke through the oratory-induced trance.
“Jim! Snap out of it. Spock’s miracle—that was the Enterprise! It had to be.”
Kirk gave a dazed shake of his head, trying to cast off the grip of the emotional spell projected by the chanting figure on the roof of the wagon.
“Somehow he’s forced Sulu to change orbit; she can’t be more than a hundred and fifty kilometers up,” McCoy hissed into his ear. “Get the wand; you’ve got to stop that madman before it’s too late. Another few minutes of this, and he’ll have everyone under his control.”
Sudden anger blossomed in Kirk, clearing his head. His ship, a pawn in the Messiah’s mad game! Aware that he had dropped the wand, Kirk bent and snatched it up. With shaking hands, he pointed it toward the capering figure on the van and pressed the firing stud.
“Death! Death to un—”
In mid-word, the Messiah slapped his hands to his chest, staggered a step, then pitched over the edge of the van like a giant, broken-winged crow.
A shocked gasp rose from the crowd. Hillmen dropped their torches and leaped to his rescue. Their reaching arms caught him, lowering the Messiah gently to the ground.
With the snapping of the hypnotic spell that had held them in thrall, voices of protest began to rise here and there as the personal implications of the Messiah’s revolutionary pronouncement began to sink in. Somewhat belatedly, Kaseme’s men remembered why they were there and broke out in a chorus of hooting jeers. The Messiah’s followers began to shout back.
Shoving began, and in moments the square was filled with cursing, struggling knots of Kyrosians, some trying to escape, others plunging into the melee.
“Come on, Bones,” Kirk muttered. The two officers began to shove their way into the seething mass, heading for the black van. Units of the provost guard came trotting out of several side streets in disciplined formations. The squads broke up, and the guards, truncheons swinging, charged into the mob.
Hillmen milled in the center of the square, clustering defensively around their fallen leader.
“Make way,” Kirk shouted authoritatively. “Make way so we may help the Messiah!”
The two burst upon the ring of hillmen and met only snarls of distrust. Dirks and swords, hidden under robes until then, gleamed wickedly in the torchlight.
“Put down those weapons,” Kirk snapped. “We’re here to help him, not to harm him.”
The clansmen glanced at each other in a moment of indecision. Finally, at a guttural command from a hillman who knelt by the Messiah’s head, the blades were lowered. Kirk moved forward, knelt by the Messiah, and placed his ear against the robe-covered chest.
In a voice easily heard by those who clustered around, McCoy asked, “Is he dead?”
Kirk glanced up and shook his head. “Not yet, but he will be soon unless we get him to a place of healing.” He rose to his feet.
“Your Messiah is dying. We cannot help him here. He must be taken to our clinic at once.”
The other stared at him, and also rose to his feet.
“No,” he said obdurately, “we will take him to the hills. The gods will not let him die.”
“Who are you to know their will?” Kirk snapped. “His breath is failing. In minutes he’ll be dead.”
He scanned the hooded figures who pressed close around until he spotted a couple of quick head nods that identified Enterprise crewmen in bill disguise. He beckoned to them.
“You and you. Pick up your master. Gently, now.”
Kirk led them to the rear of the van, unlatched the doors, and swung them open.
“Inside,” he said, his voice commanding. “There’s no time to lose.”
As the Messiah was laid gently on the floor of the wagon, a little whimpering sound came from its dark interior. Kirk peered into the darkness and could vaguely make out a hooded figure curled on a blanket in a fetal position.
“Bones, it’s Chag Gara,” he whispered to the doctor. “We’ve got them both. Let’s get them out of here fast.”
The two officers jumped out of the wagon, and Kirk slammed the doors shut. He and McCoy went quickly around the side of the black van and clambered into the front seat.
“Hillmen!” Kirk shouted. “Open a way through the crowd. Hurry!”
There was a quick stir as disguised crew members formed a wedge in front of the van. They pushed forward and through the screaming, rioting crowd.
Kirk grabbed the reins and flapped them to get the neelots into motion. As the van lumbered forward, torch-bearing hillmen trotted along its flanks, knives and swords exposed again, ready to defend their leader. From his high vantage point, Kirk could see that his plan was working well.
Some of Kaseme’s men were joyfully smashing rock-like fists into the faces of some of the hillmen scattered through the crowd. Others of the half-drunken irregulars fought fiercely with clubs and swords, while still more seized opportunity and paused occasionally to lift the purses of unconscious townspeople.
The provost guards added to the confusion as they milled through the crowd, clubbing to the ground any masked figure they came upon.
“Looks like we made it, Bones,” Kirk muttered, as the van emerged from the seething ocean of chaos in the plaza into the relative quiet of the narrow lane that led to the clinic’s compound. It lay to the left, in the middle of the lane, and as they approached it, the doors of the courtyard gate began to swing open.
“Chalk one up for our side,” Kirk said. “In a couple of hours, Spock will be back to normal, and the Enterprise will be warping out of here.”
The advance guard of the disguised Enterprise men turned as it reached the now open gate. As Kirk pulled back on the reins to slow down the neelots, there was a creaking noise behind them and McCoy twisted in his seat, glancing back.
“Jim!” he shouted. “Watch out! It’s—”
His voice ended in a gasp as a black-robed arm shot out and, wielding a club, clipped McCoy on the temple. He slumped forward, unconscious.
Kirk spun around, fumbling to get his wand in position to fire a dart into the black-robed figure who had just emerged from the trapdoor in the roof of the van. The Messiah’s club swung toward Kirk, but he dodged like a cat, arcing his arm around, aiming at his snarling antagonist.
He fired… and missed. A sudden, slashing blow of the figure’s club smashed into his right shoulder with brutal force. The wand dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.
Surrounded by a haze of blinding red pain, Kirk fumbled with his left hand on the floor of the driver’s box to recover the wand. Before he could locate it, powerful arms gripped him tightly and lifted him high.
He felt himself hurled to the cobbled street below.
He lay half stunned for a moment, struggling to regain his breath and balance. He rolled weakly onto all fours as a stentorian voice rumbl
ed above him.
“Demons!” the voice shouted. “Demons in disguise who seek my life: Kill them!”
His useless arm dangling at his side, Kirk staggered to his feet and looked wildly up at the shouting figure giving orders to his hooded followers in the street.
“The drug…” Kirk muttered half to himself as he stumbled toward the van, “… he threw it off. Bones…”
As screaming hillmen, their blades making a deadly fence, crowded close to the van to defend their Messiah, Kirk lurched toward it, a haze of pain filming his vision.
He slipped through the ranks of the fighting hillmen and, reaching up with his good arm, grabbed the unconscious doctor by one foot. As he tried to drag the surgeon to safety, the van gave a sudden lurch forward. The frightened neelots screamed and reared, sparks and chips of stone flying from their hammering hooves.
Kirk was tossed backward. His head slammed against the van, and blinding explosions of pain ripped through his skull. He collapsed onto his knees.
He struggled to rise, but fell sprawling onto his back. Paralyzed by pain, he blinked up helplessly at the hooded hillmen who closed in like vultures.
Then the tide of red crested, leaving blackness in its wake.
CHAPTER NINE
When Kirk finally came to, he found himself being half-carried, half-dragged somewhere. As he struggled feebly to escape, a familiar Scot’s burr murmured over him.
“Easy does it, Captain, we’ll hae you safe in a minute.”
“McCoy,” Kirk mumbled, “get McCoy, Scotty…”
“He’s safe, sir,” Scott replied. “Some of the boys grabbed him just after you fell. We came charging out when Spock popped up like a jack-in-the-box and put you and Dr. McCoy out of commission.”
Kirk felt himself lowered gently to the ground on his back. He sat up with difficulty, and his head swam. He realized he was well inside the courtyard. Several Enterprise wounded lay near.
Scott shouted orders to a handful of men and they rushed back to the fighting going on at the gate. As the rear-guard action went on, and the gate slowly closed, Kirk saw the van, a black-robed figure in the driver’s seat, slowly work its way out of the mass of fighting men and disappear down the street. The night echoed with the cries of enraged, vengeful clansmen.
Kirk rose shakily to his feet, glanced down at the unconscious body of McCoy, and then staggered over to help close the gate. He picked up a heavy bludgeon someone had dropped and lurched into the fray.
As a hill sword slashed toward him, he swung an awkward, but powerful, left-handed blow. There was a scream, and the audible crunch of shattering bones. The weapon clanged to the stones.
Outnumbered though they were, the Enterprise crew slowly pushed the attackers out through the gateway. The wind whipped harder, flinging dust and bits of gravel along the street, stinging the faces and blinding the eyes of the unhooded combatants. Thunder rumbled and slammed through the aurora-painted sky with greater and greater frequency. Jagged, actinic flashes of lightning illuminated the desperate struggle, flash-freezing the shouting mass of weirdly dressed, sword-wielding fighters into stroboscopic scenes out of Dante’s Inferno.
As the disciplined Enterprise forces pushed the last of the attackers into the narrow street, one of the double gates was forced shut. The other was closed to the point where only a narrow gap remained. One by one, the defenders slipped into the safety of the courtyard while those still in the street closed their ranks into an ever-tightening defensive semicircle.
Kirk ducked as a thrown dirk flashed toward his head, to bury its needle-like blade in the hard wood of the gate. Desperately calling on failing strength, he smashed right and left with his heavy club in such a berserk rage that the foremost of his attackers flinched back.
“Inside!” he shouted, and as the last of the defending party backed through the three-foot gap into the courtyard, he hurled his club into the face of one attacker. Another, wearing a tiger-striped hood, dove forward in a low tackle to bring him to the ground. Kirk reached back over his shoulder, grabbed the dirk stuck in the gate, tore it loose, and knocked the clansman senseless with the hilt.
As the hillman slumped at Kirk’s feet, he skipped backward to safety and stood, shoulders slumped and gasping for breath, as the second gate was forced shut and a stout cross-bar slammed home.
Still half-dazed, Kirk glanced around the courtyard. Many Enterprise wounded lay groaning on the ground and others were slumped against the courtyard wall.
“Get those people inside,” Kirk ordered. “Those gates won’t hold if they decide to ram. Where’s Commander Scott?”
“Here, Captain,” Scott called, stepping up to Kirk’s side.
“How long until the next beam-up?”
“No idea, sir. My lads and I hae lost all track of time.”
At that moment McCoy tottered over, a bloody rag tied around his head. “Let me check you over, Jim,” he said. “You look as if a herd of elephants ran over you.”
“I’m all right, Bones,” the captain replied, massaging his bruised arm gingerly. “At least my right arm is back in order. Take care of the others. Some look pretty bad.”
He winced as Lieutenant Dawson was carried past, the hilt of a highly decorated hill knife protruding from between his ribs.
“I’ll do what I can,” McCoy said. “But without a medikit, I don’t know…”
Slowly the courtyard was cleared of the injured. The last to be helped through the narrow door at the rear of the compound was a slight, scantily dressed female who had both hands pressing a blood-soaked cloth to her middle.
“Sara…” Kirk said, “what were you doing in that mess?”
Her wan face wrinkled in pain as she answered. “I came back here to alert Scotty as soon as the riot began. I tried… to help out at the gate… I should have practiced swordsmanship longer with Chekov.” In a tone of grim satisfaction, she added, “At least… I got three of them before… they got me.”
Her eyelids fluttered and she passed out. Kirk caught her, waved over two officers with a makeshift stretcher, and ordered them into the building. A sudden, resounding boom from the gate spun Kirk around. The doors jounced again as the hillmen rammed them with long heavy poles.
Kirk ran his gaze along the top of the six-meter-high wall, but saw no sign of scaling ladders… yet.
As the last of the landing party passed him, he entered a short, narrow corridor and closed the courtyard entrance behind him. Gloomily, he surveyed the flimsy panels and the single, small latch which held the door shut. Another boom sounded outside.
He turned decisively, walked down the corridor, and pushed his way into the crowded room that had been his office. His engineering officer stood beside the water clock watching it with an anxious expression.
“… much longer?” McCoy was asking Scott.
“I canna tell from this contraption, Doctor. You’d better get the worst of the wounded into the terminal room so they can be beamed up when they do energize.”
“Well, it better be soon or some will…” He cut off as Kirk approached.
“Status report,” Kirk ordered to McCoy.
“Only a few are really serious—Sara, Dawson, two or three others. I’m afraid to remove that dirk Dawson has in him without a represser field; he’d hemorrhage to death in a few minutes. Sara’s in shock from loss of blood and I don’t have any plasma.” He shook his head admiringly. “You know, Jim, she may have gotten us into this mess, but when you were in trouble and went down out there, she charged in like a wildcat. Three of those uglies were ready to make mincemeat out of you, but Sara took care of them all. The last one got under her guard, though, and ripped her open.”
Kirk clenched his fists as self-recrimination washed through him, and he mentally reviewed the shambles that had been made of a perfect plan.
“If I’d given Spock another shot… just to make sure,” he murmured. “If we could only use a communicator… it’s… ifs.”
McCoy mad
e a soft sound. “Take it easy, Jim. We tried…”
A sudden shout went up from those standing near the transporter terminal. “First group is up!”
“Bones, get Sara and the others in there quick,” Kirk snapped. “You, too. Get up to the ship and get to work.”
As McCoy hurried off, Kirk turned to Scott. “Scotty, get some men, take that desk, and barricade the outer door. It might buy us some time.”
Scott and a few men maneuvered the desk through the crowd of weary defenders and, when they moved aside to let it pass, Kirk caught sight of a small, plump figure huddled in one corner slurping from a wine bottle. Two empty jugs lay beside him.
“Kaseme! Get in there with the rest,” Kirk said, pointing to the terminal room.
“What does it matter where I die?” the little man murmured in a slurred voice. “A sword will hurt as much in there as it will here.”
A sudden shouting came from the corridor, and Scott and his men burst back into the room. “They’ve broken through the gates! They’ll be here in seconds!”
Scott hurried to Kirk. “We didn’t have time to brace the desk right. They’ll be through that door in no time at all.”
Barely had Scott spoken when a crash resounded in the corridor, and the passage was filled with the wild ululation of hill war cries.
“Everybody in there!” Kirk shouted above the bellowing curses of the clansmen. The Enterprise personnel moved quickly into the terminal. Kirk slammed the door leading into the hall, turned, pulled Kaseme to his feet and shoved him into the other room. Kaseme slumped in a corner and drained the rest of his flask.
Kirk pulled the terminal room’s door shut seconds before the clansmen burst into the outer room. They began to hammer at the last door between them and their prey.
The door began to splinter as a deep hum filled the room. The top quarter of the door flew inward, narrowly missing Kirk’s face, and the crackling, glittering carrier wave of the transporter beam surrounded the party.
“At last,” Kirk muttered. The room faded, wavered, then reappeared.
“That damn radiation front is still screwing up the planet’s magnetic field,” Scott growled.
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