by Джеффри Лорд
He dipped into the bag again, pulled out a white armband, and tied it about his left arm. With everybody on both sides wearing green, some sort of identification was needed to distinguish attackers from defenders. Blade hoped that all his men would remember this precaution. If they didn't, on their own heads be it. He wasn't going to stop to ask questions.
Then he pulled out a whistle, put it to his lips, and blew hard. The mist and the smoke and his own taut nerves did weird things to the whistle blast. It seemed to go on and on, echoing from the walls of all seven towers like some terrible death-shriek. But from behind Blade and on either side of him came the sound of running feet. Dim figures pounded past in the smoke, heading for the tower and the war party. The warriors of Melnon were accustomed to fighting duels, not pitched battles. So the warriors of the Serpent would have no training to help them stand off a massed attack. Nor did the warriors of the Leopard have much training to help them deliver one. Blade hoped surprise and speed and the smokescreen would let them get away with it, however. He drew his own two swords and broke into a run.
Blade wore light sandals, like the rest of his men, and he skimmed lightly over the broken ground. But others ran even faster. Before Blade had covered half the distance to the base of the tower, war-cries and death-cries and the clang of weapons sounded from ahead.
Blade charged through a thick patch of smoke and came out in the middle of the fight. A small wiry figure darted at him, with his long sword reaching out. There was no flash of white on the man's arm. Blade parried by reflex and struck by calculation. His short sword drove into the man so hard that it penetrated through the armor and into the flesh. Blood spurted down the glossy green, and the man howled in agony and reeled back.
He reeled into the path of one of Blade's men, forcing him to halt for a moment. A long sword swished out of the smoke and took the exile's head clean off. But that in turn slowed the man with the long sword long enough for Blade to close under his guard and kick him in the groin. The man doubled up, and as he did so, Blade's long sword came down. A second head flew into the air, to bounce and roll to a stop not far from the first.
That was the first and last exchange of blows that Blade remembered at all clearly. From the moment the second head struck the ground, the battle dissolved and flowed around him in an endless confusion of rushing bodies, flashing swords, and screaming men. He remembered losing his short sword to a down-cut from an oversized warrior, closing with the man, and chopping him across the throat with a knife-hand karate blow. He remembered tripping over a body that suddenly rolled under his feet, and rolling in his turn to escape the down-slash of along sword. Then he sprang to his feet behind the attacker, closed, locked both hands around the man's head, and jerked back hard to snap his neck like a carrot.
He even remembered shouting, «Hold! Warriors of the Tower of the Serpent, hold! We come only to destroy Nris-Pol, a danger to us all! We are not your enemies!» But nobody in the war party believed him. He didn't really expect them to.
Eventually both the smoke and the fighting began to break up. Some of the survivors of the war party ran blindly off into the Waste Land, pursued by some of Blade's survivors. Others, less panic-stricken, ran to their lifters and began to rise into the air.
But Blade had planned for this also. Several of his men ran forward, swinging weighted lines. They whirled the lines about their heads, then sent them whipping upward. The weights looped around the lifter cords, tangling them. Before the men on the lifters could react, the men on the ground had fastened their cords to stout pegs. A few hefty blows with a mallet drove each peg into the ground. And then it was just a tug of war between the reel above and the peg below.
Usually it was the reel that lost. They were not designed to cope with the extra strain. One by one they burnt out, and let their lifters fall. Some of the men on the lifters survived the falls long enough for Blade's men to have to fight them. But Blade saw one warrior come straight down from forty feet up. He writhed about like a half-severed worm, his back obviously broken. Blade went over to him and put him out of his misery with the short sword.
As Blade stepped back from the stiffening body, a pike sailed down from above, slicing into the earth with a thump six feet away. He glared upward for a moment, then he noticed that a slip of white paper was fastened to the butt of the pike. He picked it up and read:
Balcony secured. Main attack force getting into position. Join us as soon as possible. Bryg-Noz.
The signature was unmistakable. Blade turned to his men and shouted, «We've got the balcony. They'll be sending down lifters for us in a moment. Everybody follow me.»
The war party was no threat any more. Half its members were dead or maimed, the other half either fleeing or fled, and demoralized by the sudden nightmare attack out of the greenness. By the time they recovered their nerve, if they ever did, the main battle in the tower would have been decided one way or the other.
Blade waited as the lifters came down one by one, and his unwounded men scrambled into them and rose up toward the balcony. The smoke was almost gone now, and he could see that the railing far above was lined with a motley array of figures. A good many of them were carrying pikes.
When the last of his men had gone, Blade climbed into a lifter of his own. The cord tightened, and the lifter lurched and swayed sickeningly up into the air. Blade held on and swallowed. The battle had not affected him at all-he had seen much worse many times. But the pendulum motion of a rapidly-rising lifter was something he was never going to get used to, no matter how long he stayed in Melnon.
Chapter NINETEEN
Bryg-Noz met Blade as the Englishman climbed out of his lifter on to the balcony. The Melnonian's right arm was wrapped in a crude bandage caked with rust-colored dried blood, but he seemed steady enough on his feet. Certainly his voice was clear enough as he summed up the situation. Practically the whole attacking force was up, and the lifters and reels were being temporarily disabled.
«Why?» asked Blade.
«We don't want any of Nris-Pol's men escaping to other towers. And we don't want any of the other towers sending men over to help Nris-Pol. We want to fight this out among ourselves.»
Blade nodded. «What about the pikes and the Low People?»
«Over a thousand of them have already been armed. We are holding them back for the moment.»
«Why the devil are you doing that?» snapped Blade. «We've got to move fast. There isn't any time for fussing about details, or trying to keep the Low People under control.» He clapped his hands together suddenly as a thought struck him, so loudly that Bryg-Noz jumped in surprise.
«What is it, Blade-Liza?»
«Are the shafts still working?»
«Yes.»
«Good. That means Nris-Pol still doesn't realize how big an attack this is. Otherwise he'd shut off the shafts and let us try fighting our way up the stairs one level at a time. That could take weeks. But with the shafts still running…» Blade turned away, a frown on his face as his mind ran over the possibilities and the risks. Then he turned back to Bryg-Noz. «Can you give me fifty of your best fighters?»
«Fifty? What for?»
«I want to go up the queen's shaft to the queen's chambers and try to take and hold them.»
Bryg-Noz's jaw dropped, but he managed to close it as Blade raced on. «Mir-Kasa is something that Nris-Pol is going to have to defend. Even if he doesn't want to, the warriors will probably do it without his orders, or even against them. Unless, of course, he is planning to kill her…» He saw Bryg-Noz shudder at the thought.
«Either way, my attack should draw a few hundred of Nris-Pol's fighters up to a higher level. There may not be enough left to even hold the stairs, particularly if you let the Low People loose.»
«Let the Low People loose?» echoed Bryg-Noz. «They will-«
«I know perfectly well what they'll do.» Both time and his temper were getting shorter. He raised a hand to mop the sweat off his forehead. «But you've al
ready done most of the damage, by making the attack in the first place. Are you going to hold back from one more step, one that might give you victory, and let all you've done so far be wasted? Are you going to let Kun-Rala's death be a waste?»
That shaft struck home. Bryg-Noz winced, and for a moment Blade could see the man's lower lip trembling. Bryg-Noz's voice was half-choked as he nodded and said almost in a whisper, «And perhaps you will save Mir-Kasa herself, too.» There must have been real affection between them once, Blade realized.
Blade did not have much time to think about Bryg-Noz's feelings. Word of what he wanted had spread around the balcony almost instantly. Men swarmed around Blade, clamoring to be chosen to join him. He could not help being moved by this sign of his reputation, particularly when he was leading them on what might well turn out to be a suicide mission.
With the fifty men behind him, Blade dashed toward the queen's shaft. He knew the shaft cars were large enough to hold at least twenty-five men and still give them room to breathe and even use their weapons. He sent the other half of his party around to the shaft of the warriors, with orders to get off at the level of the queen's chambers. He didn't like dividing his forces this way, but it was either that or try walking up three thousand feet of stairs. And Blade wanted his men to arrive in shape to fight.
The shaft door opened as Blade led the head of his column toward it. He drew both swords, but stopped dead as the First Warrior himself led a column of his own out of the car, into the corridor. Then it was the First Warrior's turn to stop, stare, and shout to the men still in the car.
Blade tossed his short sword into the air, caught it by the tip, and threw it. It drove through the armor of a man just stepping out of the car door. He clutched at the sword suddenly standing out from his stomach, gave a choked, gurgling cry, and collapsed to the floor. His body blocked the track of the door, jamming it open as the men inside struggled to close it. One of them bent to drag the body tree. Blade charged, long sword raised high. It came down, and the bending man's head lolled hideously. Now there were two bodies jamming the door open, and the men inside the car gave up the effort to close the door. They drew their swords and poured out around Blade, yelling incoherently as much in fear as in anger. Their wide staring eyes and gaping mouths made an ugly sight.
But they were too furious or too frightened to be very good swordsmen. None of their wild slashes came anywhere near Blade. He backed away, and as he did so, his own men charged forward and swirled around the defenders. The defenders were outnumbered almost two to one, apart from being frightened half out of their wits. Six of them went down in as many seconds.
The First Warrior made no effort to draw his sword or defend himself otherwise. So none of Blade's men considered him dangerous, or even worth attacking. He stayed alive a little bit longer than the rest of his men, and even began to edge away down the corridor, with his eyes roaming about in a frantic search for escape. Then a great yelling and screaming split the air. Hard behind it came the sound of running feet, as a swarm of Low People came charging down the corridor, brandishing pikes. The First Warrior had just time to throw up his hands and scream- «Nnnoooooooo!»-before the Low People were on him. They knew his love for administering Low People very well. By the time they had finished shoving their pikes into his body, the First Warrior was a mangled mess, lying in the middle of a spreading pool of blood.
Blade took in the sight briefly, considering what it meant. If the people above had sent the First Warrior himself down to lead the counterattack-well, their notions of what was going on below must be even more confused than Blade had thought. And he was going to strike before they had time to sort things out.
He led his men into the shaft car and sent it hurtling upward without even giving them time to brace themselves. Several were thrown off balance, went sprawling, and had to struggle to their feet.
As they neared the level of the queen's chambers, Blade called out, «When the door opens-charge! Hit them hard, before the bastards wake up to what's happening. We want to put them all to sleep before they do!» Grim laughter filled the car, and with it the rasp of swords being drawn. Then Blade felt the car slowing. The car slowed further, stopped and the door hissed open.
Blade's twenty-five men charged out of the car with a fury that would have made ten times their number give ground.
They screamed, they shouted, they hurled curses and the filthiest epithets they could think of, and they brandished their swords in glittering arcs. There were barely thirty men in the corridor facing them at that moment. Blade's charge smashed into those men like a battering ram.
Most of the thirty went down on to the floor in the first few moments. Not all of these were dead, or even wounded. The sheer physical impact of Blade's charging men swept a good number of the enemy off their feet. But if they were alive and unwounded when they went down, they seldom got to their feet that way. Blade and his men were all over them, slashing and stabbing. They kicked and stamped as well, and armor that could turn a sword could not always keep ribs from collapsing under the crushing force of a boot. The floor became littered with an increasing number of dead bodies, and the space between the bodies slowly became red and slippery with blood. Almost before Blade had time to realize it, the first defenders were down, dead, or running for their lives.
But these were far from the only warriors Nris-Pol had on the level, as Blade discovered a moment later. In fact, it seemed that Nris-Pol was keeping his main reserves around the queen's chambers. The other shaft door hissed open, Blade's other twenty-five men poured out-and then the enemy's counterattack came thundering down the corridor nearly a hundred strong.
It caught Blade's second group before it could deploy. Now it was the turn of Blade's men to be swept away or slaughtered before they could form battle lines. Screams, shouts, and the clash of weapons rose in a deafening pandemonium. A few of the twenty-five managed to run and join Blade's own group, but most died where they stood. In dying, though, they gave Blade the chance to reform his own men into a solid line. Not much time, but enough so that when Nris-Pol's attack came boiling down the corridor again, Blade could meet them. He met them with his swords dancing, and bellowing at the top of his lungs, «For a free tower! Down with Nris-Pol!» Then the two forces collided, pandemonium rose again, and Blade could no longer keep track of what was happening around him.
Blade suddenly found himself having to be in six places at once, leading counterattacks, shoring up his sagging line, worrying about what might happen if his men were taken in the rear. Occasionally he had the satisfaction of feeling his sword sinking deeply into an opponent, and seeing a gap in the other formation instead of his own. But the odds against his men were long to start with, and they got longer in spite of all that Blade could do. Soon there were only twenty-two of his men left, then eighteen, then sixteen. The enemy was still coming onward with sixty or more. Bit by bit, Blade led his dwindling numbers backward, away from the queen's chambers. He knew that he was leaving Mir-Kasa vulnerable, that his own death was perhaps only a few minutes away. But he was determined to keep himself and as many of his men as he could alive and fighting for as long as they could breathe and move and lift their swords.
The battle rose to a new peak, and then a totally new set of noises reached Blade's ear. The sound of running feet and sword-strokes was coming now from the rear of the attackers. Mixed with those were shouts of «Treason! Treason!» and then other shouts of «Mir-Kasa!»
Somebody was hitting Nris-Pol's men hard from the rear, and Blade would have given an arm-or at least a few fingers-to have known who it was. But he could see with his own eyes that Nris-Pol's warriors stopped their advance, looked nervously over their shoulders, and began to turn. The warriors directly opposite Blade's shrunken band began to step back and lower their swords. Blade made a quick decision, then stepped two paces out in front of his men. Again he raised his swords-now battered and blood-caked-and raised his voice to a roar.
«At them!
» And he charged at the enemy's lines without bothering to look back to see whether his men would follow. He had been through enough with them this day to be sure that they would.
They did. The sixteen warriors, reeking of sweat and dripping blood, struck the enemy only seconds behind Blade. They struck before the warriors in the enemy's first rank could get ready to defend themselves. So that first rank and the two ranks behind it dissolved in confusion under the charge. Some of its warriors fought, some stepped aside, a few simply turned and ran.
Or at least they tried to run. Attacked from before and behind, Nris-Pol's men were now being packed tighter and tighter together. The mass of them filled the corridor from side to side, offering no room for a man to run and little room for a man to use his weapons. Blade and his men were hacking their way slowly into that mass, meeting less and less resistance each minute as panic began spreading through the enemy's ranks. Down the corridor Blade could see the line of swords approaching slowly, as the men still shouting «Mir-Kasa» did the same.
Eventually the two forces met. The greater part of Nris-Pol's men had died where they stood, but some had surrendered, throwing their swords on the floor and kneeling in submission. They seemed stunned and bewildered by what had happened, except for one or two who glared at Blade defiantly as he went around tying their hands behind their backs. One of them muttered, «Wait until our leader returns and steps forth among you. Then you bastards won't be walking so proudly!»
Blade did not have time to speculate on what this muttering might mean. One of the warriors from the other attacking force ran up to him and clutched at his arm. «Blade-Liza! Blade-Liza! Kir-Noz would speak with you. Come quickly, for he is dying!»
Blade thrust both swords back in their scabbards and hurried after the man. They found Kir-Noz a little way down the corridor, propped up against the wall of a small alcove.
Blood trickled from his mouth, in startling contrast to the whiteness of his skin. One glance was enough to tell Blade that the messenger was right. Kir-Noz had only a few minutes to live.