“I’ll go right away,” said Sweet Thing, and not wasting any time about it, she turned and barreled out of the room. Well, he thought, that was that. But it was not much. The situation called for more active measures than simply sending More Jam to keep an eye on Mula-ay.
It was still only midmorning, but there was no hope of getting the villagers up to and under the stockade barring the entrance to the valley before night fell. And once night had fallen, it was an odds-on chance that Mula-ay would be able to evade More Jam long enough to kill Bone Breaker.
Something must be done—and it must be done before sundown. Bill thought about the plan of attack on which he had sold the villagers, running over it in his mind to see if there was not some way by which it might be speeded up so that they could take the valley this same day, while daylight lasted. But it was just not possible.
Suddenly he jumped to his feet with an almost Dilbian-like snort of triumph. It was true the mantelet and sapping operation… which was the technical, military term for the tactic he had explained to the villagers—would not breach the Outlaw Valley’s defenses before nightfall. But he had forgotten entirely that the Middle Ages had had other, even simpler ways of taking castles by storm. He had forgotten, in fact, the most obvious one of them all.
He turned and hurried out of the Residency, and back up the road to the blacksmith shop, which was now a-swarm with male Dilbians from the village and the farms around, most of them with weapons of some sort—ranging from actual swords down to axes, and heavy-handled native scythes. The Bluffer was looking on interestedly as Flat Fingers supervised the construction of the mantelet, or shield, which Bill had described. Bill slowed his headlong pace and sauntered up to the group. As usual, it was a few seconds before the Dilbians looked down and noticed him standing there.
“Oh, there you are, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the blacksmith. What do you think—shouldn’t the skids be longer, there, under the back of the shield?”
Bill examined the structure. It looked to his human eye to be nearly as tall, wide, and heavy as the actual stockade fence of the outlaws themselves. Only the brute muscles of the Dilbians could entertain the thought of using such a thing, let alone transporting it through the several miles of woods that separated the village from the valley entrance. It was evidently designed to be moved on three pointed logs which served as its base and would operate as skids or runners on which the weight of the shield would bear, as it would push toward the wall. The shield was set just behind the points of these logs, sloping backward, and was heavily braced, towering to perhaps fifteen feet above the logs at its upper edge. Bill smiled agreeably at the sight of it, and nodded his head vigorously.
“That’s just fine, Flat Fingers,” he said. “The men pushing it certainly ought to be safe behind that, as they go up to the wall. Yes, it’ll be good protection, that shield. There’s nothing like being safe, when you attack a bunch like those outlaws.”
“Well, it’ll get us in close all right,” said the blacksmith, though he frowned a little at Bill’s second repetition on the word “safe.” “Then once we’re close, we’ll dig under and tear into them.”
That’s the spirit!” said Bill enthusiastically. “Guard yourself as much as possible until you get inside, and then tear into them. Don’t be disappointed if it takes a little while to dig under the wall. Better to be safe than sorry, I always say.”
“Oh, we won’t be disappointed, Pick-and-Shovel,” rumbled Flat Fingers grimly. “We’ve been waiting to tangle with those outlaws too long to cool down, just because we have to do a little digging to get at them.”
“Good, good!” said Bill strongly. “I know you are. But it doesn’t do any harm to play safe, does it?”
“What do you mean ‘play safe’?” exploded the village blacksmith. “What’s all this about, ‘playing safe’ you keep talking about. We’re going in there to tangle with those outlaws, the sooner the better!”
“Of course you are!” replied Bill hastily. He saw the Bluffer’s face approach and peer interestedly down at him over the left shoulder of the blacksmith. Bill went on. “There’s just no point in getting any more men hurt than have to be. That’s why I suggested this way of getting into the valley. After all, it’s the safest way, even if it does take a longer time than some other ways.”
“What other ways?” roared Flat Fingers. “You mean to say there’s other ways—quicker ways? Ways you didn’t tell us about because you thought we were worried about keeping safe?”
“There’s lots of other ways, of course,” said Bill. “But after all, as I understand it, man for man those outlaws are a lot tougher than you are—”
“Who says so?” roared one of the Dilbians who had been working on the shield. He was holding an ax which he flourished in Bill’s direction in a way that made Bill’s throat go dry. Suddenly there was bedlam, all of the village males shouting at Bill. Flat Fingers bellowed them all back into silence, then turned ominously back to face Bill.
“Now, you listen to me, Pick-and-Shovel!” said Flat Fingers. “We’re all Muddy Nosers, here—the sort of men here who’d tear that wall down with our bare hands, if we thought it could be done that way! Are you trying to start trouble—or something?”
“Why, no—of course not!” said Bill hastily. “Why, I’ll be glad to tell you of the quicker ways to get in through the gates in that stockade. As I say, there’s lot of them—”
“What’s the quickest?” demanded Flat Fingers.
“The quickest?” echoed Bill. “Well, the quickest would be to use a tree trunk.”
The assemblage of Dilbians stared at him blankly. It was hard for Bill to believe that their minds did not spring immediately from his suggestion of using a tree trunk to the idea of using it as a battering ram against the gates. The concept was so obvious to him that it was hard to see how it could not be obvious to these Dilbians.
“You take a log,” explained Bill. “You trim off all the branches, except for a few that you leave along its length for handholds. Then you get as many men to pick up the log all at the same time as you can. Then, holding the log, they run at the gates in the stockade end-on.”
To his surprise, the Dilbians continued to stare at Bill, after he had stopped speaking, with blank or puzzled looks.
“And what’ll that do, Pick-and-Shovel?” asked Flat Fingers finally.
“Stop and think,” answered Bill, “and you can imagine it for yourself. Suppose we had a bunch of men pick up one of those logs over there”—he pointed to the pile of loose logs on which he climbed the day before to hang the block and pulley from the rafter—“and ran that log at you, end-on, as hard as they could. What do you think the end of that log would do to you—or to anything else that it hit?”
For a long moment, it seemed that Flat Fingers still did not understand. Then, very slowly, his expression began to change. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped, his nostrils spread—and without warning he let out a war whoop that seemed to split Bill’s eardrums—and leave him slightly deaf for several seconds.
At that, it was probably just as well that he did not have the full sense of his hearing in the moments that followed. Because, in a second Flat Fingers was explaining to the rest of the villagers, and inside of two minutes the area was bedlam again. Villagers whooped, hollered, roared with laughter, and pounded each other on the back as they described the principle behind the use of a tree trunk as a battering ram.
“Let’s go!” trumpeted Flat Fingers, making himself heard over the rest of the din. “We don’t need to take a log to them. We can chop one down when we get there!”
Take off, they did. Bill, staring after them in a sort of deafened wonder, was in danger of being left behind as they streamed off from the village into the woods at a pace that his shorter human legs could not match. But, abruptly, he felt himself snatched up and sailed through the air to land with a thud in the saddle on the Hill Bluffer’s back.
“Hang on, Pick-and-Shovel!” t
he postman shouted, infected himself by the general excitement. “We’ll be up with the ones in the lead in two minutes.”
Chapter 23
Having said this, the Bluffer proceeded to increase Bill’s steadily growing respect for him by proving himself almost as good as his word. In his ride on the Bluffer before, Bill had somehow come to assume that the pace at which they traveled was pretty close to the practical limit for the Dilbian beneath him, considering the burden he was bearing on his back. In short, Bill had not experienced the Hill Bluffer’s running before. But now the postman set out to stretch his legs—and the result from Bill’s point of view was awesome. The landscape whizzed by at something between twenty-five and thirty-five miles an hour. And the jolting threatened to shake Bill out of the saddle within the first fifty yards.
Luckily for him, however, once the Bluffer had caught up with the leaders of the group, he dropped back to a rapid walking pace, which was a good deal easier on his rider.
Bill unlocked his legs and arms from the straps and sat up. He looked back over his shoulder. The whole village seemed to be streaming after them. The citizens of Muddy Nose were on the march at last against the outlaws.
In the front strode the biggest and best males of the community, literally tramping out a path through the brush, and chopping down small trees that impeded their way. They detoured only around the larger trunks. Behind them came the younger members of the community and the village women, flanked on both sides and followed by a rear guard of lesser and older Dilbian males. Then Flat Fingers began to sing, and the others took it up until the whole party was joining in.
The subject matter of the song—or chant—was nothing remarkable. It seemed to deal with an individual who had a perfect mania for throwing other individuals and things down his well. But it seemed to please its singers vastly.
* * *
Souse-Nose’s wife’s old uncle
He liked his grub real well.
One day he came to visit,
And said, “I’ll stay a spell.”
“Oh, no you won’t!” said Souse-Nose
And he threw him down the well!
—Threw him down the well!
Now wasn’t that a sight?
He threw him down the well so far
That he was out of sight!
Souse-Nose’s wife saw him do this
And she let out a yell.
“What do you mean by doing that?
I love my uncle well!”
“Then go with him!” said Souse-Nose
And he threw her down the well!
—Threw her down the well… etc.
After disposing of his wife’s uncle and his wife, Souse-Nose rapidly threw down the well, according to the song, a number of other relatives, some neighbors he didn’t like, a hammer that had dropped on his toe the week before, the family cooking pot (because it was empty)—and then proceeded to start throwing down the well various individuals among the marching villagers themselves, as the singers began to pick on each other.
It was all apparently hilariously funny to the Dilbians—but at the same time, Bill felt a slight shiver run down his back. The song was a humorous song, but it was also a grimly humorous one, and the tone in which it was sung was very nearly more grim than it was humorous. In fact, for all the comedy in the words, Bill realized that what he was listening to was the Dilbian equivalent of a war song. The villagers were working themselves up emotionally for combat with the outlaws. For the first time, Bill began to feel some misgivings about the forces he had set in motion. Leaning forward, he spoke into the Hill Bluffer’s right ear.
“Bluffer—” he said. “Bluffer, listen to me for a moment, will you. I’d like to ask you something—”
But he might as well have been speaking to some ten-foot-high boulder rumbling at the head of an avalanche. The Bluffer was roaring out the song about Souse-Nose with the rest, completely carried away by it.
Bill sat back in the saddle, abruptly prey to a new fear. If the Bluffer was beyond his control—how about Flat Fingers and the rest of the villagers? The rolling chant of the voices around him was hypnotic—even Bill himself felt his breath coming quicker and the blood pounding in his ears.
He was still fighting for self-control, when the Bluffer beneath him, with the other leaders of the village party, rounded the turn into the narrow ravine that led down to the entrance to the valley, and stopped.
Before them, the gates in the stockade were already shut and barred, and the heads of outlaws, as well as the upper rims of shields were showing over the points at the upper end of the upright logs which made up the stockade. There was nothing surprising in finding the valley prepared in this way. Singing and marching as they had been, the villagers undoubtedly had been heard a good half-mile or more off. Now, a few furry arms swung in the air above the stockade, and a few good-sized stones sailed toward the front rank of the villagers—but fell short. In reply, the villagers crowded into the narrow entrance of the valley and began to sing about outlaws being thrown down the well. The outlaws shouted back insults and challenges, but the solid chorus of the villagers overwhelmed them.
…Throw you down the well so far,
That you are out of sight…
—chanted the villagers.
Meanwhile, Flat Fingers had ceased singing and was rapidly issuing orders. A team of axmen had already headed off into the woods nearby, and the sound of chopping could occasionally be heard in the moments of relative silence between the singing of the villagers and the insults hurled by the outlaws. Shortly, there was the crash of falling timber—followed by a male-voiced cheer that drowned out even the singing.
Then the sound of chopping began again. Shortly, the team returned, carrying at least thirty feet of tree trunk two feet in diameter. Here and there along the trunk, they had left the stubs of branches for handholds. But most of those carrying the logs simply had one large hairy arm wrapped around it, and they grinned savagely at each other and at the outlaws.
The Bluffer squatted down and let Bill slip off his back. Bill started to approach Flat Fingers—but at this moment there was a sudden crashing sound from the forest behind them, as if a second tree was falling and everybody turned around. A moment later, a second party came trotting up, carrying a second trunk stripped down to little stubs of branches for handholds.
“No you don’t!” roared Flat Fingers, waving them back. “One at a time! Here, lay that other pole up against the side of the cut, and give us some room.”
The blacksmith’s huge finger indicated the vertical rock wall that formed one side of the narrow entrance to the valley. Reluctantly, the second batch of Dilbians leaned their log up against this and fell back.
“All right, the rest of you!” shouted the Bluffer to the rest of them standing around. “Here we go! Ready with those rocks!”
Bill had noticed these others arming themselves with rocks—and in some cases, the very ones that had been thrown at them from behind the stockade. Now, looking again, he saw that almost everyone who was not on the battering-ram crew had at least two or three of these missiles in his or her hands.
“Shields, here!” bellowed Flat Fingers. Those of the battering-ram crew who already had shields swung them up into position overhead. The rest hastily borrowed shields from friends or relatives standing around and did likewise.
“All right, then!” cried the blacksmith, taking his place at the head of the battering-ram crew. “Here we go-o-o…”
The last word ended in a long, drawn-out howl, as the battering-ram crew started off at full speed toward the gate of the stockade. In a black furred wave behind them, surged the rest of the Dilbians—but they surged only to within throwing distance of the stockade wall, and began to loose a literal barrage of rocks.
The heads of the outlaws to be seen above the points of the stockade ducked hastily down out of sight as the first flight of stones reached them. They stayed down. Meanwhile, the battering-ram crew was carrying o
n full tilt for the gate in the very center of the stockade. For a moment, they seemed to be galloping away and making no progress. But a moment later, they loomed over the gate, and a second later, they struck it. The results were all but unbelievable.
The gate split from top to bottom with a sound like a crack of thunder. But this was the least spectacular of the results of the impact. The battering-ram crew, shaken loose by the impact, piled up against the gate and the walls of the stockade themselves, like so many Dilbian-furred missiles. As a result, not merely the gate but the whole stockade wall quivered and shook like a fence of saplings.
There were glimpses of hairy arms thrown in the air briefly above the stockade’s points, as the outlaws on the catwalk inside were shaken loose and dumped backward. Evidently, not one of them up there had been able to retain his grip, for although the stones had stopped flying from the crowd of Muddy Nosers, not one head made its reappearance above the stockade wall.
“All right—up and at it!” Flat Fingers was shouting, down by the gate, as he scrambled himself to his feet. “On your feet and let’s hit it again!”
The battering-ram crew recollected itself, picked up its log, and began to swing its front end rhythmically against the cracked gate. With each blow, the entrance to the valley resounded, and gate and wall shivered together. Slowly the crack widened, and another crack split the door into three pieces. Around Bill, back at a stone’s throw distance from the gate, the rest of the villagers were going wild with triumph, and the din was deafening.
The Right to Arm Bears (dilbia) Page 31