He saw blood and the dismembered avian shapes an instant before the beasts attacked him.
They seemed to rise from weeds and snowdrifts, as if the earth had spewed them. Noiselessly they rushed in, a dozen white scuttering forms big as police dogs. Flandry glimpsed long sharp noses, alert black eyes that hated him, high backs and hairless tails. He yanked his rifle loose and fired. The slug bowled the nearest animal over. It rolled halfway downhill, lay a while, and crawled back to fight some more.
Flandry didn’t see it. The next was upon him. He shot it point blank. One of its fellows crouched to tear the flesh. But the rest ran on. Flandry took aim at a third. A heavy body landed between his shoulders. He went down, and felt jaws rip his leather coat.
He rolled over, somehow, shielding his face with one arm. His rifle had been torn from him: a beast fumbled it in forepaws almost like hands. He groped for the dagger at his belt. Two of the animals were on him, slashing with chisel teeth. He managed to kick one in the nose. It squealed, bounced away, sprang back with a couple of new arrivals to help.
Someone yelled. It sounded very far off, drowned by Flandry’s own heartbeat. The Terran drove his knife into a hairy shoulder. The beast writhed free, leaving him weaponless. Now they were piling on him where he lay. He fought with boots and knees, fists and elbows, in a cloud of kicked-up snow. An animal jumped in the air, came down on his midriff. The wind whooffed out of him. His face-defending arm dropped, and the creature went for his throat.
Arghun came up behind. The Altaian seized the animal by the neck. His free hand flashed steel, he disemboweled it and flung it toward the pack in one expert movement. Several of them fell on the still snarling shape and fed. Arghun booted another exactly behind the ear. It dropped as if poleaxed. One jumped from the rear, to get on his back. He stooped, his right hand made a judo heave, and as the beast soared over his head he ripped its stomach with his knife.
“Up, man!” He hoisted Flandry. The Terran stumbled beside him, while the pack chattered around. Now its outliers began to fall dead: Bourtai had regained the hillcrest and was sniping. The largest of the animals whistled. At that signal, the survivors bounded off. They were lost to view in seconds.
When they had reached Bourtai, Arghun sank down gasping. The girl flew to Flandry. “Are you hurt?” she sobbed.
“Only in my pride-I guess-” He looked past her to the noyon. “Thanks,” he said inadequately.
“You are a guest,” grunted Arghun. After a moment: “They grow bolder each year. I had never expected to be attacked this near an ordu. Something must be done about them, if we live through the winter.”
“What are they?” Flandry shuddered toward relaxation.
“Gurchaku. They range in packs over all the steppes, up into the Khrebet They will eat anything but prefer meat. Chiefly sataru and other feral animals, but they raid our herds, have killed people-” Arghun looked grim. “They were not as large in my grandfather’s day, nor as cunning.”
Flandry nodded. “Rats. Which is not an exclamation.”
“I know what rats are,” said Bourtai. “But the gurchaku—”
“A new genus. Similar things have happened on other colonized planets.” Flandry wished for a cigarette. He wished so hard that Bourtai had to remind him before he continued: “Oh, yes. Some of the stowaway rats on your ancestors’ ships must have gone into the wilds, as these began to be Terrestrialized. Size was advantageous: helped them keep warm, enabled them to prey on the big animals you were developing. Selection pressure, short generations, genetic drift within a small original population… Nature is quite capable of forced-draft evolution on her own hook.”
He managed a tired grin at Bourtai. “After all,” he said, “if a frontier planet has beautiful girls, tradition requires that it have monsters as well.”
Her blush was like fire.
They returned to camp in silence. Flandry entered the yurt given him, washed and changed clothes, lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. He reflected bitterly on all the Terran romancing he had ever heard, the High Frontier in general and the dashing adventures of the Intelligence Corps in particular. So what did it amount to? A few nasty moments with men or giant rats that wanted to kill you; stinking leather clothes, wet feet, chilblains and frostbite, unseasoned food, creaking wheels exchanged for squealing runners; temperance, chastity, early rising, weighty speech with tribal elders, not a book he could enjoy or a joke he could understand for light-years. He yawned, rolled over on his stomach, tried to sleep, gave up after a while, and began to wish Arghun’s reckless counsel would be accepted. Anything to break this dreariness!
It tapped on the door. He started to his feet, bumped his head on a curved ridgepole, swore, and said: “Come in.” The caution of years laid his hand on a blaster.
The short day was near an end, only a red streak above one edge of the world. His lamp picked out Bourtai. She entered, closed the door, and stood unspeaking.
“Why… hullo.” Flandry paused. “What brings you here?”
“I came to see if you were indeed well.” Her eyes did not meet his.
“Oh? Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” he said stupidly. “Kind of you. I mean, uh, shall I make some tea?”
“If you were bitten, it should be tended,” said the girl. “Gurchaku bites can be infectious.”
“No, thanks, I escaped any actual wounds.” Automatically, Flandry added with a smile: “I could wish otherwise, though. So fair a nurse—”
Again he saw the blood rise in her face. Suddenly he understood. He would have realized earlier, had these people not been more reticent than his own. A heavy pulse beat in his throat. “Sit down,” he invited.
She lowered herself to the floor. He joined her, sliding a practiced arm over her shoulder. She did not flinch. He let his hand glide lower, till the arm was around her waist. She leaned against him.
“Do you think we will see another springtime?” she asked. Her tone grew steady once more; it was a quite practical question.
“I have one right here with me,” he said. His lips brushed her dark hair.
“No one speaks thus in the ordu,” she breathed. Quickly: “We are both cut off from our kindred, you by distance and I by death. Let us not remain lonely.”
He forced himself to give fair warning: “I shall return to Terra the first chance I get.”
“I know,” she cried, “but until then—”
His lips found hers.
There was a thump on the door.
“Go away!” Flandry and Bourtai said it together, looked surprised into each other’s eyes, and laughed with pleasure. “My lord,” called a man’s voice, “Toghrul Gur-Khan sends me. A message has been picked up-a Terran spaceship!”
Flandry knocked Bourtai over in his haste to get outside. But even as he ran, he thought with frustration that this job had been hoodooed from the outset.
XIII
Among the thin winds over Ulan Baligh, hidden by sheer height, a warrior sat in the patient arms of a medusa. He breathed oxygen from a tank and rested numbed fingers on a small radio transceiver. After four hours he was relieved; perhaps no other breed of human could have endured so long a watch.
Finally he was rewarded. His earphones crackled with a faint, distorted voice, speaking no language he had ever heard. A return beam gabbled from the spaceport. The man up above gave place to another, who spoke a halting, accented Altaian, doubtless learned from the Betelgeuseans.
The scout of the Tebtengri dared not try any communication of his own. If detected (and the chances were that it would be) such a call would bring a nuclear missile streaking upward from Ulan Baligh. However, his transceiver could amplify and relay what came to it. Medusae elsewhere carried similar sets: a long chain, ending in the ordu of Toghrul Vavilov. Were that re-transmission intercepted by the enemy, no one would be alarmed. They would take it for some freak of reflection off the ionosphere.
The scout’s binoculars actually showed him the Terran spaceship a
s it descended. He whistled in awe at its sleek, armed swiftness. Still, he thought, it was only one vessel, paying a visit to Oleg the Damned, who had carefully disguised all his modern installations. Oleg would be like butter to his guests, they would see what he wished them to see and no more. Presently they would go home again, to report that Altai was a harmless half-barbaric outpost, safely forgettable.
The scout sighed, beat gloved hands together, and wished his relief would soon arrive.
And up near the Arctic Circle, Dominic Flandry turned from Toghrul’s receiver. A frosted window framed his head with the early northern night. “That’s it,” he said. “We’ll maintain our radio monitors, but I don’t expect to pick up anything else interesting, except the moment when the ship takes off again.”
“When will that be?” asked the Gur-Khan.
“In a couple of days, I imagine,” said Flandry. “We’ve got to be ready! All the tribesmen must be alerted, must move out on the plains according to the scheme Juchi and I drew up for you.”
Toghrul nodded. Arghun Tiliksky, who had also crowded into the kibitka, demanded: “What scheme is this? Why have I not been told?”
“You didn’t need to know,” Flandry answered. Blandly: “The warriors of Tebtengri can be moving at top speed, ready for battle, on five minutes’ notice, under any conditions whatsoever. Or so you were assuring me in a ten-minute speech one evening last week. Very well, move them, noyon.”
Arghun bristled. “And then—”
“You will lead the Mangu Tuman varyak division straight south for 500 kilometers,” said Toghrul. “There you will await radio orders. The other tribal forces will be stationed elsewhere; you will doubtless see a few, but strict radio silence is to be maintained between you. The less mobile vehicles will have to stay in this general region, with the women and children maneuvering them.”
“And the herds,” reminded Flandry. “Don’t forget, we can cover quite a large area with all the Tebtengri herds.”
“But this is lunacy!” yelped Arghun. “If Oleg knows we’re spread out in such a manner, and drives a wedge through—”
“He won’t know,” said Flandry. “Or if he does, he won’t know why: which is what counts. Now, git!”
For a moment Arghun’s eyes clashed with his. Then the noyon slapped gauntlets against one thigh, whirled, and departed. It was indeed only a few moments before the night grew loud with varyak motors and lowing battle horns.
When that had faded, Toghrul tugged his beard, looked across the radio, and said to Flandry: “Now can you tell me just what fetched that Terran spaceship here?”
“Why, to inquire more closely about the reported death of me, a Terran citizen, on Altai,” grinned Flandry. “At least, if he is not a moron, that is what the captain will tell Oleg. And he will let Oleg convince him it was all a deplorable accident, and he’ll take off again.”
Toghrul stared, then broke into buffalo laughter. Flandry chimed in. For a while the GurKhan of the Mangu Tuman and the field agent of the Imperial Terrestrial Naval Intelligence Corps danced around the kibitka singing about the flowers that bloom in the spring.
Presently Flandry left. There wasn’t going to be much sleep for anyone in the next few days. Tonight, though. He rapped eagerly on his own Iurt. Silence answered him, the wind and a distant sad mewing of the herds. He scowled and opened the door.
A note lay on his bunk. My beloved, the alarm signals have blown. Toghrul gave me weapons and a new varyak. My father taught me to ride and shoot as well as any man. It is only fitting that the last of Clan Tumuri go with the warriors.
Flandry stared at the scrawl for a long while. Finally, “Oh, hell and tiddlywinks,” he said, and dressed and went to bed.
XIV
When he woke in the morning, his cart was under way. He emerged to find the whole encampment grinding across the steppe. Toghrul stood to one side, taking a navigational sight on the rings. He greeted Flandry with a gruff: “We should be in our own assigned position tomorrow.” A messenger dashed up, something needed the chiefs attention, one of the endless emergencies of so big a group on the move. Flandry found himself alone.
By now he had learned not to offer his own unskilled assistance. He spent the day composing scurrilous limericks about the superiors who had assigned him to this mission. The trek continued noisily through the dark. Next morning there was drifted snow to clear before camp could be made. Flandry discovered that he was at least able to wield a snow shovel. Soon he wished he weren’t.
By noon the ordu was settled; not in the compact standardized laagers which offered maximum safety, but straggling over kilometers in a line which brought mutinous grumbling. Toghrul roared down all protest and went back to his kibitka to crouch over the radio. After some hours he summoned Flandry.
“Ship departing,” he said. “We’ve just picked up a routine broadcast warning aircraft from the spaceport area.” He frowned. “Can we carry out all our maneuvers while we’re still in daylight?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Flandry. “Our initial pattern is already set up. Once he spots that from space-and he’s pretty sure to, because it’s routine to look as long and hard as possible at any doubtful planet-the skipper will hang around out there.”
His gray eyes went to a map on the desk before him. The positions of all Tebtengri units had now been radio confirmed. As marked by Toghrul, the ordus lay in a heavy east-and-west line, 500 kilometers long across the winter-white steppe. The more mobile varyak divisions sprawled their bunches to form lines slanting past either end of the stationary one, meeting in the north. He stroked his mustache and waited.
“Spaceship cleared for take off. Stand by. Rise, spaceship!”
As the relayed voice trickled weakly from the receiver, Flandry snatched up a pencil and drew another figure under Toghrul’s gaze. “This is the next formation,” he said. “Might as well start it now, I think; the ship will have seen the present one in a few minutes.”
The Gur-Khan bent over the microphone and rapped: “Varyak divisions of Clans Munlik, Fyodor, Kubilai, Tuli, attention! Drive straight west for 100 kilometers. Belgutai, Bagdarin, Chagatai, Kassar, due east for 100 kilometers. Gleb, Jahangir—”
Flandry rolled his pencil in tightened fingers. As the reports came in, over an endless hour, he marked where each unit had halted. The whole device began to look pathetically crude.
“I have been thinking,” said Toghrul after a period of prolonged silence.
“Nasty habit,” said Flandry. “Hard to break. Try cold baths and long walks.”
“What if Oleg finds out about this?”
“He’s pretty sure to discover something is going on. His air scouts will pick up bits of our messages. But only bits, since these are short-range transmissions. I’m depending on our own air cover to keep the enemy from getting too good a look at what we’re up to. All Oleg will know is, we’re maneuvering around on a large scale.” Flandry shrugged. “It would seem most logical to me, if I were him, that the Tebtengri were practicing formations against the day he attacks.”
“Which is not far off.” Toghrul drummed the desk top.
Flandry drew a figure on his paper. “This one next,” he said.
“Yes.” Toghrul gave the orders. Afterward: “We can continue through dark, you know. Light bonfires. Send airboats loaded with fuel to the varyak men, so they can do the same.”
“That would be well.”
“Of course,” frowned the chief, “it will consume an unholy amount of fuel. More than we can spare.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Flandry. “Before the shortage gets acute, your people will be safe, their needs supplied from outside-or they’ll be dead, which is still more economical.”
The night wore on. Now and then Flandry dozed. He paid scant heed to the sunrise; he had only half completed his job. Sometime later a warrior was shown in. “From Juchi Shaman,” he reported, with a clumsy salute.” Airscouts watching the Ozero Rurik area report massi
ng of troops, outrider columns moving northward.”
Toghrul smote the desk with one big fist. “Already?” he said.
“It’ll take them a few days to get their big push this far,” said Flandry, though his guts felt cold at the news. “Longer, if we harry them from the air. All I need is one more day, I think.”
“But when can we expect help?” said Toghrul.
“Not for another three or four weeks at the very least,” said Flandry. “Word has to reach Catawrayannis Base, its commandant has to patch together a task force which has to get here. Allow a month, plus or minus. Can we retreat that long, holding the enemy off without undue losses to ourselves?”
“We had better,” said Toghrul, “or we are done.”
XV
Captain Flandry laid the rifle stock to his shoulder. Its plastic felt smooth and uncold, as nearly as his numbed cheek could feel anything. The chill of the metal parts, which would skewer any fingers that touched them, bit through his gloves. Hard to gauge distances in this red half-light, I across this whining scud of snow. Hard to guess windage; even trajectories were baffling, on this miserable three-quarter-gee planet… He decided the opposition wasn’t close enough yet, and flowered his gun.
Beside him, crouched in the same lee of a snowbank, the Dweller turned dark eyes upon the man. “I go now?” he asked. His Altaian was even worse than Flandry’s, though Juchi himself had been surprised to learn that any of the Ice Folk knew the human tongue.
“I told you no.” Flandry’s own accent was thickened by the frostbitten puffiness of his lips. “You must cross a hundred meters of open ground to reach those trees. Running, you would be seen and shot before going half way. Unless we can arrange a distraction—”
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