by Jack Vance
The lad careened down the fell toward Carcolo, shouting ahead, but his message was lost in the din of battle. At last he drew close. “The Basics, the Basics!”
Carcolo slumped like a half-empty bladder. “Where?”
“A great black ship, half the valley wide. I was up on the heath, I managed to escape.” He pointed, whimpered.
“Speak, boy!” husked Carcolo. “What do they do?”
“I did not see; I ran to you.”
Carcolo gazed across the battle field; the Banbeck Fiends had almost reached his Juggers, who were backing slowly, with heads lowered, fangs fully extended.
Carcolo threw up his hands in despair; he ordered Givven, “Blow a retreat, break clear!”
Waving a white kerchief he rode around the battle to where Joaz Banbeck still lay on the ground, the quivering Murderer only just now being lifted from his legs. Joaz stared up, his face white as Carcolo’s kerchief. At the sight of Carcolo his eyes grew wide and dark, his mouth became still.
Carcolo blurted, “The Basics have come once more; they have dropped into Happy Valley, they are destroying my people.”
Joaz Banbeck, assisted by his knights, gained his feet. He stood swaying, arms limp, looking silently into Carcolo’s face.
Carcolo spoke once more. “We must call truce; this battle is waste! With all our forces let us march to Happy Valley and attack the monsters before they destroy all of us! Ah, think what we could have achieved with the weapons of the sacerdotes!”
Joaz stood silent. Another ten seconds passed. Carcolo cried angrily, “Come now, what do you say?”
In a hoarse voice Joaz spoke, “I say no truce. You rejected my warning, you thought to loot Banbeck Vale. I will show you no mercy.”
Carcolo gaped, his mouth a red hole under the sweep of his mustaches. “But the Basics—”
“Return to your troops. You as well as the Basics are my enemy; why should I choose between you? Prepare to fight for your life; I give you no truce.”
Carcolo drew back, face as pale as Joaz’s own. “Never shall you rest! Even though you win this battle here on Starbreak Fell, yet you shall never know victory. I will persecute you until you cry for relief.”
Banbeck motioned to his knights. “Whip this dog back to his own.”
Carcolo backed his Spider from the threatening flails, turned, loped away.
The tide of battle had turned. The Banbeck Fiends now had broken past his Blue Horrors; one of his Juggers was gone; another, facing three sidling Fiends, snapped its great jaws, waved its monstrous sword. The Fiends flicked and feinted with their steel balls, scuttled forward. The Jugger chopped, shattered its sword on the rockhard armor of the Fiends; they were underneath, slamming their steel balls into the monstrous legs. It tried to hop clear, toppled majestically. The Fiends slit its belly, and now Carcolo had only five Juggers left.
“Back!” he cried. “Disengage!”
Up Barch Spike toiled his troops, the battle-front a roaring seethe of scales, armor, flickering metal. Luckily for Carcolo his rear was to the high ground, and after ten horrible minutes he was able to establish an orderly retreat. Two more Juggers had fallen; the three remaining scrambled free. Seizing boulders, they hurled them down into the attackers, who, after a series of sallies and lunges, were well content to break clear. In any event, Joaz, after hearing Carcolo’s news, was of no disposition to spend further troops.
Carcolo, waving his sword in desperate defiance, led his troops back around Barch Spike, presently down across the dreary Skanse. Joaz turned back to Banbeck Vale. The news of the Basic raid had spread to all ears. The men rode sober and quiet, looking behind and overhead. Even the dragons seemed infected, and muttered restlessly among themselves.
As they crossed Blue Fell the almost omnipresent wind died; the stillness added to the oppression. Termagants, like the men, began to watch the sky. Joaz wondered, how could they know, how could they sense the Basics? He himself searched the sky, and as his army passed down over the scarp he thought to see, high over Mount Gethron, a flitting little black rectangle, which presently disappeared behind a crag.
Chapter IX
Ervis Carcolo and the remnants of his army raced pell-mell down from the Skanse, through the wilderness of ravines and gulches at the base of Mount Despoire, out on the barrens to the west of Happy Valley. All pretense of military precision had been abandoned. Carcolo led the way, his Spider sobbing with fatigue. Behind in disarray pounded first Murderers and Blue Horrors, with Termagants hurrying along behind, then the Fiends, racing low to the ground, steel balls grinding on rocks, sending up sparks. Far in the rear lumbered the Juggers and their attendants.
Down to the verge of Happy Valley plunged the army and pulled up short, stamping and squealing. Carcolo jumped from his Spider, ran to the brink, stood looking down into the valley.
He had expected to see the ship, yet the actuality of the thing was so immediate and intense as to shock him. It was a tapered cylinder, glossy and black, resting in a field of legumes not far from ramshackle Happy Town. Polished metal disks at either end shimmered and glistened with fleeting films of color. There were three entrance ports: forward, central and aft, and from the central port a ramp had been extended to the ground.
The Basics had worked with ferocious efficiency. From the town straggled a line of people, herded by Heavy Troopers. Approaching the ship they passed through an inspection apparatus controlled by a pair of Basics. A series of instruments and the eyes of the Basics appraised each man, woman and child, classified them by some system not instantly obvious, whereupon the captives were either hustled up the ramp into the ship or prodded into a nearby booth. Peculiarly, no matter how many persons entered, the booth never seemed to fill.
Carcolo rubbed his forehead with trembling fingers, turned his eyes to the ground. When once more he looked up, Bast Givven stood beside him, and together they stared down into the valley.
From behind came a cry of alarm. Starting around, Carcolo saw a black rectangular flyer sliding silently down from above Mount Gethron. Waving his arms Carcolo ran for the rocks, bellowing orders to take cover. Dragons and men scuttled up the gulch. Overhead slid the flyer. A hatch opened, releasing a load of explosive pellets. They struck with a great rattling volley, and up into the air flew pebbles, rock splinters, fragments of bone, scales, skin and flesh. All who failed to reach cover were shredded. The Termagants fared relatively well. The Fiends, though battered and scraped, had all survived. Two of the Juggers had been blinded, and could fight no more till they had grown new eyes.
The flyer slid back once more. Several of the men fired their muskets—an act of apparently futile defiance—but the flyer was struck and damaged. It twisted, veered, soared up in a roaring curve, swooped over on its back, plunged toward the mountainside, crashed in a brilliant orange gush of fire. Carcolo shouted in maniac glee, jumped up and down, ran to the verge of the cliff, shook his fist at the ship below. He quickly quieted, to stand glum and shivering. Then, turning to the ragged cluster of men and dragons who once more had crept down from the gulch, Carcolo cried hoarsely, “What do you say? Shall we fight? Shall we charge down upon them?”
There was silence; Bast Givven replied in a colorless voice, “We are helpless. We can accomplish nothing. Why commit suicide?”
Carcolo turned away, heart too full for words. Givven spoke the obvious truth. They would either be killed or dragged aboard the ship; and then, on a world too strange for imagining, be put to uses too dismal to be borne. Carcolo clenched his fists, looked westward with bitter hatred. “Joaz Banbeck, you brought me to this! When I might yet have fought for my people you detained me!”
“The Basics were here already,” said Givven with unwelcome rationality. “We could have done nothing since we had nothing to do with.”
“We could have fought!” bellowed Carcolo. “We might have swept down the Crotch, come upon them with all force! A hundred warriors and four hundred dragons—are these to be despised?�
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Bast Givven judged further argument to be pointless. He pointed. “They now examine our brooders.”
Carcolo turned to look, gave a wild laugh. “They are astonished! They are awed! And well have they a right to be.”
Givven agreed. “I imagine the sight of a Fiend or a Blue Horror—not to mention a Jugger—gives them pause for reflection.”
Down in the valley the grim business had ended. The Heavy Troopers marched back into the ship; a pair of enormous men twelve feet high came forth, lifted the booth, carried it up the ramp into the ship. Carcolo and his men watched with protruding eyes. “Giants!”
Bast Givven chuckled dryly. “The Basics stare at our Juggers; we ponder their Giants.”
The Basics presently returned to the ship. The ramp was drawn up, the ports closed. From a turret in the bow came a shaft of energy, touching each of the three brooders in succession, and each exploded with great eruption of black bricks.
Carcolo moaned softly under his breath, but said nothing.
The ship trembled, floated; Carcolo bellowed an order; men and dragons rushed for cover. Flattened behind boulders they watched the black cylinder rise from the valley, drift to the west. “They make for Banbeck Vale,” said Bast Givven.
Carcolo laughed, a cackle of mirthless glee. Bast Givven looked at him sidelong. Had Ervis Carcolo become addled? He turned away. A matter of no great moment.
Carcolo came to a sudden resolve. He stalked to one of the Spiders, mounted, swung around to face his men. “I ride to Banbeck Vale. Joaz Banbeck has done his best to despoil me; I shall do my best against him. I give no orders: come or stay as you wish. Only remember! Joaz Banbeck would not allow us to fight the Basics!”
He rode off. The men stared into the plundered valley, turned to look after Carcolo. The black ship was just now slipping over Mount Despoire. There was nothing for them in the valley. Grumbling and muttering they summoned the bone-tired dragons, set off up the dreary mountainside.
Ervis Carcolo rode his Spider at a plunging run across the Skanse. Tremendous crags soared to either side, the blazing sun hung halfway up the black sky. Behind, the Skanse Ramparts; ahead, Barchback, Barch Spike and Northguard Ridge. Oblivious to the fatigue of his Spider, Carcolo whipped it on; gray-green moss pounded back from its wild feet, the narrow head hung low, foam trailed from its gill-vents. Carcolo cared nothing; his mind was empty of all but hate—for the Basics, for Joaz Banbeck, for Aerlith, for man, for human history.
Approaching Northguard the Spider staggered and fell. It lay moaning, neck outstretched, legs trailing back. Carcolo dismounted in disgust, looked back down the long rolling slope of the Skanse to see how many of his troops had followed him. A man riding a Spider at a modest lope turned out to be Bast Givven, who presently came up beside him, inspected the fallen Spider. “Loosen the surcingle; he will recover the sooner.”
Carcolo glared, thinking to hear a new note in Givven’s voice. Nevertheless he bent over the foundered dragon, slipped loose the broad bronze buckle. Givven dismounted, stretched his arms, massaged his thin legs. He pointed. “The Basic ship descends into Banbeck Vale.”
Carcolo nodded grimly. “I would be an audience to the landing.” He kicked the Spider. “Come, get up, have you not rested enough? Do you wish me to walk?”
The Spider whimpered its fatigue, but nevertheless struggled to its feet. Carcolo started to mount, but Bast Givven laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. Carcolo looked back in outrage; here was impertinence! Givven said calmly, “Tighten the surcingle, otherwise you will fall on the rocks, and once more break your bones.”
Uttering a spiteful phrase under his breath, Carcolo clasped the buckle back into position, the Spider crying out in despair. Paying no heed, Carcolo mounted, and the Spider moved off with trembling steps.
Barch Spike rose ahead like the prow of a white ship, dividing Northguard Ridge from Barchback. Carcolo paused to consider the landscape, tugging his mustaches.
Givven was tactfully silent. Carcolo looked back down the Skanse to the listless straggle of his army, set off to the left.
Passing close under Mount Gethron, skirting the High Jambles, they descended an ancient watercourse to Banbeck Verge. Though perforce they had come without great speed, the Basic ship had moved no faster and had only started to settle into the vale, the disks at bow and stern swirling with furious colors.
Carcolo grunted bitterly. “Trust Joaz Banbeck to scratch his own itch. Not a soul in sight! He’s taken to his tunnels, dragons and all.” Pursing his mouth he rendered a mincing parody of Joaz’s voice: “‘Ervis Carcolo, my dear friend, there is but one answer to attack: dig tunnels!’ And I replied to him, ‘Am I a sacerdote to live underground? Burrow and delve, Joaz Banbeck, do as you will, I am but an old-time man; I go under the cliffs only when I must.’”
Givven gave the faintest of shrugs.
Carcolo went on, “Tunnels or not, they’ll winkle him out. If need be they’ll blast open the entire valley. They’ve no lack of tricks.”
Givven grinned sardonically. “Joaz Banbeck knows a trick or two—as we know to our sorrow.”
“Let him capture two dozen Basics today,” snapped Carcolo. “Then I’ll concede him a clever man.” He stalked away to the very brink of the cliff, standing in full view of the Basic ship. Givven watched without expression.
Carcolo pointed. “Aha! Look there!”
“Not I,” said Givven. “I respect the Basic weapons too greatly.”
“Pah!” spat Carcolo. Nevertheless he moved a trifle back from the brink. “There are dragons in Kergan’s Way. For all Joaz Banbeck’s talk of tunnels.” He gazed north along the valley a moment or two, then threw up his hands in frustration. “Joaz Banbeck will not come up here to me; there is nothing I can do. Unless I walk down into the village, seek him out and strike him down, he will escape me.”
“Unless the Basics captured the two of you and confined you in the same pen,” said Givven.
“Bah!” muttered Carcolo, and moved off to one side.
Chapter X
The vision-plates which allowed Joaz Banbeck to observe the length and breadth of Banbeck Vale for the first time were being put to practical use. He had evolved the scheme while playing with a set of old lenses, and dismissed it as quickly. Then one day, while trading with the sacerdotes in the cavern under Mount Gethron, he had proposed that they design and supply the optics for such a system.
The blind old sacerdote who conducted the trading gave an ambiguous reply: the possibility of such a project, under certain circumstances, might well deserve consideration. Three months passed; the scheme receded to the back of Joaz Banbeck’s mind. Then the sacerdote in the trading-cave inquired if Joaz still planned to install the viewing system; if so he might take immediate delivery of the optics. Joaz agreed to the barter price, returned to Banbeck Vale with four heavy crates. He ordered the necessary tunnels driven, installed the lenses, and found that with the study darkened he could command all quarters of Banbeck Vale.
Now, with the Basic ship darkening the sky, Joaz Banbeck stood in his study, watching the descent of the great black hulk.
At the back of the chamber maroon portieres parted. Clutching the cloth with taut fingers stood the minstrel-maiden Phade. Her face was pale, her eyes bright as opals. In a husky voice she called, “The ship of death; it has come to gather souls!”
Joaz turned her a stony glance, turned back to the honed-glass screen. “The ship is clearly visible.”
Phade ran forward, clasped Joaz’s arm, swung around to look into his face. “Let us try to escape! Into the mountains, the High Jambles; don’t let them take us so soon!”
“No one deters you,” said Joaz indifferently. “Escape in any direction you choose.”
Phade stared at him blankly, then turned her head and watched the screen. The great black ship sank with sinister deliberation, the disks at bow and stern now shimmering mother-of-pearl. Phade looked back to Joaz, licked her lips. “Are y
ou not afraid?”
Joaz smiled thinly. “What good to run? Their Trackers are swifter than Murderers, more vicious than Termagants. They can smell you a mile away, take you from the very center of the Jambles.”
Phade shivered with superstitious horror. She whispered, “Let them take me dead, then; I can’t go with them alive.”
Joaz suddenly cursed. “Look where they land! In our best field of bellegarde!”
“What is the difference?”
“‘Difference’? Must we stop eating because they pay their visit?”
Phade looked at him in a daze, beyond comprehension. She sank slowly to her knees and began to perform the ritual gestures of the Theurgic cult: hands palm down to either side, slowly up till the back of the hand touched the ears, and the simultaneous protrusion of the tongue; over and over again, eyes staring with hypnotic intensity into emptiness.
Joaz ignored the gesticulations, until Phade, her face screwed up into a fantastic mask, began to sigh and whimper; then he swung the flaps of his jacket into her face. “Give over your folly!”
Phade collapsed moaning to the floor; Joaz’s lips twitched in annoyance. Impatiently he hoisted her erect. “Look you, these Basics are neither ghouls nor angels of death; they are no more than pallid Termagants, the basic stock of our dragons. So now, give over your idiocy, or I’ll have Rife take you away.”
“Why do you not make ready? You watch and do nothing.”
“There is nothing more that I can do.”
Phade drew a deep shuddering sigh, stared dully at the screen. “Will you fight them?”
“Naturally.”
“How can you hope to counter such miraculous power?”
“We will do what we can. They have not yet met our dragons.”
The ship came to rest in a purple and green vine-field across the valley, near the mouth of Clybourne Crevasse. The port slid back, a ramp rolled forth. “Look,” said Joaz, “there you see them.”
Phade stared at the queer pale shapes who had come tentatively out on the ramp. “They seem strange and twisted, like silver puzzles for children.”