"You will get back," she said quietly. "Your kind of man survives."
"Maybe!"
"It is heroic, what you have done already." She looked away from him, toward the driving clouds around Oborch's peak. "I am not certain anything can stop you. Except yourself."
"I?" He was beginning to be embarrassed now, and wanted to talk of other things. He plucked at his bristly red beard.
"Yes. Who else can? You have come so far, so fast. But why not stop? Soon, perhaps here on this mountain, must you not ask yourself how much farther it is worth going?"
"I don't know. As far as possible, I guess."
"Why? Is it necessary to become great? Is it not enough to be free? With your talent and experience, you can make good-enough monies on many settled planets where men are more at home than here. Like Hermes, exemplia. In this striving to be rich and powerful, is it not merely that you want to feed and shelter the little boy who once cried himself hungry to sleep back in Triton Docks? But that little boy you can never comfort, my friend. He died long ago."
"Well . . . I don't know . . . I suppose one day I'll have a family. I'd want to give my wife more than just a living; I'd want to leave my children and grandchildren enough resources to go on—to stand off the whole world if they have to—"
"Yes. So. I think maybe—" he saw, before she turned her head from him, how the blood flew up into her face—"the old fighting Dukes of Hermes were like so. It would be well if we had a breed of men like them again—" Suddenly she began walking very fast down the path. "Enough. Best we return, not?"
He followed her, little aware of the ground he trod.
XII
When the Lannachska were ready to fight, they were called to Salmenbrok by Tolk's Whistlers until the sky darkened with their wings. Then Trolwen made his way through a seethe of warriors to van Rijn.
"Surely the gods are weary of us," he said bitterly. "Near always, at this time of year, there are strong south winds." He gestured at a breathless heaven. "Do you know a spell for raising dead breezes?"
The merchant looked up, somewhat annoyed. He was seated at a table outside the wattle-and-clay hut they had built for him beyond the village—for he refused to climb ladders, or sleep in a damp cave—dicing with Corps Captain Srygen for the beryl-like gemstones which were a local medium of exchange. The number of species in the galaxy which have independently invented some form of African golf is beyond estimation.
"Well," he snapped, "and why must you have your tail fanned? . . . Ah, seven! No, pox and pills, I remember, here seven is not a so good number. Well, we try again." The three cubes clicked in his hand and across the table. "Hm-m-m, seven again." He scooped up the stakes. "Double or nothings?"
"The ghost-eaters take it!" Srygen got up. "You've been winning too motherless often for my taste."
Van Rijn surged to his own feet like a broaching whale. "By damn, you take that back or—"
"I said nothing challengeable," Srygen told him coldly.
"You implied it. I am insulted, myself!"
"Hold on there," growled Trolwen. "What do you think this is, a beer feast? Eart'a, all the fighting forces of Lannach are now gathered on these hills. We cannot feed them here very long. And yet, with the new weapons loaded on the railway cars, we cannot stir until we get a south wind. What to do?"
Van Rijn glared at Srygen. "I said I was insulted. I do not think so good when I am insulted."
"I am sure the captain will apologize for any unintended offense," said Trolwen, with a red-shot look at them both.
"Indeed," said Srygen. He spoke it like pulling teeth.
"So." Van Rijn stroked his beard. "Then to prove you make no doubt about my honesties, we throw once more, nie? Double or nothings."
Srygen snatched the dice and hurled them. "Ah, a six you have," said van Rijn. "It is not so easy to beat. I am afraid I have already lost. It is not so simple to be a poor tired hungry old man, far away from his home and from the Siamese cats who are all he has to love him for himself, not just his monies. . . . Tum-te-tum-te-tum. . . . Eight! A two, a three, a three! Well, well, well!"
"Transport," said Trolwen, hanging on to his temper by a hair. "The new weapons are too heavy for our porters. They have to go by rail. Without a wind, how do we get them down to Sagna Bay?"
"Simple," said van Rijn, counting his take. "Till you get a good wind, tie ropes to the cars and all these so-husky young fellows pull."
Srygen blew up. "A free clan male, to drag a car like a . . . like a Draka?" He mastered himself and choked: "It isn't done."
"Sometimes," said van Rijn, "these things must be done." He scooped up the jewels, dropped them into a purse, and went over to a well. "Surely you have some disciplines in this Flock."
"Oh . . . yes . . . I suppose so—" Trolwen's unhappy gaze went downslope to the brawling, shouting winged tide which had engulfed the village. "But sustained labor like that has always . . . long before the Drakska came . . . always been considered—perverted, in a way—it is not exactly forbidden, but one does not do it without the most compelling necessity. To labor in public—No!"
Van Rijn hauled on the windlass. "Why not? The Drak'honai, them, make all kinds tiresome preachments about the dignity of labor. For them it is needful; in their way of life, one must work hard. But for you? Why must one not work hard in Lannach?"
"It isn't right," said Srygen stiffly. "It makes us like some kind of animal."
Van Rijn pulled the bucket to the well coping and took a bottle of Earthside beer from it. "Ahhh, good and cold . . . hm-m-m, possibly too cold, damn all places without thermostatted coolers—" He opened the bottle on the stone curb and tasted. "It will do. Now, I have made travels, and I find that everywhere the manners and morals of peoples have some good reason at bottom. Maybe the race has forgotten why was a rule made in the first place, but if the rule does not make some sense, it will not last many centuries. Follows then that you do not like prolonged hard work, except to be sure migration, because it is not good for you for some reason. And yet it does not hurt the Drak'honai too much. Paradox!"
"Unlawfulness take your wonderings," snarled Trolwen. "It was your idea that we make all this newfangled apparatus, instead of fighting as our males have always fought. Now, how do we get it down to the lowlands without demoralizing the army?"
"Oh, that!" Van Rijn shrugged. "You have sports—contests—nie?"
"Of course."
"Well, you explain these cars must be brought with us and, while it is not necessary we leave at once—"
"But it is! We'll starve if we don't!"
"My good young friend," said van Rijn patiently, "I see plain you have much to learn about politics. You Lannachska do not understand lying, I suppose because you do not get married. You tell the warriors, I say, that we can wait for a south wind all right but you know they are eager to come to grips with the foe and therefore they will be invited to play a small game. Each clan will pull so and so many cars down, and we time how fast it goes and make a prize for the best pullers."
"Well, I'll be accursed," said Srygen.
Trolwen nodded eagerly. "It's just the sort of thing that gets into clan traditions—"
"You see," explained van Rijn, "it is what we call semantics on Earth. I am old and short with breath, so I can look unprejudiced at all these footballs and baseballs and potato races, and I know that a game is hard work you are not required to do."
He belched, opened another bottle, and took a half-eaten salami from his purse. The supplies weren't going to last very much longer.
XIII
When the expedition was halfway down the Misty Mountains, their wind rose behind them. A hundred warriors harnessed to each railway car relaxed and waited for the timers whose hourglasses would determine the winning team.
"But they are not all so dim in the brain, surely," said Sandra.
"Oh, no," answered Wace. "But those who were smart enough to see through Old Nick's scheme were also smart enough to see it
was necessary, and keep quiet."
He huddled in a mordant blast that drove down alpine slopes to the distant cloudy green of hills and valleys, and watched the engineers at work. A train consisted of about thirty light little cars roped together, with a "locomotive" at the head and another in the middle. These were somewhat more sturdily built, to support two high masts with square sails. Given wood of almost metallic hardness, plus an oil-drip over the wheels in lieu of ball bearings, plus the hurricane thrust of Diomedean winds, the system became practical. You didn't get up much speed, and you must often wait for a following wind, but this was not a culture bound to hourly schedules.
"It's not too late for you to go back, my lady," said Wace. "I can arrange an escort."
"No." She laid a hand on the bow which had been made for her—no toy, a 25-kilo killing tool such as she had often hunted with in her home forests. Her head lifted, the silver-pale hair caught chill ruddy sunlight and threw back a glow to this dark immensity of cliffs and glaciers. "Here we stand or here we die. It would not be right for a ruler born to stay home."
Van Rijn hawked. "Trouble with aristocrats," he muttered. "Bred for looks and courage, not brains. Now I would go back, if not needed here to show I have confidence in my own plans."
"Do you?" asked Wace skeptically.
"Let be with foolishness," snorted van Rijn. "Of course not." He trudged back to the staff car which had been prepared for him: at least it had walls, a roof, and a bunk. The wind shrieked down ringing stony canyons, he leaned against it with his entire weight. Overhead swooped and soared the squadrons of Lannach.
Wace and Sandra each had a private car, but she asked him to ride down with her. "Forgive me if I make dramatics, Eric, but we may be killed and it is lonely to die without a human hand to hold." She laughed, a little breathlessly. "Or at least we can talk."
"I'm afraid—" He cleared a tightened throat. "I'm afraid, my lady, I can't converse as readily as . . . Freeman van Rijn."
"Oh," she grinned, "that was what I meant. I said we can talk, not him only."
Nevertheless, when the trains got into motion, she grew quiet as he.
Lacking their watches they could scarcely even guess how long the trip took. High summer had almost come to Lannach; once in twelve and a half hours, the sun scraped the horizon north of west, but there was no more real night. Wace watched the kilometers click away beneath him; he ate, slept, spoke desultorily with Sandra or with young Angrek who served as her aide, and the great land flattened into rolling valleys and forests of low fringe-leaved trees, and the sea came near.
Now and again a hotbox or a contrary wind delayed the caravan. There was restlessness in the ranks: they were used to streaking in a day from the mountains to the coast, not to wheeling above this inchworm of a railway. Drak'honai scouts spied them from afar, inevitably, and a detachment of rafts lumbered into Sagna Bay with powerful reinforcements. Raids probed the flanks of the attackers. And still the trains must crawl.
In point of fact, there were eight Diomedean revolutions between the departure from Salmenbrok and the Battle of Mannenach.
The harbor town lay on the Sagna shore, well in from the open sea and sheltered by surrounding wooded hills. It was a gaunt grim-looking complex of stone towers, tightly knitted together with the usual tunnels and enclosed bridges, talking in the harsh tones of half a dozen big windmills. It overlooked a small pier, which the Drak'honai had been enlarging. Beyond, dark on the choppy brown waters, rocked two score enemy craft.
As his train halted, Wace jumped from Sandra's car. There was nothing to shoot at yet: Mannenach revealed only a few peaked roofs thrusting above the grassy ridge before him. Even against the wind, he could hear the thunder of wings as the Drak'honai lifted from the town, twisting upward in a single black mass like some tornado made flesh. But heaven was thick with Lannachska above him, and the enemy made no immediate attack.
His heart thumped, runaway, and his mouth was too dry for him to speak. Almost hazily, he saw Sandra beside him. A Diomedean bodyguard under Angrek closed around in a thornbush of spears.
The girl smiled. "This is a kind of relief," she said. "No more sitting and worrying, only to do what we can, not?"
"Not indeed!" puffed van Rijn, stumping toward them. Like the other humans, he had arranged for an ill-fitting cuirass and helmet of laminated hard leather above the baggy malodorous native clothes. But he wore two sets of armor, one on top of the other, carried a shield on his left arm, had deputed two young warriors to hold another shield over him like a canopy, and bore a tomahawk and a beltful of stone daggers. "Not if I can get out of it, by damn! You go ahead and fight. I will be right behind you—as far behind as the good saints let."
Wace found his tongue and said maliciously: "I've often thought there might be fewer wars among civilized races, if they reverted to this primitive custom that the generals are present at the battles."
"Bah! Ridiculous! Just as many wars, only using generals who have guts more than brains. I think cowards make the best strategists, stands to reason, by damn. Now I stay in my car." Van Rijn stalked off, muttering.
Trolwen's newly-formed field artillery corps were going frantic, unloading their clumsy weapons from the trains and assembling them while squads and patrols skirmished overhead. Wace cursed—here was something he could do!—and hurried to the nearest confusion. "Hoy, there! Back away! What are you trying to do? Here, you, you, you, get up in the car and unlash the main frame . . . that piece there, you clothead!" After a while, he almost lost consciousness of the fighting that developed around him.
The Mannenach garrison and its sea-borne reinforcements had begun with cautious probing, a few squadrons at a time swooping to flurry briefly with some of the Lannachska flying troops and then pull away again toward the town. Drak'ho forces here were outnumbered by a fair margin; Trolwen had reasoned correctly that no admiral would dare leave the main Fleet without a strong defense while Lannach was still formidable. In addition, the sailors were puzzled, a little afraid, at the unprecedented attacking formations.
Fully half the Lannachska were ranked on the ground, covered by rooflike shields which would not even permit them to fly! Never in history had such a thing been known!
During an hour, the two hordes came more closely to grips. Much superior in the air, the Drak'honai punched time after time through Trolwen's fliers. But integrated by the Whistler corps, the aerial troops closed again, fluidly. And there was little profit in attacking the Lannachska infantry—those awkward wicker shields trapped edged missiles, sent stones rebounding, an assault from above was almost ignored.
Arrows were falling thickly when Wace had his last fieldpiece assembled. He nodded at a Whistler, who whirled up immediately to bear the word to Trolwen. From the commander's position, where he rode a thermal updraft, came a burst of messengers—banners broke out on the ground, war whoops tore through the wind, it was the word to advance!
Ringed by Angrek's guards, Wace remained all too well aware that he was at the forefront of an army. Sandra went beside him, her lips untense. On either hand stretched spear-jagged lines of walking dragons. It seemed like a long time before they had mounted the ridge.
One by one, Drak'honai officers realized . . . and yelled their bafflement.
These stolid ground troops, unassailable from above, unopposed below, were simply pouring over the hill to Mannenach's walls, trundling their siege tools. When they arrived there, they got to work.
It became a gale of wings and weapons. The Drak'honai plunged, hacked and stabbed at Trolwen's infantry—and were in their turn attacked from above, as his fliers whom they had briefly dispersed resumed formation. Meanwhile, crunch, crunch, crunch, rams ate at Mannenach; detachments on foot went around the town and down toward the harbor.
"Over there! Hit 'em again!" Wace heard all at once that he was yelling.
Something broke through the chaos overhead. An arrow-filled body crashed to earth. A live one followed it, a Drak'ho warrior
with the air pistol-cracking under his wings. He came low and fast; one of Angrek's lads thrust a sword at him, missed, and had his brains spattered by the sailor's tomahawk.
Without time to know what had happened, Wace saw the creature before him. He struck, wildly, with his own stone ax. A wing-buffet knocked him to the ground. He bounced up, spitting blood, as the Drak'ho came about and dove again. His hands were empty—Suddenly the Drak'ho screamed and clawed at an arrow in his throat, fluttered down and died.
Sandra nocked a fresh shaft. "I told you I would have some small use today," she said.
"I—" Wace reeled where he stood, looking at her.
"Go on," she said. "Help them break through. I will guard."
Her face was even paler than before, but there was a green in her eyes which burned.
He spun about and went back to directing his sappers. It was plain now that battering rams had been a mistake; they wouldn't get through mortared walls till Matthewsmas. He took everyone off the engines and put them to helping those who dug. With enough wooden shovels—or bare hands—they'd be sure to strike a tunnel soon.
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