“He ain’t too heavy. Barely,” the ’Cat assured. “You hafta ride him single, less you strap that gun on another,” he called.
Earl set his jaw and stepped forward again. “I’ll keep my gun,” he snarled. “And I’ve rode a horse before. How different can it be? He’ll just follow along, right?”
Another ’Cat snorted a laugh. “Sure—if you can hold on. You fall off, bust open, he gonna eat you! Them straps won’t hold his mouth shut long, he gets tempted by too sweet a snack!”
“Shut up, you fish-faced little monkey!” Earl roared. “I’ll stay on! I can ride anything with feet. Gimme a hand with this gun!”
Matt rode behind the corporal, his Springfield slung across his back. He was a little unsteady and wasn’t sure what to do with his hands until the ’Cat told him to “grab on me”! After that, it was easy. The me-naak had a smooth, sure-footed gait even through the muddy debris, and its back was steady as a rock. Matt knew the creatures grew tolerant, even apparently fond of longtime riders, and the cav-’Cats often became very attached to them as well. Their thick thoracic case and rough hide made them nearly bullet- and arrow-proof, and they were more terrifying that any medieval warhorse when their muzzles were removed in close combat. If it weren’t for their occasional tendency to try to eat their riders in a fit of pique, they’d be better than horses. Of course, horses bite, stomp on your feet, and sometimes try to throw you, Matt reflected. He looked around.
The column that left the docks was making good time, and there was a minimum of straggling. He knew his destroyermen and ’Cats had been just as hesitant to ride as he, but riding double, there seemed to be few problems. One beast was far behind, acting up, but it was starting to rain again and he couldn’t see who rode it. Probably Lanier, he supposed, with one of the guns. Never should’ve let him keep the thing, but there’s nothing for it now. Passing the rearward trenches of the troops guarding the Grik civvies, he saw another cluster of riders trotting toward the charred hovels those creatures dwelt in, and wondered what that was about. He looked forward. Suddenly, they were at the base of the Wall of Trees. Looking high above, he saw the flash of rifles and the cloud of gun smoke swirling at its peak for a good distance to the left and right.
“Hold on!” the cav-’Cat warned. “We goin’ straight up, an’ it’s kinda steep!”
“Straight to the center?” Matt asked as the meanie made its first lunge upward.
“Ay. The Maroons is holdin’ well enough on the right,” the ’Cat admitted grudgingly, “but these Griks is hittin’ the center hardest. Major Risa don’t know if they doin’ it on purpose, to break through an’ roll up either side, or they doin’ it by accident, just chargin’ at the middle like they always used to do. Don’t matter. It’ll work just the same if the Raiders break.” Matt could see that was close to happening. The firing was intense, and crossbow bolts fluttered by them even here, but now bayonets flashed and the defenders were edging back as more and more Grik gained the crest.
“Bring us up behind the Raiders, parallel to their position!” Matt ordered.
“That’s what I’s gonna do!” the ’Cat shouted back to be heard over the fighting. Curving to the left on the high angle, reverse side of the wall, the ride was much more frightening—but it didn’t last long. “Off here!” the ’Cat cried. “Holders!” he shouted. Even as Matt’s landing party dropped from the animals, one ’Cat in four gathered the reins to hold the me-naaks as their riders raced up the slope with their carbines.
“Riflemen! With me!” Matt shouted, taking the Springfield off his back and affixing the bayonet. Others were doing the same.
“What about the machine guns?” Bernie shouted back.
“We can’t just shoot up there from here!” Matt answered. “Put ’em together and bring ’em up ready to fire.” He looked at the others. “We have to push the Grik back over the edge first, see? Follow me!” With that, he staggered up the wet, mushy slope toward the sagging line, followed by forty-odd ’Cats and a ragged cheer. Their puny numbers and gasping cheer had no effect on the Grik. They couldn’t see it or hear it, most likely. But the exhausted ’Cats and men of the 1st Raider Brigade knew what it meant, and with cav-’Cats and their carbines first, then Matt’s destroyermen joining them, they fought back with renewed vigor.
Springfields boomed, not as loud as the Allin-Silvas up close, but with greater pressure that pounded eardrums in the press. They fired faster too, bolts working feverishly and stripper clips reloading five rounds in the time Allin-Silvas took to load one. Blitzers stuttered, and the distinctive Ta-ta-tat! Ta-ta-tat! of Thompsons joined in, accompanied by the Wham-wham-wham! of Packrat’s BAR. Matt shot a Grik in the face, right in its open mouth, and it fell away, but another was there before he even worked his bolt, swinging its curved sword in a wide arc aimed at his head. Simon Herring shot it, then gave a high-pitched yell and lunged forward with his bayonet, toppling it backward. Matt nodded at the wide-eyed man, who was wiping spattered blood off his face with his hand, and finished chambering another round. He fired. Chief Jeek was suddenly there beside him, firing a Thompson. Rain sizzled on the hot barrel, and smoky brass spewed in the air. Matt realized the battered weapon was the same one Gray was using when he died, and Jeek was doing the same thing with it—protecting him.
“Thank God you’re here!” Major Jindal yelled in his ear, jabbing past him with a bayonet at a Grik trying to slink in low. The creature squealed and another tripped over it, taking three rounds from Jeek’s tommy gun that spewed steaming gobbets back at them.
“Where’s Risa?” Matt demanded, fending off a spear aimed at his face and slamming the rifle barrel down hard on a Grik head. Herring shot it.
“God knows! To the right, I think! The Maroons are fighting well, like devils in fact, but they were having a hard time of it where their lines touch ours. She took a squad with Blitzers to bolster them!”
“When?”
Jindal gestured helplessly.
“Doesn’t matter,” Matt said. “We have to push them over the crest to use our machine guns, and this looked like the toughest spot from behind. Kill them!” he roared, his voice cracking in the dense smoke flowing back over the peak, but he doubted his words went far in the more violent wind and heavier rain that assailed him now. The wind’s come around more out of the west, his subconscious sailor’s mind told him without asking. Herring screamed, dropping his rifle in the rotten wood, mud, and churned-up vegetation that grew from it. He went to his knees, clutching his abdomen, and a Grik clamped jaws on his shoulder and tried to pull him away. He screamed again and fell forward, flailing his hands and feet for purchase to resist. Matt shot the Grik in the head and its jaws slacked, allowing Jeek and another ’Cat to drag Herring back. “Corps-’Cat!” Jeek shouted.
“Keep pushing!” Matt yelled, stuffing rounds in his rifle and throwing the stripper clip away. He’d reached the peak at last, but the fight was desperately close and he had to clear a spot for the.30s! Something wet and slimy was underfoot, and he slipped and fell. Jeek and Jindal crowded around him, firing and stabbing, as he tried to climb his rifle, but something grabbed his leg and claws pierced his calf. He looked and saw the Grik whose guts he’d stepped in trying to drag him to its teeth. Flipping open the flap on his holster, he drew his 1911 Colt, thumbed the safety down, and blew the thing’s eye out. Its claws spasmed and he yelled, but then the claws relaxed.
“Gangway, you buncha fuzzy monkeys!” Earl Lanier bellowed, waddling up behind, the heavy machine gun cradled in his arms. “Here! Next to the Skipper!” he ranted, and a ’Cat dropped a tripod that spattered Matt with bloody mud. Lanier splashed to a knee and dropped the pintle in the hole. “Feed me!” he roared, and Matt couldn’t help barking a laugh, considering the source, and Lanier glared at him while the ’Cat quickly positioned a long ribbon of shiny brass shells.
“Get the Skipper back, Jeek,” Earl shouted over th
e wind and rain and battle. “He’s in the way!” Jeek seemed to notice Earl for the first time, as well as the fact that Matt was down, and he and Jindal dragged Matt behind the gun. “Get a load o’ this!” Earl growled, racking the bolt and pointing the weapon at a new surge of Grik, but instead of the expected chattering spray of copper-jacketed lead, there was only a muffled clack, barely heard. Earl’s face lost all expression. “Now, ain’t that the god-awfulest sound you ever heard?” he murmured, and frantically racked the bolt again. Jindal had helped Matt to his feet, and for the first time he finally looked down on the swarm of Grik below, choking the area between him and the jungle. At a glance, they seemed numberless, but Jindal pointed at the trees, indistinct in the storm-lashed rain. “No more coming!” he gasped. “No more coming out of the jungle! This must be all of them, at last!” He seemed . . . relieved, and Matt took his word, but looking down, he still saw a hell of a lot of Grik climbing toward them. What, “only” twenty or twenty-five thousand more?
“Get that thing shooting or get it the hell out of the way and let somebody else in!” he ordered Earl. “Bernie!” he yelled back down the slope. “Get them in! Anywhere you can!” He couldn’t see more than a few paces to either side, but it looked like this was the only position so far. Or maybe not, he reevaluated, hearing rapid fire from one of the gun embrasures he’d seen coming up. Most were still spitting canister, but maybe that gun was damaged or out of ammunition. Bernie might find other places. He looked at the swarm and again at Earl, who was slapping and cursing his weapon. No time. Earl would get his gun going or he wouldn’t. The others would find their own positions or not—there was nothing left to do but fight. His leg ached where the Grik had clawed him, and his eyes were blurred by rain and blood, with a near wall of water pouring off his helmet rim when he looked down. Crossbow bolts still fluttered thickly, but their strings were wet and they were much less powerful. Blitzers and rifles still chattered and cracked in response, but there were so many Grik—and they just kept coming. The ones they’d pushed back were having a tough time regaining their ground, scrabbling up the slippery slope on all fours, the rain directly in their upturned faces. Many had even discarded their weapons, coming on with just their teeth and claws. Nothing left to do but fight, Matt told himself again, and thrusting his pistol in his belt, he raised his Springfield once more. “Let ’em have it!” he shouted at those around him.
• • •
Hij Geerki slid down from the me-naak he’d ridden to this ravaged area between the “civilian” Grik and the frustrated troops guarding them. Not far away, to his left, the battle raged at the top of the Wall of Trees, and he yearned to be there, fighting as he’d done in Indiaa. What a strange craving that is, he reflected. I am no warrior, and I am old and nearly useless. Yet, I feel . . . compelled somehow, to help these friends of my master, General Lord Muln Rolak. Very strange indeed. The same apparent “First Hij” of these resident Grik that he’d spoken to before was waiting for him in the rain, as Geerki had requested. That had been simple enough to arrange. English was considered the “scientific” tongue, and enough upper-class Hij could read it, at least. A message had been sent to the commander of the entrenched brigade to write out the request, put it in a water bottle, and then just throw it toward the surviving Grik huddled under whatever shelter they could find. That was how he’d first made contact. That had been a much different situation, however, and he wasn’t sure they’d meet him this time, but this one did. Geerki peered at the First Hij standing before him, warm rain soaking his thick, finely woven, hooded cape, and wondered how best to proceed. Summoning himself to behave as he’d seen his master do in similar situations, he did his best to project an air of confidence.
“You have had ample time to consider ‘The Offer,’” he said. “I must hear your reply.”
“A strangely generous ‘offer,’ made by hunters to those who do not hunt,” the creature observed. “And not an offer to join the hunt. You ask me to consider a proposal so distressingly unprecedented that I may as well contemplate walking across the sea—or flying, like a winged beast! It seems impossible that anyone could even imagine such a thing.”
“We fly,” Geerki pointed out dryly, “as do Ghaarrichk’k now. Nothing is impossible. Even offers such as the one I brought you, to those such as us, from warriors. My masters make ‘offers,’ alliances, accommodations, of all sorts among themselves—and to other folk like us that I have seen.” He clasped his breast. “I serve them myself, and I thrive.”
“So you say,” the First Hij replied skeptically.
“You can doubt me? Here I am before you!”
The First Hij sighed. “It is so difficult to know what to do in these strange times. Prey has come to the Celestial City, slain our Giver of Life, and now ‘offers’ to give us life in her stead. I am not able to believe such things even as I see them.” He jerked his snout toward the battle. “And perhaps I should not. Warriors have come. If they destroy your masters, all will return to as it was before, for us. It is so much simpler to wait for that than to contemplate the unsettling thoughts you bring. I believe we should wait.”
“If you wait for all to be as it was, then you wait in vain. The Ghaarrichk’k will not win this fight. And even if they do, they will slaughter you for what you have seen. They have done it everywhere else.” He cocked his head. “But I come to tell you that you may wait,” Geerki said to the other’s surprise, “as long as ‘wait’ is all you do.” He stared up at the dark, heavy clouds and let the rain wash his face. “I was once as you, so I understand your hesitation. But having seen and done the things I have, lived as I have, since accepting my own ‘offer’ from my master, I am no longer Ghaarrichk’k, and I despise the miserable existence you would again embrace. Even so, I will force you to make no choice except to do absolutely nothing until you do decide.”
“What could we do? We are not warriors.”
“You might cause a distraction, as I suspect you’ve been urged to do by the warriors who remain among you.” He held up a hand. “Do not protest! Do not lie. I know it is so. Coordination was required for this attack, and it could have had no other source.” He made a very human shrug like he’d seen General Pete Alden make so often. “Still, the offer remains. You may contemplate further, as I have said, whether you wish to truly live for the first time in your life, and you may do that for as long as you like. But you must decide this instant whether you will do absolutely nothing while the battle proceeds—or die.”
“How can you know which I choose, in truth?”
“Choose to live by destroying the warriors among you and casting them here upon this muddy ground. They will not die easily and there will be fighting. They are warriors, after all, and your only weapons are those you were born with. The brigade behind me will see the fighting and will leave you to join the greater battle. If they do not see you do what I say, they will destroy each and every one of you—and then leave to join the battle. It’s actually quite simple.”
“What you propose is not ‘doing nothing,’” the First Hij grated uneasily, glancing behind him.
“From my perspective it is,” Geerki suddenly snarled, “as it relates to the outcome of the battle here today.” He sneered. “Even this, my masters here would have done for you, had you made the greater choice sooner. Consider it the price of indecision.” Geerki turned to stalk away, but the First Hij called to him. “How soon must you see us . . .” He paused, probably glancing behind him again, toward where warrior Hij doubtless watched. “How soon must you see us ‘doing nothing’?” he pleaded.
“Now,” Geerki replied. “I go to stir the troops that guard you to march to battle—or destroy you all. You have until I reach them to begin . . . doing nothing,” he almost spat, amazed that he sprang from the same species as that loathsome creature. He knew many of his master’s friends remained skeptical that he truly was as devoted to them as he tried to prove each day, bu
t he forgave them. What else were they to think, given the evidence of the Grik at large? But he knew the difference between what he was and what he’d been, and thanked the Lemurian’s Maker of All Things that he’d been captured that day in Raan-goon. He did spit then, hacking a gobbet of phlegm from deep in his throat, and quickened his pace. Long before he reached the trenchline, he heard the growing tumult of fighting behind him.
“Now you can go,” he told the Lemurian officer waiting expectantly below. He looked northeast to where the “main” battle led by General Queen Safir Maraan raged on the beach across the storm-ripped harbor. “I ser’ you, Lord!” he said aloud, fervently.
The Wall of Trees
Five machine guns were up and running now, steaming, hissing, crackling, spitting fire, and scything Grik away like twigs from a broom. They tumbled back, falling on others, tripping them, sliding or rolling down the slope. More crawled over them, clawing at mud and bodies, roaring defiance and rage. Canister gusted from embrasures, sweeping dozens down, right in front of their muzzles, and.50-80 Allin-Silvas,.30-06 Springfields, and.45 ACP from Blitzers, Thompsons, and 1911s continued to slay and maim. Bayonets did their grisly work as the Grik lapped at the summit, tearing bowels, gouging eyes, ripping throats—but the Grik were killing too, with their wicked spears, swords, claws, and teeth, and the Raiders’ line was thinning. The slope ran with blood and gore mixed with feces, and the wind slammed the stench in the defenders’ faces, causing many to retch even as they fought. Nothing Matt had seen in this war, except maybe the fight for Walker, compared to the concentrated killing he and his friends were doing. But still the Grik came on. Worse, since they hadn’t been able to use the machine guns all at once and mass their fire, they hadn’t been able to create the sudden, decisive edge Matt wanted—and they hadn’t been able to bring enough ammunition to keep them going long. So now they were feeding five guns with the ammo they brought for nine, and they were already running low.
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