He was right. A minute later hoofs clattered. Ed greeted his friends and told them what had happened. Then he climbed into the front wagon, and the caravan started off at a fast pace.
Jack was put in the wagon. His legs and hands were tied, but he wasn't gagged. He shouted, "Chuckswilly'll never forgive this. He'll kill you."
"No, he won't. Why? Because while attacking the dog-eaters, our brave leader will die in the vanguard. He will become a martyr to the cause."
Ed burst out laughing. In the middle of his laughter, a bright red-blue-and-white globe burst in the distant sky.
"That's Mowrey's rocket!" yelled Ed. "Polly must be leaving the cadmus!"
Lashes drew blood. The riding became a frenzy of shouts for more speed, of violent lurches and bumps as the wagons, rounding curves, skidded off the road, of wind rushing past his sweating face, and a steady but vain tugging and wrenching at the ropes around his wrists.
The race, which should have been eternally long, went fast. By the time he had rope-burned his wrists until they bled, had cursed until his dry mouth and rasping throat forced silence, the train had pulled into the Cage barnyard.
Ed jumped down and beat on the closed door of the barn. Zeb, one of the indentured servants, stuck his head out of the open door of the hayloft. His eyes widened, and he disappeared. A moment later, the big bar was drawn, and the door swung in. The wagons drove in, one after the other. Ed told Zeb to shut the door. Jack, struggling to his knees, saw his father rise from a pile of furs in a dark corner. He had puffy eyes, and the red marks on one side of his face snowed he had slept in one position.
Jack wondered about his mother and sisters. They were not supposed to know anything about what was going on. How could they sleep through all the snortings and whee-haings of the unicorns, the grind of wooden axles, the beating on the door, the shouting? And his mother? She'd know Walt was staying all night in the barn. What excuse could he give to fool her?
In some ways, thought Jack, this was a most amateurish and unsecret plot. Not that that would matter if his cousin succeeded.
There was a rapping on the big door. Zeb swung open the small door within the larger. Josh Mowrey stepped through. He was pale beneath his dark skin, and his mouth worked.
"You see my rocket?"
"Yes," said Ed. "What does it mean?"
"I see Kliz, you know, the Catcher of the Larks, come down the highway from the direction of the mountains. He been gone for two weeks, you know."
Josh paused for the confirmation he so desperately seemed to need. Ed nodded.
"He goes into a cadmus, the second from the left as you face the creek, you know. Then, about an hour ago, he comes out with R'li and Polly O'Brien. They build a fire and sit around it for a while, talking and barbecuing ribs. They got a couple of big sacks, the kind you take on long trips. I watch. Nothing happens. But I get to thinking. If Polly's showing herself like that, it means only one thing. You know?"
Suddenly he began wheezing heavily and coughing. When he'd mastered his fit, he said, "Damn it, Ed, can't we talk outside? You know I can't be near a unicorn without getting this asthma."
"So what if everybody in Slashlark does know what's going on? Stay here. And cut out the details. You're not writing a book."
Josh looked hurt.
"Well, if I get to wheezing, I'll be no good as a fighting man. Anyway, to me it meant she's getting ready for the Thrruk. But what's she waiting for? I can't tell; I'm too far away to hear them. And I don't care to crawl closer. You know how those horstels are, Ed. They can smell you a mile off and hear the drop of an eyelid. Isn't that so?"
Ed snarled, "Drag this out any more and I'll stick you, so help me!"
Josh wheezed and said, "Damn beasts! Don't get mad. Well, I'd just decided to sneak over, anyway, because I am a good stalker, you know. Then I saw something coming through the woods. When it was close enough so I could make out its outlines, my hair stood on end. That's not just a figure of speech, Ed. It stood. And was I happy I'd stayed where I was! I about filled my britches. You should have seen it."
Wang's voice was getting shriller. "Seen what?"
"Big as a house. Teeth three times as long as a bear's. A tail that could knock down a tree. Even though I didn't believe. . ."
"Do you want to die?"
"It was a dragon!"
Josh glanced about to soak up the astonishment and fear he had created.
Wang seemed to sense that if he didn't do something at once, he'd lose his command.
He shouted, "All right! Dragon or not, we're attacking! Men, unload this equipment! If you're not sure how the weapons operate, read the instructions! Shake it! It's not too long until dawn!"
Jack became aware of two things at once. Chuckswilly had regained consciousness and was being helped down from Tappan's wagon. And his father was walking toward him, ignoring everyone's greetings, his eyes steady on his son but glazed. He held the scimitar in his left hand. His eyes were red and swollen with tears, and his beard was soaked.
"Son," Walt spoke in a voice so low, so out of character, that Jack was frightened. "Tony told your mother and me a thing he could no longer keep to himself."
"And that was. . .?"
"He saw you kissing that -- that siren, R'li. Caressing her."
"Well?"
Walt's voice remained subdued. "You admit it?"
Jack refused to lower his eyes before his father's. "Why not? I'm not ashamed of it."
Walt gave a roar. He raised the scimitar. Ed grabbed his arm and wrenched so strongly that the blade fell to the ground. Walt gasped with pain and held his wrist, but he did not offer to pick up the weapon. Ed, however, stooped quickly to seize it.
As Walt stood there, breathing heavily, his eyes appeared to focus for the first time, to grasp that his son and his leader were both tied. "Chuckswilly! What's going on?" The dark man, ghastly with dried blood caking the side of his face, explained.
Walt could not move. Events were happening too fast for him. Struck from two sides, he could not decide which way to hit out. As a result, he did neither.
"We're raiding your cadmen tonight," Ed told him. "Are you helping us?" He swung the scimitar meaningfully.
"It's a revolt, is it?" whispered Walt. "What'd Jack do? Stand up for Chuckswilly?''
"Oh, Jack's all right," said Ed cheerily. The magic of the iron in his hand had uplifted him. "Jack just lost his head for a minute. But he's thinking straight now. Aren't you, Cuz?
"The testimony about his making love to a siren would be enough to condemn him to death on the spot. But, after all, he was just having a bit of fun. Weren't you, Jack? And sirens are beautiful. Not that Bess Merrimoth would appreciate hearing that. But she won't, will she, Jack? Why? Because you're going to kill off who first? Guess who?"
Jack said slowly, "R'li."
Ed nodded.
"That's the only way you'll redeem yourself. Wipe out your sin, and get in my good graces again, not to mention the Church's. Let me remind you that, from now on, it's going to be the correct thing in this county to be in my good graces.''
The ropes of the two bound men were cut. Even though Chuckswilly was now their prisoner, he was not handled roughly.
One of the men unloading the wagon said, "Ed, what'll we do? All those guns and stuff, and nobody knows how to handle them."
"Of course not," Chuckswilly said scornfully. "You bloody bucketing blowbrains never stopped to think you're going to need a lot of training before you become deadly with those. Why do you think I insisted this raid be canceled? What good is a gun to you if you can't load it properly, let alone aim it? Who knows how to handle that glass cannon? And the flamethrowers? Lamebrained clodhoppers, you've failed before you started!"
"The hell we have!" blazed Ed. "Men, if you've read the instructions, load your arms."
He detailed a gang as cannoneers and another to pull the machine along on its wheels. Within an hour, he had rehearsed his men. "Don't fire until you're
so close you can't miss. They'll be paralyzed just from the noise."
"And so will your men, the first time they pull the triggers," muttered Chuckswilly.
Shortly after, the entire group marched down the highway. Chuckswilly and Jack Cage were in the lead. Both were armed with rapiers, but each had a man with a pistol pointed at him a few yards behind.
Ed had been given courage and an exaltation by the touch of the fabulous steel. He sang softly and coaxed his men until they came to a little path that ran from the road and into the woods. This led to Cadmus Meadow. The plan was to proceed upon it, dragging the cannon after them, until they burst out upon the field.
In the woods, the cannon's wheels sank into the soft mud. The whole company together could not get it going.
Ed swore and said, "Abandon it. We don't need it, anyway."
Subdued by the loss, nervous about what was ahead and their unfamiliarity with the firearms, the HKers walked on. Whenever a weapon clanked or a man cracked a twig, the rest shushed him.
At last they had only a few bushes between them and the field's broad sweep. There was the remnant of a fire glowing before one of the cadmus entrances, but no horstel was in sight.
"Flamethrowers to the front," said Ed. His voice was strained, and he turned angrily to reprimand Josh for wheezing so loudly.
"There are twelve cadmi. When I give the signal, shoot your fire down the holes of the outer eight. Two men will stand guard at each of the other two entrances there. They will cut down anybody who tries to climb out. The remainder of the party will split into the designated halves. My men will follow me into the hole of the right-hand cadmus. The other half will follow Josh into the left. Chuckswilly will precede me; Jack will go before Josh. Walt, who do you want to go with?"
The elder Cage's eyes bulged. He shook his head and said hoarsely, "I don't know. Wherever you want me."
"Go with your son, then. Maybe you can keep him from turning coat and siding with the horstels."
The Walt whom Jack knew would have knocked Ed down at that insult. This one shook his head and said, "Boys, it isn't necessary to burn up all those goods stored underground. There's plenty for everybody to take home and enough left over for me. After all, it's my property. Don't wantonly destroy it. It isn't human to do so."
Jack cried, "Dad, for God's sake! Even at a time like this? What about the blood. . .?"
Ed's fist silenced him. He staggered back, a salty wetness in his mouth.
Walt blinked as if he couldn't understand his son. "Now that you've done. . . what you did, what else is there to think about?"
Then, in the next second, they had started to advance stealthily across the meadow.
The moon was bright with fullness. There was no wind. The only sound was the rustle of shoes through the ruggrass, a muffled cough that several swore at under their breaths, the wheezing of Josh Mowrey.
The circles at the bases of the cadmi were black and seemingly empty. Jack could not help visualizing eyes staring out from the shadows and hands gripping bows and spears. Was an arrow even then being centered on his unarmored chest?
Ed whispered to Mowrey, "Where do you suppose Polly is? Could she have left before we got here?"
Josh's eyes rolled whitely, and he wheezed, "I don't know. I'm not worried about her. What I'd like to know is where's that dragon?"
Ed snorted and said, "The only dragon you saw came from a bottle."
"Not me! When I drink, I don't wheeze. And you can hear me now, can't you? But where in hell could it be?"
As if he had been overheard and was being answered, a bellow came from directly behind them. It was a roar such as none had ever heard, a throatiness and a basso profundo that made a bear's seem reedy. They whirled; they screamed. The thing rushing from the woods loomed twice as high as a tall man. It ran on two thick legs, its columnar body upright. The legs were crooked like a dog's hind limbs except for the feet, which spread five tremendous toes to support its weight. Two arms stretched straight out. Compared with the lower extremities, they looked tiny. Actually, they were thick as a man's body. Each of its three-fingered hands held a club, a young tree trunk.
The teeth flashed wickedly in the moonlight.
Its face was a mixture of beast and man: a high crest of cartilage on the bald pate, a tall forehead, thick supraorbital ridges, flaring lyre-shaped ears, a sloping canine muzzle, a heavy hominoid jaw, a prominent chin, and a bagging wrinkled reddish wattle. A dozen pencil-thick whiskers bristled from the sides of the grinning lips.
Even as it charged with a sound that rolled back from the surrounding forest like thunder from clouds, another bellow came from the creekbank. The men wheeled to see a second dragon.
Ed, screaming like a maddened unicorn, managed to make himself heard by some of his men. "Flamethrowers! Shoot at them with your projectors! Fire'll scare them off!"
But the men were unfamiliar with their apparatus. Fright did not help their fumbling fingers. And half the twelve carrying the equipment threw it off their backs and ran.
One managed to ignite his thrower. A long fountain of red shot up into the night and fell, not on the oncoming monster, but on a group of men. Frantically, the thrower swerved his spray from them and toward the dragon. It was too late for half a dozen. Screaming, batting at their clothes, writhing on the ground, they burned. One ran for the creek. Halfway there, he fell and did not rise.
The flames forced the beast to pause, to whirl, to run around the mob in the hope it could get behind them where the projector could not reach it without frying other men.
Ed yelled, "Shoot your guns at their bellies! They're soft!"
He raised his double-barreled flintlock pistol and pulled on both triggers.
The explosion stopped both monsters. They glared, looking here and there. However, neither seemed to be hit. No blood spurted from their white abdomens.
Some of the men took heart. They, too, raised their pistols and longbarrels and squeezed the triggers. Four or five misfired. A dozen barked.
A man fell, struck in the back by a comrade who had shot wildly.
The men reloaded. Fear made their motions frenzied and clumsy; they spilled the powder and dropped the bullets.
Silently the dragons charged. They were too close to be stopped, and the flamethrower could not hose them without searing the men. Moreover, one of the beasts threw a club over the heads of the crowd. It struck the flame handler in the chest and knocked him, unconscious or dead, to the ground.
The unattended projector emptied itself across the meadow.
A colossus stormed by Jack, its thick, tapering tail lashing from side to side. He threw himself to the ground in time to hear the whish of plated flesh as it just missed crushing his skull. He heard the thwack of it shattering the bones of the man behind him.
For a few seconds he lay hugging the ground, shaking uncontrollably. When he had mastered himself enough to raise his head, he saw that the man who had been struck was his father. He was on his back, and his mouth bubbled blood. His right arm was bent just below the elbow at a grotesque angle.
Jack had no chance to see more, for a huge body rushed at him. Once more, he clutched the meadow to his chest while both he and the ground shook. A five-toed, sharp-clawed foot as long as his arm crashed hard by his head. It lifted, seemingly into the sky, and he saw it no more.
But he did not leap up, for close behind the first dragon came the other, gripping George How between its teeth. George screamed and writhed. The jaws clamped down. The fat youth, like a distended sausage breaking at both ends from pressure in the middle, squirted blood from head and feet.
He gave one piercing shriek, "Father!"
Then he dangled limply.
The first dragon turned its head and spoke. It sounded as if it said, in horstel child-talk, "Some fun, heh, sister?"
The second did not reply. It bit through George's body, and the severed portions fell to the ground, close to Jack. George's nose was on
ly a few inches from Jack's. The dead man's eyes were open in a gaze that seemed to Jack to say, "You are next."
Jack jumped up and ran. He did not aim for any particular destination, or he would not have fled to the nearest cadmus.
Just inside the entrance, he dived headlong. He didn't know whether the floor was six inches or sixty feet down. It seemed a hundred, but the bare earth floor was actually on a level with the meadow outside. Then and only then did he dare pause in his flight, to look back.
Others had the same idea. They were racing toward his shelter. Ed was in the lead, his short legs pumping desperately and his arm extended, with the scimitar held out at a forty-five degree angle from his body.
Just before Ed and the men behind him ran into the cadmus, another man arose belatedly from the seeming dead and tried to make the same flight. Even halfway across the meadow, the wheeze of Josh Mowrey could be heard. The dragons had, for that moment, quit their bellowing, and none of the wounded were crying out. For perhaps thirty seconds, there was one of those freakish silences that occur during even the noisiest battles. It was broken only by Josh's desperate, grating breath.
One of the dragons charged. Its footsteps thundered; it became a brutish figure outlined against the moon, its shadow blotting out the running pygmy. A huge arm raised. The club in its hand was a sinister chord bisecting the bright circle in the sky. It hung there a second and then dropped. There was a loud crack.
The wheezing was cut off. Josh was thrown forward by his own momentum plus that given by the blow. He slid for a dozen feet on the bloody and slippery grass, slid on his chest, for he had no head.
Then Jack's vision was curtained as the crowd forced him back into the cadmus.
Jack was shaken and his head whirled, but he realized he had an advantage over the newcomers. They were silhouetted by the moonlight, and they could not see him. It was easy to strike Ed's wrist with his fist and knock the scimitar from his grasp.
Ed yelled and clutched for his attacker and his uninjured hand. His cousin stooped over and picked up the blade and merged with the darkness. "Stand back!" Jack shouted. "Or I'll cut you down!"
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