Fire Time

by Poul Anderson

  Likewise did the Tassui. During the past octad, Overlings had been building fleets to harry islands from which the legions were departed, and the commerce between them. Arnanak had been too busy ashore for much buccaneering of his own. However, he used all the labor he could spare in Ulu’s shipyard. Some vessels he lent out to raiders whom he egged against the east coast and the Ehur archipelago. They pulled the attention and strength of the enemy in that direction while he readied his inland campaign. Some keels he held in reserve until now – now when his time looked ripe to close the ring.

  For the Zera sat only in Port Rua. Its sallies were fitful into those hinterlands which, a bare year ago, civilization had imagined it dominated. United behind Arnanak, the warders of Valennen beat off every such foray, or faded from sight and let it waste itself on emptiness.

  He was not content with that. As long as the Gathering had a sea-supplied base here, his flanks and rear would be too unsafe for the ventures further south that he planned on. Due haste was needful. Though scouts and spies reported no sign of a movement anywhere in the Gathering to send reinforcements, this could change. Before it did, he wanted Port Rua under siege ashore and blockade afloat… and not a single soldier getting home to fight on a later day.

  Thus he put himself at the head of a flotilla. They sailed afar to Castle Island, overcame a weak defense, pillaged widely, and tore down stone buildings raised by agents of the Gathering. Else these might have become fortresses. Arnanak meant for the inhabitants erelong to have Tassu masters, where they were not simply replaced in their still fertile home. Beyond this, his purposes were to learn by direct experience how well his naval organization, modeled on the legionary, worked; to exercise a number of quite young males; and to get away for a span from dull demands on the Overling of Overlings.

  On their way back northwestward, a typhoon scattered his ships. He didn’t believe any would be lost. His people had a tradition of outfacing wild weather. But it was the reason why he had only two hulls with him when he spied the vessel from Beronnen.

  ‘Sail ohai-ah!’

  The lookout’s call brought Arnanak springing to the poop. Seas ran high, gray-green and foam-laced, blue-black in their troughs. Spindrift flew blindingly and stingingly off wave-crests. Overhead, low clouds raced gray, high clouds roiled. Double shafts of sunlight struck through, double colored, to shatter in glints and spill in gleams. A wind shrilled nearly cold. The waters brawled and rumbled, the deck swung underfoot.

  He picked the strange craft out, a fleck afar. Behind it, the peak of a volcano on Black Island thrust above a dim horizon. Smoke blew tattered from the mountain’s throat. He focused a telescope he had once bought from a trader. The shape grew clear, not a lean low Valennener but a high-sided two-masted square-rigger such as plied out of Beronnen.

  ‘A Gathering transport, bound for Port Rua,’ he decided, and offered the telescope to Usayuk, the mate. ‘Surely alone. Steer to intercept and signal Devourer to come along.’

  ‘I’d say yonder’s a legionary, not a merchantman,’ Usayuk replied carefully. ‘Belike they’ve guards aboard and ballistas ready cocked.’

  ‘The better reason for a close look. Fear not. We can maneuver around them like fangfish closing in on a sea judge.’

  Usayuk stiffened. ‘I never said I was afraid.’

  Arnanak gave him a stark smile. ‘Nor did I. Let me own, instead, that I am he who feels a little unease, at what their faring may protend.’

  For if the enemy has decided after all to pay the cost of holding fast north of the equator– No, now. What use a single shipload?-’ Well, a convoy may have been flung apart as we were. Or if it carries something those humans are giving the legion to fight with–

  Arnanak thrust the thought away. Worry was bootless, the more so when he knew not with any surety what the will or the powers of the aliens were. Therefore let him go boldly forward. The Three would dance out his fate: in the mighty rhythms of Sun and Ember Star, and in that chaos the Rover brought, from which free will might snatch a chance to begin a new cycle of destinies.

  Commands and responses roared the length of Leaper’s decks. It had been tacking. To catch the foreigner meant a nearly straight downwind run. The mainmast boom came over in a thunder of cloth. Arnanak considered ordering the topsail unfurled, but abided by the mate’s judgment that jibs and mizzen simply be kept poled out wing and wing with the mainsail. Devourer did likewise. Both gaudy hulls bounded ahead.

  Males busked themselves. Deckhands fastened onto ankles those hooks whereby they could swarm into the rigging at need. Some climbed aloft as archers. Others went below to stand by the oars. The rest of the crew unlashed timbers and dovetailed these together to make a platform and gangway forward of the mast. There several took stance, while followers waited beneath. Arnanak was among the former. Aside from helmet and shoulderpieces, he had left off armor – it would drown him should he go overboard – and carried just shield, spear, and cutting weapons.

  The platform jutted slightly over the water. He stood at its edge, feet braced against roll, pitch, and yaw. The wind ‘from aft thrummed it in shrouds and tossed the leaves of his mane. It smelled of salt and wildness. To him came Igini his son, who asked in a growl, ‘When we board, may I take the lead?’

  ‘No, thats for me,’ Arnanak said ‘You may come right behind.’ An old thought passed through him, how foolish it really was that a leader must always be in the van. But he might not live to see his Tassui become a soberly calculating civilized race. ‘Anyhow, if they’re strong they won’t be worth the risk and loss of attacking, when our holds are already stuffed with booty.’

  ‘What? But then they’ll go make war against our brothers ashore!’

  ‘Say, rather, they’ll enter the cage we’re building. Frankly, I’d have steered wide of them, save that a glance across their decks should give a hint as to whether Sehala is serious about keeping Port Rua.’ Arnanak lifted his telescope again.

  They were preparing for battle on the southland craft. He saw only a few legionaries among the sailors. They might have more below, ready to spring a surprise, but he doubted that; they could not have foretold this encounter. To be sure, as Fire Time neared, merchant crews also got trained for combat. Nevertheless, here was not likely any troopship. It must be carrier of messages, incidental supplies, maybe a personage or two on a special mission.

  Then should he close? They’d give a stern reply. Two lucky hits from those ballistas fore and aft could wreck his vessels. Or he himself might be killed, and the alliance he had forged soon rust away. … Well, he took that hazard whenever he trod into action. And he might win a treasure or learn a thing of unreckonable value.…

  What was that form which came from a deckhouse? Two legs, no body-barrel whatsoever, wrapped in cloths though long yellow-brown strands fluttered from beneath a headband–

  ‘We fight!’ Arnanak bellowed.

  While shouts rang and weapons rattled around him, he leaned over the platform edge and told Usayuk: ‘Hark, they bear a human among them. Can we capture it, who knows what it may tell us, what ransom we can get or bargains make? Bring us alongside and grapple fast. I’ll lead our storm. But all we want is that human. The same eyeblink as we come back with it, cast loose and make off. Signal Devourer to take their starboard side, as we their port.’

  ‘Hu – man-n?’ The mate showed unease. Like most Tassui, he had merely heard rumors about the strangers; but those whispered of wizardry.

  ‘It may unleash a terror against us,’ Arnanak admitted. ‘Vu-wa, we can be no worse than slain, can we? And for sooth the Gathering will never of its free choice give us an opening unto those creatures.’ He raised his head and added in an iron tone: ‘Moreover, I am ally to the dauri.’

  Usayuk, and those others who heard, traced signs against ill luck. Yet they were heartened. Though nobody could be sure either what powers the dauri commanded, they lived much closer by than humans.

  The Torchbearer cast a light out of
the murk ahead, onto the Beronnener ship, as if to set it ablaze.

  Arrows whined from topmasts to decks. A ballista stone made a fountain within a javelin throw of Leaper. On both barbarian craft, sails were struck and oars thrust forth. They had worked themselves ahead of the southerner in such wise that its sails – the sole motive power it had – brought it straight in between them.

  Arnanak saw the human and a helper rush around, passing out metal tubes with stocks akin to a crossbow’s. Soldiers and sailors took unskilled aim. He saw an archer of his crumple and fall from the shrouds, to smash on deck in a splash of purple. But how different was this from a dartdeath? And there was no time for fear.

  Inner oars withdrew again. Hulls grated together. Hurled at the ends of cables, grappling irons bit fast.

  Swifter and more maneuverable, the northland ships did have less freeboard by a head-height. This alone had overawed many a would-be raider, in the bright days of the Gathering. But since then Arnanak had devised his knockdown platforms and caused them to be widely built.

  That on which he stood thrust above the gunwale of his enemy. He pounced downward. His sword belled and sparked on hostile iron.

  Beronneners swarmed against him. He laid around, struck aside a descending blade, caught ax-thunder on his shield, chopped into meat and bone. Few yells lifted. Breath loudened and hoarsened; in the chill wind, pelts steamed white. More Tassui boarded, and more. They cleared a space.

  Above heads and helmets, Arnanak saw the human. It stood beside a legionary on the foredeck. In its hands was a sorcerer’s weapon. But the maelstrom of infighting made firearms well-nigh useless. A shot was as likely to hit friends as foe, Arnanak deemed. Anyhow – move! He howled the war cry of UIu and pushed ahead.

  With him came his warriors. Their opponents had not awaited a breakthrough at a single place; that was not the way of boarders who sought to capture a ship. Arnanak’s gang hewed through their mass and sped across bare planks beyond.

  Igini outdashed his father and pounded first up the gangway. The human raised its weapon and squeezed trigger. Igini’s head exploded. He fell off the board and lay in purple-soaked shapelessness. Arnanak cast his ax. He could have thrown it to kill, but he meant to stun. The top of helve and blade caught the human in the midriff. It lurched and sat down. Its weapon clattered free. Arnanak reached the being and swept it into his grasp. The legionary had drawn sword and battled furiously. Sheer weight of arriving warriors drove him into the bows.

  The southerners rallied and loped against this little band which had let itself be pinched off. Arnanak’s males held the gangway. He himself went to the port rail. Gripped in his left arm, the human struggled vainly. His right waved at Usayuk. The mate ordered grapnels released. Driven by oars on the farther side, Leaper edged forward until its foredeck was below Arnanak. He sprang. Usayuk’s rowers kept their vessel in place while the rest of the raiders followed.

  They were not the whole group. Some, boxed amidships, must take whatever mercy the foe chose to give. Some lay dead, among them Igini, who had been young and glad. But a male could proudly lose a son or life in a cause like this – the capture of a human.

  ‘Fall off!’ Usayuk bawled. ‘Get away!’

  Devourer came into view from around the stern of the transport. Its attack on the starboard side had had much to do with making Arnanak’s exploit possible. Both Tassu craft set sail anew. Wind skirled for them. The Beronneners would have no hope of overhauling

  The human staggered to its feet and yelled words. The legionary who had tried to defend it appeared at the rail. He carried a chest which he must have hurried off to fetch from a cabin. Already a broad gap of water churned between him and his uncanny companion. He whirled the casket by a strap and let fly. His cast was heroic. The box boomed against the deckhouse

  ‘Overboard with that!’ Usayuk cried: for it might be deadly.

  The human could not have followed his Tassu, but did see how sailors jumped to obey. ‘No!’ it wailed in Sehalan. ‘Else I’ll die–’

  ‘Belay!’ Arnanak called ‘We’ll keep yon chest.’ And in Sehalan to the human, harshly because of Igini: ‘I do want you alive for a while at least.’

  XV

  They shipped Ensign Donald Conway to Mundomar in a large group of air corpsmen. The personnel carrier was old and overcrowded. You had to do everything by turns, by the numbers. To pigeonhole yourself in a bunk another fellow had been using, in the middle of a vast lattice of identical bunks, and lie there listening to your brothers in arms snore and smelling their farts somehow didn’t relate very well to crusades for rescuing gallant pioneers threatened by monstrous aliens and securing mankind’s future among the stars. Not that he had been naïve, exactly – old Uncle Larreka was blunt-spoken when he shared his memories – yet he had pictured himself as a kind of legionary. Was he, instead, a plug-in unit?

  Well, he triumphed at the poker table, and refrained from admitting this was because he had learned the hard way, from his sister Jill. That made him wonder how she was doing, and Mother and Dad and Alice and her husband and their kids. He missed them more than anybody he had met on Earth.

  Monotony became tension as the convoy neared its goal. In merely interplanetary space, it would certainly be detected by the Naqsans, whose fleet was likewise busy around that sun. If they decided on an assault–

  Tension became terror. The Naqsans did attack. And the air corpsmen had nothing to do but crouch jammed together between blank bulwarks. If they took a direct hit, they would likely never know it. Conway learned how excellent was the American expression ‘sweating it out’. To judge from the stink and clamminess, his skin exuded every poison his body could make.

  After many hours – mostly devoted to maneuvers and computations, then a swift burst of furies, then more hours when men must wait – the enemy evidently decided the price was too high, and withdrew. The convoy had suffered losses of its own. These included a ranger which had taken a near miss, peeling back half its hull. The crew was spacesuited, but a number of suits got ripped open, and all men took varying amounts of blast, heat, and hard radiation. The convoy rescued what casualties it could and divided them among the ships that remained.

  Travelers on the personnel carrier gave up bunks and helped tend the wounded while the voyage proceeded through its last stages. Don Conway thus experienced men with pulverized bones, with faces cooked away and eyeballs melted, with vomiting and diarrhea and the sloughing off of hair, skin, flesh, intelligence. He had seen death before, in animals and a few sophonts; but the latter had been peaceful. Now he understood why, for a year after Aunt Ellen perished in the Dalag, Jill had had nightmares. He even guessed this was part of the reason for her closeness to Larreka.

  But Aunt Ellen was the victim of a senseless accident. These men had died, were dying, would survive as cripples when cloning wasn’t feasible, in a great cause. Right?

  At first his unit was stationed near Barton, the capital of Eleutheria, largest human settlement on Mundomar. Action was slight everywhere on the planet. The front had stabilized, which Conway read as ‘stalemated’. Desultory clashes occurred on land, in the air, at sea. ‘Wait a while,’ Eino Salminen warned. ‘The lull is mainly due to lack of supplies on either side. But Earth and Naqsa are pouring in matériel. Soon the fun begins.’

  ‘Why can’t we blockade?’ Conway inquired.

  ‘They would try the same against us. We would get battles with heavy nuclear weapons at satellite altitudes, maybe in atmosphere. Bad enough to meet in deep space. Close-in fighting of that kind would probably ruin the planet we are supposed to be fighting about. Worse, it could provoke a full-scale war between the mother worlds.’

  Conway guessed he understood this wisdom. Neither Eleutherians nor Tsheyakkans missiled each other’s towns. The latter, in their drive to regain Sigurdssonia, had occupied several communities of the former; but he learned to scoff (privately) at what atrocity stories he heard. If you checked, the proven horrors were incide
ntal to combat – children got in the way of bullets, et cetera – and Tsheyakkan military governors, while strict, treated Eleutherians as humanely (!) as was the case where situations were reversed. Maybe more so, but censorship made it impossible to discover the truth of that.

  He was glad to be out of the spaceship and able to stride about freely, in safety. However, he found little to do on leave. Barton had a few night clubs, live theaters, and whatnot. If you’d been on Earth, they seemed dull, crowded, overpriced. It was easier to stay on base and watch a 3V recording. A couple of philanthropic organizations made an effort to get the citizens and their new allies acquainted, by way of dances and invitations to homes. By and large, the results made Conway uncomfortable. These were good folks, no doubt; their courage and devotion were fantastic; but weren’t they, well, rather dour?

  A girl asked while she danced with him: ‘Why have no more of you come?’

  Another girl declined his suggestion of an evening out: ‘I’m in war production, you know, working every day. No, please don’t feel sorry for me. This is what I want to do – serve. It’s different for you, of course. You’ve always been rich and safe.’

  His host at dinner got a tad drunk and said: ‘Yes, I’ve lost one boy already. Two more are down there. Earth supplies weapons, we supply warm bodies.’ He grew indignant when Conway remarked that this was equally true of Naqsa and the Tsheyakkans.

  The countryside offered roads where a person might hike. But Conway thought it unattractive. No matter how thoroughly terraformed, the district remained flat, hot, wet, almost always thickly overcast. Amidst regimented trees and fields, green though they were, he missed Ishtar’s wild red and gold; he missed a sight of sun, moons, stars. Naturally the Eleutherians were emotional about their homeland. But did he have to be?

  The unit was ordered to the front. Action was rising afresh.