Eric John Stark

by Leigh Brackett

  “You were wrong,” said Balin, peering. “There is nothing on the plain.”

  “Go kick that sentry awake,” Stark told him, and strode off to rouse the other one. The man snarled at him and Stark straightened him up with a rough hand, pushing the brazier over into the street below. “There is something out there that you should see,” he said.

  Swiftly now, in the thin air of Mars, the dawn came with a rush and a leap, flooding the world with harsh light. It flashed in cruel brilliance from sword-blades, from spearheads, from helmets and burnished mail, from the war harness of beasts. It glistened on bare russet heads and on coats of leather, and it set the banners of the clans to burning, crimson and gold and green, bright against the snow.

  For as long as a man might hold a breath there was no sound, not a whisper, in all the land. Then the sentry turned and ran, his iron-shod boots pounding on the stone. A great gong was set up on the parapet. He seized the hammer and began to beat the alarm, and the sound was picked up all around the circumference of the Wall where other gongs added their brazen booming.

  Out among the tribesmen a hunting horn sent forth one deep cry to split the morning. The wild skirling of the mountain pipes came after it, and the broken thunder of drums, and a wordless scream of exultation that rang back from the Wall of Kushat like the very voice of battle.

  The men of Mekh began to move.

  They came slowly and raggedly at first, the front ranks going at a walking pace that quickened as the press of warriors behind them pushed forward, until all at once they were running and the whole army began to break and flow, and the barbarians swept toward the city as water sweeps over a broken dam.

  They came in knots and clumps of tall men, running like deer, leaping, shouting, swinging their great brands. Riders spurred their mounts until they raced with bleeding flanks and their bellies to the ground. There was no order, no array of neat and studied ranks advancing according to a plan. Behind the runners and the riders came more and more men and beasts until they became indistinguishable as such and were simply a motion, a tossing and rushing and trampling that shook the ground.

  Ahead of them all came a solitary figure in black mail, bearing a sable axe and riding a tall beast trapped all in black.

  Stark became aware that he was leaning far over the parapet and that Balin was trying to pull him back. “Did you have some idea of single combat?” Balin asked, and Stark stared at him, and Balin drew back, away from him. “One favor, friend. Don’t become my enemy, please—my nerves would never stand it. But your turn against Ciaran must come later.”

  He pointed along the parapet where soldiers were running toward them, shouting at them to get off the Wall. Stark shrugged and followed Balin back down the steps and then up another set to the roof of the building. Thanis followed them, and they clambered out over the cold slates to watch. And again Stark was withdrawn into his stony patience, but only when Ciaran was hidden from him did he take his eyes off the black helmet.

  Kushat had come violently to life. The gongs still bellowed intermittently. Soldiers had begun to pour up onto the Wall. There seemed to be very many soldiers until their numbers were balanced off against the numbers of the barbarians and the length of the Wall. Mobs of citizens swarmed in the streets, hung out of windows, filled the roofs. A troop of nobles went by, brave in their bright mail, to take up their posts in the square by the great gate.

  “What do you think now?” asked Balin softly, and Stark shook his head.

  “This first attack won’t carry. Then it depends on whether Ciaran is leader enough to hold his men at the Wall.” He paused. “I think he is.”

  They did not speak again for a long while.

  Up in their high emplacement the big ballistas creaked and thrummed, hurling boulders to tear great gouges in the flesh and bone of the attackers. From both sides the muted song of the horn bows became a wailing hum, and the short bone arrows flew in whickering showers. Slingers rattled their stones as thick as hail. War was a primitive thing here in the Norlands, as it was now over all of Mars except where the Earthman’s weapons had been brought in, not for lack of ingenuity but for lack of metal and chemicals and power. Even a drained and dying world could still find hide and stone and bone and enough iron to forge a blade, and these simple, ancient ways were efficient enough. Men fell and were carried or kicked off the ledges by their fellows, and below them the barbarian dead began to lie in windows. The blood-howl of the clans rang unceasingly on the frosty air, and Stark heard the rap of scaling ladders against stone. And he began to think that he was wrong and this first charge was going to carry after all. The soldiers of Kushat fought bravely, but it was their first and only battle and they were indeed like folded sheep against the tall killers of the mountains.

  Still the Wall held. And by mid-morning the barbarian wave had beaten its strength out on the black stones. The men of Mekh grew silent and moved sullenly back across the plain, carrying their wounded with them, leaving their dead behind.

  Thanis said, “You see, Stark? The Wall—the Wall protects us.” Her face was drawn and over-bright with hope. “You see? They’re going away.”

  Stark said. “They have left their dead. Among the tribes I know, the men of Kesh and Shun, this is a pledge that they will return. I would guess that these have the same custom. And look there.” He pointed out across the plain. “That black banner with the lightning stroke. That is Ciaran’s standard, and see how the chiefs are gathering to it.”

  Looking at the thinned ranks of the soldiers on the Wall, Balin said, “If this is victory, one is all we can afford.”

  But the city screamed with joy. People rushed into the streets to embrace the soldiers. The nobles rode the circuit of the Wall, looking well pleased. And on the highest tower of the king’s hall a crimson banner shook out on the wind.

  Stark said to Thanis, “Bring us food, if you will. There’ll be little time later on.”

  She said fiercely, “I don’t believe you, Stark. They’re beaten.” But she went and brought them food. The sun rose higher, and they waited.

  A little after noon the barbarian army began to move again. It split itself into three spearheads, with a fourth body of men in reserve. Two spearheads launched themselves at two widely separated segments of the Wall, while the third simply waited. And Stark nodded.

  “This is what Ciaran should have done at first. But barbarians are independent and have to be crushed once before they’ll listen. Now we’ll see. And the nobles had better get their reserves on the Wall.”

  The reserves came, running wildly. The forces of the defenders divided themselves raggedly and rushed to the two threatened points to repel the tribesmen already swarming up their ladders onto the parapet. Now the rest of the Wall was only thinly guarded.

  The third barbarian spearhead hurled itself at the great gate.

  Now the city was silent again except for the noises of battle. And Thanis said abruptly, “What is that—that sound like thunder?”

  “Rams,” Stark answered. “They are battering the gate.”

  He became very restless, watching as the officers tried to meet this new danger with their increasingly inadequate forces. The party attacking the gate was well organized. The sweating red-haired giants who swung the rams were protected by shield-men who locked their long hide shields together overhead to form a roof, warding off missiles from above. Other shield-men knelt to provide cover from behind which bowmen and slingers could sweep the Wall. Out on the plain, by the black standard, Ciaran waited with some of the chiefs and the impatient body of reserves, who were beginning to howl and cry like hounds chained up in sight of the hunt.

  Stark said to Balin, “It would be better if you went now. Take the talisman, gather your men…”

  Balin struck his fists down hard against the states. “Not one man will leave Kushat without fighting for it.” He glared angrily at Stark
, who shrugged.

  “Their chance is coming.” He nodded to where press gangs were stating to beat the Quarter for men. “Let’s go and meet them, then.” He stood up and turned to Thanis. “You asked me last night to tell you how you could fight.” He took off the belt and fastened it around her body underneath her cloak. “Take this, and what food and blankets you can carry, but above all this. Go, and wait for us at the Festival Stones.”

  She seemed about to defy him, and he told her gently, “You have the talisman. It’s up to you to see that it’s not taken.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed, and Balin said impatiently, “Will you stand all day?” He kissed her on the cheek and then pushed her bodily ahead of him off the roof and down the stairs. As they passed the door of the room he added, as though to make sure she understood, “And wait. Someone will come.”

  He ran on past her, down the steps. Stark smiled and said, “Be careful.” He followed Balin. At the foot of the steps he glanced back and she was gone inside the room, taking with her Camar’s belt and the talisman. He felt light and free, as though he had been relieved of a heavy stone.

  They joined a thickening flow of men who needed no urging from the press gangs to go and fight for their city. Balin ran beside Stark, and his face was so set and white around the tips that Stark said, “When you run the first one through and he screams, and you reflect open your mutual humaness, remember that he came here of his own free and greedy will to kill you.”

  Balin snarled at him. “Thanks, but I don’t expect to have that trouble.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Stark, “you will.”

  The weapons of the dead and wounded soldiers were heaped together in piles to supply the citizenry. Stark and Balin armed themselves and went up onto the Wall.

  IX

  It was a waste of time, and Stark knew it. He thought that probably a fair number of the men swarming up with them knew it too, and certainly for the thieves at least it would have been much easier simply to slip away out of Kushat and avoid the inevitable. But he was beginning to have considerable respect for the people of Kushat. To his simple way of thinking, a man who would not fight to defend what was his did not deserve to have it and would not have it for long. Some people, he knew, professed to find nobility in the doctrine of surrender. Maybe they did. To him it was only a matter of making a virtue out of cowardice.

  At any rate, they fought, these men. Thief and weaver, butcher and blacksmith, stonemason and tavern-keeper, they fought. They were not very good at it, and the officers who ordered them this way and that along the Wall were not much better. The intermittent thunder of the rams still boomed from the gateway. The barbarian spearheads attacking the Wall began to play a game of shift, striking and then withdrawing to strike again in another place. “Playing with us,” Stark thought, and noticed that the supply of arrows seemed to be exhausted, as more and more of the defenders threw away their bows. He looked out at the black standard, where it waited on the plain.

  And then the wait was over.

  The mounted standard-bearer lifted the banner and rode with it to the forefront of the reserve force. The blackmailed form of Ciaran rode in its shadow. The pipers set up a thin wild crying, and the mass of men was suddenly in motion, coming down on Kushat like a thunderbolt.

  Stark said to Balin, “Don’t wait too long, friend. Remember there is a second battle to be fought.”

  “I know,” said Balin. “I know.” His face was agonized, watching the death of his city. He had not yet found occasion to flesh his blade.

  The occasion came swiftly.

  A ladder banged against the stones only a few feet away. Men came leaping up the rungs, fierce-eyed clansmen out to avenge their fallen brothers and wipe out the defeat they had suffered that morning. Stark was at the ladderhead to greet them, with a spear. He spitted two men through with it and lost it as the second one fell with the point jammed in his breastbone. A third man came over the parapet. Stark received him into his arms.

  Balin stood frozen, his borrowed sword half raised. He saw Stark hurl the warrior bodily off the Wall and heard the cry as he fell, and he saw Stark’s face as he grasped the ladder and shoved it outward. There were more screams. Then there were more ladders and more red-haired men, and Stark had found a sword and was using it. Balin smelled the blood, and suddenly he was shaken with the immediacy of it, the physical closeness of an enemy come to slaughter him and destroy everything he loved. A fever burned through him. He moved forward and began to chop at the heads that appeared over the Wall. But it was as Stark had said, and at first he found that it was easier if he did not look too closely into their faces. Because of this one of them got under his uncertain guard and almost gutted him. After that he had no more difficulty.

  Things had become so hot and confused now that the officers had lost control and men fought wherever they wished and could. And there was fighting in plenty for all, but it did not last long. The barbarians gained the Wall in three places, lost it in two and then regained it in one, and from these two footholds they spread inward along the ledges, rolling up the defenders, driving them back, driving them down. The fighting spread to the streets, and now all at once the ways leading back into the city were clogged with screaming women and children. Stark lost sight of Balin. He hoped that he was still alive and sensible enough to get away, but however it might be, he was on his own and there was nothing Stark could do about it. So he forgot it and began to think of other things.

  The great gate still held against the booming rams. Stark forced his way through to the square. The booths of the hucksters were overthrown, the wine-jars broken and the red wine spilled. Tethered beasts squealed and stamped, tired of their chafing harness and driven wild by the shouting and the smell of blood. The dead were heaped high where they had fallen from above. The last of the defense was here, soldiers and citizens forming a hollow square more or less by instinct, trying to guard their threatened flanks and their front, which was the gate, all at the same time. The deep thunder of the rams shook the very stones under them. The iron-sheathed timbers of the gate gave back an answering scream, and toward the end all other sounds grew hushed. The nobles had come down off the Wall. They mounted and sat waiting.

  There were fewer of them now. Their bright armor was dented and stained, and their faces had a pallor on them. Still they held themselves erect and arranged their garments and saw that the blazons on their shields were clean of blood. Stark saw Rogain. His scholar’s hands were soft, but they did not tremble.

  There was one last hammer-stroke of the rams. With a bitter shriek the weakened bolts tore out and the great gate was broken through.

  The nobles of Kushat made their first, and final, charge.

  As soldiers they went up against the riders of Mekh, and as soldiers they held them until they were cut down. The few who survived were borne back into the square like pebbles on the forefront of an avalanche. And first through the gates came the winged battle-mask of the Lord Ciaran.

  There were many beasts tied among the mined stalls with no riders to claim them. Stark mounted the nearest one and cut it free. Where the press was thickest, there was the man in black armor, riding like a god, and the sable axe drank life wherever it hewed. Stark’s eyes shone with a strange cold light. The talisman was gone, the fate of Kushat was nothing to him. He was a free man. He struck his heels hard into the scaly flanks and the beast plunged forward.

  It was strong, and frightened beyond fear. It hit and trampled, and Stark cut a path through the barbarians with the long sword, and presently above the din he shouted, “Ciaran!”

  The black mask turned toward him. “Stark.”

  He spurred the beast again. “I claim my sword-right, bastard!”

  The remembered voice spoke from behind the barred slot. “Claim it, then!” The black axe swept a circle, warning friend and foe alike that this was a single combat. And all at o
nce they two were alone in a little space at the heart of the battle.

  Their mounts shocked together. The axe came down in a whistling curve, and the red swordblade flashed to meet it. There was a ringing clash of metal, and the blade was shattered and the axe fell to the ground.

  There was a strange sound from the tribesmen. Stark ignored it. He spurred his mount ruthlessly, pressing in.

  Ciaran reached for his sword, but his hand was numbed by the force of the blow and lacked its usual split-second cunning. The hilt of Stark’s weapon, still clutched in his own numb grip and swung viciously by the full weight of his arm, fetched Ciaran a stunning blow on the helm so that the metal rang like a flawed bell. He reeled back in the saddle, only for a moment, but long enough. Stark grasped the war-mask and ripped it off, and got his hands around the naked throat.

  He did not break that neck, as he had planned to do. And the clansmen all around the circle stopped and stared and did not move.

  Stark knew now why the Lord Ciaran had never shown his face.

  The threat he held was white and strong, and his hands around it were buried in a mane of black hair that fell down over the shirt of mail. A red mouth passionate with fury, wonderful curving bone under sculptured flesh, eyes fierce and proud and tameless as the eyes of a young eagle. A splendid face, but never on any of the nine worlds of the sun could it have been the face of a man.

  In that moment of amazement, she was quicker than he.

  There was nothing to warn him, no least flicker of expression. Her two fists came up together between his out-stretched arms and caught him under the jaw with a force that nearly snapped his neck. He fell backward out of the saddle and lay sprawled on the bloody stones, and for a moment the sun went out.

  The woman wheeled her mount. Bending low, she caught up the axe from where it had fallen and faced her chieftains and her warriors, who were as dazed as Stark.

  “I have led you well,” she said. “I have taken you Kushat. Will any man dispute me?”