American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Despite their awesome losses, the Wersgorix still outnumbered our folk two or three to one. Yet it was scarcely fair. They had no body armor. Their only weapon for such close-in fighting was a knife attached to the muzzle of the handgun, to make a most awkward spear . . . or the gun itself, clubbed. A few did carry pellet-firing sidearms, which caused us some casualties. But as a rule, when John Blueface fired at Harry Englishman, he missed even at pointblank range, in all that turmoil. Before John could fire again, Harry had laid him open with a halberd.

  When our cavalry returned, striking the Wersgor infantry from the rear and hewing away, it was the end. The enemy broke and ran, trampling his own comrades in blind horror. The riders chased them, with merry hunting calls. When they were far enough away, our longbows cut loose once more.

  Still, many escaped who must otherwise have been spitted on a lance, for Sir Roger saw the heavy wagons trundling vengefully back and retreated with his folk. By God’s mercy, I was so occupied caring for the wounded fetched to me that I knew nothing of that moment when our leaders thought we were undone after all. For the Wersgor charge had not gone for naught. It had succeeded in showing the turtle-cars how to avoid our pits. And now the iron giants came across a field turned into red mud, and naught we knew could stop them.

  Thomas Bullard’s shoulders slumped where he sat mounted near the baronial pennon. “Well,” he sighed, “we gave what was ours to give. Now who will ride out with me to show them how Englishmen can die?”

  Sir Roger’s weary face drew into grave lines. “We’ve a harder task than that, friends,” he said. “We were right to hazard our lives on a chance of victory. Now that we see defeat upon us, we’ve no right to throw those lives away. We must live—as slaves, if need be—so that our women and babes are not altogether alone on this hell-world.”

  “God’s bones!” shouted Sir Brian Fitz-William. “Are you gone craven?”

  The baron’s nostrils flared. “You heard me,” he said. “We stay here.”

  And then—lo! It was as if God Himself had come to deliver His poor sinful partisans. Brighter than lightning, a blue-white flash burst, several miles off in the forest. So lurid was the radiance that those few who chanced to be looking in that direction were blind for hours afterward. No doubt a great many Wersgorix were thus incapacitated, since their army faced it. The roar that followed knocked riders from their saddles and men from their feet. A wind swept us all, furnace hot, and carried tents before it like blown rags. Then, as that shattering wrath departed, we saw a cloud of dust and smoke arise. Shaped like an evil mushroom, it towered almost to heaven. Minutes passed before it began to dissipate; its upper clouds lingered for hours.

  The charging war-cars ground to a halt. They knew, as we did not, what that burst signified. It was a shell of the ultimate potency, that destruction of matter which I cannot but feel to this day is an impious tampering with God’s work, though my archbishop has cited me Scriptural texts to prove that any art is lawful if it be used for good purposes.

  This was not a very strong shell, as such weapons go. It was meant to annihilate a half-mile circle, and produced comparatively little of those subtle poisons which accompany such explosions. And it had been fired distantly enough from the scene of action to harm no one.

  Yet it put the Wersgorix in a cruel dilemma. If they used a similar weapon to wipe out our camp—if they overran us by any means—they might expect a hail of death. For the hidden bombard would have no further reason to spare the area of Ganturath. Thus they must suspend their assault upon us, until they had found and dealt with this new enemy.

  Their war-wagons lumbered back. Most of the aircraft they had in reserve lifted and scattered widely, searching for whoever had fired that shell. The chief implement of this search was (as we knew from our own studies) a device embodying the same forces as are found in lodestone. Through powers which I do not understand, and have no desire to understand since the knowledge is unessential to salvation if not smacking of the black arts, this device could smell out large metallic masses. A gun big enough to fire a shell of the known potency should have been discovered by any aircraft flitting within a mile of its hiding place.

  Yet no such gun could be located. After a tense hour, while we English watched and prayed on our walls, Sir Roger gusted a deep breath.

  “I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” he said, “but I do believe God’s helped us through Sir Owain, rather than directly. We ought to find his party somewhere out in the woods, even if those enemy flyers don’t seem able to. Father Simon, you must know who the best poachers are in your parish—”

  “Oh, my son!” exclaimed the chaplain.

  Sir Roger grinned. “I ask for no secrets of the confessional. I’m only telling you to appoint a few . . . shall we say, skilled woodsmen? . . . to sneak their way through the grass into yon forest. Have them locate Sir Owain, wherever he is, and order him to hold his fire till I send word. You needn’t tell me who you appoint, Father.”

  “In that case, my son, it shall be as you command.” The priest drew me aside and asked me to give spiritual comfort to the injured and frightened as his locum tenens, while he led a small scout party into the forest.

  But my lord found another task for me. He and I and an esquire rode out under a white banner toward the Wersgor camp. We assumed the foe would have wit enough to understand our meaning, even if they did not use the same truce signal. And thus it was. Huruga himself drove out in an open car to meet us. His blue jowls looked shrunken, and his hands trembled.

  “I call upon you to yield,” said the baron. “Stop forcing me to destroy your poor benighted commoners. I pledge you’ll all be treated fairly and allowed to write home for ransom money.”

  “I, yield to a barbarian like you?” croaked the Wersgor. “Just because you have some . . . some confounded detection-proof cannon—no!” He paused. “But to get rid of you, I’ll allow you to leave in the spaceships you’ve seized.”

  “Sire,” I gasped when I had translated this, “have we indeed won escape?”

  “Hardly,” Sir Roger answered. “We can’t find our way back, remember; and as yet, we dare not ask for a skilled navigator to help us, or we’d reveal our weakness and be attacked again. Even if we did somehow win home, ’twould still leave this nest of devils free to plot a renewed assault on England. Nay, I fear that he who mounts a bear cannot soon dismount.”

  So with a heavy heart, I told the blue noble that we had come for more than some of his shoddy, old-fashioned spaceships, and if he did not surrender we would be forced to devastate his land. Huruga snarled for reply and drove back.

  We also returned. Presently Red John Hameward came from the forest with Father Simon’s party, which he had encountered on his way to our camp.

  “We flew to that Stularax castle openly, sire,” he related. “We saw other sky-boats, but none challenged us, taking us for a simple ship o’ their own. Still, we knew no fortress sentries’d let us land without some questions. So we put down in some woods, a few miles from the keep. We set up our terbuchet and put one o’ those bursting shells in’t. Sir Owain’s idea was to lob a few to shake up their outer defenses. Then we’d slip closer afoot, leaving a crew to fire some more shells when we was near and break down their walls. We expected the garrison’d be scurrying about in search of our engine, so we could slip in, kill whatever guards were left behind, lift what we could carry from their arsenal, and return to our boat.”

  At this point, since it is no longer used, I had best explain the trebuchet. It was the simplest but in many ways the most effective siege engine. In principle it was only a great lever, freely swinging on some fulcrum. A very long arm ended in a bucket for the missile, while the short arm bore a stone weight, often of several tons. This latter was raised by pulleys or a winch, while the bucket was loaded. Then the weight was released, and in falling it swung the long arm through a mighty arc.

>   “I didn’t think much o’ those shells we had,” Red John went on. “Why, the things didn’t weigh no more’n five pounds. We’d trouble rigging the terbuchet to cast ’em only those few miles. And what could they do, I wondered, but burst with a pop? I’ve seen terbuchets used proper, laying siege to French cities. We’d throw boulders of a ton or two, or sometimes dead horses, over the walls. But, well, orders was orders. So I m’self cocked the little shell like I’d been told how to, and we let fly. Whoom! The world blew up, like. I had to admit this was even better to throw nor a dead horse.

  “Well, through the magnifying screens we could see the castle was pretty much flattened. No use raiding it now. We lobbed a few more shells to make sure it were reduced proper. Nothing there now but a big glassy pit. Sir Owain reckoned as we was carrying a weapon more useful nor any which we could o’ lifted, and I’d say he were right. So we landed in the woods some miles hence and dragged the terbuchet forth and set it up again. That’s what took us so long, m’ lord. When Sir Owain had seen from the air what was happening about that time, we fired a shell just to scare the enemy a bit. Now we’re ready to pound ’em as much as you wish, sire.”

  “But the boat?” asked Sir Roger. “The foe have metal-sniffers. That’s why they haven’t found your trebuchet in the forest: it’s made of wood. But surely they could discover your flying boat, wherever you’ve hid it.”

  “Oh, that, sire.” Red John grinned. “Sir Owain’s got our boat flitting up there ’mongst t’others. Who’s to tell the difference in yon swarm?”

  Sir Roger whooped laughter. “You missed a glorious fight,” he said, “but you can light the balefire. Go back and tell your men to start shelling the enemy camp.”

  We withdrew underground at the agreed-on moment, as shown on captured Wersgor timepieces. Even so, we felt the earth shudder, and heard the dull roaring, as their ground installations and most of their ground machines were destroyed. A single shot was enough. The survivors thereof stormed in blind terror aboard one of the transport ships, abandoning much perfectly unharmed equipment. The lesser sky-craft were even quicker to vanish, like blown sea scud. As the slow sunset began to burn in that direction we had wistfully named the west, England’s leopards flew above England’s victory.

  Chapter XIV

  * * *

  SIR OWAIN landed like some hero of a chanson come to earth. His exploits had not required much effort of him. While buzzing around in the middle of the Wersgor air fleet, he had even heated water over a brazier and shaved. Lithely now he walked, head erect, mailcoat shining, red cloak aflutter in the wind. Sir Roger met him near the knightly tents, battered, filthy, reeking, clotted with blood. His voice was hoarse from shouting. “My compliments, Sir Owain, on a most gallant action.”

  The younger man swept him a bow—and changed it most subtly to Lady Catherine’s, as she emerged from our cheering throng. “I could have done no less,” murmured Sir Owain, “with a bowstring about my heart.”

  The color mounted to her face. Sir Roger’s eyes flickered from one to another. Indeed, they made a fair couple. I saw his hands clench on the haft of his nicked and blunted sword.

  “Go to your tent, madame,” he told his wife.

  “There is still work to do among the wounded, sire,” she answered.

  “You’ll work for anyone but your own husband and children, eh?” Sir Roger made an effort to sneer, but his lip was puffy where a pellet had glanced off the visor of his helmet. “Go to your tent, I say.”

  Sir Owain looked shocked. “Those are not words to address a gentlewoman with, sire,” he protested.

  “One of your plinking roundels were better?” grunted Sir Roger. “Or a whisper, to arrange an assignation?”

  Lady Catherine grew quite pale. She took a long breath before words came. Silence fell upon those persons who stood within earshot. “I call God to witness that I am maligned,” she said. Her gown streamed with the haste of her stride. As she vanished into her pavilion, I heard the first sob.

  Sir Owain stared at the baron with a kind of horror. “Have you lost your senses?” he breathed at last.

  Sir Roger hunched thick shoulders, as if to raise a burden. “Not yet. Let my captains of battle meet with me when they’ve washed and supped. But it might be wisest, Sir Owain, if you would take charge of the camp guard.”

  The knight bowed again. It was not an insulting gesture, but it reminded us all how Sir Roger had transgressed good manners. He departed and took up his duties briskly. A watch was soon set. Thereafter Sir Owain took Branithar on a walk around the blasted Wersgor camp, to examine that equipment which had been far enough away to remain usable. The blueface had—even during the past few busy days—picked up more English. He talked, lamely but with great earnestness, and Sir Owain listened. I glimpsed this in the last dim twilight, as I hurried to the conference, but could not hear what was being said.

  A fire burned high, and torches were stuck in the ground. The English chieftains sat around the trestle table with alien constellations winking to life overhead. I heard night sough in the forest. All the men were deathly tired, they slumped on the benches, but their eyes never left the baron.

  Sir Roger stood up. Bathed, clad in fresh though plain garments, a sapphire ring arrogant on one finger, he betrayed himself only by the dullness of his tone. Though the words were brisk enough, his soul was not in them. I glanced toward the tent where Lady Catherine and his children lay, but darkness hid it.

  “Once again,” said my lord, “God’s grace has aided us to win. In spite of all the destruction we wrought, we’ve more booty of cars and weapons than we can use. The army that came against us is broken, and only one fortress remains on this entire world!”

  Sir Brian scratched his white-bristled chin. “Two can play that game of tossing explosives about,” he said. “Dare we remain here? As soon as they recover their wits, they’ll find means to fire on us.”

  “True.” Sir Roger’s blond head nodded. “That’s one reason we must not linger. Another being that it’s an uncomfortable dwelling place at best. By all accounts, the castle at Darova is far larger, stronger, and better fitted. Once we’ve seized it, we need not fear shellfire. And even if Duke Huruga has no means left him whereby to bombard us here, we can be sure he’s now swallowed his pride and sent spaceships off to other stars for help. We can look for a Wersgor armada to come against us.” He affected not to notice the shudder that went among them, but finished, “For all these reasons, we want Darova for our own, intact.”

  “To stand off the fleets of a hundred worlds?” cried Captain Bullard. “Nay, now, sire, your pride has curdled and turned to madness. I say, let’s get aloft ourselves while we can, and pray God that He will guide us back to Terra.”

  Sir Roger struck the table with his fist. The noise cracked across all forest rustlings. “God’s wounds!” he roared. “On the day of a victory such as hasn’t been known since Richard the Lion Heart, you’d tuck tail between legs and run! I thought you a man!”

  Bullard growled deep in his throat, “What did Richard gain in the end, save a ransom payment that ruined his country?” But Sir Brian Fitz-William heard him and muttered low, “I’ll hear no treason.” Bullard realized what he had said, bit his lip and fell silent. Meanwhile Sir Roger hastened on:

  “The arsenals of Darova must have been stripped for the assault on us. Now we have nearly all which remains of their weapons, and we’ve killed off most of its garrison. Give them time, and they’ll rally. They’ll summon franklins and yeomen from all over the planet, and march against us. But at this moment, they must be in one hurly-burly. The best they’ll be able to do is man the ramparts against us. Counterattack is out of the question.”

  “So shall we sit outside Darova’s walls till their reinforcements come?” gibed a voice in the shadows.

  “Better that than sit here, think you not?” Sir Roger’s laugh was forced,
but a grim chuckle or two responded. And so it was decided.

  Our worn-out folk got no sleep. At once they must start their toil, by the brilliant double moonlight. We found several of the great transport aircraft which had been only slightly damaged, being on the fringes of the blast. The artisans among our captives repaired them at spearpoint. Into these we rolled all the weapons and vehicles and other equipment we could. People, prisoners, and cattle followed. Well before midnight, our ships had lumbered into the sky, guarded by a cloud of other vessels with one or two men aboard each. We were none too soon. Hardly an hour after our departure—as we learned later—unmanned flyers loaded with the strongest explosives rained down upon the site of Ganturath.

  A cautious pace, through heavens empty of hostile craft, brought us over an inland sea. Miles beyond it, in the middle of a rugged and thickly forested region, we raised Darova. Having been summoned to the control turret to interpret, I saw it in the vision screens, far ahead and far below but magnified to our sight.

  We had flown to meet the sun, and dawn glowed pink behind the buildings. These were only ten, low, rounded structures of fused stone, their walls thick enough to withstand almost any blow. They were knitted together with reinforced tunnels. Indeed, nearly all that castle was deep underground, as self-contained as a spaceship. I saw an outer ring of gigantic bombards and missile launchers poke their snouts from sunken emplacements, and the force screen was up, like Satan’s parody of a halo. But this seemed mere trimming on the strength of the fortress itself. No aircraft were visible, save our own.

  By now I, like most of us, had had some instruction in the use of the far-speaker. I tuned it until the image of a Wersgor officer appeared in its screen. He had obviously been trying to tune in on me, so we had lost several minutes. His face was pale, almost cerulean, and he gulped several times before he could ask: “What do you want?”