West Of The Sun

by Edgar Pangborn

  5

  All night Paul heard the distant barbarous thunder of the drums. Inthe hour before first-light his advance company formed; a furiousserpent, it stole two miles south through grassland following thepallor of the beach. Near first-light, Paul knew, they would see athread of new moon. In this present darkness the Vestoians might beslipping north on the lake; there would be no betraying sound abovethe passion of the drums. As for the land army, that could be miles tothe south or over the next rise of ground.

  His mind fought a pressure of alternatives. Better to have kept thearmy in one unit? To wait in the forest for news of Abro Samiraa'sthrust in the northeast? _Never mind: no time now._ At least his bodywas meeting the challenge without rebellion. His wiry legs carried himin silence; his senses were whetted to fineness. Rifle, pistol, fieldglasses, hunting knife made a light load. Ahead of him Mijok loomedagainst a division of two shadows, sky and earth. Not first-light:only a sign that five thousand miles away on the eastern shore of thiscontinent there might be the shining of a star now called the sun.Mijok carried a shield of doubled asonis hide; his only weapon was aseven-foot club, since his smallest finger was too large to pass thetrigger guard of a rifle. Though keeping watch with Paul, Mijok hadspoken little during the night--brooding perhaps, trying (Paulimagined) to see a new world in the matrix of the old. But there wasno guessing a giant's thoughts. Lacking the stale burden of humanguilt and compromise, they had the strength as well as the weakness ofinnocence; the country of their minds must wait on the explorations ofcenturies.

  Abro Pakriaa, close to Paul's right, moved like a breeze in thegrass. She and her small soldiers despised the use of shields,despised the arrows of their own bowmen as fit only for timid males.They never threw their spears but kept them for close quarters; theironly other weapon was a white-stone dagger.... The army groped throughthe meadow in three ranks, widely spaced at Paul's order; beyond theright flank the archers were concentrated. Four hundred fightersaltogether--against six thousand.

  A wooded knoll grew into silhouette fifty yards from the beach, tenfeet above the level of the meadow. "We meet them here," Paul said. Byprearrangement Pakriaa halted a hundred of her spearwomen between theknoll and the beach, the other two hundred on the west side, thehundred bowmen out beyond. Paul and Mijok penetrated the blackness ofthe knoll, pushing through to its southern side, where Pakriaa joinedthem. Even in that short passage the heaviness of dark had alteredwith a promise. There were few clouds. The day (if it ever came) wouldbe hot, windless, and beautiful. No more blue fireflies werewandering. The planet Lucifer had become three gray enigmas of lakeand meadow and sky, but in this blind hush when morning was still thesupposition of a dream, the shapes of the trees were attaining aseparate reality; in the west Paul could find a hint of the low hillsstanding between him and the West Atlantic.

  Seventy or eighty miles over yonder Dorothy's brown eyes would bewatching for first-light on the sea, watching for it not on the greatsea, he knew, but on the channel that shut her away from the mainland,from himself. With his child at her breast, another unknown life inthe womb. Ann Bryan too, her troubled secret mind still full ofprotest at the contradictions and unfulfilled promises which made upthe climate of life on Lucifer as well as elsewhere; and the ancientgiantess Kamon, and Rak and Muson, Samis, Arek, and those giantchildren perennially puzzling and lovable.... _No time._ Mijok waspeering out on the west side of the knoll. "Nicely hidden. Yoursoldiers are very good, Abro Pakriaa," said the giant, whose knowledgeof war was almost as dim a product of theory as his knowledge of theplanet Earth, where his Charin friends had been born.

  The pygmy princess did not answer. Paul thought with held-in anger:_Can't she understand even now that Mijok is one of us, the best ofus...?_ But Pakriaa was staring south; she might not have heard. Shepointed.

  Thus, after a year of waiting, wonder, rumor; a year when Lantis ofVestoia, Queen of the World, had been a half-mythical terror, symbolof tyranny and danger but not a person; a year that Ed Spearman spokeof as "lost to the piddlings of philosophy"--Paul saw them at last.

  Saw rather a waving of the grass, a cluster of dots shifting, bobbing,advancing. Pakriaa's tree-frog voice was calm: "They come fast. Theywant to reach our forest before the light makes the omasha fly. Yourplan is good, Paul: we hold them in the open, the omasha have goodmeat."

  A man could dourly accept it, somehow. Bred to gentleness,undestructive labor, study, contemplation, Paul could tell himselfthat a certain spot (even as it bloomed like a nodding flower in thetelescopic sights) was not flesh and blood and nerve, only a target._Would it be so if I were fighting only for myself...?_ He held thespot in focus; he said, "Your soldiers are prepared for the firestick? They know they must not charge till they have the order fromyou?"

  Her voice had warmth: "And they know you are my commander."

  Paul squeezed the trigger.

  _Too soon--and too damned quiet._ The clever makers oftwenty-first-century firearms on Earth had cut down the shout of a .30caliber to a trivial snap. The savage eyes out there might not evenhave caught the flash at the muzzle. There ought to have been theglare and circumstance of a rocket. How could they be panicked by asilly pop and a spark? Even though--well, one of the dots hadvanished, true enough. Maybe he had killed his first human being.

  He glanced westward, wondering how soon the gray must change tosaffron and crimson. The new red moon--there it was. A bloody sliverof a sword above the far shore of the lake.

  And he saw the boats.

  They were half a mile out. No others were visible north of them, butthat meant nothing: these might or might not be the lead canoes ofthe fleet. The noise of drum boats in the south was constant: thosewould stay anchored in hiding, letting their wrath appear to come fromall parts of the world.

  The leading boat jumped to clarity in the sights. Forward the barkroofing reached the gunwale; aft, the sides were open to leave spacefor two paddlers. Paul saw the tight mouth of the one on the portside: she could have been Pakriaa's blood sister. Now it was necessaryto think of Abro Pakriaa's ambassador torn in quarters, head and armssent back as a message from the Queen of the World--until the mind ofthe student of Christopher Wright rebelled: _Vengeance was one of theape's first discoveries._ It became more necessary to think: _Make ita good head shot--she won't feel it...._

  It was not a very good shot. The scream came weakly across the water.The paddler tumbled, an arm dangling. The starboard paddler seemed notto understand and labored stupidly, making the canoe lurch to port.The prow of a following boat rammed it, tore away the matting,revealed the huddled soldiers who became splashing legs and arms in asudden foam. While the land army came on....

  Dots that were bald red heads, white specks that were spear blades. Asimple arithmetic: less than a hundred rounds for the rifle; fourhundred soldiers; a heart divided but angry, and the devotion of aneight-foot giant with a big stick. Against six thousand in the landarmy alone. "Pakriaa, it's a single column--the fools! Send yourbowmen out west, catch them on the flank." Pakriaa ran down the knoll.

  Paul shot twice at the head of the column. A flurry. No halt. Some ofthe boats were no longer sliding north, but driving down on the beach,forty or fifty, like hornets from a torn nest. _Another mistake--no,not if it diverts them from the camp._ Pakriaa's hundred on this sideof the knoll were holding firm for an order. Paul's wave was enough:they spread out in the grass at the edge of the beach, quivering likewaiting cats. The light was changing their bodies from vagueness tofamiliar copper, black skirts, white body paint.... Mijok tore ahalf-buried rock from the ground and hurled it out to splinter thenearest boat. But the soldiers would merely swim ashore. "Mijok! Staywith me!"

  The head of that column was less than two hundred yards away. Paulfired mechanically, seeing life tumble backward and lie still. "Letthem see us now, Pakriaa, Mijok----"

  They strode down the south slope of the knoll in plain sight under thebeginning of morning as the bowmen in the meadow released a harshflight. The beach on
the left became a seething of yells, snarling,trampling, clash of white stone. _First-light--first-light--and wherein damnation is Ed Spearman with the lifeboat...?_

  The column was confused by the many pressing up from behind. A fewdozen spearwomen streamed out toward Pakriaa's archers; a second andthird flight downed most of them--the little men had skill. NoVestoian bowmen had appeared. "Now, Pakriaa----"

  Her one cry brought the spearwomen out of the grass west of the knoll,skimming forward like red bullets, spears low in the left hand untilthey crashed into the column; then weapons rose and plunged and rose.

  The Vestoians wore no white paint. Their leaders had caps of green.Their grass skirts were mere fringes. They died easily. They killedeasily.

  Some distance down the column--for it was still a column, still arolling machine that could not halt--a tall structure was swaying,hard to assess in this tortured twilight. A litter? Lantis of Vestoia,the Queen of the World herself? Paul checked his own running advanceto send two shots at it. Then he and Mijok were surrounded by awrithing of arms, white-stone, and blood, Mijok raging but bewildered.Paul saw Pakriaa's spear drive down below naked ribs and withdraw fromwhat sprawled on the ground. She was untouched. Her lean little bodydripped with sweat, her teeth gleamed in a devil's grin. Twopurple-skirted captains joined her; the three smashed into a clusterof shrieking souls who only began to understand what was happening.

  Arithmetic still ruled. This column might be only one of many pushingup between lake and hills, bent on reaching Pakriaa's forest beforethe omasha soared in from those hills to feed on living and dead.

  Mijok brushed through the fighters with his shield and down the linetill he was clear of Pakriaa's white-painted demons. His stick swung,destroying everything in a half circle before him. He was not confusednow, not even shouting, but saving breath. He worked stolidly, like aman beating at a swarm of rats.... Pakriaa jumped on a fallen thing topoint at that clumsy framework down the line. "Lantis! That isLantis----"

  The litter wobbled toward the center of confusion on the shoulders ofsix women. Paul fired twice again at it. He had a glimpse of a scrawnyfigure with a high green headdress leaping down, snatching a spear,vanishing in an improvised protective phalanx. He shot into that,dropping one of the outer soldiers. Mijok saw; he changed the courseof his attack, a bulldozer aiming at a new clump of brush. Pakriaascreamed in frenzy, without meaning. Her spear was still a part ofher. She was bleeding from a thigh wound; her bright blue skirt hadbeen torn away; she glittered with sweat and paint and blood, adancing devil mindlessly happy. Then she was down once more in thepress, squirming toward the phalanx, and Paul could not shoot.

  But it was the toiling giant, Paul thought, who made Lantis break.Again he saw the snarling face of the Queen of the World and heard hersqueal an order. Before Mijok could cut his way to her the phalanx wasrunning, sheltered by the mere mass of soldiers. It was necessary tocall Mijok back.

  The whole Vestoian army was running. "Pakriaa!" Paul plunged afterher, caught her shoulder. "No pursuit!" Her eyes glazed in madrejection; he thought she would bite his wrist. "Turn your soldiers!Bring them down on the Vestoians from the boats--_the boats_!"

  She could understand that. Her order was the shriek of a rusty nail onglass, and it turned them. It brought them howling down to the beachto aid what was left of the first hundred. The water was a jumble ofabandoned boats--even the paddlers had struggled ashore to kill anddie.

  Mijok ploughed in a second time.... That ended it. Some of theVestoians might have glimpsed what he did to the land soldiers. A fewforgot all custom and threw their spears, which Mijok's shieldcarelessly turned; then they stared with sickness at their emptyhands and waited for the club. Meanwhile the strengthened crowd ofpygmies worked on till the sand was redder than the sky and there wasno more to be done. "Back!"

  Pakriaa screamed "No!" and pointed south. Paul stumbled on somethingslippery. He stooped to her, yelling, _"Omasha!_ The sky will be fullof them. Let them fight Lantis. We've lost a hundred already----"

  Her face became sane and blank in agony. "My people--my people----"

  "Yes! And other boats are still going north. Your soldiers must pickup the hurt and run for it."

  There were not many living wounded in this sudden quiet. A spear hasscant mercy. And the lifeboat had not come.... Mijok was holding outhis shield on both arms; he had tossed his stick aside. "Put them onthis. I can carry six--seven." When the shield could hold no more helifted it, his face contorted and changed. "Paul--I told myself I wasback in the old life, when we always killed them if we could. But thenew laws--oh, Paul, _the laws_----"

  "War perverts all laws. But the laws are true. It is--climbing amountain, Mijok: we slip, fall back, try again. Nothing good in war,only necessity, choice of evils. Now make the best speed you can,friend--don't wait for us." Mijok ran with his vast strides, holdingthe shield out in front so that the motion of his body would notjounce it.

  Pakriaa would not move till the last of the survivors had stumbledpast her. They were disciplined. Already some of the soft bowmen hadtaken out arrows of the whining, glittering type that sometimesfrightened off the omasha. They were ready. Paul tried to count, gaveit up. Less than three hundred. The archers had not suffered much.Paul said, "Your leg is hurt, Abro Pakriaa. I'll carry you."

  She was indifferent. "I thank you." He slung his rifle and caught herup, naked and slippery with blood and acrid-smelling paint. Her weightwas less than forty pounds. Her head lolled back; she whispered to thesky, "No one should call me Abro. I am Pakriaa the child, weak as amale, a fool. I could have followed. I could have brought her to theground. I let her go. I am a red worm. I blame you for it, Paul-Mason.You and your friends. All of you--except Sears, who is a god with awindow on another world."

  "Hush! The world Sears shows you in the microscope is this world,Pakriaa. He tells you so himself. And I tell you there'll be a newway----"

  She was not listening. Still he saw no threat of brown wings, and nolifeboat. But time was a deception; dawn on Lucifer was abrupt oncloudless mornings. The battle which had seemed long as heart-breakhad been a skirmish, a brush of advance parties lasting perhaps tenminutes from his first shot to the retreat. Pakriaa's head twitchedfrom side to side; her eyes were dry. "I have betrayed Ismar,Creator-and-Destroyer-Who-Speaks-Thunder-in-the-Rains----"

  "Pakriaa----"

  "My people are to burn me in the pit for the kaksmas with lamp oil. Iwill order it. I would have been Queen of the World." Making no effortto escape from his arms, she burst into rage at him; a rage pitiable,not dangerous: "Why have you come, you sky people, you speakers of newwords? We had our life, no need of you. We were brave--you weaken uswith words, with words. Your friendship is the green-flower weed thatkills the self. You make children of us. You break our beautiful imageof the god and tell us she never lived. You say that now?" She slashedher fingers down her side, drawing blood.

  Firing? Firing at the camp?

  She clung to him, wailing: "And now you carry me. I cannot even hateyou. You steal our strength. The priests were right--thepriests----Ismar, help me! _Ismar!_"

  Paul forced himself into a run. It was firing, rapid and sharp,pistols and rifles. The ammunition would melt fast at that rate. Hecould hear yelling. Catching up with the running soldiers, leavingthem behind, he could see Mijok, far ahead, swerve to the left.

  And the lifeboat was in action.

  It curved grandly from near the surface of the lake, which was dimwith smoke. It circled over jungle, descended in another swoop at thecanoes. Red bodies tumbled overside; the silver nose tilted as if indisdain; the jet spoke for one second, blasting the near canoes intonothing, sending up the further ones in yellow fire, driving thelifeboat into its seeming-careless leap. But there was still firingfrom the gray stone fortress, a human tangle on the beach before it, ahigh long screaming.

  Forward detachments of the lake fleet must have passed in the dark.Paul ran on, only his arms remembering Pakriaa. She slipped down,grabbe
d a spear as her soldiers caught up with her, and ran straightfor the beach.

  That part of the agony was almost done. No more boats were comingin--Ed Spearman's sky weapon had seen to that. There were more canoes,many more, but they were holding off, grouping clumsily at a distance.Paul waited for the lifeboat to slip over him and waved to the south.Spearman altered the course of the glide, dropping after one moregroup of panicked boats but heading south. A longer burst of the jet,and Spearman's weapon lifted, straightened, shot out of sight acrossthe meadow.

  Paul could picture the big man's intent and mirthless grin, the coldgray eye alert on the fuel gauge. And when this fuel was gone--nomore. It might stand for a while, somewhere, a decaying artifact....

  Those left alive on the beach were bringing in casualties. The boatswere still withdrawing. Christopher Wright was in the fortress withthe wounded, his narrow face tight in the misery of a doctor who cando almost nothing. "Doc--how many have we lost here?"

  "You! I had almost--Oh, Mijok, what've you got there...? Paul, theyjumped us at first-light. No time even to remind Ed to go afteryou----"

  "No, he did right. More needed here. We've stalled the land army, butthey'll come on. They have to." In the sky the brown dots had appearedat last, pouring from their foul rock ledges in the hills. All of themwere flying south. "Pakriaa, look! Lantis has two wars now."

  She stood naked and stiff, watching, her underlip thrust out, despairgiving way to a glare of satisfaction at the far-off wings, the beastswho ate everything, feared nothing. The southwestern sky was heavywith them. Paul had been right; he sickened at his own cleverness."How many, Doc?"

  "Forty or worse. This defense on the beach was by Kamisiaa's peopleand our giant girls--who can shoot." Paul saw the golden-furred girlLisson smile uneasily at him; there was a sober stare from brownTejron. The other two giant women, old Karison and young Elron, seemedmore deeply disturbed, Elron studying her rifle as if it were a livingthing. Wright said, "With Abro Brodaa's help I made the others stay inthe woods where you posted 'em. Surok ran over from the right flank--Ihad him run back and tell Sears and the rest to sit tight....Pakriaa"--Wright strode out to her--"let me bind that up--you'rebleeding." She permitted it....

  The boats were clustering a quarter mile away. Paul fumbled for hisfield glasses; they were lost. Little Abroshin Nisana, whom he hadordered to remain at the fortress, spoke beside him, slowly andcarefully because her English was not good: "Commander, Abro Samiraais return. The plan--good. She crossed the stream, catch them inblackness. A few escape. We lose twenty. One was Abro Duriaa--I am notknow how she is killed." She scuffed her little seven-toed foot in thedust; there was nothing alien in her smile. "Those who returnTocwright is send west." She was puzzled, not disapproving. "Why arewe most strong in the west? The Vestoians follow lake shore."

  He said, not quite honestly, "Their straightest approach to AbroPakriaa's village--your village--is in the west. Were thereprisoners?"

  "Abro Samiraa is not like to take prisoners. We took not any on thebeach. Wrong?"

  He smothered a sigh of exhaustion. "It may not matter." With Mijok,the stout giantess Tejron was moving among the wounded. Paul noticed aheap of torn cloth, all that remained of Earth-made shorts and jacketsand overalls, ripped for bandages. Wright's idea, no doubt, and good:the pygmies' pounded-bark fabric was a poor second best. _After thewar we can go naked--fair enough...._ He saw a pygmy woman shrink fromTejron's approach; she might be from one of the northern villages, herstoicism unequal to accepting the touch of the huge beings she wouldalways have regarded as wild animals. Paul knelt, hoping to reassureher, as Tejron eased a bandage around a pierced abdomen. There wouldbe internal bleeding. "You are from the north?"

  She looked hurt that he did not know her face. "I am of Abro Brodaa'svillage." Then in spite of her shrinking her question was directed atTejron: "Abro Brodaa has say to us--we are all one flesh.That--that----"

  Tejron was able to say, "That is true." And while Paul searched forother words that might affirm, comfort, explain, the soldier died.

  The only omasha now visible were soaring stragglers. The swarm wouldhave found the army of Lantis--which must and would continue toadvance. There was a limit to the gorging of the bat-winged beasts;they too could die on the spears. Meantime the lifeboat was gone, theboats were landing, in a moment of darkly sweet quiet which was theeye of the storm.

  Paul checked the giant girl Lisson from firing at the landing party."Save ammunition." He indicated a tall blue-flowered shrub a hundredyards out in the meadow. "We wait at the edge of the woods until theypass that bush, then charge them. If they break us down here, everyoneis to fight west, away from the lake--_west_. Now run down the line,pass on these two orders." Lisson sped away, her golden fur bright andunstained. "Doc--get the wounded together, have the other women andMijok take them west, beyond Sears' group, well back in the woods. Tryto find out where Abara's got to with the olifants but send a runnerback (if there's time)--don't come back yourself. And keep Mijok withyou. I don't want him to do any more fighting if we can help it--it'stearing him up inside."

  "I----" Wright checked himself, nodded, hurried back into thefortress.

  "Pakriaa, Abro Kamisiaa, get your soldiers at the edge of the woods."

  They vanished. The meadow was empty of life; the many open eyes on thebeach would not see what was to come. Wright's party left theenclosure, Mijok carrying the shield. Wright could not look back norwave, for his own arms were full, his head bent in some consolingspeech. Paul was striding for the woods when Pakriaa met him andmurmured in contempt, "We hide too, Commander?"

  He answered out of a moment of black indifference. (_Probably we alldie and everything I have done is a mistake._) "Pakriaa, they maybreak easier if they don't see us till we charge." She shrugged,following him into the obscurity, pointedly ignoring Nisana, who cameto his other side, perhaps still hating the little captain for herindependence of yesterday, when Paul was chosen commander of thisgrotesque army.

  The Vestoians from the boats were rising out of the grass and comingforward. Steadily now, with no more apparent haste than the firstbreakers leading a destroying wave. It was possible to think withamazing leisure of the high meadows and wooded roads of New Hampshire.Paul's brother had always been a little too fat and fond of ice cream.There was a bookstore in Brattleboro. And the waves of the South ChinaSea were moving mountains with snowcaps of foam as they came in onLingayen. Why, there was a war there once, more than a hundred yearsago, when the Republic of Oceania was hardly even a thought. Yes: theycalled it a Second World War....

  The Vestoians passed the blue shrub. The breaker was red, with a foamof white-tipped spears.

  Paul was swept into the open, not only by the howling drive of his ownpygmy army, but by the machine within, relentless again, briefly freefrom the compromise of thought. He was firing with precision in thescant time available before the white-painted bodies crashed into theunpainted and churned up a froth of battle.

  He had time to wonder why Nisana was here with him a few yards back ofthe hand-to-hand frenzy. She was not afraid; her spear was balanced. Abreak in the line of fighters let through a Vestoian soldier, darkmouth squared in a yell. Nisana's spear widened the mouth to a deathmask and withdrew. Paul stepped into the breach and sent a few shotstoward a trio of green-capped leaders. Something slapped and gouged athis chest--_nothing serious_. But his own fighters to the left of himwere going down, outnumbered. He shouted at a brief gleam of Pakriaa'sface, "West! Fight _west!_"

  Golden Lisson was running back from her errand, her rifle waving, herlips straining in wild laughter. She passed him, trying to bring herrifle into use as she ran; it did not fire. A Vestoian was forcingNisana away from Paul and beating down her spear. "Why, damn you!" TheVestoian face dissolved in pulp and strangeness under his rifle butt,and Paul reeled back, believing for an unbounded second that ghostsfrom a place only a few light-years away had swirled across thisstinking battlefield to shriek at him: "_Yes! Your people al
waysfought that way--the ape picked up a stone...._" But Nisana was alive;Nisana was unhurt and alive. He could look up again and see the girlLisson also using her rifle as a flail.

  She was between him and the beach. Three pygmies had caught the butt,and now she swung them absurdly high; she had almost shaken them offwhen a spear pierced her arm and hung there. The rifle dropped. Shewas down, under the leaping spears and red bodies. She did not evencry out again; the golden fur was reddened and defiled. Paul beat hisway toward her, scarcely seeing what his swinging rifle hit, knowingit was too late, forgetting his own order to drive west. Aware too ofanother tawny shape flashing toward him.

  Surok, who had loved Lisson, who would have been her playmate in thenext Red-Moon-before-the Rains. Paul tried to stop him--but if anysound came out of his own throat it would have been lost againstSurok's mindless crying. The giant tore into the press around Lisson'sbody and fell almost at once, crushing a few as he rolled....

  "_West!_ Stay behind my rifle, Nisana---"

  It had become a methodical insanity like Mijok's, a cutting of red haythat spouted blood. He noticed blood on his right hand too--nothing:front sights of the rifle gouging him. The Vestoians in this directionwere thinning out and giving way. He caught up with a white-splashedback and bandaged thigh--Pakriaa, ploughing her way west. Abro Samiraadrove across his path in the wrong direction, chasing an isolatedgroup of three; squat and heavy-faced, she looked happy and more thanlife-size in the moment of her death, as she took a spear thrust overher heart and lay down with the enemy to grin at the sky and ceasehating.

  A rifle barked ahead of him. That could only be Sears Oliphant: Wrightwould surely follow orders and keep Mijok and the giant women with himto protect the wounded.... Abro Brodaa was fighting through to aidPakriaa, not yelling, not excited, keeping somehow an air of dreamycontemplation, as if the arms driving her spear and dagger were notquite hers. Nisana cried out, "They are not following! They goback----"

  It was true. Partly true. Here in this patch of bloody meadow therewas not much left to fight. The defenders had functioned like a singleorganism, forming a new semicircular line. Behind it was a quiet,where Pakriaa was gasping, pounding her foot into a body that feltnothing.

  And this dear monster, this fat naked grotesque, panting and smearedwith red--this must be Sears Oliphant, late of John HopkinsUniversity. The monster smiled in a black beard. "Few got by, oh my,yes. Tamisraa's girls fixed 'em--had to club m' rifle--dirty caveman--no fear, Paul--_no fear!_ Muscle man with an empty head. Theyhad--couple bowmen with 'em--no harm done." No harm? Was he unaware ofthe broken arrow shaft below his ribs, deeply bedded, with dark bloodoozing around the wood? "They quit, Paul?"

  "They haven't quit." He looked south, seeing why they wouldn't quit.

  "Tamisraa got a bad one--throat." Sears coughed painfully. "I sent herto Doc--he's just back of those trees. And my pets, Paul, my olifants,why, they're standing fast, boy. With Abara, bless him--'bout halfmile north. You can't beat 'em. We must figure some way to ferry 'emover to the island--must--they're people, those olifants----"

  "You go to Doc yourself, Jocko, and fast. That----"

  "Oh, that, that. Mere prac'l dem'stration nobody loves fat man----"

  The Vestoians would not quit because of what was coming half a mileaway in the south under a cloud of brown wings, coming fast. The hordewould be ignoring the omasha, striking them aside, spearing them whenthere was time, granting them the necessary toll for passage, andcoming fast. Oh, they would be less than six thousand now--somewhatless. Meanwhile the remnant from the boats was waiting, regrouping,drawing breath, readying itself for the climax of massacre, maybedeliberately postponing it until Lantis of Vestoia, Queen of theWorld, could arrive to enjoy it. Paul tried again to count his peoplein the sturdy half circle. Black Elis was striding among them, agreat stick in each hand, rumbling comfort and encouragement, and noneof them shrank away from him.

  It looked like less than seven hundred. A hundred lost at the knoll;forty, Wright said, in the first skirmish at the camp; twenty inSamiraa's night expedition. Perhaps three hundred in this last wave ofthe battle. And Samiraa herself; Duriaa; Tamisraa wounded, Pakriaainsane with grief; Lisson and Surok dead. Lame Kamisiaa--Paul couldnot find her. Abro Brodaa--still calm, unhurt, competent. Verywell--seven hundred against somewhat less than six thousand of theland army, somewhat less than four thousand from the boats.

  _How I dreamed!_ There would be no southward drive to the island. Theomasha alone made it an absurdity. He had been idiotic to imagine it.

  Pakriaa broke her spear across her knee. She walked out into themeadow toward the advancing swarm. She looked back stupidly at Paul'sshout, and Nisana ran to her, crying out in the old language. Pakriaa,with no change of expression, lunged at the captain, strikingflat-handed across her face, forcing her back until Paul reached themto interfere and Sears caught Pakriaa's wrist, mumbling, "Comenow--come with me, princess."

  "I am no princess."

  "I call you so," Sears said clearly, and speaking with sternness forpossibly the first time in his life. "Now come with me."

  Paul stammered, "Have Doc get that damned arrow out of you. Then he'sto start north with the wounded--at once."

  "North." Sears nodded.

  "There are no gods," said Pakriaa.

  "Yes, north. We'll catch up with you."

  "I thought of you as a god."

  "Think of me as a friend who loves you. It is better." She went withhim, stumbling as Paul had never seen her do, and when the leavesclosed behind them it seemed to Paul that there was surely the cloudof another world. She might have been a small girl going for a walk inthe woods with her grandfather....

  There was no lifeboat above that rolling swarm. Ed Spearman musthave----_No time to think about it_.

  But he had to, a little. Spearman was forced down by lack of fuel andkilled. Or forced down, isolated somewhere, miles away. Or he had keptgood watch of the fuel gauge until there was just enough for anothertrip to the island and had gone--right, reasonable, what he ought tohave done, what Paul would have ordered him to do if he could have....Paul turned to Brodaa. "Your sister Kamisiaa--I don't see her----"

  "My lame sister is dead." Her eyes were shrewd, counting. "We havemore than seven hundred. Two hundred of them bowmen."

  "Bring them all to the woods. Spread the bowmen at the edge: they willmeet the first charge with arrows, nothing else, and then join ourretreat. Send a hundred spearwomen to guard and help Tocwright'sgroup: they will go straight north. Send another hundred through thevillages to save what they can--the children, the old--and take themwest and north to join the others. All the rest will stay with you andme and Elis to fight in the rear--delay and confuse--fighting retreat,Brodaa. I see nothing else."

  "Nothing else," she said evenly. "As you say...."

  Elis was with him, waiting under the trees, and Nisana, who said, "Nogods? There must be other gods. Not Ismar...."

  Elis watched the meadow over the crouching bowmen. "Within you,Captain. The god within you made you save the life of my friend. I sawthat. I even think I begin to understand. But that might be vanity."