The Rebel Worlds

XII

The easiest way to reach one pass was through a canyon. During megayears, a river swollen by winter rains had carved it, then shrunken in summer. Its walls gave protection from winds and reflected some heat; this encouraged plant life to spring up every dry season along the streambed, where accumulated soil was kinder to feet than the naked rock elsewhere. Accordingly, however twisted and boulder-strewn, it appeared to offer the route of choice.

The scenery was impressive in a gaunt fashion. The river rolled on the parry’s left, broad, brown, noisy and dangerous despite being at its low point. A mat of annual plants made a border whose sober hues were relieved by white and scarlet blossoms. Here and there grew crooked trees, deep-rooted, adapted to inundation. Beyond, the canyon floor reached barren: tumbled dark rocks, fantastically eroded pinnacles and mesas, on to the talus slopes and palisades. Gray sky, diffuse and shadowless light, did not bring out color or detail very well; that was a bewildering view. But human lungs found the air mild, dry, exhilarating. Two krippos wheeled on watch overhead. Harvest Fetcher stayed complete, and every ruka rode a noga. The outworlders walked behind, except for Kathryn, Flandry, and Havelock. She was off to the right, wrapped in her private thoughts. This landscape must have made her homesick for Aeneas. The commander and the ensign kept out of their companions’ earshot.

“Damn it, sir, why do we take for granted we’ll turn ourselves in at Port Frederiksen without a fight?” Havelock was protesting. “This notion our case is hopeless, it’s encouraging treasonable thoughts.”

Flandry refrained from saying he was aware of that. Havelock had been less standoffish than the rest; but a subtle barrier persisted, and Flandry had cultivated him for weeks before getting this much confidence. He knew Havelock had a girl on Terra.

“Well, Ensign,” he said, “I can’t make promises, for the reason that I’m not about to lead us to certain death. As you imply, though, the death may not necessarily be certain. Why don’t you feel out the men? I don’t want anyone denounced to me,” having a pretty fair idea myself, “but you might quietly find who’s … let’s not say trustworthy, we’ll assume everybody is, let’s say enthusiastic. You might, still more quietly, alert them to stand by in case I do decide on making a break. We’ll talk like this, you and I, off and on. More off than on, so as not to provoke suspicion. We’ll get Kathryn to describe the port’s layout, piecemeal, and that’ll be an important element in what I elect to do.”

You, Kathryn, will be more important.

“Very good, sir,” Havelock said. “I hope—”

Assault burst forth.

The party had drawn even with a nearby rock mass whose bottom was screened by a row of crags. From behind these plunged a score of Didonians. Flandry had an instant to think, Ye devils, they must’ve hid in a cave! Then the air was full of arrows. “Deploy!” he yelled. “Fire! Kathryn, get down!”

A shaft went whoot by his ear. A noga bugled, a ruka screamed. Bellyflopping, Flandry glared over the sights of his blaster at the charging foe. They were barbarically decorated with pelts, feather blankets, necklaces of teeth, body paint. Their weapons were neolithic, flint axes, bone-tipped arrows and lances. But they were not less deadly for that, and the ambush had been arranged with skill.

He cast a look to right and left. Periodically while traveling, he had drilled his men in ground combat techniques. Today it paid off. They had formed an arc on either side of him. Each who carried a gun — there weren’t many small arms aboard a warship — was backed by two or three comrades with spears or daggers, ready at need to assist or to take over the trigger.

Energy beams flared and crashed. Slugthrowers hissed, stunners buzzed. A roar of voices and hoofs echoed above the river’s clangor. A krippo turned into flame and smoke, a ruka toppled to earth, a noga ran off bellowing its anguish. Peripherally, Flandry saw more savages hit.

But whether in contempt for death or sheer physical momentum, the charge continued. The distance to cover was short; and Flandry had not imagined a noga could gallop that fast. The survivors went by his line and fell on the Thunderstone trio before he comprehended it. One man barely rolled clear of a huge gray-blue body. The airborne flyers barely had time to reunite with their chief partners.

“Kathryn!” Flandry shouted into the din. He leaped erect and whirled around. The melee surged between him and her. For a second he saw how Didonians fought. Nogas, nearly invulnerable to edged weapons, pushed at each other and tried to gore. Rukas stabbed and hacked; krippos took what shelter they could, while grimly maintaining linkage, and buffeted with their wings. The objective was to put an opponent out of action by eliminating heesh’s rider units.

Some mountaineer nogas, thus crippled by gunfire, blundered around in the offing. A few two-member entities held themselves in reserve, for use when a ruka or krippo went down in combat. Eight or nine complete groups surrounded the triangular formation adopted by the three from Thunderstone.

No, two and a half. By now Flandry could tell them apart. Harvest Fletcher’s krippo must have been killed in the arrow barrage. The body lay transfixed, pathetically small, tailfeathers ruffled by a slight breeze, until a noga chanced to trample it into a smear. Its partners continued fighting, automatically and with lessened skill.

“Get those bastards!” somebody called. Men edged warily toward the milling, grunting, yelling, hammering interlocked mass. It was hard to understand why the savages were ignoring the humans, who had inflicted all the damage on them. Was the sight so strange as not to be readily comprehensible?

Flandry ran around the struggle to see what had become of Kathryn. I never gave her a gun! he knew in agony.

Her tall form broke upon his vision. She had retreated a distance, to stand beneath a tree she could climb if attacked. His Merseian blade gleamed in her grasp, expertly held. Her mouth was drawn taut but her eyes were watchful and steady.

He choked with relief. Turning, he made his way to the contest.

A stone ax spattered the brains of Smith’s ruka. Cave Discoverer’s ruka avenged the death in two swift blows — but, surrounded, could not defend his back. A lance entered him. He fell onto the horn of a savage noga, which tossed him high and smashed him underfoot when he landed.

The humans opened fire.

It was butchery.

The mountaineer remnants stampeded down the canyon. Not an entity among them remained whole. A young Terran stood over a noga, which was half cooked but still alive, and gave it the coup de grace; then tears and vomit erupted from him. The Thunderstoners could assemble one full person at a time. Of the possible combinations, they chose Guardian Of North Gate, who went about methodically releasing the wounded from life.

The entire battle, from start to finish, had lasted under ten minutes.

Kathryn came running. She too wept. “So much death, so much hurt — can’t we help them?” A ruka stirred. He didn’t seem wounded; yes, he’d probably taken a stun beam, and the supersonic jolt had affected him as it did a man. Guardian Of North Gate approached. Kathryn crouched over the ruka. “No! I forbid you.”

The Didonian did not understand her pidgin, for only heesh’s noga had been in Cave Discoverer. But her attitude was unmistakable. After a moment, with an almost physical shrug, heesh had heesh’s ruka tie up the animal.

Thereafter, with what assistance the humans could give, heesh proceeded to care for the surviving Thunderstone units. They submitted patiently. A krippo had a broken leg, others showed gashes and bruises, but apparently every member could travel after a rest.

No one spoke aloud a wish to move from the battleground. No one spoke at all. Silent, they fared another two or three kilometers before halting.

In the high latitudes of Dido, nights around midsummer were not only short, they were light. Flandry walked beneath a sky blue-black, faintly tinged with silver, faintly adance with aurora where some of Virgil’s ionizing radiation penetrated the upper clouds. There was just sufficient luminance for him not to stumble. Further off, crags and cliffs made blacknesses which faded unclearly into the dusk. Mounting a bluff that overlooked his camp, he saw its fire as a red wavering spark, like a dying dwarf star. The sound of the river belled subdued but clear through cool air. His boots scrunched on gravel; occasionally they kicked a larger rock. An unknown animal trilled somewhere close by.

Kathryn’s form grew out of the shadows. He had seen her depart in this direction after the meal she refused, and guessed she was bound here. When he drew close, her face was a pale blur.

“Oh … Dominic,” she said. The outdoor years had trained her to use more senses than vision.

“You shouldn’t have gone off alone.” He stopped in front of her.

“I had to.”

“At a minimum, carry a gun. You can handle one, I’m sure.”

“Yes. ’Course. But I won’t, after today.”

“You must have seen violent deaths before.”

“A few times. None that I helped cause.”

“The attack was unprovoked. To be frank, I don’t regret anything but our own losses, and we can’t afford to lament them long.”

“We were crossin’ the natives’ country,” she said. “Maybe they resented that. Didonians have territorial instincts, same as man. Or maybe our gear tempted them. No slaughter, no wounds, if ’tweren’t for our travelin’.”

“You’ve lived with the consequences of war,” his inner pain said harshly. “And this particular fracas was an incident in your precious revolution.”

He heard breath rush between her lips. Remorse stabbed him. “I, I’m sorry, Kathryn,” he said. “Spoke out of turn. I’ll leave you alone. But please come back to camp.”

“No.” At first her voice was almost too faint to hear. “I mean … let me stay out a while.” She seized his hand. “But of your courtesy, don’t you skite either. I’m glad you came, Dominic. You understand things.”

Do I? Rainbows exploded within him.

They stood a minute, holding hands, before she laughed uncertainly and said: “Again, Dominic. Be practical with me.”

You’re brave enough to live with your sorrows, he thought, but strong and wise enough to turn your back on them the first chance that comes, and cope with our enemy the universe.

He wanted, he needed one of his few remaining cigarets; but he couldn’t reach the case without disturbing her clasp, and she might let go. “Well,” he said in his awkwardness, “I imagine we can push on, day after tomorrow. They put Lightning Struck The House together for me after you left.” All heesh’s units had at various times combined with those that had been in Cave Discoverer; among other reasons, for heesh to gain some command of pidgin.

“We discussed things. It’d take longer to return, now, than finish our journey, and the incomplètes can handle routine. The boys have gotten good at trailsmanship themselves. We’ll bear today’s lesson in mind and avoid places where bushwhackers can’t be spotted from above. So I feel we can make it all right.”

“I doubt if we’ll be bothered any more,” Kathryn said with a return of energy in her tone. “News’ll get ’round.”

“About that ruka we took prisoner.”

“Yes? Why not set the poor beast free?”

“Because … well, Lightning isn’t glad we have the potential for just one full entity. There’re jobs like getting heavy loads down steep mountainsides which’re a deal easier and safer with at least two, especially seeing that rukas are their hands. Furthermore, most of the time we can only have a single krippo aloft. The other will have to stay in a three-way, guiding the incomplètes and making decisions, while we’re in this tricky mountainland. One set of airborne eyes is damn little.”

“True,” He thought he heard the rustle of her hair, which she had let grow longer, as she nodded. “I didn’t think ’bout that ’fore, too shocked, but you’re right.” Her fingers tensed on his. “Dominic! You’re not plannin’ to use the prisoner?”

“Why not? Lightning seems to like the idea. Been done on occasion, heesh said.”

“In emergencies. But … the conflict, the — the cruelty—”

“Listen, I’ve given these matters thought,” he told her. “Check my facts and logic. We’ll force the ruka into linkage with the noga and krippo that were Cave Discoverer’s — the strongest, most sophisticated entity we had. He’ll obey at gun point. Besides, he has to drink blood or he’ll starve, right? A single armed man alongside will prevent possible contretemps. However, two units against one ought to prevail by themselves. We’ll make the union permanent, or nearly so, for the duration of our trip. That way, the Thunderstone patterns should go fast and deep into the ruka. I daresay the new personality will be confused and hostile at first; but heesh ought to cooperate with us, however grudgingly.”

“Well—”

“We need heesh, Kathryn! I don’t propose slavery. The ruka won’t be absorbed. He’ll give — and get — will learn something to take home to his communion — maybe an actual message of friendship, an offer to establish regular relations — and gifts, when we release him here on our way back to Thunderstone.”

She was silent, until: “Audacious but decent, yes, that’s you. You’re more a knight than anybody who puts ‘Sir’ in front of his name, Dominic.”

“Oh, Kathryn!”

And he found he had embraced her and was kissing her, and she was kissing him, and the night was fireworks and trumpets and carousels and sacredness.

“I love you, Kathryn, my God, I love you.” She broke free of him and moved back. “No … ” When he groped toward her, she fended him off. “No, please, please, don’t. Please stop. I don’t know what possessed me … ”

“But I love you,” he cried.

“Dominic, no, we’ve been too long on this crazy trek. I care for you more’n I knew. But I’m Hugh’s woman.”

He dropped his arms and stood where he was, letting the spirit bleed out of him. “Kathryn,” he said, “for you I’d join your side.”

“For my sake?” She came close again, close enough to lay hands on his shoulders. Half sobbing, half laughing: “You can’t dream how glad I am.”

He stood in the fragrance of her, fists knotted, and replied, “Not for your sake. For you.”

“What?” she whispered, and let him go. “You called me a knight. Wrong. I won’t play wistful friend-of-the-family rejected suitor. Not my style. I want to be your man myself, in every way that a man is able.” The wind lulled, the river boomed. “All right,” Flandry said to the shadow of her. “Till we reach Port Frederiksen. No longer. He needn’t know. I’ll serve his cause and live on the memory.”

She sat down and wept. When he tried to comfort her, she thrust him away, not hard but not as a coy gesture either. He moved off a few meters and chainsmoked three cigarets.

Finally she said, “I understand what you’re thinkin’, Dominic. If Snelund, why not you? But don’t you see the difference? Startin’ with the fact I do like you so much?”

He said through the tension in his throat, “I see you’re loyal to an arbitrary ideal that originated under conditions that don’t hold good any more.”

She started to cry afresh, but it sounded dry, as if she had spent her tears.

“Forgive me,” Flandry said. “I never meant to hurt you. Would’ve cut my larynx out first. We won’t speak about this, unless you want to. If you change your mind, tomorrow or a hundred years from tomorrow, while I’m alive I’ll be waiting.”

Which is perfectly true, gibed a shard of him, though I am not unaware of its being a well-composed line, and nourish a faint hope that my noble attitude will yet draw her away from that bucketheaded mass murderer Hugh McCormac.

He drew his blaster and pushed it into her cold unsteady clasp. “If you must stay here,” he said, “keep this. Give it back to me when you come down to camp. Goodnight.”

He turned and left. There went through him: Very well, if I have no reason to forswear His Majesty Josip III, let me carry on with the plan I’m developing for the discomfiture of his unruly subjects.