The Torian Pearls Part 8

In their eagerness the Kargoi opened fire before any of the Torians were within range. The Torians' speed quickly brought them under Kargoi fire, though. The wooden shields were too clumsy to protect a man on horseback, and in any case the Kargoi aimed at the horses. The blue-skinned animals began to go down, screaming, kicking, rolling about and sometimes rolling onto their fallen riders. Parts of the incoming line became ghastly tangles of riderless or fallen or stumbling horses and staggering or crawling or fallen men. Neither the Torians nor their horses died quietly.

The Torians came on, and soon they could dismount and return the arrow fire. With the speed and precision of circus riders, they sprang down from their horses, bows in one hand and the great shields in the other. With shouts and slaps they turned their horses back. The animals dashed away through the oncoming infantry, who opened their ranks to let them pa.s.s.

Meanwhile the archers set up their shields on the ground and knelt behind them. The Kargoi shifted their fire, but it was hard to hit a shielded man and nearly impossible to kill him. The Torians would duck behind their shields, nock an arrow, pop up, let fly, then duck down before the Kargoi could fire. They were not shooting very well, but they were shooting fast and furiously. A steady stream of arrows poured over the wall, and Kargoi began to go down as the arrows pierced their reptile-hide armor or found exposed areas of their bodies.

Blade bellowed orders for the Kargoi to kneel behind the railing. That gave them some extra protection, but the arrows continued to whistle over them and into the fort.

Arrows began to run short on the wall. Someone inside the fort organized a line of the women to pa.s.s filled quivers up to the archers, while others collected Torian arrows. Blade saw Naula running toward the wall and scrambling up it without using a ladder, agile as a monkey. He shouted for her to get back down, but she seemed to be deaf to everything except the mounting roar of the battle. Her eyes were wide, more with excitement than with fear, and Blade saw that she had a carving knife stuck in her belt.

Well, if she wanted to get into a full-scale battle, shed chosen the right time and place. Reluctantly Blade put the girl out of his mind and turned back to the battle.

The archers of both sides were shooting as furiously as ever, but no longer very effectively. Both sides were now so well protected that they were neither taking nor doing much damage. If there'd been only archers on hand, the archery duel could have gone on all day, the archers using and reusing each others arrows until all the arrows and all the bowstrings were broken and not an archer on either side could lift a finger.

Now the Torian infantry were crowding up behind their archers, standing ready to advance when somebody gave them the word. They stood there for several minutes, long enough for the Kargoi to pick off some of them, long enough for some Torian commander to realize that the Kargoi archers weren't going to give up. Then a horn blew at one end of the Torian line, and all the Torians surged forward, a solid ma.s.s of more than a thousand men hurling themselves at the wall of the West Fort.

Along the wall Blade saw the Kargoi dropping their bows and picking up spears and swords. The men with the bags of naphtha did not pick them up, but stood close by them, ready to go to work.

The oncoming ma.s.s of Torians reached the ditch around the fort and the men with the brushwood bundles ran forward. They hurled the bundles down into the ditch while their own archers kept up a steady fire. Blade saw Kargoi rise to hurl spears and be picked off by arrows.

He shouted to them to get down and save their spears for the close combat that was only minutes away. Some of them heard him, others were too full of battle fury to listen to anyone or anything. Blade ran along the wall, ignoring the arrows flying past, jerking men down onto their knees.

Now the ditch was filled nearly to the top with brushwood in three places, and the Torians with the scaling ladders were coming to the front. The Torians wore no armor and their weapons for fighting on foot were not as good as those of the Kargoi-only a short curved sword and a small circular wooden shield. There might not have been much to fear, if the Torians hadn't so badly outnumbered the defenders and if they hadn't been coming on as if nothing but death could stop them. Probably nothing could.

Now the ladders were banging up against the wall and the first Torians were scrambling up them. Some Kargoi eagerly thrust their spears against the ladders the moment they were in position. Other waited until Torians were on the ladders, then pushed. Ladders and Torians fell with clatters, thuds, and screams.

Blade ran to where three ladders were rising above the wall almost side by side. The shower of incoming arrows had stopped; the Torian archers were too afraid of hitting their own men. The Kargoi had no such fear, and wherever the Torians were not coming up the wall Kargoi bows were at work. The ground outside the ditch was becoming littered with still or writhing bodies and stained with blood.

Blade reached the first of the ladders just as a Torian head popped up over the railing. His sword fell with a swish, the Torian head leaped from its shoulders, and the blood-spouting corpse fell back on the men climbing up behind it. The ladder swung away from the wall and crashed down on top of half a dozen more Torians. Kargoi arrows hissed down onto the men before they could get themselves sorted out, and several of them never got up again.

From the second ladder a Torian actually scrambled over the railing, onto the wall. Blade and a Kargoi warrior struck him in the same moment. The Kargoi's spear went through the man from the back, while Blade's sword laid open his belly. Each grabbed the Torian by one arm and heaved his body off the wall.

More Torians were running forward now, with more brushwood to make new crossing places. Blade gave his orders to the naphtha carriers. They waited until each crossing place was filled in and the Torians moving up to the wall. Then they threw down bags of naphtha and torches on top of that. Flames boomed up, brushwood crackled, and Torians died screaming horribly, rolling on the ground or running wildly, trailing flame and smoke.

Now Blade had a few moments free to look over the fort. He saw at once that too many men were trying to get in on the defense of the wall, and not enough were ready elsewhere. He began shouting, waving men away and pushing others toward the ladders. Gradually he got warriors and women drifting across the fort toward the gate. He would have liked to see Naula join that drift, but she seemed determined to stay with him on the wall until the last Torian attacker was beaten down or beaten back.

Blade's orders reinforcing the gate came just in time. Only minutes after the warriors started moving that way, the Torians attacked with their battering-ram. A tremendous booming crash rolled across the fort as the ram struck its first blow, drowning out all other sounds for a moment. The echoes died away, harsh Torian voices rose in a heaving chant, and the ram crashed home again. Blade saw the heavy logs of the gate shiver.

Torian heads appeared over the outer railing of the gate house and Kargoi scrambled up to meet them. A new and furious battle exploded up there, as the ram pounded away at the gate below. Blade saw Rehod leading warriors and a band of women and workers carrying logs, to brace the sagging gate. From the gate house Torian archers fired at Rehod's band, each one getting off an arrow or two before he was killed. Blade saw Rehod bend and pick up something from the ground, then run on toward the gate.

The Torians kept trying to scale the wall where Blade stood until all their brushwood and most of their ladders had been used up-smashed or burned or buried under mounds of corpses. In several places the ditch was nearly filled with Torian bodies. They'd lost nearly five hundred men, enough to make the bravest draw back and think again. Blade saw warriors beginning to drift around the walls of the fort, to join the attack on the gate.

The gate seemed to be only minutes from collapse. Blade saw several men shot down trying to toss naphtha down on the crew of the rare. Flames and screams rose in one place, but not the right one. The pounding of the ram went on.

Blade was heading for a ladder, to go down and join the defense of the gate, when a woman's cry struck a sudden new note in his ear. He turned, to see Naula standing close behind him. She was swaying like a drunkard, her teeth clamped down hard on her lower lip. Blade reached out a hand to steady her, then saw the Torian arrow driven into her breast.

Her lips moved, twisting painfully to get the words out. "Rehod-at you-saw him-he wanted us to think Torians-kill-" Then she sagged forward, and would have fallen off the wall if Blade hadn't caught her. He held her for a moment, long enough to feel the life go out of her. Then he laid her down, wiped the blood from her lips, and sprang down from the wall into the fort like a tiger on the hunt.

He had to kill Rehod, and quickly, before the baudz could attack again or get any of his personal followers to defend him against Blade. It would have to be a stealthy killing, too, or the garrison would see their two commanders locked in deadly combat as the Torians broke through the gate. That spectacle could sow panic and give the Torians victory.

As Blade ran across the fort the logs of the gate gave inward with an uproar of thuds and crackings. The women and workers trying to brace fresh logs in place scattered, leaping over the brush-filled ditch dug in a semicircle around the gate. The Torians followed them, scrambling over the fallen logs, coming on with shouts and screams, scenting victory.

Then Rehod threw a lighted torch down into the brushwood that filled the ditch. The naphtha-soaked wood exploded into a wall of flame that ran completely across the gate. At the very ends of the semicircle there were gaps, where the ditch was cut short to keep the wall from catching fire. Solid cl.u.s.ters of Kargoi with spears and swords ran into position behind those gaps. Meanwhile, every Kargoi within range who had a bow and arrows let fly.

The first few Torians could not draw back in time as the flames roared up. They tumbled straight into the ditch. The screams were indescribable, and Blade saw hardened Kargoi warriors turn white and vomit at the sound. Arrows rained down on the Torians who escaped the flames, and the head of the attacking column went down as if a machine gun had gone to work on it.

The spectacle of the dying Torians drew all of Rehod's attention. He stood at the edge of the smoke cloud around the fire-filled ditch, waving his sword, with no eyes for anything to his flanks or rear. Blade sprinted up to Rehod, pivoted on one foot, and wheel-kicked the baudz in the small of the back. Rehod was in the flaming ditch before he realized that he was falling. He did not scream long, but he screamed louder and more horribly than anyone else who'd died in the ditch. Blade could ignore those screams. Naula was now thoroughly avenged, and the danger of civil war or intrigue among the Kargoi greatly reduced.

Only a few minutes after Rehod's death, the attack through the gate collapsed. Again the Torians left several hundred dead and dying on the ground before they gave up the struggle. Between the two attacks, they'd lost more men than the whole strength of the garrison of the West Fort, without inflicting more than a hundred casualties on the Kargoi.

Blade kept his doubts about the future to himself. Apart from the lurking threat of the Menel, the Torians would certainly come again. They were intelligent as well as brave, and they would certainly learn valuable lessons from this repulse. When they came again, they might not be so comparatively easy to stop.

He wasn't even sure that the Torians had finished with this attack. The fort was dangerously short of both arrows and naphtha. If the Torians pushed home another a.s.sault, they might lose another thousand men, but they would probably have the West Fort when the battle was over.

Blade didn't relax until dawn the next morning showed empty plain where the Torian camp had been. Even then he was cautious about letting parties out of the fort to scavenge up the fallen weapons and collect the bodies for burial in a ma.s.s grave. The parties worked armed, with mounted scouts out in all directions.

That evening Paor appeared with five hundred mounted warriors and a long wagon convoy of supplies. Now the fort could hold out against any attack the Torians could launch for quite some time.

"Where's Rehod?" was Paor's question, after inspecting the fort.

"I killed him," said Blade quietly. "He shot at me with a Torian arrow, to make it look like the work of the enemy. Naula died taking that arrow. I came down, caught Rehod by surprise, and pushed him into the fire ditch. No one could even recognize which body was his after the fire died down.

"Did anyone see you do it?"

Blade shook his head. "Let us say that if anyone saw it, they have said nothing to me about it. They know they will not raise Rehod from the dead, and they may perhaps join him if they offend me."

"My sword would be with you in that," said Paor.

"Good. It seems to me that we have now found as much of a new homeland as we are likely to have until we make peace with the Torians. That may be a long time. With Rehod dead there is less danger of plots and intrigues. Perhaps it is time that we consider making you High Baudz."

Paor stared, then shook his head. "I-the G.o.ds only know whether I am worthy of this."

"I know that you are worthy," said Blade. "So do many of the other warriors, and neither I nor they are G.o.ds."

Paor laughed weakly. "No, I suppose not. But I-Blade, I need time to think upon this. Can you give me that?"

"Certainly," said Blade. "But do not ask for too much time. The Torians will not give it to you."

Chapter 21.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and the Torians did not come. Blade suspected that when they did come east again, they would come with fourteen or even forty thousand men, and they would be a great deal harder to defeat or discourage.

Meanwhile the Kargoi did what they could to prepare. The West Fort was repaired and a second fort was built and garrisoned. Five hundred mounted warriors camped on the edge of the forest, ready to move out to the aid of either fort. The rest of the warriors camped wherever they could get food and avoid the Hauri. They spent much of their time making fifteen-foot pikes and practicing using them, in lines, squares, and columns. Blade watched them with growing confidence. If the Torians were too slow in launching their next attack, they might face a pike wall that no cavalry charge could break. That might be enough to give the Kargoi the victory they needed. Hopefully they would not need to march two hundred miles to Tordas, storm its walls, and put Queen Kayarna to the sword in her own palace before the Torians would agree to let the Kargoi use the plains!

The truce with the Hauri held firm. The Kargoi still did not entirely trust the fishermen of the villages, while the Hauri did not wish to seem too friendly to the Kargoi, in case the Torians won the next battle.

Yet slowly the wariness and suspicion faded. The women of each people began to find the men of the other interesting, and the men did the same with the women. The Kargoi developed a taste for eating dried fish and wearing necklaces of polished sh.e.l.ls. The Hauri found it agreeable to feast on roasted drend meat and wear garments of drend leather or armor of reptile hide.

The Hauri and the Kargoi were still not one people. That would take generations, if it ever happened at all. They were two peoples who had begun to trust each other. That meant a good deal. The Kargoi could face the Torians knowing that their rear was safe, and the Hauri could go about their lives as they had done for centuries.

After a month or two the Hauri began to invite Blade and other high-ranking warriors of the Kargoi to their villages. The visitors ate fish and oysters roasted on driftwood fires and strong-tasting stews of clams and seaweed. They slept in the gra.s.s-roofed huts with the chocolate-colored Hauri women. They even sailed in the Hauri's outrigger canoes, far out on what had been open sea even before the ice melted and the water rose.

Blade was happy to go on those fishing trips. He could do nothing against the Torians for the moment, while far out to sea he might again encounter the Menel.

There were whitecaps on the sea, and the sail of the big canoe was filled out round and firm.

"Like the breast of a fine woman," said Fudan, as he put the helm over. The canoe heeled sharply; it would have capsized without the outrigger. The sail swung around with the mast and rigging creaking under the strain, and the canoe settled on its new course. Now they were heading straight toward a low rocky island that reared up out of the depths and sheltered a stretch of water three miles long. They could anchor in the lee of the island, safe from most storms but within easy diving range of a particularly rich pearl bed.

"Like Loya's b.r.e.a.s.t.s," Blade thought, looking at the sail. He did not say this out loud, although he knew Fudan made no effort to act as his sister's guardian. He'd seen Loya often during the past few weeks. She never wore more than the trousers in which he'd first seen her, and sometimes less. Other women of the Hauri might cover themselves from throat to ankles, but not Loya, in the pride of her rank or perhaps in the even greater pride of her beauty.

The pearl bed they sought lay no more than sixty feet down, shallow water for the pearl oysters. Closer to the mainland, such a shallow bed would long since have been stripped of its choicest pearls. Here they were a good thirty miles farther out than the canoes of the Hauri usually came. Only a bold sailor such as Fudan would come this far.

A flash of light low on the horizon caught Blade's attention. It was far too bright to be sunlight reflected on the sea. It came and went irregularly. Blade realized that it was indeed reflected sunlight, but sunlight flashing from something made of polished metal, moving slowly just above the water. It appeared to be moving toward the lee side of the island, where Blade and Fudan were planning to anchor.

A moment came when the sunlight was not blazing from the moving object. Blade got a clear view of a streamlined metal cylinder with a high fin aft and a bubble canopy forward.

It was a flying machine of the Menel. He'd seen them before in the Dimension of the Ice Dragons. In fact he'd flown a force of raiders aboard one into the polar regions, to destroy the Ice Dragons and the Ice Master and liberate his slaves and prisoners. The one he'd flown against the Ice Dragons was several times larger than the one he saw now, but they were of the same basic design.

As Blade watched, he realized that the machine was not under full control. It was weaving erratically from side to side and bobbing up and down, sometimes barely skimming the crests of the waves, at other times soaring high into the air. Gradually it took a nose-down att.i.tude. Blade held his breath, watching and waiting for the inevitable.

The machine swooped low, and this time its nose dug into the crest of a wave. Spray exploded around it as it cartwheeled for a hundred feet, the canopy shattering and the tail fin ripping loose. Blade thought he saw an elongated dark shape with four waving arms hurtling out of the spray. Then the machine struck again and arrowed straight down into the water. A spreading patch of foam marked the spot.

It was a moment before Blade realized that Fudan had watched the final gyrations and fall of the Menel flying machine. Blade stared at the man, trying to read the expression on the weather-beaten brown face.

"It will not come again, after this," said Fudan quietly.

Blade was startled and his voice showed it. "You mean-this is nothing new to you? You've seen-that-before?"

"Oh yes. Our fishermen see it come up from the south, oh, once a month, for two years now. Always the same one, we think."

"For two years, you say?" Blade went on. He was finding Fudan's calmness harder to deal with than panic or superst.i.tious awe.

"Oh yes. It began after the great star fell from the sky onto the island to the south. So we think it comes from that island, where the Sky People must live."

Blade realized that if the conversation went on this way much longer, he was going to either lose his temper or sound like an idiot. Neither would do any good. "You know that people from the sky have come to this world, and are living on an island to the south. Their machine has come once a month for the past two years. Didn't you do anything about this?"

Fudan looked innocent. "Why should we? They have done nothing to us by flying over our canoes and looking at them. The fish and the oysters and the seaweed are as abundant as ever, the sharks and eels no more dangerous, our women bear as many healthy children as before." He frowned. "Of course, if the sea reptiles are becoming dangerous, as you say, perhaps it is these Sky People who are behind it. In that case perhaps we shall have to think about what we may do against them, if they go on doing evil with-"

Blade's temper nearly snapped. "Why didn't you tell me?" he said, an edge in his voice.

"You never asked me," said Fudan.

Blade let out his breath in a long whoooossssh and began to laugh. Fudan was quite right. It had never occurred to him that the Hauri might have seen the Menel without thinking them worth mentioning. It had seemed wise to keep the Menel as much a secret from the Hauri as he'd kept them from the Kargoi.

So much for what had seemed wise.

"I understand," said Blade. "But I must tell you that Sky People, the Menel, are indeed using the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air against us. They are enemies to the Kargoi. They may become enemies to the Hauri as well. Now that their machine has fallen, we have a good chance to learn more about them. We must dive down to that machine and look at it and everything in it. This will be more dangerous than letting the Menel fly over your canoes and look at you, but-"

"Do you think the Hauri become afraid so easily?" said Fudan. He did not sound angry, merely implying that Blade was being rather silly to even raise the point.

"No. I have fought the Hauri and know they are a brave people. But the Menel have weapons against which the courage of the Hauri and the Kargoi together may be nothing. There may be such weapons in this machine, and some of the Menel may still be alive to use them. So let us not treat them like stranded sea turtles, to be knocked on the head with a stick."

"Certainly, that would not be wise," said Fudan. He put the helm over, and the canoe turned toward the position of the crash. "Blade, look to our weapons. The weapons of the Hauri have slain green sharks and death eels, so perhaps they will make even the Menel know that the Hauri are not easy prey."

If the Menel beamers didn't work under water, Fudan might very well be right. The Hauri's underwater weapons would not have been turned down by a Home Dimension skin diver. They had tridents and thrusting spears, hooked bars for prying sh.e.l.lfish loose from rocks, crossbows with elastic bands of fish skin that propelled heavy barbed darts, and curved knives that could slit the throat of a man or the gills of an eight-foot green shark with equal ease. The Hauri never killed or took more than they needed from the sea, but they made sure they could always take that much.

Fudan started the canoe zig-zagging as they approached the crash position, to make a difficult target for anyone who might be waiting. Blade hoped the wreck would be no more than eighty feet down. He was a good enough skin diver to reach that depth easily, but he was no more than an amateur by the standards of the Hauri. Their best divers could bring up sh.e.l.ls and coral from a hundred and seventy feet down.

As they drew closer to the position Blade scanned the water, looking for floating wreckage. Fudan lowered the sail and broke out the paddles. The water was now so transparent that they could see down to the bottom a hundred feet below, every fish and every coral boulder clearly visible. Both men loaded crossbows and put them in the bottom of the canoe within easy reach.

They were entering the area of the crash when Blade saw a gray-white cloud of shrieking sea birds whirling over something floating in the water. Without a word Fudan steered for it. A few more strokes, and Blade could make out the floating object as one of the Menel. A few more, and they were alongside the body.

There was no doubt the Menel was dead. No living creature could survive with its head crushed into featureless pulp, two arms torn out of their sockets, and half its body split open so that strange internal organs trailed out into the water. Small fish were already nibbling at those organs while the sea birds swooped on them from above.

Blade looked at the Menel, and couldn't help feeling slightly sorry for it. It reminded him of the body of an RAF pilot he'd seen, washed ash.o.r.e after a high-speed plane crash into the sea. It had suffered a wretched death he wouldn't wish on any intelligent creature, human or not, friendly or not.

Blade saw no other bodies floating. If there'd been any other Menel aboard the machine, they were probably trapped in the wreckage. Fudan said nothing, although this must have been his first sight of one of the Sky People. Perhaps to a man used to the strange creatures of the sea, even a being from outer s.p.a.ce would not look strange.

Another hundred yards, and Blade saw a dark shape on the bottom below. Its outlines were distorted by the water and by crash damage, but it was unmistakably what they were looking for. Fudan threw the anchor overboard and counted the knots on the line as it ran out. Finally the stone touched bottom and the canoe swung gently to and fro.

"Nine dzor," said Fudan, as he laid his paddle in the bottom of the canoe. The dzor was a measure of depth equal to about seven feet. So the wreck lay about sixty feet down, easy diving depth.

Blade pulled off his sandals and began strapping on the fish-skin fins. Then he tied the weight belt with its pouches of gravel around his waist and picked up a sack and his crossbow.

"With your permission, Fudan?" he said. The first dive on a fishing expedition had a certain ritual quality. Normally Blade would have let Fudan go first, but he didn't know how much time they would have. If the crashed machine had been able to get off any sort of a distress signal ....

Fudan nodded. He was silently pulling on his own diving gear, watching both sky and water as he did so. There was no need to tell him to keep alert. The Hauri knew the basic safety rule for diving: one man in the water, the other in the boat, alert and ready to help if needed.

Blade clung to the side of the canoe, breathing deeply to fill his system with oxygen. At last he let go of the canoe, flipped upside down, and plunged toward the wreck below.

He seemed to drift down through the greenness, although he was kicking as hard as he could. The wreck of the Menel machine seemed to hang suspended before his eyes in a distant limbo for a long time, without getting any closer. A school of foot-long silver fish with dark stripes swam up past him. Then suddenly the coral branches on the bottom seemed to be reaching up toward him like clutching hands. He leveled out and swam toward the machine.

It lay with its nose crushed against a cl.u.s.ter of boulders and its tail standing up like a tombstone. The canopy was gone, both hatches blown off, and the metal skin amidships torn open like a paper bag. Blade swam up to the gaping opening left by the missing canopy and looked down into the c.o.c.kpit.

Two of the Menel lay there in the wreckage, their bodies mangled almost beyond recognition. Among the smashed controls and what must have been seats, Blade could see the twisted shape of one of the beamers. Farther back in the fuselage he could make out a third Menel, crushed under several items of heavy equipment torn loose from the walls and floor by the impact of the crash.

That was all he could make out before his chest began to tighten up from lack of air. He backed out of the machine and thrust himself steadily back to the surface, the sunlight, and the air.

For the next two hours, Blade and Fudan alternated diving and keeping watch. Dive after dive, Blade explored the machine. Dive after dive, Fudan brought up pearl oysters and piled them in the bow. He paid no attention to the machine.

"It interests me, yes," he said. "But also I must bring home the pearls. We have come too far to do otherwise. Besides, if we bring home no pearls, many will wonder what we did here. They will ask questions that I do not want to have to answer."

Since the machine was designed for a crew of beings nine feet tall, there was plenty of room inside it in spite of the damage. Blade swam about freely, examining the equipment as well as he could in the dim light and the short time he had on each dive.