West Of The Sun Part 19

Saw rather a waving of the gra.s.s, a cl.u.s.ter of dots shifting, bobbing, advancing. Pakriaa's tree-frog voice was calm: "They come fast. They want to reach our forest before the light makes the omasha fly. Your plan is good, Paul: we hold them in the open, the omasha have good meat."

A man could dourly accept it, somehow. Bred to gentleness, undestructive labor, study, contemplation, Paul could tell himself that a certain spot (even as it bloomed like a nodding flower in the telescopic sights) was not flesh and blood and nerve, only a target.

_Would it be so if I were fighting only for myself...?_ He held the spot in focus; he said, "Your soldiers are prepared for the fire stick? They know they must not charge till they have the order from you?"

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

Paul squeezed the trigger.

_Too soon--and too d.a.m.ned quiet._ The clever makers of twenty-first-century firearms on Earth had cut down the shout of a .30 caliber to a trivial snap. The savage eyes out there might not even have caught the flash at the muzzle. There ought to have been the glare and circ.u.mstance of a rocket. How could they be panicked by a silly pop and a spark? Even though--well, one of the dots had vanished, true enough. Maybe he had killed his first human being.

He glanced westward, wondering how soon the gray must change to saffron and crimson. The new red moon--there it was. A b.l.o.o.d.y sliver of a sword above the far sh.o.r.e of the lake.

And he saw the boats.

They were half a mile out. No others were visible north of them, but that meant nothing: these might or might not be the lead canoes of the fleet. The noise of drum boats in the south was constant: those would stay anch.o.r.ed in hiding, letting their wrath appear to come from all parts of the world.

The leading boat jumped to clarity in the sights. Forward the bark roofing reached the gunwale; aft, the sides were open to leave s.p.a.ce for two paddlers. Paul saw the tight mouth of the one on the port side: she could have been Pakriaa's blood sister. Now it was necessary to think of Abro Pakriaa's amba.s.sador torn in quarters, head and arms sent back as a message from the Queen of the World--until the mind of the student of Christopher Wright rebelled: _Vengeance was one of the ape's first discoveries._ It became more necessary to think: _Make it a 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 not to 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 a sudden foam. While the land army came on....

Dots that were bald red heads, white specks that were spear blades. A simple arithmetic: less than a hundred rounds for the rifle; four hundred soldiers; a heart divided but angry, and the devotion of an eight-foot giant with a big stick. Against six thousand in the land army alone. "Pakriaa, it's a single column--the fools! Send your bowmen 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 of the 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 side of the knoll were holding firm for an order. Paul's wave was enough: they spread out in the gra.s.s at the edge of the beach, quivering like waiting cats. The light was changing their bodies from vagueness to familiar copper, black skirts, white body paint.... Mijok tore a half-buried rock from the ground and hurled it out to splinter the nearest boat. But the soldiers would merely swim ash.o.r.e. "Mijok! Stay with me!"

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

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

The column was confused by the many pressing up from behind. A few dozen spearwomen streamed out toward Pakriaa's archers; a second and third flight downed most of them--the little men had skill. No Vestoian bowmen had appeared. "Now, Pakriaa----"

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

The Vestoians wore no white paint. Their leaders had caps of green.

Their gra.s.s skirts were mere fringes. They died easily. They killed easily.

Some distance down the column--for it was still a column, still a rolling machine that could not halt--a tall structure was swaying, hard to a.s.sess in this tortured twilight. A litter? Lantis of Vestoia, the Queen of the World herself? Paul checked his own running advance to send two shots at it. Then he and Mijok were surrounded by a writhing of arms, white-stone, and blood, Mijok raging but bewildered.

Paul saw Pakriaa's spear drive down below naked ribs and withdraw from what sprawled on the ground. She was untouched. Her lean little body dripped with sweat, her teeth gleamed in a devil's grin. Two purple-skirted captains joined her; the three smashed into a cl.u.s.ter of shrieking souls who only began to understand what was happening.

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

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

The litter wobbled toward the center of confusion on the shoulders of six women. Paul fired twice again at it. He had a glimpse of a scrawny figure with a high green headdress leaping down, s.n.a.t.c.hing a spear, vanishing in an improvised protective phalanx. He shot into that, dropping one of the outer soldiers. Mijok saw; he changed the course of his attack, a bulldozer aiming at a new clump of brush. Pakriaa screamed in frenzy, without meaning. Her spear was still a part of her. She was bleeding from a thigh wound; her bright blue skirt had been torn away; she glittered with sweat and paint and blood, a dancing devil mindlessly happy. Then she was down once more in the press, 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 her squeal an order. Before Mijok could cut his way to her the phalanx was running, sheltered by the mere ma.s.s of soldiers. It was necessary to call Mijok back.

The whole Vestoian army was running. "Pakriaa!" Paul plunged after her, caught her shoulder. "No pursuit!" Her eyes glazed in mad rejection; 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 on gla.s.s, and it turned them. It brought them howling down to the beach to aid what was left of the first hundred. The water was a jumble of abandoned boats--even the paddlers had struggled ash.o.r.e to kill and die.

Mijok ploughed in a second time.... That ended it. Some of the Vestoians might have glimpsed what he did to the land soldiers. A few forgot all custom and threw their spears, which Mijok's shield carelessly turned; then they stared with sickness at their empty hands and waited for the club. Meanwhile the strengthened crowd of pygmies worked on till the sand was redder than the sky and there was no more to be done. "Back!"

Pakriaa screamed "No!" and pointed south. Paul stumbled on something slippery. He stooped to her, yelling, _"Omasha!_ The sky will be full of 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 pick up the hurt and run for it."

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

"War perverts all laws. But the laws are true. It is--climbing a mountain, 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, holding the shield out in front so that the motion of his body would not jounce it.

Pakriaa would not move till the last of the survivors had stumbled past her. They were disciplined. Already some of the soft bowmen had taken out arrows of the whining, glittering type that sometimes frightened off the omasha. They were ready. Paul tried to count, gave it 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 her up, naked and slippery with blood and acrid-smelling paint. Her weight was less than forty pounds. Her head lolled back; she whispered to the sky, "No one should call me Abro. I am Pakriaa the child, weak as a male, a fool. I could have followed. I could have brought her to the ground. 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 G.o.d with a window 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 new way----"

She was not listening. Still he saw no threat of brown wings, and no lifeboat. But time was a deception; dawn on Lucifer was abrupt on cloudless mornings. The battle which had seemed long as heart-break had been a skirmish, a brush of advance parties lasting perhaps ten minutes from his first shot to the retreat. Pakriaa's head twitched from 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. I will order it. I would have been Queen of the World." Making no effort to 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 new words? We had our life, no need of you. We were brave--you weaken us with words, with words. Your friendship is the green-flower weed that kills the self. You make children of us. You break our beautiful image of the G.o.d and tell us she never lived. You say that now?" She slashed her fingers down her side, drawing blood.

Firing? Firing at the camp?

She clung to him, wailing: "And now you carry me. I cannot even hate you. You steal our strength. The priests were right--the priests----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. He could hear yelling. Catching up with the running soldiers, leaving them 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 dim with smoke. It circled over jungle, descended in another swoop at the canoes. Red bodies tumbled overside; the silver nose tilted as if in disdain; the jet spoke for one second, blasting the near canoes into nothing, sending up the further ones in yellow fire, driving the lifeboat into its seeming-careless leap. But there was still firing from the gray stone fortress, a human tangle on the beach before it, a high long screaming.

Forward detachments of the lake fleet must have pa.s.sed in the dark.

Paul ran on, only his arms remembering Pakriaa. She slipped down, grabbed a spear as her soldiers caught up with her, and ran straight for the beach.

That part of the agony was almost done. No more boats were coming in--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 more group of panicked boats but heading south. A longer burst of the jet, and Spearman's weapon lifted, straightened, shot out of sight across the meadow.

Paul could picture the big man's intent and mirthless grin, the cold gray eye alert on the fuel gauge. And when this fuel was gone--no more. It might stand for a while, somewhere, a decaying artifact....