Firehand Part 16

They were not long in reaching their comrades. The news that the invader Ton was near and within their potential grasp brought a low growl of mingled rage and exultation from the a.s.sembled warriors, but their commander would allow no move against Zanthor, not yet.

It was Ross's intention to strike his enemies just as they were forming their evening's camp, when the most men were dismounted and least prepared for combat and the guards, if out at all, would not be fully settled into their watching. He had not forgotten the prowess of Condor Hall soldiers or what it had cost his own command in their last encounter.

It was not just his people that he wanted to spare, either. By coming at Zanthor's warriors as he intended, more of them could probably be felled with less-than-fatal strokes than would be the case if they were attacked as the alert, battle-ready unit the column had revealed itself to be. Murdock had no more love than did Gurnion I Carlroc for the needless slaughter of valiant men.

The Sapphirehold partisans timed their arrival carefully so that their charge could begin at the moment their chief had indicated.

Ross's mouth was a hard line. The attack would not be quite as effective as he had originally hoped. The Condor Hall commander had not so settled his force as to render it easy for the taking. His position was high although well sheltered, readily defensible, and holding the surrounding area under its view. If the partisans were able to strike as planned and do so quickly, they should still be able to conquer. If the charge were delayed or if their presence came somehow to be suspected before it began, they would be forced to storm the enemy position as if it were a fort, or else to retreat.

It would be the latter, whatever their eagerness to take Zanthor. Sapphirehold did not have the troops to squander in costly frontal a.s.saults. Harrying tactics had served them well through all this campaign and would serve them here if needs be until they could find a position from which to attack again in force. With luck, one of the archers might be able to pick I Yoroc off from ambush even if they were unable to join open battle.

The war captain turned in his saddle to look upon his own warriors, studying them so intently for several seconds that they felt his scrutiny and glanced toward him in both amazement and discomfort.

He had to be certain their hate was in control. If it were not, it could betray them all.

His head raised. He wronged them. These domain soldiers were no less than the professionals hired by Gurnion I Carlroc or those manning the Project at home. Calm was demanded of them now, and this they would give, whatever their feelings against the ruler of Condor Hall.

His heart was beating hard and fast. The battle ahead of them could be the ending or the final turning of the war. If they could fell or take Zanthor...

His comrades would be no less aware than he of what their efforts could bring, to their domain and island if not to Dominion of Virgin herself. Scant wonder they stood beside him in this icy, almost stunned stillness.

He drew a deep breath to steady himself and then straightened. The invaders would be no more vulnerable than they were at this moment.

Almost in slow motion, the Terran raised his battle horn to his lips and sounded the command to charge.

Ross Murdock had fought many times and in many different ways during his life but rarely before in a battle that equaled this either in fury or in the skill and determination, the raw courage, of the partic.i.p.ants.

The Condor Hall men, warriors and officers alike, yielded no inch of ground not soaked red with their own and their enemies' blood, nor did their efforts lessen when it at last became evident that the partisans would gain the day.

Ross's skill was heavily tried. It was the officers that he sought out, knowing their fall was d.a.m.ning not only to their comrades here present but to the invaders' cause as a whole, and as was the case with his own command, many of them appeared to have won rank with courage and ability rather than through mere favor or birth. They did not go down readily, and not all those falling did so without setting their mark on him so that his clothing was rent and red-stained in several places by the time his soldiers began to bring the confrontation to a close.

He ignored the wounds. None was of any significance, and with the battle-fire on him, he scarcely felt them. Soreness would come later, when quiet returned to his mind and body. For now, unless they began to stiffen prematurely and thus slowed his movements, they were of no interest to him.

Zanthor, too, had felt the bite of his enemies' weapons and bore their tears even as did his foeman. Like the Terran Captain's, his sword was brilliantly wielded, brilliantly and with deadly accuracy. None who faced him stood long against him.

Always, the two commanders sought to join combat, and always, the press of the fighting kept them apart. At last, however, each found himself free of opponents and with a clear path open between them.

Murdock set himself to charge, but another rider bore suddenly down upon the invader, and he drew his doe aside. "For your people," he whispered. Dread was a knife twisting in his heart, but he knew if he refused Eveleen Riordan this right, it would stand between them for whatever remained to either of them of life.

The Ton of Condor Hall saw him pull back and stared at him a moment in amazement. He well knew that this accursed partisan did not fear to confront him.

Zanthor saw the one who was to challenge him then and laughed. Did this sharp-faced slip of a girl actually imagine she could match blades with him, however adept she was at lurking in shadows?

It was almost a pity, he thought as he spurred his springdeer toward her. He would have enjoyed breaking her in another way.

Their swords met, slid off one another, and met again.

The man's amus.e.m.e.nt vanished. EA Riordan was good, very good, even as her reputation declared her to be, and she fought in the odd fas.h.i.+on of these Sapphireholders so that his bulk and his longer reach gave him no advantage over her.

That might alter if he could wear her down, weary her.

It was no use. The wench kept him moving, denying him any chance to spare himself for later a.s.sault.

The contest went on. He himself was tiring, and still he could find no weakening in her guard, nothing upon which he could capitalize. Her light blade danced maddeningly before his eyes, seemingly without effort on her part, certainly without flaw. There appeared to be no pattern upon which he could fix, nothing he could prepare to meet or counter...

The woman's sword,spun into a small circle, daintily striking aside his own heavy weapon and darting forward in one liquid motion. Its point pierced his left eye and the brain behind it.

27.

MURDOCK LOOKED UP at the man standing between two of his partisans. The prisoner was young, approximately the same age Ross had been when he had joined the Project. He was slight, almost twisted, of body, but he bore himself proudly, hardly surprising given the officer's stripe on his battle-stained uniform and the cast of his features, which the broad bandage encircling his head could not conceal.

Tarlroc I Zanthor. Two other sons of the slain Ton had perished in the fight, but this one had been felled by a blow to the skull and taken still breathing.

The partisan leader had been aware of his capture since the battle's end, but there had been a great deal to be done-arranging the care of the wounded, sending out patrols and sentries to guard against a counterattack, starting a systematic search of the Condor Hall camp-and that had claimed his first attention. Besides, he had wanted to have both Gordon and Eveleen present at this interview, which would not have been possible any sooner.

Loud voices, sharp with hate, were audible outside the tent in which the Sapphirehold leaders sat. Now that everything immediately possible had been done for the living, the dead were being gathered for burial. To judge by the present commotion, I Yoroc's corpse must have just been drawn up from the slope.

Tarlroc read the meaning of the sounds as well. For an instant, his control threatened to shatter, but he was practiced in holding a rein on himself, and he kept his face and stance impa.s.sive before his captors.

Ross observed the quickly masked quiver of emotion pa.s.s over the younger man. He could pity the sudden loss of a father and brothers without regretting the deaths themselves. "Tell them to keep it quiet out there," he ordered the two guards. "Just take care of the dead, theirs and ours, and get the wounded ready to move."

Once the pair left to obey, he turned to his prisoner. "Your kin will be buried with the rest of your fallen, as is necessary to prevent the spread of sickness. No dishonor will be shown them. As for yourself, I want some answers from you."

"You cannot expect me to provide them," I Zanthor responded quietly, with a dignity that belied his youth. "Even if I had them," he added with carefully schooled bitterness. "My father always kept his plans to himself until he was ready to act. Even the Ton-heir might not have been informed of his purpose."

Would they believe him? They might, for Zanthor had always been known to play his game close, long before he had started on the road to domination. And death.

As for himself, Tarlroc I Zanthor was a minor light, a clerk, not a warrior at all unless unavoidably pressed by circ.u.mstances as in this last, tragic battle.

Condor Hall was lost anyway, he thought dully, whether he held quiet or not. Neither the new Ton nor his other surviving brother was a man to equal Zanthor I Yoroc. They would not be able to hold the war effort together much less carry out the rape of the south, even in the unlikely event that their sire had communicated his intentions to one or the other of them. One of the mercenary commandants might possibly be able to do so, functioning behind a figurehead Ton, but none of the three was clearly dominant now, and he could not see any of them seizing control in time to accomplish any good.

Maybe they had been fated to fail in any case. In that event, Zanthor was fortunate to have fallen here, albeit at the hand of an ugly woman scarcely bigger than a child, rather than later and far more slowly to the so-called justice of his enemies.

A sudden surge of loss and hate filled him. "It is the demons who should have died," he whispered through set lips. "They encouraged Zanthor to begin the war and then withheld the aid that would have given him victory."

A strangling dread crushed Murdock's heart, but his brows only raised. "Are you trying to excuse Zanthor, to say that he was one who obeyed voices sounding in the air around him?"

"Zanthor I Yoroc bowed to no one's will, and the only voices he heard came from throats solid enough to grasp and strangle."

"Go on." The Condor Hall man said nothing more, and Ross Murdock leaned forward. "You claim these supposed allies betrayed Zanthor, at least to the extent of refusing significant help. Tell us what happened. It is the only way you have left of avenging him."

I Zanthor studied Firehand. He was determined not to compromise his sire's cause or his brothers' efforts, however futile, but the big heads were no part of Condor Hall's war. They had no claim on his loyalty.

The partisan leaders were silent for some moments after he had finished his tale. At last, Murdock called for the guards, who had been waiting outside the tent. "Watch him carefully," he commanded, "and see that nothing happens to him. We may want to question him again."

His eyes closed as the Dominionites left the tent. "Baldies," he whispered.

"They're well met." Eveleen Riordan s.h.i.+vered. "That man frightens me more than they do."

Her eyes flashed in anger. "His father was betrayed! There's no word about his father's neighbors or the women and babies butchered or those dying in battle, for and against Condor Hall!"

"Terra knows his kind all too well," Ashe said grimly. "Psychiatrists..."

"d.a.m.n it, Gordon, don't go bleeding heart on me!" Ross snapped. "Tarlroc I Zanthor and his old man weren't little lambs led into evil ways by the big, bad Baldies. They knew full well what they were doing, and they went right ahead and did it."

"Precisely. So do the people I was describing. Psychopaths, sociopaths, antisocial personalities-call them what you will, they're sane, they're aware of the harm they do, and they simply do not care. Nearly all our serial killers have been of that breed and most of the real military and political monsters as well."

The other man's eyes dropped. "I'm sorry, Gordon, but what are we going to do, or how are we going to do it, rather? On Hawaika, we had the Foanna's magic, and we were still nearly whipped. Here, all we have are swords and bows to set against everything those devils can command."

The archeologist shook his head. "They're tough, but don't make the mistake of believing them more formidable than they are." He smiled at the incredulity in his comrades' expressions. "First off, we won't be facing anything like we did on Hawaika. The Baldies themselves had tapped into on-world powers there. That's what created most of the havoc. There were a lot more of them as well. Here, we have only five..."

"That's all I Zanthor saw at a given time," Eveleen interjected. "I'd bet a month's pay that he can't tell one Baldy from another any more than we can."

"Good point," Murdock agreed, "but I think Gordon's right on that point. This seems to be a small party sent to get Zanthor to do their killing for them." His lips tightened as bitter memories rose in his mind. "Five of them are more than enough of a challenge."

"A challenge we can reduce," Ashe told him. "We know from your own experience and also from I Zanthor's that they can be surprised, and they cannot wield their mental powers as long as they themselves are physically occupied. I stayed conscious during that battle on Hawaika longer than you did, long enough to be certain of that. We'll have to hit them fast and hard so they don't have a chance to bring their mental or physical weaponry into play, but it is at least theoretically possible for us to take them."

Ross scowled at his partner. "There's a problem with theory. It doesn't always work out in practice."

The other smiled. "It's up to us to make it work."

The partisan commander nodded, deadly serious now. "The attack party will have to be small, limited to ourselves probably, and we'll have to go in deerless on the last leg of the approach. That was how Zanthor and Tarlroc managed to surprise them. If we can't gain that edge, we might as well just pack up and go home. Our Baldy friends'll either burn us down or immobilize us before we ever reach their camp."

"If they're still there," Eveleen said.

"No reason why they shouldn't be." He frowned. "That's one point that really puzzles me. Why have they just sat it all out for so long? Those boys aren't shy, or at least, they've taken active roles everywhere else that we've encountered them. Why are they so pa.s.sive here?"

"I'd like to know why-or how-they're here at all," Gordon Ashe remarked. "This is more than seven centuries ahead of their time."

That observation gave his companions a nasty jolt. Ross licked his lips. "It's how many millennia ahead of ours?... Time travel?"

"They're nothing if not technologically sophisticated, and they did get a good look at our rivals' setup back on Terra."

"Then no place, no era, is safe from them..."

"Let's stop raising windmills to fight, shall we?" Eveleen told her comrades. "There are a number of possible explanations for the Baldies' presence here and now besides the one that brought us. For one thing, we ran into them at a certain stage in their history. They had to be around a lot longer than that and be star traveling longer. These could be discoverers or a team sent to seed long-term trouble."

Ashe nodded. "That makes sense. They're trying to keep a low profile."

"Maybe they just can't do more," Murdock suggested. "By the sound of it, they've had equipment problems on a major scale almost from the start. They must have managed to reach Dominion, or part of the intended team did, brought their camp gear, supplies, and the gold with them, but they couldn't get the rest. They have to be short to be using their lasers for repair tools."

"Not to mention trying to patch things up with native metals and maybe trying to manufacture the components they need out of them as well," Gordon agreed.

"Beggars usually have to take what they get, whether they plead for alms or demand them," Eveleen remarked.

"Zanthor I Yoroc would have been a singularly ungenerous donor. He may well have doomed his own cause by his tightness. Even Baldies couldn't fight if they didn't have the means."

"He might also have preserved his own hide, from them at least. They'd have been quick to eliminate him once he had done the job they wanted, especially since both he and his son were resistant to mental control."

The Lieutenant pushed her chair away from the rough table and stood up. "We might get a few answers when we check out their camp, a.s.suming we survive the attempt to take it... Do you think I Zanthor will cooperate enough to guide us there?"

"He'll cooperate," her husband said, "that far anyway. He apparently did love his father, and he suffered considerable abuse from those devils himself. We represent his only chance to get a crack at them."

"Unless he's spun us a fine story," she suggested darkly.

"That's hardly impossible, but he'll still lead us to them, to our sorrow if we can't outwit the lot of them. We can be sure of one thing. Tarlroc I Zanthor did encounter Baldies. He's right on too many points for him to be faking that."

28.

THE PARTISAN COMMANDER eased his way past a thick stand of brush crowding the narrow path. This was it, the culmination of two weeks made h.e.l.lish by ever-growing dread and the antic.i.p.ation of disaster.

It was fitting, he supposed, Terran Time Agents once again directly confronting the Baldies whose drive for destruction they were attempting to thwart. The only trouble was that they stood too good a chance of losing. Losing their lives and more than their lives. Losing Dominion of Virgin.

Tarlroc I Zanthor, who had been walking a few paces ahead, stopped and waited for him. "Let me have a knife if not a sword."

"Just stay out of it when the trouble starts, if it does."

"You will not trust me?"

"Would you trust us?"

The Dominionite's eyes narrowed. "You may not be talking so proudly soon, Firehand," he snarled, "or talking at all. Those we brought with us the first time never spoke again. The demons made statues of them."

"We shall see how they fare with us, if your demons are there at all."

That response was required by the role he played, but Ross Murdock felt better for having voiced it. He had confronted these foes before, and each time, he had come away unbroken. He could hold that knowledge as an inner s.h.i.+eld, a brace for his courage, in whatever was all too soon to come.

A new surge of fear set his heart racing. It was almost time. They had picketed their springdeer half a mile back. An hour's walk at this cautious pace would bring them to the starmen's camp.

His hands balled despite his effort to keep them open at his sides. Lord of Time, was it this bad for Eveleen and Gordon as well? Could it be? They had never stood alone on a windswept beach and faced down that raw will to conquer...

Ross's heart was still hammering; but his mind and emotions were under tight control. They had to be. He was crouching at the edge of the clearing Tarlroc had described, and his targets were before him.

Four targets. The fifth Baldy was not in sight. Bad. That boded trouble for later, but there was no help for it. They must strike at once or lose the power of surprise that was their only hope of victory.

The Time Agent's hand raised in signal to his comrades. As it did, their bows released, and two of the s.p.a.cers fell.