Two Space War Part 12

but kin to all the powers,

As merry as the ancient sun and

fighting like the flowers.

So, thinks Melville, This is how it will come. This is how I will die. This is the being who will kill me. He is astounded to find that there is no anger in him, not even resignation, just wonder and . . . a fierce joy!

One sound shall sunder all the spears and

break the trumpet's breath:

You never laughed in all your life as I shall

laugh in death.

His sword comes up in slow motion. He can tell that it will be too late. The rest of the battle doesn't exist. All sound is gone, only eery silence remains. His tunnel vision permits him to see only his opponent's head, torso and upper arms. He doesn't see the sword tip cras.h.i.+ng down. Sword tips move too fast to follow, best always to watch the enemy's arms and project the position of the sword.

His sword is still moving up. Too slow, too slow! He is looking upward. At the edge of his vision he sees his monkey's belaying pin, a tattered, splintered, torn, beautiful belaying pin, meet and slightly deflect the huge Guldur sword. The long, straight, sword is deflected to his left! He jerks his head and body to the right. So little time. Time to move just slightly right. The enemy sword clips his hair, clips off the top of his left ear and slices deep into his left shoulder. He is alive!

Funny, he feels no pain as the sword slices through his flesh. Only the pressure of the blade cutting through the muscles of his shoulder. He also feels the pressure of his sword in his hand, coming up, thrusting forward. His left leg thrusts his body forward. His right knee bends. His sword point, a gory, dripping, hungry red sword point, lunges home: Through teeth, and skull, and helmet

So fierce a thrust he sped,

The good sword stood a hand-breadth out

Behind the Tuscan's head.

The enemy drops, with Melville's sword through its brain, protruding out the back. Its tick leaps down to the deck where it dies, almost casually, anticlimactically, sliced in half as the tip of Corporal Kobbsven two-handed claymore begins an upward sweep.

Melville watches his enemy, his n.o.ble, n.o.ble enemy, fall.

How white their steel, how bright their eyes!

I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet

of the brave.

Melville asks himself, "Why are there tears in my eyes?" Water for the dead. Water for the brave. He has killed the enemy captain. Brave, brave captain.

Yea, I will bless them as they bend and

love them where they lie,

When on their skulls the sword I swing

falls shattering from the sky.

Hans and Valandil are coming toward him from the enemy's quarterdeck. Only a handful of Guldur and Goblan are still on their feet. It's only a matter of time now and this mighty s.h.i.+p will be his. The rightful fruit of honorable combat. Melville drops to his knees and looks down at his fallen foe.

The hour when death is like a light and

blood is like a rose,a"

You have never loved your friends,

my friends, as I shall love my foes.

Somewhere in the darkness of interstellar s.p.a.ce, a wooden s.h.i.+p drifts. Perhaps, in the unthinkably long lifetime of the universe, some alien race will find that s.h.i.+p. Inside this bizarre wooden vessel they will find the corpses of many doglike creatures, and gray, goblinlike beasts, all dehydrated and mummified by the vacuum of s.p.a.ce. As they examine these corpses, if they look closely at their faces, and if they understand such things, perhaps they will be struck by the fact that all of them appear to be very, very surprised.

Chapter the 7th.

Recovering from Battle:

Lief Should I Rouse at Morning

Could man be drunk forever

With liquor, love or fights,

Lief should I rouse at morning