Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 32

He only grinned owlishly. The village had gone into a frenzy of jubilation when he announced that Nodonn's coup had failed and Basil and the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were safe. "But I didn't tell you all of Elizabeth's news, bubeleh. I wanted to save it! We'll have a really big feast-a monster barbecue, you hear me? I'll bring you six antelope to roast. Afterwards I'll tell you and the rest of the people the biggest news since the Flood!"

"Loco indio," she mumbled fondly. "No me importa dos cojones." She came squirming toward him. "Look, it's nice and cool now. You don't really want to go hunting. Lucien and the kids can get game for your feast. Vamos a pichar, mi corazon, mi porra de azucar-"

She made a grab for him, but he was already out the door of her hut, buck-naked in the dawn (and still well s.h.i.+ckered, if the truth be told), aflame with atavistic masculine instincts that were, at least for now, more imperative than s.e.x. He stumbled to his wigwam and got dressed-not in the chino cargo pants and st.u.r.dy boots that had been his customary garb ever since the exodus from Muriah, but in his old breechclout and moccasins.

When he rummaged about for hunting equipment he shoved aside the modern pla.s.s-and-metal compound bow, deadly and dependable, and the iron-tipped vitredur arrows that had slain so many exotic antagonists. He took up instead the gear he had chosen to carry through the time-gate many years earlier, when he still cherished a dream of returning to tribal ways.

Peopeo Moxmox, n.o.ble savage and late Justice of the Was.h.i.+ngton State Supreme Court, sat in his canoe and laughed. The craft was not made of bark but of decamole, that marvel of Milieu technology, and he would deflate it and tuck it into a waist-pouch when the day's comedy ended. He suddenly remembered the tag good old Saul Mermelstein used to tease him with when he was a fledgling lawyer in Salt Lake City: "Lo, the poor Indian, whose soul proud science never taught to stray ... "

But he had, he had! And nowhere more than in the primeval Pliocene.

He fingered the warped shaft of an arrow, turning it so that the carefully chipped obsidian point glittered in the sun. Somewhere back in the wigwam was a shaft straightener, a simple gadget no primitive huntsman would be without. But on the other hand, vitredur arrows were indestructible, with self-fletching and a wide a.s.sortment of interchangeable heads. Some of them even had built-in transponders for tracking wounded game and easy retrieval.

Apple Injun!

"So why did I come out here today?" he inquired of the world at large. "Why ask, Burke? You hopeless shmegeggeh!"

An unseen crocodilian choofed and a warbler sang. Two blue b.u.t.terflies twirled in a mating dance above the gleaming water.

He caught a whiff of vanilla essence in the still, hot air and looked up to see a spray of exquisite tiny orchids growing from a cleft in the bark of the cypress. Burke reached out and touched it. He was very glad he had come, glad he had killed nothing.

After a while he consulted his wrist chronograph, a thing as handsome (and nonaboriginal) as his golden torc. The time was coming up on 1600 hours, and he had left a note for Denny Johnson, asking to be met at the river trail with chalikos and plenty of game bags for the antelopes ...

Grinning, he untied the painter and stroked out into the lagoon toward the mainstream of the Moselle. The swan reappeared, majestic in black-and-white plumage, and glided tamely after the canoe. As Burke left it behind and the ripples of his wake subsided, the bird seemed poised in the centre of a peat-dark mirror, superimposed upon a reflection of itself.

Clumps of emerald gra.s.ses topped by feathery plumes framed it against the deeper green of the jungle. Staring back over his shoulder, Burke caught his breath. He would remember this-and so much more.

Then the canoe grounded on a mudbar. Setting aside the paddle, he boosted the craft over into the river backwater, stood up, and began to pole stoutly upstream. He hoped that Denny himself would be waiting. There would be salutary jibes to endure, but as they rode back to Hidden Springs he could break the news about the time-gate. And they could discuss ways and means for a Lowlife capture of Castle Gateway.

Lowlife prisoners from Iron Maiden and Haul Fourneaville numbering sixty or seventy were armed and ready in their big wooden cage. Their position was one of strength, partially sheltered behind granite outcroppings at the crest of the small ridge.

There was no way they could be surprised or outflanked, no chance that the Firvulag might overwhelm them by resorting to the traditional ma.s.sed a.s.sault or bogeyman tactics. The Lowlife miners, veterans of many a skirmish in the beleaguered Iron Villages, would only be bested by mind-power.

Up in the royal observation post on a nearby height, King Sharn chewed his lower lip as he watched the first company of stalwart gnomes, led by Pingol the Horripilant, begin their advance. Curses and catcalls came from the defending prisoners, but they held their fire. Some experienced fighter must have taken on the leaders.h.i.+p, imparting a modic.u.m of discipline to the demoralized crew. Their yells subsided, then rose afresh as a second and smaller contingent of Firvulag, warrior ogresses under Fouletot Blackbreast, started up the ravine on the left shoulder of the ridge. This route provided more shelter for the attackers, but was considerably steeper. To Sharn and Ayfa, watching the manoeuvres from their vantage point half a kilometre away, the two a.s.sault forces looked like separate swarms of jet-black beetles, serrated pikes and standards waving like antennae under the blazing sun, creeping up on a gigantic exposed picnic basket.

"I still think it was a mistake to arm the prisoners with iron,"

Sharn said. "Just one scratch, and it's curtains for our folks."

"They've got to get used to the hazard," Ayfa retorted brutally. "Do you think Roniah will be defended with gla.s.s swords and bronze battle-axes? By rights, those prisoners should have stunners and laser carbines as well as arrows tipped with the blood-metal. That's what our troops will be up against in a real battle. Look what happened to Mimee's outfit at Bardelask."

"h.e.l.l, they won, didn't they?"

"Only because the Bardy-Town defenders were vastly outnumbered and ran out of arrows. And if Aiken Drum's supply train had arrived with the futuristic weaponry, it would have been G.o.ddess-Bless-Me-ere-I-Sleep!" The Queen frowned at the Firvulag forces creeping up the hill. "Our lads and la.s.ses have to understand that mind-power is the only sure way to victory. Concerted mind-power-not our usual higgledypiggledy uncoordinated individual efforts. That's why Betularn White Hand set up these manoeuvres to give the Lowlives the tactical advantage-and why he put gonzo youngsters like Fouletot and Pingol in command of this first demonstration."

"Let's hope the prisoners put up a good fight," Sharn said, shading his eyes to peer at the now silent cage. "Be a pity if they funked out."

Ayfa snickered. "Betularn gave them his personal a.s.surance that if they managed to hold off our troops until sunset, we'd set them free."

The King guffawed in appreciation of the jest. "Poor dolts!

They never seem to learn that the solemn word of a Firvulag holds only when given to another Firvulag or a Tanu-not to a Lowlife. I mean, how can you make a pact of honour with a nonperson?"

"But they keep falling for it," Ayfa observed, shaking her sable-helmed head in wonderment. "Even the biggest Lowlife of them all!"

The King leaned forward in his seat, scowling. "Pingol's bunch is getting too d.a.m.n close to the cage. Why doesn't he call up the defensive screen? Any minute now those prisonersTe's tus.h.i.+e!"

At the monarch's exclamation of dismay a hail of iron-tipped missiles exploded from the cage and rained upon the frontal a.s.sault force. There were scattered screeches and wails and a tardy telepathic command. A sparkling barrier of mental energy sprang raggedly into existence, flickering here and there as some dwarf belatedly linked into the defensive metaconcert. The Lowlives bellowed in derision and sent off salvo after salvo of arrows. Most of Pingol's company held their ground and concentrated on shoring up the mind-s.h.i.+eld, which steadied into a translucent bubble-section three or four metres high that hovered just ahead of the forward ranks. Even at a distance, Sharn and Ayfa could hear the sinister tinkle of iron points striking this barrier and falling away.

Well done! the King broadcast, by way of encouragement. He rose up and a.s.sumed his guise of a monstrous scorpion. A handful of gnomes raised a pro forma cheer, but most of them had all they could do to keep the great protective umbrella erected. For others, motionless on the rocks in tumbled and broken att.i.tudes, the mental shelter had come too late.

"They didn't act together, and the screen's too widespread,"

Ayfa noted, glowering her disapproval. "And that t.u.r.d-head Pingol waited much too long before giving the command-"

"Here come the big girls!" Sharn exclaimed.

Fouletot's ogresses were swarming up the defile to the left of the cage, a businesslike little screen protecting them in the steep terrain. A dozen or so of the giant exotics, perhaps one-fifth of the total force, fell back from the others and gathered into a close formation. An instant later a gout of blue flame soared up from their midst like a shot from a Roman candle. It arced high above the ridge and fell onto the cage roof, where it sank slowly through the heavy gridwork to the accompaniment of hideous Lowlife screams. Coils of greasy smoke seeped out around the rocks. After a brief pause, a furious shower of arrows descended upon the ogresses. One fell, howling, and the survivors hastened to expand their screen.

Downslope in front of the cage, the gnomish force was redeploying. A desultory discharge of arrows fell on them, to be mostly deflected by their mental screen. This was now much more compact and efficient, generated by a semicircle of creative stalwarts who slowly advanced up the hill. Only the occasional missile penetrated, but these were sufficient to bring death with the slightest wound. The humans inside the cage jeered and screamed at the top of their lungs every time an exotic fell.

Now Pingol's fighters left off waving their halberds and skulldraped standards and formed three bodies in close array behind the moving s.h.i.+eld. Suddenly three glowing b.a.l.l.s of energy, almost white beneath the harsh sun, flew up in cometlike trajectories and converged upon the cage. The structure burst actively into flame and the prisoners inside shrieked and leaped about, batting at the blazing timbers with their garments and dousing the more stubborn flames with their scant supply of drinking water. The storm of arrows abated only slightly, and within minutes was thicker than ever.

The smaller force of ogresses had attained a rocky platform, a stratum of denser rock that capped the top of the ravine about fifty metres below the end of the cage. The ledge was very narrow, little more than a sharp lip strewn with slippery scree from the precipitous slope above. Rather than attempting this, they strung out in a cordon, maintaining the mind-screen umbrella. At a farspoken signal, each warrior extended her black gla.s.s-sword and opened a slit in the screen. From the points of the weapons flowed individual corruscating rays that united, just before striking the cage, into a thick, twisted flash of lightning. It hit the cage squarely, and at the same time a blast of thunder reached the ears of Sharn and Ayfa and caused them to blink, so that they missed the beginning of Pingol's charge-then shouted in delight at the sight of the gnomes, still in their disciplined trifid formation preceded by the s.h.i.+elders, racing up the hill and bombarding the cage with a fusillade of small psychocreative bursts.

"Beautiful!" shouted Sharn, las.h.i.+ng about with his scorpion tail. He knocked over the refreshment table, but neither he nor the Queen seemed to notice that they were jumping up and down in a mess of spilled beer, hooby mushrooms, Danish cuc.u.mbers, slices of black melon, eel a la Flamande, and candied malmignattes.

Ayfa cried: Smite the Lowlife b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Arms united, minds united!

And the Firvulag soldiery responded: Yllahayl the Foe!

The thunderbolt generated by Fouletot Blackbreast and her platoon had knocked that end of the cage to flinders at the same time that it killed numbers of human defenders outright. The survivors now began to scramble out onto the rocks, brandis.h.i.+ng their bows and arrows, long knives, and small tomahawks, ready to engage the advancing Firvulag hand to hand. More fireb.a.l.l.s popped up from the dwarf attackers. The ogresses got off one last streak of lightning, completing the demolition of the cage.

Then humans and exotics mingled in combat, the Lowlives diving under shaky mental screens or shooting arrows in high parabolas so that the missiles might strike the rear ranks of the enemy. Discipline among the exotics wavered, then collapsed.

Both officers and troops forgot about working in metaconcert and reverted to the traditional fighting form. They bawled out the old battle cries, shape-s.h.i.+fted into monstrous apparitions, and fell upon the outnumbered Lowlives. Dwarfs hacked and flailed with serrated obsidian blades. Ogres thrust about, impaling bodies with barbed lances-or even s.n.a.t.c.hed up disarmed humans to rend them limb from limb. The tumult reverberated throughout the fastness of Grand Ballon mountain. Plumes of smoke and steam rose as the odd stalwart remembered orders and used mental energy to annihilate the foe.

Sharn and Ayfa, wearing their normal shapes and saying nothing, watched. The blinding disk of the sun descended behind the towers of High Vrazel and a cool wind swept away some of the carnage stench. Carrion birds circled and began to descend.

Finally there settled over the rocky battleground a great stillness, and in the minds of the King and Queen rang the simultaneous farspoken voices of Pingol and Fouletot: High King and High Queen-we proclaim a victory in Te's name!

All the dwarfs and ogres and middling monsters came together on the foreslope beneath the devastated cage, and with weapons and standards raised on high, shouted: "Praise and glory to Te, G.o.ddess of Battles! And to Sharn and Ayfa, High King and High Queen! And to the Great Captains Pingol and Fouletot-and to all of us!

Arms united! Minds united!

Slitsal!

Slitsal! Slitsal!