By and large, Tony had little choice but to remain in the Vosges with free humanity. He pretended to cooperate wholeheartedly with the Lowlife insurgents, even though life in the newly established Iron Villages along the Moselle was a brutish comedown from the fine-honed delights of Finiah.
There were six of the settlements, with a total population of about 400—mostly male. Five villages were clustered in the vicinity of the future French city of Nancy. Their names were Iron Maiden, Hematite, Mesabi, Haut-Fourneauville, and Vulcan. Each had an open-pit mine and a simple smeltery inside a heavy log stockade. Iron Maiden, the largest, served as a storage depot for iron produced by the others. It was situated adjacent to an area of disease-killed conifer forest, and on Tony's suggestion, had a naval-stores distillery operating on the side. Vulcan and Haut-Fourneauville had small primitive blast furnaces and robing mills. Upstream and south of this quintet, approximately midway between them and the Lowlife headquarters at Hidden Springs, 90 kilometers distant, was the largest new settlement, Fort Rusty. Here was the principal metalworking establishment, where the pigs and bar-stock were turned into weapons. The fort also had a limeburner and a cluster of charcoal ovens. These vital raw materials were sent down the Moselle to the mining and smelting towns via raft, as were food and other supplies. Caravans of draft chalikos and giraffid helladotheria hauled the iron into Fort Rusty.
Since the setup was so new, very little attempt had been made as yet to export iron weapons to other Lowlife bands. But the word had gone out And all through the rainy season hardy expeditions from the Paris Basin and the High Helvetides, and even from Bordeaux and Albion, had come slinking into the Vosges, demanding their share of blood-metal. The newcomers were pressed into the labor force, crushing limestone or stoking the insatiable coke ovens for a few weeks, then paid off in cold iron and sent back to their own haunts ready for action.
All winter long, ever since late November, Tony Wayland had labored twelve and fourteen hours a day. He was a one-man training program, an analytical laboratory, a production supervisor, quality controller, and allaround soot-stained dogsbody. Everybody praised him, but no one was his friend except demented Dougal, who popped in and out of his knight-errant persona like a Shakespearean actor who kept forgetting his lines. Tony could only bide his time in patience, waiting for the political situation in the Many-Colored Land to shake down.
If the rumors brought in by the last gang of iron seekers could be credited, the times were finally ripening! An upstart human was said to have installed himself as ruler of the late Nodonn Battlemaster's rich domain of Goriah in Brittany. There were hints that this usurper was accepted—even welcomed—by the demoralized remnant of the Tanu High Table. It was said that he would marry the Battlemaster's widow, that he would elevate torced humanity to a parvenu aristocracy! (And how poor Tony's bare neck had itched at that last intimation, and how searing had been the memory of his lost tore's ecstacies.)
As the rainy season neared its end, Tony planned to make his move. Perhaps when that group of Lowlives from the Upper Laar finished their trick and departed from Fort Rusty with a load of axes, knives, and iron arrowheads, he could follow them secretly, then join up at a safe distance from the Vosges, when the inevitable posse sent after him got fed up and returned home. Loyal, unquestioning Dougal would go along with him if he pulled his liege-lord act and if they reached the Laar they could sail down it to the Atlantic and be practically on top of Goriah. Tony never doubted that he and Dougal would receive a fine welcome from the new human monarch—as well as a pair of shiny golden tores...
It all might have happened just as he planned, had not this Howler attack left him well and truly fucked.
A pumpkin-sized boulder came rolling down the gully, through the broken palisade, and smashed against the log wall of the barracks like a cannonball.
"Dammit boys, they're still out o' crossbow range!" The mine foreman, a lantern-jawed crypto-hillbilly named Orion Blue, coughed and hawked and spat. The chinking between the half-meter-wide oak boles exploded inward with each impact. The beleaguered men inside the tiny fortress choked in a swirling cloud of pulverized clay, moss fibers, and sawdust.
Sir Dougal ignored the bombardment. Muddy sweat dripped from his ginger beard into the meshes of his titanium chain mail. His knightly surtout with its blazon (gules, a lion's head erased or) was spotless as always: The twenty-second-century fabric was ionized to repel soil.
"Hell-hounds! Show thyselves!" quoth he, sending bolt after bolt from his powerful compound bow through the embrasure. Another boulder slammed the wall, making the entire fort tremble. As the vibration died away, a faint screech could be heard in the distance.
"Aha! Aha!" cried Dougal. "Die, misbegotten Howler scum!"
Orion Blue squinted through the loophole next to the medievalist. "They're totin' up a big un', Doogie. Can you stop 'em from rollin' it?"
"Out of range," said the knight flatly. From upslope came a thunderous rumble.
Beniamino, his voice gone falsetto with panic, fell back from his loophole shrieking. "Back! Get back! This next mother's bigger than a VW egg! And dead on the mark!"
The defenders flung themselves to the sides, cursing. Tony Wayland alone stood at his slit, paralyzed, unable to tear his gaze from the huge chunk of granite bounding down upon them. Far up the hill, safe from the miners' iron-tipped arrows, a horde of goblins leaped and cheered. They glowed faintly in the morning mist.
"'Ware, milord!" Dougal shouted. Tony felt himself scooped up in mailed arms and flung several meters to the right. Almost simultaneously there was a cataclysmic impact. One of the great logs in the western wall buckled inward. The logs above it sagged fractionally with a hideous squeal. The structure still held firm—for the moment; but if one of those missiles hit the roof, which was of a much weaker barky-pole-and-slab construction, the place would come down around their ears.
Orion, sprawling in the dirt, didn't even bother to get up. He crawled toward the northeastern corner of the barracks, where most of the surviving miners crouched behind a wall of leather sacks filled with iron arrow blanks. "We're done for, boys. Only nine of us mother's sons left agin that whole passel o' spooks! They'll bust up this place, then mind-fry us like they done the other poor bastards outside."
Tony crept to join the others, useless crossbow still clamped under one arm. Only Dougal still stood defiantly at the western wall, where smaller rocks continued to thud against the splintering oak. He smote the golden lion on his breast. "Then, childish fear avaunt! Wilt thou stand craven before night's dark agents, thou whoresons? Not I!" He grabbed a fresh handful of arrows. "Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"
At his next shot, the bowstring snapped and set all the weapon's pulleys spinning impotently. Dougal said, "Oh, shit"
He came back to the despairing huddle and dropped to one knee in front of Tony, drawing a steel dirk and holding it point-up before his face. "I have failed you, Exalted Lord. My life is forfeit. But if you command it I will use this misericord to spare you and these minions agonizing death at the hands of the Howler demons."
"Who you callin' a minion?" snarled Orion.
Several of the other men, mouths gaping, shrank back from the kneeling figure. "Goddam loony!" one muttered. "Call him off, Wayland!" said another. But at that moment three huge rocks impacted, and the vee of the broken log jutted inward more acutely. Little Beniamino licked his lips and rolled bloodshot eyes. "Doogie's got a point guys. The ones that were ambushed outside died quick. But if the friggerty Howlers capture us, they might take their sweet time with the snuffin' party—like when they grabbed poor Alf and Veng Hong last month."
Dougal lowered the point of the dagger until it was level with Tony's diaphragm. "Say but the word, milord. We will meet again before the throne of Asian."
"Hold it!" the metallurgist exclaimed, cringing against the eastern wall. He held out his crossbow. After a pause, Dougal sheathed his blade and took the weapon with a courteous bow. Tony told
him, "We still have the arbalests, Sir Dougal, even though they don't have the range of your compound bow. And the logs may be bending, but they're still in place. Fort Rusty and the other villages should know by now that we're in trouble. We missed the ten-hundred-hour sked. If we can just stand fast until they send reinforcements—"
"Keep dreaming, Wayland," a miner said bitterly. Another man curled up, head between his knees, shaking with soundless sobs. Hamid, who ran the turpentine still, consulted his wrist gyrocompass to ascertain the direction of Mecca six million years into the future, then prostrated himself and began his final prayers.
Orion Blue went to one of the eastern apertures that overlooked the Moselle and scanned the mist-hung waters through a small monocular.
"Hellfar an' white lightnin'!" he ejaculated, drawing back from the loophole as though electroshocked. "There is suthin' comin'! But sure's shit it ain't no troops from Rusty."
Everybody except Hamid and the weeping miner crowded for a look. A large raft was drawing up to the landing stage. It bore a towering wooden apparatus resembling a derrick on a wheeled platform. The upper part of the contraption had a pivoting arm with a scooplike container at one end and an amorphous bulky object at the other. A complex web of rope tackle linked the arm to the carriage. When the barge was made fast, three monstrous Howlers attached cables to the wooden engine, settled themselves into a troika hitch, and began hauling the thing toward the village's open gate.
"Maledizione!" wailed Beniamino. "Una bombarda!"
"What the hell is that?" Tony asked.
Sir Dougal studied the machine with professional interest. "A mangonel. Or could it be a perrier? A bricole? Funny ... I never heard of Howlers using mechanical devices before."
"What does it do?"Tony yelled in exasperation.
"It just might be an onager," Dougal mused. He turned gravely to Orion Blue. "May I borrow your spyglass for half a tick?"
The mine foreman turned it over without a word. Dougal stared intently, muttering beneath his breath. "Not a classical ballista. Counterweighted. Od's bodikins—I think I've got it! It's a trebuchet!" Beaming, he handed the monocular back to Orion.
Tony was nearly screaming. "What—does—it—do?"
The knight shrugged. "Well, it's a medieval catapult, you see. They'll finish us by lobbing rocks at the roof."
"Hellfar!" Orion groaned.
Tony watched the approach of the siege engine with fatalistic awe. The middle monster of the hauling team was a hideous prodigy that Dougal identified as a "fachan." It moved in awkward hops because it had only a single columnar leg. An armless hand more than a meter wide, equipped with black claws, sprang directly from its chicken-breasted trunk. Its head had a cyclopean eye and a froggy mouth from which an obscenely prehensile tongue lolled. The fachan's yokemates were somewhat more conventional horrors: a two-meter crested lizard with fiery carbuncle eyes, and a tall warthog, sky-blue, that walked on its hind legs.
As the Howler trio toiled into the village compound, they filled the air with valorous hoots. Their compeers on the high ground above the fort responded gleefully, then sent a veritable avalanche of stone cascading down on the log barracks. The sheer volume of the fresh assault now provided an ironic respite to the trapped miners. Enough rocks had piled in front of the western wall to form a salient angle, a wedge-shaped mass that tended to deflect rolling missiles to the right or left of the target. When it became clear to the exotic foe that the boulder-bowling maneuver had lost its effectiveness, the Howlers on the hill cut off their bombardment to await the arrival of the trebuchet.
Dougal raised his arms. The glittering links of mail and scarlet surcoat made him a splendid figure in the dusty gloom. "Mount, mount, my soul, thy seat is up on high! Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die." He closed his eyes with a sigh of theatrical melancholy.
"Damn ree-tard!" Orion grabbed up the crossbow, which the knight had discarded, and a leather bucket of iron-tipped quarrels. "Snap out of it, Doogie! Haul yer ass over yonder to the front wall. Those spooks on the machine are comin' in range of a crossbow shot!"
Dougal shed his aura of detachment. "What sayest thou, O lean unwashed artificer?"
"They got their infernal slingshot over next t' naval-stores shop! And they're climbin' all over it Gettin' ready, I 'spect. But they're exposed, and you kin pot the suckers if you calc'late a good trajectory."
Dougal, Tony, and most of the miners rushed to join Orion at the northern wall. The flat area between the barracks and the industrial buildings was strewn with bodies, both human and chaliko. When the Howlers launched their surprise attack, a caravan loaded with pig iron had been on the point of leaving for Fort Rusty. The trebuchet now rested in a position about 90 meters from the barracks, partially screened by one corner of the wood-distillation shed. A large pile of conifer stumps next to the naval-stores shop provided partial cover for the enemy, but the men inside the barracks could see a dark shape moving in the upper part of the siege engine, probably adjusting its tackle.
"Enemy on the move!" Beniamino peered through one of the western loopholes. "They're coming down the hill—circling to the north. Gonna help their buddies with ammo for the bombarda, I bet."
Shapes far out of crossbow range now drifted between the far section of the village palisade and the iron pit where the red ore made a shocking contrast to the jungle greenery, like an open wound in the land. An eerie silence had fallen, broken only by creaking noises as the Howler engineer tinkered with the trebuchet.
Dougal took aim. Wunng went the crossbow. On the other side of the compound, something let out a gurgling bellow. A skyblue carcass tumbled from the trebuchet tower, seeming to shrink to a much smaller black form before disappearing from view. A chorus of angry howls went up from behind the stump pile.
"Hee-yah!" Orion smote his thigh joyously, still holding the monocular to his eye. "Look sharp! Tother side o' the pile! Suthin' movin' in that palmetty thicket!"
Wunng.
An apparition like a fanged furry pushball leaped into the air, vestigial limbs flailing, uttering screeches like a catamount As it dropped out of sight it, too, shape-shifted into a different form.
"A hit a very palpable hit!" quoth Dougal.
"That's two," Orion chuckled.
Tony clapped the big knight on one mailed shoulder. "Well done, my man."
"Your servant milord."
Beniamino drew in a sharp breath. "Hey—the throwing arm on the machine is moving. They must be getting ready to fire."
Dougal squinted desperately through the arbalest sight "I can't see a fuckin' thing ... I mean, the foe eludes mine eye, Goodman Napoli, and I—hoo boy! Here she comes!"
The counterweighted lever was drawn fully down. The entire mechanism vibrated. Abruptly, the counterweight fell, the arm whipped up, and a block of granite that must have weighed 50 kilos came whistling over the roof of the barracks. It landed on the far side with an echoing crash.
"Bismallah!" cried the Son of the Prophet falling to his knees once more. "That's cooked us."
"Do something, Dougal!" Tony urged his heroic vassal. But the gingerbearded head wagged in helpless chagrin. "I cannot descry the demons clearly, milord. They skulk behind the still-shed."
"Still!" Tony's face lit up. "The naval stores! Tar, pitch, turpentine—barrels of the stuff in the wood-distillation shop. If you could hit it with a flaming arrow—"
A heavy thud betokened the fall of another rock less than five meters short of the barracks.
"They got us bracketed," groaned Orion. "Get outa the line o' fire, ever'body!"
They scattered. Tony cursed wildly, trying to modify an arrow shaft so that it could be launched by the crossbow. Somebody found a parfleche full of flammable pitch and Beniamino used his skill as camp cook to quickly kindle a light.
The first missile to find its mark fell through the roof just as Tony solved the arrow problem. The place became a bedlam of noise and swirling debris. A falling timber struck o
ne of the miners across the shoulders, pinning him to the floor. As men struggled to rescue the victim, shouting and coughing, Tony finished lashing the pitch-smeared wad to the shaft and touched it off. He thrust the firebrand at Dougal.
"Only one chance. Right through the open window of the still-shop. Kill, big fella!"
Dougal aimed and let fly—and then everything seemed to happen at once. Another great rock shattered the roof just above the loophole where Tony and Dougal were standing. Planks and rafters rained down while they tried to shield their heads. Tony felt himself falling, there was a tremendous whoomp, a prolonged clatter, a ragged chorus of distant exotic screams.
As Tony fetched up in a tangle of roof poles like a broken doll caught in a pile of giant's pick-up-sticks, he heard Orion's Johnny-Reb yell and presumed that the fire-arrow had found its target Then oblivion claimed him.
***
He woke up, splinted and bandaged. The face of Denny Johnson, Lowlife Warlord Pro Tem, beamed down at him like a bitumen-painted mask. The Hidden Springs medic named Jafar was there, too, and so was the chief honcho, Old Man Kawai himself.
Tony tried to speak. His mouth would not open. "Wha' hop'n?" he inquired mushily.
The doctor lifted Tony's head, proffered a glass of water with a straw, and helped him to drink. "Your broken jaw's wired shut. Take it easy."
"Aths muths be'er." The metallurgist managed a crooked smile. "So cav'ry 'rive juths in thime, eh?"
Denny nodded. "Our barge from Fort Rusty landed a gang of fighters while the spooks were trying to douse the burning catapult and rescue their wounded. We finished them all off."