“Mitty and I put this thing together,” he said, indicating the packs and panting with the effort of carrying them. “Mitty thinks it will stop the walkers, if I can find the right frequency. I brought it out because everyone else is busy, and Mitty’s got some new weapons he’s putting up top of Gaddi House so they can fire down into the canyon.”
“Do you need help setting it up?”
“Yes. Someplace where we won’t be attacked If it works, we can maybe put it on a horse and move around the walls. Mitty thinks it has to be fairly close or it won’t work at all.”
Abasio and CummyNup helped him carry the packs into cover under the trees. By now, it was light enough to see the wall above them with the walkers arrayed along it Tom began unpacking the parts, most of which seemed to have been put together with tape.
“I better go tell folks what to do,” said CummyNup. “See you later, Basio.”
Abasio raised a hand in farewell, before stooping to the mechanism to offer whatever assistance he could.
Berkli remained on the Gaddi House roof, watching Mitty come and go, occasionally lending a hand with this or that piece of weaponry. Tom, Arakny, and Abasio were gone Presumably they were busy Berkli wished he had enough knowledge to be busy. He had never felt so helpless and futile.
Dawn brooded gray between the black horizon and a line of dark cloud when a group of workers on the roof stopped short, all of them peering toward the north. As they moved slowly toward the northern parapet, Berkli joined them, and together they stared up at the crag where the Griffin was perched, now almost fully visible. The great beast was moving restlessly, its great face turned toward the east, as though waiting.
A rim of white fire rose above the horizon The line of cloud turned to flame. The sky seemed to run with blood. The Griffin waited no longer. It cried out, a huge, brazen cry, and stooped from the crag where it had been perched, wings trailing, beak screaming like a bugle in the dawn. From the shadows at either side of the precipice came an swering cries, followed by the emergence of giants, huge feet thudding earthshakingly, fists like mighty boulders swinging, jaws like the prows of buttes, mighty-thewed, as twin trees that had grown for a thousand years. So Berkli thought.
Behind the first giants came others, and others yet. And after the giants came ogres and trolls, from large to larger to largest, shaggy head behind shaggy head, shambling figure behind shambling figure. And behind them dragons and more griffins, chimeras and wiverns, minotaurs and manticores, rank on rank, file on file, twisting tails and shining scales, hooked wing behind hooked wing, fanged jaws and clever claws, monster after monster, pouring from the crevasses to do battle with the walkers of Ellel: creatures of legend to do battle with the soldiers of a forgotten time.
So Berkli thought, undecided whether to be elated or frightened If the monsters conquered the walkers, would they then turn their attention to the Place of Power? Other men seemed untroubled by this idea. They were manning the machines at the eastern edge of the parapet, firing downward into the line of walkers against the wall.
Berkli stood alone, peering into the west, where he could see men on horseback coming from the forest, shields held high before them as they slowly cantered toward the wall of the Place of Power. He heard howling and yipping and bellowing from the south. From the east came battle cries, some voiced by Artemisians, the others, presumably, by the ganger army he had been told was there, warbling war cries, inexplicably howling something about a cat.
The walkers along the western wall saw the Heroes as they came from the forest, shining in the ensanguined dawn like creatures carved from ruby, their swords and shields polished to a uniform glitter, their helms gleaming, the brightly caparisoned horses no less effulgent than themselves, the whole enhanced by the lowering cloud to the north that lent a dramatic and threatening quality to the scene.
Walkers knew beauty when they saw it. When they had been built, the destruction of beauty had been built into them. Many men were comforted by beauty; preserving it was natural to them. Such men were enemies of those who built the walkers. Such men were to be debased, humiliated, and stripped of anything they loved. In order to destroy beauty, the walkers had a subprogram that recognized it.
The sight of these perfect Heroes, therefore, brought the subprogram erupting through the fragile glosses, as the smell of a tethered goat brings saliva into a tiger’s mouth. All the work done by Jark III and Ellel fell away as the subprogram took over the direction of a number of walkers who moved from the wall, following the glorious images as they deliberately withdrew.
Too slowly, as it happened Two of the Heroes could not quite mitigate their practiced heroism to meet the current threat. The walkers moved like lightning. Like lightning their feet strode, their hands thrust, and the Heroes fell, one of them surprised by that final inexorable thrust into a high, incredulous shriek of ultimate loss. A murmur ran through the ranks of the other Heroes, a tightening, and faces already grim grew strained in their concentration. Horses walked backward slightly more quickly, keeping just out of reach, step by step into the shadow of the trees and thence more deeply into the forests. The walkers continued in pursuit.
Not all the walkers followed after. In some, the glosses were more complete. In some the deep programming was better overlaid with more recent strictures. They had been ordered to protect the wall, to prevent anyone coming in or going out, so while roughly half their number followed the Heroes into the trees, the others stayed where they were, immobile, their red eyes gleaming.
After a considerable time, a new group of Heroes moved from cover to form a single rank along the forest edge and pose themselves there as their fellows had done before. These men were, if anything, more glorious than the first group, more magnificently muscled, more marvelously armed, and they increased the power of their attraction by dismounting and striking poses, arms extended, arms akimbo, kneeling with back muscles bunched and throbbing, posed as though to support the weight of the world.
Not only beauty, but power. The walkers had been built to destroy both. Some among those remaining could not resist. An additional number of them left the wall and followed the glorious bodies into the woods, leaving behind only a quarter of the original walkers. This was still a sufficient number to stop anyone who might attempt to enter or leave the Place of Power.
And yet again Heroes came forth, another group, this time arrayed in small ensembles standing against the trees as they sang their battle hymns, declaiming the baseness and villainy of the walkers between verses. Not only beauty and power but also flagrant opposition.’ Again some of the walkers pursued them, and again they withdrew. This was the last time. No further Heroes emerged from the shadows of the trees.
The walkers who were left were not concerned. Sooner or later their fellows would catch up to those who had tempted them into the woods. Walkers did not need sleep, did not need rest. Sooner or later they would come up to the horses and riders, and when they did, neither horses nor riders would go on living.
To the south, a similar effort at attrition was taking place, though here, since the original creators of the walkers had seen nothing beautiful in animals, or indeed in any facet of nature, the animals had to use strength as walker bait. Though walkers had no emotions, they had something that resembled pride, as the animals had come to know. A direct challenge on the basis of strength could not be ignored.
Thus, when a huge bear came from the woods and challenged them in speech, saying that it was stronger than they, the nearest walkers smiled bleak, scythe-edged smiles and went implacably after it into the canyons. When a bull moose or elk made a similar suggestion, it was similarly pursued. Walkers had no humor or sense of the ridiculous. It did not seem odd to them that large animals kept appearing with similar announcements, or that walkers who had departed in pursuit did not reappear.
Coyote, watching from behind a stump, knew very well that these were only early maneuvers in a battle that could be slightly delayed but never won wit
h such methods. The furry bodies that lay on the open ground between the canyons and the walls spoke eloquently of that. Some of them were his own kin. Some of them were Bear’s kin. Some had been speaking beasts There were not enough speaking beasts in the world to trade for these walkers.
Coyote found his sight wavering, ducked his head to paw at his eyes. Was this what men knew as weeping? Such foolishness. Now, when he needed clear sight above everything.
Arakny had found Wide Mountain Mother awake and alert, and had conveyed to her the essence of what was known about walkers. Helmets must be padded around the ears, she said, for walkers were capable of a sound that killed. Also, it was important to stay away from them, out of their grip. They would not be enticed from the wall by rage, which was a good thing. Many of them could be killed where they stood, if the Artemisian warriors stayed far enough back.
“And how do we do that?” Wide Mountain Mother asked.
Arakny went down the list Abasio had given her. “Their eyes are vulnerable to a direct hit by an arrow or spear, provided there’s considerable force in the blow. They’ll burn, if they can be hit with something clinging and inflammable. They can be somewhat crippled by removal of their limbs with an ax, though their hands and arms are independently motivated and they can walk on them as well as upon their legs. To cripple them completely, all four limbs need to be removed.”
“In short,” said Wide Mountain Mother, “they are extremely difficult to kill. What would happen if we merely left them to their carnage and departed this place?”
Arakny spoke of weapons and Ellel and an earth enslaved under a tyrant once more, just now when all tyrants were gone.
“I hope there’ll be enough humans left alive to celebrate our funerals,” said Mother. “I had hoped to live yet awhile.”
By dawn, most of the warriors were equipped with helmets with padding over the ears, and the best marksmen were arrayed nearest the walker lines. The ax was not a traditional Artemisian weapon, but every man and woman in the country knew how to fell trees and split wood, so there were axes aplenty in the Artemisian host. The battle began with a slow practice of marksmanship, during which the warriors of Artemisia discovered how difficult it was to hit the eyes of something that could move as fast as the walkers did. It was not long before the doctors of the Artemisians had many wounded to treat, and many who were past treating.
The gangers, meantime, had come up the canyon wall to the slope beneath the Place of Power. All the fire weapons the gangers had were distributed among the front rank, and as soon as it was light enough, the assault began.
Deep in the forest to the west a dozen walkers moved in swift pursuit of three Heroes. At the mouth of a vertically walled arroyo, the Heroes turned tail and fled, using the full speed of their horses to take them out of reach of the walkers. By this time, the only motivation the walkers retained was to destroy the prey before them. Guarding the wall was a distant duty to which they would return when this task was over. Looking neither right nor left, the walkers ran down the arroyo, keeping the Heroes in sight.
At a narrow turn in the canyon, the Heroes vanished. At that same turn, a sound from above brought the walkers’ eyes up too late. Behind a fragile barricade of logs, stones had been piled, and now the ropes holding the barricade had been chopped through. The stones came down, knocking others loose on the slope below them to create an avalanche that buried the walkers beneath it. One of them struggled at the edge, like an ant, buried to its chest. but with its arms still free. With incredible strength, it began to pull itself from beneath the stones.
A Hero rode back to the stone pile, cut off the arms, then cut off the head. The walker still lived. Its red eyes still gleamed, the arms still moved of themselves, scrabbling.
“They’re still alive under there,” the Hero called up the hill. “Eventually, they’re going to get out!”
“I know,” said the giant at the top of the hill. “But the rocks will hold them for a while.”
Methodically, he began piling stones behind another cradle, to await the arrival of the next victims.
To the south, walkers followed bears into deep, dark, much-ramified caves from which the Bears emerged by other exits, leaving the walkers lost in darkness below, their infrared vision useless where all was chill stone. Others followed moose, who decoyed them far up into high meadows beside marshy lakes where they sank deep into the ooze, unable to extricate themselves. Walkers, the animals told one another eagerly, delighted at the knowledge, could not swim.
Still, there were bears who did not return, moose who did not return. Their numbers fell faster than the number of walkers. Animals had only their natural fleetness as protection. They were as overmatched by the walkers as they always had been by weapon-bearing men. It was not a fair fight. Those who had designed the walkers had not thought in terms of fair fights.
Below the southern wall, a frantic Coyote leaped and darted on three legs, one dangling uselessly, barely keeping out of a persistent walker’s hands. He tripped and rolled, coming to rest with an uncontrollable yelp of pain when the shattered bone encountered an outcropping.
“About time,” he mumbled to himself dazedly, catching sight of a troll form looming over the walker’s shoulder. “Someone mentioned our getting help—”
“Talk!” grunted Bear, as he punished the walkers with great blows of his claws before turning to flee. “Fight more. Talk less.”
Coyote did not reply. His fighting days were past. His talking days as well, it seemed The walker was getting up again. They seemed always to get up again. The troll was too far away to be of immediate help. He put his head between his paws and waited for the walker to deliver the final blow.
On his way past, Bear scooped him up with one huge and bleeding paw and thundered down the slope into a canyon, where he led the pursuing walker into the jaws of a waiting wivern.
“Thanks,” muttered Coyote to Bear, his vision blurring in and out, like fog.
“Anytime,” said the wivern, munching.
North of the walls, the monsters fought with claw and jaw, with whipping tail and biting talon. Fire belched from dragon maws, huge clubs thudded to the earth with monstrous regularity, each blow signifying another walker crushed. Though they seemed for a time impervious to the walkers’ bone-breaking blows and untroubled by wounds that would kill ordinary creatures, slowly they, too, began to weaken.
Not soon enough for the walkers, who began to keen, a sound their creators would have recognized as one of frustration. Walkers had been built to deal with creatures more powerful than these! They had programs and weapons they had not yet used, programs that had been glossed and covered with others, inhibitions and taboos that both Jark III and Ellel had inflicted upon them. Now, faced with the possibility, however remote, of losing a battle, those inhibitions began to flake away, a bit at a time, gradually revealing what lay beneath.
While in Fantis, Abasio had managed to avoid real fighting for some years, and he found himself woefully out of practice, praying to someone or something that the walkers confronting him wouldn’t make what he thought of as The Noise until he, Abasio, could get Tom out of reach. So long as the walkers confined themselves to using their hands, feet, and bodies only, he might manage to stay alive. This thought had no sooner occurred to him than one of the walkers kicked Abasio’s legs from under him and then raised its armored foot to crush Abasio’s skull. One of the gangers flung himself at the walker, knocking him aside. Before the thing could retaliate, a beam from the top of Gaddi House decapitated it, as well as several other walkers who were fortuitously grouped just behind it. The bodies went on moving, however, striking out blindly in every direction, and several desperate moments went by before Abasio got Tom free of them, somewhat battered and bloodied in the fray.
Tom set up his device on an outcropping of rock, and while he twiddled with it, Abasio and a dozen gangers surrounded him. One of the men handed Abasio a power lance he’d picked up from some fallen ganger
, and he faced outward, wishing Tom would accomplish something better than he had managed thus far. Every now and then Tom would hit a frequency that made one or more walkers explode with a loud noise, a stink, and a gout of fire. The explosions seemed to occur at random, some nearby, some farther away. Some walkers exploded while they were attacking, but some that were uninvolved exploded as well. It wasn’t good enough. The humans were tiring even as the walkers seemed to be getting better and better at killing them!
From the Gaddi House roof, Mitty supervised the use of the weapons he had brought there, jumping about from one to another, advising, experimenting, cursing, and pulling circuits apart, only to reconnect them and try again.
Berkli watched him.
“Mitty,” he said tentatively.
Mitty waved a hand and went back to his weapons.
“Mitty,” said Berkli again.
Mitty put down the tool he had been using and came over. “What?”
“I’ve been watching over the north wall. Some of the walkers are acting differently. I think that thing has happened you were afraid of.” “Oh, for the love of—” “Well, you can look for yourself.” Mitty did so, hanging over the parapet at the northeastern corner of Gaddi House. The walkers were no longer stretched in a thin line along the wall. Here and there, they were forming up in military fashion. Here and there, two or more of the creatures opened parts of their bodies and joined them to the bodies of others, becoming something larger and obviously more deadly Mitty didn’t need to have the matter explained. He knew that not even the monsters would be able to stand against them once they had reverted.
“Qualary told me Ellel controls the things from a closet in her quarters,” said Berkli from close behind him “I’ve been thinking, that’s really where we ought to be.” “We can’t reprogram—” “Surely there’s some way to turn them off!” Mitty gave him a look of combined surprise and respect. He himself had not thought of that!