Again with both hands on the handle, Rahm pulled the ax free, leaving a gouge on the blood-splattered hardwood.
—
The heart-hammering paralysis for Kire ended with the Çironian’s voice. The soldiers had all released him. One was running, turning, pulling out his sword as he danced backward; now he began to feint forward.
And Kire crawled, scrambled, clambered around the block and under the swinging blade. A moment later he came up with, first, Nactor’s powergun and, a moment after that, in his other hand, the other officer’s.
There was still a desperate string of seconds when the lieutenant seemed uncertain if he should fire on his own men—who’d been about to kill him—or obliterate this Çironian madman who was now wreaking mayhem and death among men who, till a day ago, had been his own guards. Finally, when another soldier started toward them, sword drawn, Kire, still on the ground, turned and fired, destroying most of the man save one leg, in a swirl of black smoke and red flame. But it was only then that Kire, glancing up, realized who the marvelous madman was.
—
Afterthought would have certainly made Kire’s decision self-evident. But to some of the soldiers watching, especially from the second and third rows, it seemed—for those moments—as moot and, for the moments after it, as illogical as anything else that had happened in what was still no more than a dozen seconds.
That illogic held them—Uk was one—fixed.
Someone in an officer’s cloak had started to run—not toward the mayhem around the block, but toward the soldiers, whose ranks, with each blow and hack and thrust before them, became looser and looser, as some (around Uk) stepped forward and others (in front of him, knocking against him) stepped back.
Crawling on his knees at the end of a swath of bloody grass, doubled over in a kind of moving knot, the officer with the severed arm was still screaming. The flap at the crawling man’s waist bobbed above his empty sling. His scream seemed at last to move—though very slowly—people about the common’s edge.
—
As, with the powergun in his right hand, Kire dispatched another Myetran and, with the one in his left hand, fired wildly, Rahm paused a moment with his ax, drew a great breath, turned his face to the sky, and shouted, “Vortcir!”
He did not shout for help. The young Çironian meant by it only: I am here. See this now and behold me…before I die! (For such actions as his—just as much as Naä’s—cannot be undertaken other than in the certainty of death.) As such, it was a far more desperate cry than any call for aid. Probably no one about the common’s rim understood its meaning: but a chilling combination of triumph and desperation rang through it.
—
His own powergun drawn, the officer who’d run up to the observing soldiers shouted: “Get in there and stop that—take them down! Go on! Stop it! Forward! Now!”
Perhaps a third of the soldiers began to run forward, some pulling their swords loose from their scabbards as they sprinted across the grass. Looking for a clear spot between them for some sort of shot, the officer, shaking his head, trotted behind them.
—
At the center of the fray, which had turned both Kire and Rahm by this time toward the council building, Rahm’s ax sank into another shoulder; and as he lugged the blade back, he gasped: “You see, friend Kire? You see how peaceful I am!” And swung the ax again.
RAHM! KIRE—TURN AROUND!
The thunderous voice crashed against the air itself. The sound staggered all about them. Every man on the field halted a moment—except Kire and Rahm.
Turning, Rahm saw the light tower beside the council house. Halfway up its ladder of beams and girders, a woman—it was Naä—crouched in an angle of metal, clutching a small silver rod.
LEFT, RAHM—DUCK!
Rahm threw himself to the left and to the ground as smoke and flame burned through the air above him. Someone who had not ducked screamed—very briefly.
BEHIND YOU, KIRE!
From the ground, as he pulled his ax to him, Rahm saw Kire whirl and fire—obliterating two soldiers and causing half a dozen more to scatter.
Because he was on the ground, Rahm looked up—and saw suddenly the great forms dropping from the sky. Near the edge of the common, he realized, half a dozen Winged Ones fought with half a dozen Myetrans!
Rahm scrambled to his feet and swung up the ax with one hand so that the blade rose over his head, gleaming red and silver.
—
For Uk, all this—execution, rebellion, the voice from the tower—had played out like a fatigued dream. At the point the officer shouted, “Forward!” he was actually running the thought through his mind: in the morning, I must get up, march to the common, and with the others, observe the lieutenant’s execution. So this is surely some wild night vision that will end in a moment with a breath of cold air through the opening of my sleeping bag and the smell of morning gruel.
But in the real world, such thoughts do not linger. And when, at the “Forward!” order, other soldiers started toward the fray, Uk unsheathed his sword and started too. He’d gone two dozen steps, cutting the distance between him and the wildly fighting figures by a third, by two thirds, when he saw the berserk executioner swing his ax high—Uk had not even seen the hood thrown free. But that was not black cloth wrapped about his head. It was hair, swinging. And the naked face—
Between them, Uk saw Nactor on his side, one hand above his head, the blindfold still looped on three fingers, one eye wide, one closed, and drooling blood. Uk looked up again and recognition hit. It chilled him, turning all possibility of dream into the nightmare whose specific horror was that it took place in one’s own bed, in one’s own room, in one’s own house, in a world that was indeed supposed to be precisely his. If, in fact, he had dreamed some beast had, howsoever, been thrust with him into his sleeping bag, and he’d waked to find it clawing and biting at his unarmored belly and unhelmeted face to get free, it would have been exactly as frightening as the realization that this incarnation of evil, who had wildly and insanely murdered Mrowky, was now wreaking death and murder (an arc of blood followed the Çironian’s ax blade through the air) among the dozen men around him!
Uk was terrified; but he was also a brave soldier; moreover, he was an intelligent one, which meant he’d already had several occasions to learn that terror in battle—a different thing from ordinary rational fear—had best be moved into and through so that you came out the other side as quickly as possible—if it were at all possible. That, indeed, is what bravery, military or otherwise, was. Uk took a great wet breath, with a lot of noise in it—much like a sob, had anyone heard it among the shouts and shrieks. (The damned traitor of a lieutenant was on one knee, firing to the right. Would Kire’s beam be what cut Uk down? No matter. This other one had to be stopped—had to be!) Uk crouched, his sword back for the thrust, and ran forward, hammering the ground with his boots, gasping air, one fist pumping at his side, the other, holding his sword, awkwardly poised, his whole body aimed for the space between the backs of two soldiers who were already feinting at the ax wielder with their blades.
RAHM! THE ONE COMING UP
ON THE RIGHT OF—!
Rahm swung his ax, and one of the feinters dove aside and rolled away. The other danced back. And Rahm saw the big soldier, crouched low, coming at him—for an instant.
It was a very long instant, though.
Beneath the helmet’s rim, the soldier’s eyes, as gray as stone, seemed only a moment away from magma red. The effort that twisted the face (the soldier’s teeth were bared) seemed to Rahm an image of absolute, blood-stopping evil.
Recognizing it, Rahm felt himself lose purchase with his right foot on the grass and earth that had grown so black and slippery. The part of him that knew how his own blows were timed saw, as clearly as if it had been written out on one of Ienbar’s scrolls, that the only backswing he could get in would not connect with any vital part—maybe knock aside the running man’s forward arm, if that. This
mad creature—who had started to holler now—would collide with him, surely cut him, and likely stab him and stab him and stab again….
Then something fell between them—ropes? But they were moving, Rahm saw, backward, away from him. Rahm glanced left and right. The ropes—tied together in some sort of net—had taken several others of the soldiers too.
If a big man runs head-on into a rope net, the net should give some—two feet, three feet, maybe even twice that. The berserk soldier was no more than five feet from Rahm when the net caught him and started sweeping back.
The big soldier hit those ropes as though they were solid. His free hand grasped a cord near his head. His sword arm went directly through, between thick strands. If you were a wall and someone ran smack against you, that’s the only other way you’d ever see that expression on a man’s face: the jaw-jarring jerk—when his chest hit—shook Uk’s whole body. The sword flew forward from his hand—Rahm winced to the side, slipping more.
But the blade went clear of Rahm’s right hip, by a palm’s width—before it slid, spinning, back from grass onto gravel. Rahm reeled again but kept his balance.
Winged Ones—fifteen, twenty of them, or more—pulled the vine web back across the common. Soldiers stumbled back behind it. At the sides Winged Ones ran with it. At the top others flew with it. Some cords in the web were of a lighter color than the rest; and from the way some soldiers within were struggling to pull one loose from a face or an arm or a leg, Rahm realized in a strangely attenuated knowledge that those lines were cave-creature filaments! The Winged Ones at the net’s top now descended, making the web a cage. Within were at least twenty-five Myetran soldiers. And the Winged Ones had their own, strangely gripped blades—
“Friend Rahm!” It was not Kire’s voice, but a familiar mew.
Gasping, Rahm turned to see, like a huge and moving shadow beside him, wings spreading, beating in dawnlight—
“Vortcir?”
“Jump on, friend Rahm!”
While the wings turned before him, Rahm dropped the ax and staggered forward. He threw himself at the furry shoulders, caught himself. As they lifted, he called out, sliding, holding his breath, then letting it all out: “Vortcir! I cannot hold thee!”
“Of course you can!” declared the Handsman. And he banked, so that they moved in a far gentler rise; and Rahm, pulling himself forward on his friend’s back, sucking in exhausted gasps, looked over Vortcir’s shoulder. They sailed left, swooped around, then sailed right, then left again, gaining only a dozen feet each sweep. Wings labored either side of Rahm as Vortcir circled and circled the common.
On the ground, with their long blades, Winged Ones were not being kind to the soldiers under the net. But Rahm’s eyes fixed on the lieutenant.
Kire stood, head hanging and powergun pointed straight into the air. He looked as exhausted as Rahm felt. Slowly Kire’s arm went down and his head rose so that the gun was pointed at the Winged Ones fighting around the netted Myetrans. There were far more Winged Ones about than Myetrans!
KIRE, NO!
(Vortcir’s translucent ears jerked. Beneath Rahm, the jerk went through all of Vortcir’s body, as if it were a moment’s pain.) Kire’s arm dropped to his side. Then his gloved hand with the gun started to rise again.
KIRE!
(Vortcir’s ears flicked.) The gun dropped again.
And over Vortcir’s shoulder, Rahm saw Naä reach the ground at the light tower’s base and run toward Kire, to take his arm. He saw Kire try to shake her off once—saw her take his shoulder again…
Vortcir soared higher, and beyond the trees and hut roofs, Rahm could see the Myetrans’ tents. Moving among them and occasionally taking off from among them were not Myetrans, but Winged Ones! Not twenty or thirty, but what seemed hundreds!
“Look there, beside us!” Vortcir called in the wind.
Rahm looked out to his left. By some kind of rope, two Winged Ones pulled something through the air—a kind of glider. It was a larger version of the wood and leather toys Rahm had seen skimming between the fliers in the mountains. Much larger, though—larger than one of the Winged Ones! Piled on the upper side of this one—and there were more of them, many more of them in the air—was a bundle of net. On another was a rack of long-handled knives. On still others, were bound-up balls with spikes jutting from them, whose use Rahm could not even imagine.
“You smell of blood,” Vortcir remarked. “But that’s better than your skinny friend who stinks of garbage. And”—because, on Vortcir’s back, Rahm had started to shake and could now see only shimmering and shifting cloud and light—“you are crying.” Though—certainly anyone could hear—they were the grinning sobs of relief.
—
“What’s going to happen to us? Hey, Uk—what’s going to happen? I’m bleeding bad! I’m bleeding bad now. What’s going to happen!”
“Shut up, boy!”
“Shut your mouth—and be quiet!”
“What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen?”
There was a grunt in the darkness. “You want to know what’s going to happen? You’re going to have a red hot fever by tonight. And in three days that gash in your leg is going to be filled with little white worms. And you’re going to have flies crawling all over you. And your mouth’s gonna dry up, and you’re going to cry for water, only if somebody brings it to you, you won’t be able to drink it; and if somebody pours it in your mouth it isn’t going to make no difference, and you’re gonna hang around like that for seven, eight, nine days, with your tongue cracking and bleeding, turned all black. Then you’re going to die. That’s what’s going to happen. An’ I just hope I’m dead already when it does—probably will be. ’Cause what I got’s a lot worse than what you do.”
“Don’t tell him that, Uk. You don’t have to tell him—”
“Hey, Uk? That’s not what’s going to happen, is it, Uk? That’s not what’s gonna happen? Oh, no, don’t tell me that!”
“The boy don’t need to know that kind of thing.”
“Then why’d he ask, if he didn’t want to know? They pulled their damned blades when they had us under that net, hacking at us. They didn’t cut to kill—you can’t fight a war like that! You can’t do it like that! That’s not the way to do it!”
“They’re not going to let that happen to us, are they? You don’t think that’s what they’re going to do? Oh, don’t tell me that!”
“You can’t pull back when you’re fighting like that. If I had my blade, boy, I’d kill you now. Put you out of your misery—and if you don’t shut up in here, I may just try it anyway with my bare hands. Only I’m too weak—too bad for you. But keep quiet, I say!”
On the council building’s cellar floor, at first making figures like red feathers, blood leaked out to mix with the urine still there from the village prisoners released that morning.
“Oh, don’t say that—I’m bleeding, Uk. I’m bleeding so bad!”
“Will you shut up, boy? Are you a man or are you a howling dog? There’re men dying in here. And there’re going to be more men dying. So will you have some respect and shut up?”
But after minutes, all form to the red shapes spreading the wet floor was gone.
chapter seven
From high in the mountains a stream drops in feathery falls to bubble along beside the grassy fold through the quarry at Çiron.
When Rahm threw a last handful of sand and grit back to pock the water and, elbows high and winging, waded up the bank, his hair was a black sheet bright on his back and his dripping skin was raw—but both were free of blood.
Vortcir perched on a log jutting above the rocks, wings waving like a great moth’s.
A leg still in the foamy rush, Rahm looked down to finger the chain around his neck.
“They were planning to come through the mountains to Hi-Vator. Hi-Vator was right in their line.” Vortcir cocked his head to the side, above his own Handsman’s chain. “We heard what they’d done to you and your villag
e. Certainly we couldn’t let that happen to us. No sense of weapons, god, or money—you’re not far enough along toward civilization for anyone to take you seriously. Still, I did not like these Myetrans—and my aunt said attack. Then, my friend, I heard your name through their accursed speakers—and after that, your own call. Well, these are all things to put out of your mind. You are free. Your village is free. A third of the Myetran soldiers run wildly even now, away in the woods. My scouts say most are heading southeast, in the direction of Myetra Himself. More than a third are dead, and the few captured are penned in the basement of your council building. It could be a lot worse.”
Along the path to the bank, dappled light spilling bits of even brighter copper down his braids, Abrid ran half a dozen steps, stopped; and, copper spilling hers even faster, Rimgia overtook him. Behind, wings waving in their own rose dapple, the female Winged One who’d once told Rahm about money came after them. “These are the ones you wanted, the two with the red hair—yes, Handsman Rahm? These are the ones, no? Certainly they must be!” Her voice was between a piping and a whine.
“Rahm!” Rimgia declared, Abrid right behind. “The Winged Ones—they drove off the soldiers!” and she excitedly began to tell him many things he already knew; and while Abrid looked excited and kept silent, they started back to the village.
The path crossed the bristle of a burnt field. Halfway over, Rahm halted. “I’ll see thee back in town in a little, Rimgia, at the common,” and he turned across the stubble toward the remains of the shack.
As he came around where half a wall still stood, he stopped.
—
On her knees, Naä looked up from where she had been pulling earth from under a charred log. “Rahm?” She smiled up at him, then dug some more.
Three double handfuls of black, cinder-filled dirt, and she leaned to reach in under with one arm. Sitting back, she lifted free the harp and unwrapped the charred cloth. Two dead leaves were caught in its strings. Fingering them loose, she pulled the base back into her lap, laid her hand against the strings, but did not pluck.