There was very little time for thought. Hunnar yelled, “Up now!” and Ethan stood, turned.
He was confronted almost immediately by a snarling face framed in metal and leather and a pair of slitted yellow eyes that stared hypnotically into his own. He stood frozen in shock, unable to move, the sword dangling limply from one hand. The nomad raised a heavy mace in seeming slow motion over his head while Ethan watched, unmoving.
A long pike thrust out of nowhere and skewered the other through the chest. It gurgled, coughing blood, and dropped from view. That broke the ennui that had coated Ethan. Another minute and he was swinging his own sword rhythmically, jabbing and slashing and cutting at anything that showed itself above the clean gray stone. He never did have a chance to thank the pikeman who’d saved his life.
The yelling and shrieking, crying and bellowing drowned any coherent speech. In one harried moment he got a glimpse of September. Roaring like a pride-leader, the white-haired old giant was swinging the monstrous ax in great arcs, lopping off hands, arms, and heads like a thresher taking up wheat.
Hunnar seemed to be everywhere, dropping alongside for a quick thrust with his own sword, stepping back and running down the wall to rearrange a line of spearmen, offering encouragement to the fighting and solace to the wounded, always appearing where the fighting was heaviest, red beard bobbing in and out of the morass of blood and fur, receiving information from down the wall and offering some of his own.
All along the harbor wall lights were blinking demandingly as both Sofoldian and nomad flashers threw silent tirades of anger and agony at each other. Carnage was reported by peaceful sunlight.
Ethan thrust forward again, felt something hard and cold along his right side. September saw him falter and was at his side in a minute. He caught Ethan as the younger man staggered, dazed.
“Where you hit, young feller?” he asked anxiously. He had to shout to make himself understood over the noise.
“I … I don’t know.” Really, he didn’t. He’d felt something strike, but he wasn’t weak or faint. He looked down at himself, felt his body. Nothing. September had him turn slowly and examined his back. Ethan heard, “Bless my soul!” for the second time that day.
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” said Ethan tightly. “What is it?”
He felt a tugging at his back. September grunted once. Then he was grinning and showing Ethan a long barbarian arrow. ‘This was sticking out the back of your tunic, three-quarters through. Must have gone right down your sleeve. Sonuvabitch.”
Ethan wanted to say something appropriately clever, but didn’t get the chance. In the next minute it seemed that a solid wall of screeching, howling nomads were swarming over the top of the wall. In places some of the enemy had actually attained the top and were fighting inside. But reinforcements, using the ice-paths to move quickly along the wall, chivaned up and down to repair such cracks in the line.
Then, abruptly, the screams and bellows of defiance turned to howls of frustration. The great mass of enemy troops was moving backwards and down, retreating across the ice. Yells of derision accompanied them, along with arrows and crossbow bolts.
September walked over to Ethan, pulled his helmet off, and slung it across the wall. It bounced off the stone with a metallic clunk. His face was red and running with sweat. A tiny trickle of blood ran down one cheek, dribbled lazily off his chin. The huge ax was stained crimson.
“You’re bleeding,” said Ethan.
“Eh?” September paused, put a hand to his face, brought it away. “So I am. Well, just a scratch, it is. Right now, young feller-me-lad, I’m too tired to care.” He let out a long, exhausted breath.
“I had a dozen brand-new pocket medikits in my baggage,” began Ethan, but September waved him off and frowned.
“I’ve had enough of listening to you talk about the marvelous trade goods we haven’t got, young feller.”
“Sorry,” said Ethan contritely.
“Getting too old for this sort of thing … what?” the big man mumbled.
All down the wall and across the harbor, the Sofoldian soldiers and militia were singing and celebrating their victory with a fervor that matched their fighting intensity. As word spread, a similar tintinnabulation arose from the town itself, as the townsfolk and their country visitors slowly received the news.
Hunnar joined them. The knight’s eyes were glowing and his once-immaculate uniform was stained with dark splotches. “By the Running Plague of Deimhorst, we beat them! We beat them!”
“They’ll be back, y’know,” wheezed September.
Hunnar glanced down at him. “Yes, I know. But consider for a moment what has happened here. Ah no, you cannot. You cannot feel the same. For hundreds of years no one has dared to challenge the might of the Horde or any of their bloodsucking ilk. Whatever happens now, even should Wannome be razed to the ice, the word will be spread. Whether from us or from a garrulous drunkard among the enemy. It will be known that the barbarians can be beaten!”
“It wasn’t exactly an overwhelming victory, you know,” added September drily. “That last charge almost rolled us over.”
Hunnar took a long, slow breath of his own. “I know, friend September. It was a near thing.” He looked around, walked over to the body of one of the enemy. “If it had not been for this, I fear we would indeed have broken. Look.”
He stuck a foot under the corpse and shoved. It rolled over onto its back. Ethan could see the stubby hilt of one of Willams’ crossbow bolts protruding from the soldier’s chest. It had gone right through the thin layer of bronze and the double leather backing.
“Twas not so much the greater range of your wizard’s weapon, though that was important, but the fact that it carries so much striking power. Even, yea, into the wind!”
“You’ve lost that surprise now, though,” September commented pointedly. “Next time they’ll know what to expect.”
“All the anticipation in the world will not slow one of these,” the knight observed. He prodded the hilt of the bolt. A little blood oozed out as he moved it around in the dead tran’s chest.
“And Mulvakken and his craftsmen are turning out new bows and many dozens of bolts constantly. Though we still have four trained men for every crossbow that is finished. That is our greatest weakness.”
“Will they attack again today?” asked Ethan curiously.
Hunnar glanced at the sun, then looked down at him. “No, friend Ethan, I think not. The Horde,” he explained with relish, “are not used to retreating. It will take their leaders some time to absorb what has happened to them. Tis completely foreign to their experience. For the first time they will have to ponder a real strategy. I cannot guess what that may be, except that it will not be another open frontal attack!” He smiled ferociously. “The ice is sick with their bodies.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear we can rest awhile,” said Ethan, “because I am completely and totally finished. Out of it. Tired.” His right hand was resting in a pool of ice water. He raised it and patted a little gently under his eyes, wiped it free with the back of a gloved hand before it could … wait a minute. Ice water? At this temperature?
He looked down. His hand had been resting in a large pool of rich red blood, which was just now beginning to congeal and thicken in the sub-freezing air. His survival glove and jacket sleeve had been soaked to a point halfway up his forearm. It looked like a scrap from a slaughterhouse.
“Darn! Now I’ll have to find a fire and melt this out.” Then he fell over in a dead faint.
IX
THE FOLLOWING MORNING DAWNED clear and lovely—and windy. It was so beautiful that it was almost impossible to imagine the horror of the previous day. It was not necessary to call on the mind, however. All one had to do was glance over the harbor wall. The ice was littered for hundreds of meters in all directions with tiny clumps of fur and wide frozen ponds of dark red.
Warriors on this world, he reflected, were spared at least one of the great horrors of war. S
ince every engagement took place in a perpetual deep-freeze, there would be no lingering stink of moldering corpses.
“How do you feel, young feller?” asked September. “You keeled over so quick-like yesterday you had me worried a second.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Ethan replied.
“No need to apologize …” began September, but Ethan halted him.
“No, I’ve seen men killed before. And these aren’t even humans or thranx. I thought I’d seen quite a bit, but this …” He indicated the ghastly litter on the ice before them.
September put a great hand on his shoulder. “In the universe, my young friend, it’s always the familiar sights that shock the most. We’re always expecting the unfamiliar.”
Hunnar joined them, but his eyes were on the ice. Come to think of it, so were those of most of the men-at-arms stationed along the wall.
“What will they try today?” asked Ethan, aware that he was missing something.
“Don’t you hear it?” the knight replied.
“Hear what?”
“It has been sounding for several minutes now. Listen.”
Ethan waited, straining to hear something from across the ice. As usual, there was only the eternal infernal wind. Then there seemed to be something more.
“I hear it,” growled September. “Sounds like singing.”
“Yes,” Hunnar agreed. “Singing … Ah.” He pointed. “There.”
Far out across the solid sea, a strange object of truly monstrous proportions was moving toward them. Four long lines of nomad warriors were harnessed to four thick cables of woven pika-pina. Ethan could make out individual words now. The singing was accompanied by a deep-throated thrumming from smaller versions of the great Margyudan.
“Hayeh, chuff … hayeh, chuff!” intoned the straining barbarians. “Haryen abet hayeh chuff … hoo, hoo, chuff! …”
They swayed in rhythm to the song, pulling first to the left, then the right, left, then right. After they’d moved another dozen meters closer, the design of the engine they were dragging became clear even to Ethan’s untrained eye.
Hunnar said quietly, “That’s the biggest moydra … catapult … I’ve ever seen.”
Both singing and machine halted a few minutes later. The long lines of warriors rolled up their green cables. A crew of busy nomads began working about the base of the great war engine.
“Throwing out ice anchors,” said September, staring into the distance, “and blocking down the skates. I don’t wonder. The recoil on that thing must be terrific.”
The singing resumed, on a much smaller scale this time. Ethan could see the huge Cyclopean arm gradually sinking toward its base. It was hard to get a true sense of scale at this distance, but the crossbeam of the catapult was many times the height of a man.
There seemed to be a lapse in the activity. “What are they doing now?” he asked anxiously.
Hunnar yelled, “Get down!”
The cry was echoed by dozens of other voices along the wall. Ethan dropped as he had yesterday. Nothing happened. He raised his head slightly. There was a loud whistle in the sky and it wasn’t arrows, and it wasn’t the wind. Something went crunch in the distance, behind them.
Without waiting for an “all clear” he was on his feet, across the ice-path, and looking into the harbor. He almost stumbled on the ice.
Across the harbor, near the second tower down from the harbor gate, a section of wall at least five meters wide and three deep had been knocked from the back section of stone as though by the bite of a giant shovel.
Several twisted tran-shapes sprawled on the ice among the broken stone. From both walls troops were converging on the spot. A few started to scramble down the open break onto the ice.
There was a line in the harbor ice formed by three successive gouges, each about twenty meters apart. They lay in line from the broken section of wall. Twenty meters beyond the last gouge lay an enormous chunk of solid basalt. It sat placid and innocent in a slight depression of its own making.
Hunnar uttered something vicious that Ethan couldn’t translate and started running toward the castle. From several towers, Sofoldian catapults began to twang in response. Their smaller stones fell far short of the huge barbarian war engine.
A broad crescent of nomads had assembled next to the catapult. When it became clear that their own machine was impregnable they set up a great cheering and screaming that didn’t stop until the next stone was released.
This one landed short of the wall, took one bounce, and slammed into the masonry not ten meters down from where Ethan was standing. The concussion threw everyone stationed on that section off his feet.
Immediately, Ethan was standing and leaning over the side to inspect the damage.
A respectable portion of rock had been smashed free. Now it lay scattered on the ice like so many pebbles, the boulder a colossus among them.
“It’s a damn good thing it takes them so long to wind that thing up,” said September. “Just the same, Hunnar’s going to have to do something about that toy—and fast. Otherwise, near as I can figure, Sagyanak can sit out there and enjoy the party while that one piece of oversized artillery slowly turns these walls into gravel.”
The flickering candles illuminated the map spread before them, but did nothing to lighten their spirits. Balavere, Hunnar, Ethan, and September sat at the table. They were joined by the Landgrave and several other of Sofold’s most important nobles, the latter forming Balavere’s general staff.
One of the nobles was using a long stick of polished wood to indicate crosses and circles on the map, gesturing here and there at the line representing the harbor wall.
“The wall has been nearly breached—here, here, and here. Severe damage to battlements has occurred here, here, here, and here. Wherever you see a sting sign there is minor damage of varying degree. This is not to mention our personnel casualties, nor the damage to the spirit of the men. There is some talk of surrender and throwing the city on the mercy of Sagyanak. It is small as yet, but will surely grow unless something is done.”
“Better to throw oneself on the sword,” said Balavere. “But I understand their talk. Tis intolerable to sit helplessly and watch one’s comrades flattened, unable to fight back.” He shook his great maned head.
“We cannot endure more than another two or perhaps three days of this bombardment before they will have weakened us at so many points that it will become impossible for us to keep them from the harbor. Then it will be all up.”
“So we must keep them out … somehow,” responded Hunnar tightly. “We could never survive an open battle on ice with them. We killed thousands today, but they still outnumber us badly. Do any think otherwise?” he concluded half hopefully.
No one saw fit to dispute this depressing bit of truth.
Finally Balavere gave a sigh and looked up. “Tis a poor leader who does not solicit advice when he himself has naught to offer. Gentlemen?”
One of the nobles spoke up immediately.
“Surely our technology is greater than that of these barbarian primitives! Can we not build ourselves a weapon of equal, if not greater power?”
“In a few malvet, most surely we could, Kellivar, replied Balavere. “But we need one in two days.”
“Could we not,” proposed one of the older nobles, “establish several of our own smaller moydra within range of their own? From there we could throw animal skins of burning oil onto it.”
“Have you seen how they surround it?” said Hunnar tiredly. “We could not disguise such a plan from them. We could never muster a protective force of sufficient strength to stave off an attack on such an advanced position.”
“Even if it were protected,” the noble added, “by all our new crossbowmen, who would have only a single small bit of ice to defend?”
“Well …” hesitated Hunnar. He looked questioningly at Balavere.
“The idea has merit, Tinyak,” the general replied. “Yet, should we fail to fire the b
arbarians’ engine quickly, even the crossbows would not be enough to prevent an encirclement. I cannot take the risk of losing them in such an enterprise. They were the difference on the walls yesterday.”
“By the Krokim’s tail, is it not understood that in a few days there will be no walls!” shouted one of the nobles.
“The way I see it,” said September calmly, “is pretty simple, if I might have leave to say a few words, noble sirs?”
“You proved yourself the equal or better of any at this table,” said the Landgrave, speaking for the first time. “We will give close attention to whatever you counsel.”
“All right then.” September leaned back in his chair, propped one foot on the table and began rocking back and forth. “Near as I can tell, there’s only one thing to do. That’s put on your warm woolies, friends, sneak out the dog-door, and set fire to that gimcrack by hand, yourselves, tonight.”
“Fighting at night is unmanly,” said one of the nobles disdainfully.
“So’s getting terminated by a fat slab of street paving,” September countered.
“Tis not worthy of a gentleman!” the other grumbled, less certainly this time. “At night.”
Ethan glanced around the table, saw the same indecision mirrored in the faces of others.
“Look,” said September, taking his foot off the table and leaning forward intently. “I’ve been amply supplied with the details of what this Sagyanak is going to do if and when the Horde gets in among your women and kids. You won’t have to worry about the fact that such atrocities will be conducted in an unmanly and ungentlemanly fashion, because none of you will be around to condemn it. That’s if you’re lucky … Now, you can try this long shot with me, because I intend to try it whether any of you come along or not. Or you can get around this question of etiquette by sending along some of your wives or mistresses in your place. I don’t think moral considerations will trouble them.”
“Everything we hold dear and true is at stake,” interrupted the Landgrave suddenly, “and there are still some among you who would sit at leisure and debate fine points of obscure protocol … Damn and hell!” He stood up, old and shaky all of a sudden. “Sir September and Sir Hunnar will take charge of an expedition to move against the enemy this very night. However, I will force no one to take part in this who would feel his honor forever impugned. Should the expedition be successful,” and here he looked hard at Hunnar, “and it must be successful … there will be no question as to the honor of those who went …