Dorsai! (7 page)

There were none. They waited for him to go on. He, in turn looked slowly around the circle, assessing these men on whom his command would depend.

He had had a chance to get to know them in the three weeks previous to this early morning. The six who faced him represented, in miniature, the varying reactions his appointment as Force-Leader had produced in the Force as a whole. Of the hundred and fifty men under him, a few were doubtful of him because of his youth and lack of battle experience. A larger number were unequivocably glad to have him over them because of the Dorsai reputation. A few, a very few, were of that class of men who bristle automatically, as man to man, whenever they find themselves in contact with another individual who is touted as better than they. The instinctive giant-killers. Of this type was the Senior Groupman of the Third Group, an ex-Coby miner named Lee. Even squatting now in this circle, on the brink of action, he met Donal's eye with a faint air of challenge, his brush of dark hair stiffly upright in the gloom, his bony jaw set. Such men were troublemakers unless they had responsibility to hold them down. Donal revised his original intention to travel, himself, with the Third Group.

“We'll split up into patrol-sized units of twenty-five men each,” he said. “There'll be a Senior or Junior Groupman to each unit. You'll move separately as units, and if you encounter an enemy patrol, you'll fight as a unit. I don't want any unit going to the rescue of another. Is that clear?”

They nodded. It was clear.

“Morphy,” said Donal, turning to the thin Senior Groupman. “I want you to go with the Junior unit of Lee's Group, which will have the rearguard position. Lee will take his own half-group directly in front of you. Chassen”—he looked at the Senior Groupman of the Second Group—”you and Zolta will take positions third and fourth from the rear. I want you personally in fourth position. Suki, as Junior of the First Group, you'll be ahead of Chassen and right behind me. I'll take the upper half of the First Group in advance position.”

“Force,” said Lee. “How about communications?”

“Hand-signal. Voice. And that's all. And I don't want any of you closing up to make communication easier. Twenty-meter minimum interval between units.” Donal looked around the circle again. “Our job here is to penetrate to the little town as quickly and quietly as we can. Fight only if you're forced into it; and break away as quickly as you can.”

“The word is it's supposed to be a Sunday walk,” commented Lee.

“I don't operate by back-camp rumor,” said Donal flatly, his eyes seeking out the ex-miner. “We'll take all precautions. You Groupmen will be responsible for seeing that your men are fully equipped with everything, including medication.”

Lee yawned. It was not a gesture of insolence—not quite.

“All right,” said Donal. “Back to your Groups.”

The meeting broke up.

A few minutes later the almost inaudible peep of a whistle was carried from Force to Force; and they began to move out. Dawn was not yet in the sky, but the low overcast above the treetops was beginning to lighten at their backs.

The first twelve hundred meters through the woods, though they covered it cautiously enough, turned out to be just what Lee had called it—a Sunday walk. It was when Donal, in the lead with the first half-Group, came out on the edge of the river that things began to tighten up.

“Scouts out!” he said. Two of the men from the Group sloshed into the smoothly flowing water, and, rifles held high, waded across its gray expanse to the far side. The glint of their rifles, waved in a circle, signaled the all clear and Donal led the rest of the men into the water and across.

Arrived on the far side, he threw out scouts in three directions—ahead, and along the bank each way—and waited until Suki and his men appeared on the far side of the river. Then, his scouts having returned with no sight of the enemy, Donal spread his men out in light skirmish order and went forward.

The day was growing rapidly. They proceeded by fifty meter jumps, sending the scouts out ahead, then moving the rest of the men up when the signal came back that the ground was clear ahead. Jump succeeded jump and there was no contact with the enemy. A little over an hour later, with the large orange disk of E. Eridani standing clear of the horizon, Donal looked out through a screen of bushes at a small, battle-torn village that was silent as the grave.

Forty minutes later, the three Forces of the Third Command, Battle Unit 176 were united and dug in about the small town of Faith Will Succour. They had uncovered no local inhabitants.

They had had no encounter with the enemy.

The name of Force-Leader Graeme was mud.

The Third Command, or at least that portion of it that was dug in around the village, made no great attempt to hide the fact from him. If he had shown at all that he was sensitive to their opinion of him, they would have made even less. But there was something about his complete indifference to their attitude that put a check to their obvious contempt. Nevertheless, the hundred and fifty men that had been forced by him to make their approach on the village under full equipment and maximum security effort, and the three hundred other men who had made a much more casual and easy approach, and were congratulating themselves on being out from under such an officer, agreed in an opinion of Donal that had reached its nadir! There is only one thing that veterans hate worse than being made to sweat unnecessarily in garrison; and that is being made to sweat unnecessarily in the field. The word had gone out that the day's work was to be a Sunday walk. And it
had
been a Sunday walk, except for those serving under a green young Dorsai officer, name of Graeme. The men were not happy.

Along about twilight, as the sunset was fading through the bushy-limbed trees that were the local mutant variform of the Earthly conifer that had been imported when this planet was terraformed, a runner came from Hugh at Command HQ, just outside the enemy end of the village. He found Donal seated astride a fallen log, studying a map of the local area.

“Signal from Battles,” said the runner, squatting beside the log.

“Stand up,” said Donal, quietly. The runner stood. “Now, what's the signal?”

“Second and Third Commands won't be moving up until tomorrow morning,” said the runner sulkily.

“Signal acknowledged,” said Donal, waving him off. The runner turned and hurried away with another instance of the new officer's wax-and- braid to relate to the other enlisted men back at HQ.

Left to himself, Donal continued to study the map as long as the light lasted. When it was completely gone, he put the map away, produced a small black whistle from his pocket and peeped for his ranking Senior Groupman.

A moment later a thin body loomed up against the faintly discernible sky beyond the treetops.

“Morphy, sir. Reporting,” came the voice of the Senior Groupman.

“Yes—” said Donal. “Sentries all posted, Groupman?”

“Yes, sir.” The quality of Morphy's tone was completely without inflection.

“Good. I want them alert at all times. Now, Morphy—”

“Yes, sir?”

“Who do we have in the Force that has a good sense of smell?”

“Smell, sir?”

Donal merely waited.

“Well, sir,” said Morphy, finally and slowly. “There's Lee, he practically grew up in the mines, where you have to have a good sense of smell. That's the mines on Coby, Force-Leader.”

“I assumed those were the mines you meant,” said Donal, dryly. “Get Lee over here, will you?”

Morphy took out his own whistle and blew for the Senior Groupman, Third Group. They waited.

“He's about the camp, isn't he?” said Donal, after a moment. “I want all the men within whistle sound that aren't on sentry duty.”

“Yes, sir,” said Morphy. “He'll be here in a moment. He knows it's me. Everybody sounds a little different on these whistles and you get to know them like voices after a while, sir.”

“Groupman,” said Donal. “I'd be obliged if you didn't feel the need to keep telling me things I already know.”

“Yes, sir,” said Morphy, subsiding.

Another shadow loomed up out of the darkness.

“What is it, Morphy?” said the voice of Lee.

“I wanted to see you,” spoke up Donal, before the Senior Groupman had a chance to answer. “Morphy tells me you have a good sense of smell.”

“I do pretty well,” said Lee.

“Sir!”

“I do pretty well, sir.”

“All right,” said Donal. “Both of you take a look at the map here. Look sharp. I'm going to make a light.” He flicked on a little flash, shielded by his hand. The map was revealed, spread out on the log before them. “Look here,” said Donal, pointing. “Three kilometers off this way. Do you know what that is?”

“Small valley,” said Morphy. “It's way outside our sentry posts.”

“We're going there,” Donal said. The light went out and he got up from the log.

“Us? Us, sir?” the voice of Lee came at him.

“The three of us,” said Donal. “Come along.” And he led the way surefootedly out into the darkness.

Going through the woods, he was pleased to discover the two Groupmen were almost as sure-footed in the blackness as himself. They went slowly but carefully for something over a mile; and then they' felt the ground beginning to slope upward under their feet.

“All right. Down and easy,” said Donal quietly. The three men dropped to their bellies and began in skilled silence to work their way up to the crest of the slope. It took them a good half-hour; but at the end of that time they lay side by side just under the skyline of a ridge, looking over into a well of blackness that was a small, hidden valley below. Donal tapped Lee on the shoulder and when the other turned his face toward him in the gloom, Donal touched his own nose, pointed down into the valley and made sniffing motions. Lee turned his face back to the valley and lay in that position for several minutes, apparently doing nothing at all. However, at the end of that time, he turned toward Donal again, and nodded. Donal motioned them all back down the slope.

Donal asked no questions and the two Groupmen volunteered nothing until they were once more back safely within the lines of their own sentry posts. Then Donal turned toward Lee.

“Well, Groupman,” he said. “What did you smell?”

Lee hesitated. His voice, when he answered, had a note of puzzlement in it.

“I don't know, sir,” he answered. “Something—sour, sort of. I could just barely smell it.”

“That's the best you can do?” inquired Donal. “Something sour?”

“I don't know, sir,” said Lee. “I've got a pretty good nose, Force—in fact,” a note of belligerence crept into his voice. “I've got a damned good nose. I never smelled anything like this before. I'd remember.”

“Have either of you men ever contracted on this planet before?”

“No,” said Lee.

“No, sir,” answered Morphy.

“I see,” said Donal. They had reached the same log from which they had started a little less than three hours before. “Well, that'll be all. Thank you, Groupmen.”

He sat down on the log again. The other two hesitated a moment; and then went off together.

Left alone, Donal consulted the map again; and sat thinking for a while. Then he rose, and hunting up Morphy, told him to take over the Force, and stay awake. Donal himself was going to Command HQ. Then he took off.

Command HQ was a blackout shell containing a sleepy orderly, a map viewer and Skuak.

“The commandant around?” asked Donal, as he came in.

“Been asleep three hours,” said Skuak. “What're you doing up?
I
wouldn't be if I didn't have the duty.”

“Where's he sleeping?”

“About ten meters off in the bush, at eleven o'clock,” said Skuak. “What's it all about? You aren't going to wake him, are you?”

“Maybe he'll still be awake,” said Donal; and went out.

Outside the shell, and the little cleared space of the HQ area, he cat-footed around to the location Skuak had mentioned. A battle hammock was there, slung between two trees, with a form mounding its climate cover. But when Donal reached in to put his hand on the form's shoulder, it closed only on the soft material of a rolled-up battle jacket.

Donal breathed out and turned about. He went back the way he had come, past the Command HQ area, and was stopped by a sentry as he approached the village.

“Sorry, Force,” said the sentry. “Commandant's order. No one to go into the village area. Not even himself, he says. Booby traps.”

“Oh, yes—thank you, sentry,” said Donal; and, turning about, went off into the darkness.

As soon as he was safely out of sight, however, he turned again, and worked his way back past the sentry lines and in among the houses of the village. The small but very bright moon which the Harmonites called The Eye of the Lord, was just rising, and throwing, through the ruined walls, alternate patches of tricky silver and black. Slipping in and out of the black places, he began patiently to search the place, house by house, and building by building.

It was a slow and arduous process, carried out the way he was doing it, in complete silence. And the moon mounted in the sky. It was nearly four hours later that he came upon what he was searching for.

In the moonlit center of a small building's roofless shell, stood Hugh Killien, looking very tall and efficient in his chameleon battle-dress. And close to him—almost close enough to be in his arms—was Anea, the Select of Kultis. Beyond them both, blurred by action of the polarizer that had undoubtedly been the means of allowing it to carry her invisibly to this spot, was a small flying platform.

“. . . Sweet,” Hugh was saying, his resonant voice pitched so low it barely carried to the ears of Donal, shrouded in shadow outside the broken wall, “Sweet, you must trust me. Together we can stop him; but you must let me handle it. His power is tremendous—”