Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War (28 page)

"Elder Stevan."

The voice was gentle, but insistent. "Elder Stevan," it repeated. There was an urgency in it which carried it through to my sleep-drugged consciousness. I rolled over and sat up.

The first thing I noticed was that the first trace of light was just now showing in the sky. Then, that Barbi was not in the room.

The next thing was that Jim Jenkins was at the door. Seeing that I was aware of him, he spoke. "My daughter is at my house. Grace Pomroy. She has the two childs with her. Paul Pomroy isn't anywhere; can't find him."

"Well?"

"Grace has brought the two childs from the Temple to my house."

The strangeness of the report hit me then. "What? Why did she do that?"

"She says the Elder Barbi told her to do it, told her not to tell anybody, but I saw her there and—"

"Yes," I rose, passed Jenkins, and called from the door. "Barbi!"

The echo spent itself. There was no one in the Temple.

"You came here, in this part of the Temple where the Folk do not go, and just to tell me— Well, you did right," I decided, keeping my voice carefully under control. "Do you know where the Elder Barbi is?"

"No."

We started downstairs, Jenkins trailing. "Do you know of anything else unusual's happening, Jim Jenkins?"

His answer was negative, but a positive answer arrived soon enough.

We made our way into the great unlighted cavern that was the Temple's main room. Jenkins was still in the process of lighting candles when we heard footsteps outside, someone running. Tim Marvic, the Guard, called, "Tony Shelton would see the Elder."

"Enter, Tony Shelton."

He burst in, followed by an identical shadow on the book-lined wall. "Elder Stevan . . . oh, Jim Jenkins."

Jenkins nodded, lighted another candle.

After a moment's pause to catch his breath, Shelton announced explosively: "Lookouts saw men at five different places. To south, and over hill toward river, and off there to west. Not men of Village. All five seen just now, this night."

"So soon," I said, sinking into a chair.

The Chief! It might be no coincidence he came now; he could have seen Barbi's party, followed it here. No, not that, he wouldn't have needed the expedition to lead him to the Village, for he had been born here.
Was
it coincidence, then?

"Coincidence, heck!" I said to myself angrily. Everything pointed to one simple and unpleasant explanation, and I might as well face it. Jim Jenkins' spy system had failed completely. That expedition to the west had been a council of war with the Chief, against me, and neither Jenkins nor I had realized it.

But
why?
Why would Barbi do it?

"Elder Stevan." Shelton had more to report. "All gone from Buddy Hoey's house. No one there."

That clinched it. I said rapidly: "There may be a fight. The Chief hasn't surrounded the Village without a reason. Just the same, we shouldn't start sending arrows after the first of the Chief's men we see. If there is a fight, it will be because they start it."

"Yes, Elder Stevan."

"We aren't sure how many of the Folk will be with us. Do you have any idea, Jim Jenkins?"

Jenkins was conscious of his recent failure, and didn't offer a guess. Shelton said: "Twenty, more." That might mean almost anything; I wasn't sure how far Shelton could count.

For a long half-minute I sat desperately trying to think what to say next, realizing that I wasn't completely awake yet. "Tony Shelton, how many lookouts are there now?"

"Six."

"Good. Bring them all here to the Temple . . . no, send one of them to Marvic's house and houses near there, to wake the Folk. Jim Jenkins, you get the Folk in the rest of the Village. Have them bring bows and arrows."

"All come to the Temple?"

"Yes."

"But then the Chief—" Jenkins floundered, and Shelton took over. "Chief can take food, all things from the Village. We're at the Temple then we can't stop him."

"Yes—" But there was Barbi. Barbi was almost certainly among the attackers. Without knowing why, I was quite sure there would be a fight at the Temple. I repeated, "Go now, and, Jim Jenkins, take Tim Marvic with you."

"No Temple Guard?"

"No, don't leave any Temple Guard. You have to hurry."

So the three of them went: I watched their gray shirts flickering away into the darkness.

The instant I was left alone I realized guiltily that the candles should never have been lighted. I put them out at once before returning to my chair. It was too late to do any good, of course. The enemy, if there was an enemy, would have seen the lights before now, and deduced that the Village was preparing.

If there was an enemy! What were Barbi's motives, after all? She had spoken earlier this same night about letting the Folk leave the Village as hunters. Maybe that was it. Maybe there would be no fight; Barbi would simply carry off a prearranged plan to smuggle Old Red's partisans off to the Chief's tribe, where they'd feel more at home.

But Barbi had also spoken of allowing the Folk to raid the Village. Sometimes her present sophistication made me forget that the first eighteen years of her life had been lived in near-savagery.

So, while the night slowly thinned outside the windows, I sat there, wide awake now, staring at the high ceiling, where the shadows still hung black as midnight. It was some time before it occurred to me that my life was in danger.

Immediate danger! I got to my feet with a start. I was alone here, and if the Temple should be attacked
now
I was defenseless.

No, not quite. With a surge of relief I remembered the rifles. There had been quite a number of the venerable weapons here in my grandfather's time. When the Folk had come and it became clear they could not be fought off, my grandfather had buried all the remaining ammunition, assuring the Folk there was none left and the rifles were useless. I knew where the ammunition was hidden, and the rifles were in the cabinet in the kitchen. I smiled gleefully to myself. Not many prewar battles had been won by secret weapons, but the battle coming up now might be.

As I was crossing the room to the kitchen door I heard footsteps outside. I hesitated. If these were not friends, nothing would help now. I reversed my steps, opened the front door. They were friends.

Tim Marvic, Jane Anderson, and about twenty others burst chaotically into the Temple, breathing hard from the haste of their coming. Then, as abruptly, their motion stopped and they stood bewildered in the darkness.

I gave rapid instructions. The windows of the Temple had to be boarded up, leaving only a narrow slit at the side of each, through which a bowman could fire. The job had to be done in darkness. The board ordinarily used for covering the windows in winter could be trimmed to size for the purpose; they were already fitted with dowel-holes. I would help the Folk match the shutters to the windows—quite a necessary job, in order that the dowel-holes come in alignment. I'd have given a lot for a hundred prewar nails!

So everyone fell to work. I said nothing about the hidden cartridges. They had been kept secret from the Folk for excellent reasons, and I didn't plan to use them as long as there was a chance of winning without them.

Shortly afterward, Tony Shelton and the lookouts arrived, and on their heels the group from the southern part of the Village. Where was Jenkins? Well, there was no time to worry about it. When the windows on the ground floor had been boarded up I stationed a line of bowmen at each slit, with instructions that in case of a charge on the Temple the first in line should loose an arrow quickly and drop out of the way of the second. I took the new arrivals upstairs to take care of barricading the windows there.

I was standing at a window on the west side of the Temple when Shelton whispered over my shoulder, "Look! Men leave Lavery's house. Two I saw."

"I missed it."

"On this side."

"Jenkins and the rest must have stayed there because they thought it was too dangerous to come on to the Temple. If you saw two leave, they're probably all leaving."

"Yes."

Then I saw the reason.

At first it was only one of the windows gleaming redly. It stared for a moment, as if the flames had been frozen in place. Then a stream of fire spilled out and poured up the roof of the house.

"They use fire," said Shelton quietly.

Between us and the blaze ran a silhouetted man with his stubby shadow. At this distance he was tiny; even in the firelight he'd have been invisible except that he moved. Astonishingly, he ran all the way across into darkness without felling. When he had passed, two more followed, then there were only the flames; it was as if there were no one left in the Village to care about the loss of the house. The fire unfolded out of the window and leisurely spread its orange palm over the roof.

"We'll be safe from that in the Temple," I said, "because we can keep watch on all four sides."

"Except—"

"Except that Jenkins' men may not make it here. Tony Shelton, you'd better take ten men out and hide in the corn at the bottom of the hill on this side of the Temple—to cover Jenkins when he comes."

Shelton left. Moments later, he and his men were scattered down the gray hillside, filtering between the gaunt tree trunks and unobtrusively as smoke. When one reached the edge of the corn, he would drop to the ground and disappear. Once there was a sudden commotion in the corn, over toward the right, and out of it erupted two men, locked together, struggling grimly. The fight was terrible, but brief. A third figure rose out of the ground beside them and grasped a head in both arms, savagely; at once all three figures dropped into the sea of corn and there was only the burning house off in the distance to remind my eyes of danger.

So some of the rebels
were
hiding around the Temple. Yet they hadn't attacked; perhaps they would when Jenkins got here.

I started downstairs. Before I'd reached the main room I heard a suppressed shout from the bowmen at the windows there. I hurried in.

"Men by the threshing floor, Elder Stevan," a woman said. "Running this way."

"The Chief's men?"

"Yes. Chase the Folk." She didn't sound too certain of this; I looked out. There were two groups. The more distant was running in a body; the nearer—now fairly close—was dispersed, zigzagging to avoid arrows from behind. Although the dawn was coming faster now, it was impossible to make out faces; still the woman's guess was obviously right.

The nearer group reached the cornfield. Now, I thought, they would be ambushed by the rebels hiding down there, and the killing would begin. I waited; and it didn't! The men raced up the rows of corn. There was an occasional, quickly-ended scuffle, and then Jenkins' and Shelton's men scampered up through the oak grove to the Temple.

As far as I knew, not a single arrow had left its bow. It had been too simple.

It had been too simple.

A crowd of the Folk stood in the center of the main room, bewildered, panting from their run. The lines of the bowmen at the windows fidgeted. No one knew what came next.

The Folk were a crowd of shadows against the timid grayness of the windows. I picked my way among them, searching their faces. Finally I found the Temple Guards, Shelton and Marvic, squatting in the pitch blackness under the stairs. Shelton had a dark bruise, five inches long and the width of a thumb, running from his ear down across his throat.

I crouched beside them, and they greeted me quietly. "How did you get the bruise, Tony Shelton?" I asked.

"Out there, when I first went into the corn. Man right near me, hiding: I stopped. He knew I saw him, so we fought." He gripped his bow more tightly.

"I saw it, but I didn't know it was you."

"Did you see the other's face?"

"No."

"Paul Pomroy. I think his neck's broke." Shelton and Marvic both looked me squarely in the face. Less than a year before Pomroy had been their best friend.

"Others will be killed, too," I said. "Too many. It is not good."

They relaxed. That was what they'd wanted to hear, though they wouldn't have said it themselves.

"All these people here," I said, "they must be ready to fight. When the Chief charges—"

"Yes," said Shelton, "but maybe the Chief doesn't charge. He can keep his men all around the Temple. We don't have food. He can wait to charge."

"That's true," I answered thoughtfully, appalled that I had never thought of a siege. "Do you think he'll do that?"

"Don't know."

I stood up, glanced out the nearest window. "It's getting lighter. If he does charge, he'll have to do it right away."

We waited, and the rest of the room waited.

Now and then the enemy would be sighted—always beyond bowshot, and always only a small group. One of the watchers at the windows would report the fact, calmly. Very calmly.

"It's getting pretty light outside for them to charge," I said. Then I thought: Why had the Chief not attacked earlier in the night? Why had Jenkins' men been allowed to reach the Temple? Why had the enemy's only offensive action been to force the Folk in Lavery's house to leave it for the Temple? Barbi was with the other side, I was sure, and while she'd have difficulty giving orders to the Chief and Old Red she might have got them to accept her plan. And Barbi would have thought of a siege.

There was only one answer.

"After you've fired," I said rapidly to the small group around me, "pull back this knob and flip it to the side. The next round—the next cartridge goes in here, and then you go through the same thing again." I handed the rifle to Shelton; he went through the procedure and passed the weapon on to the others. "Remember, you don't have to aim above your target; I've fixed the sights so you just look straight down them, the way I told you."

I left them to discuss it among themselves, and crossed to where the lone semiautomatic was lying. It was too bad we hadn't been able to clean the guns better after their long interment. Too bad the ammunition, which was supposed to be used within five years of manufacture, was going to be used after a hundred plus years, and too bad there were only four guns for which there was any ammunition at all. Too bad also that I was going to use the semiauto, which would have fared better by the stronger, sharper-eyed Shelton; but it was easier and quicker to do the job myself than to go through explaining another loading and firing procedure. I sighed, reread a page of the manual I'd been referring to, and slammed the book shut.