The Iron Dream (25 page)

It was child's play for Feric and his men to hack their way through this twitching mass of effectively decapitated muscle; the task was made that much easier when the bulk of the Pullers suddenly chanced to run in the same direction, dragging the war-wagon and themselves over the edge of the bridge and down into the depths of the Roul with a gigantic splash. The great sound alone seemed to add to the panic, and scores of Warriors actually leapt off the bridge into the river, where their rudimentary brains proved quite unequal to the task of swimming.

Led by Feric and his SS elite guard, the Helder column brushed aside all residual opposition and roared across the bridge to join the climactic battle on the west bank of the Roul. Five tanks were the last to cross, and when their treads were firmly on the soil of the west bank, they swiveled their turrets to the rear, and with three quick 163

barrages blew the bridge to bits, stranding the decimated rear half of the Zind horde behind the wide watery barrier of the river.

As for the rest of the horde, it was now trapped between Waffing's men to the west and Feric's to the east, halved in size, cut off from relief, and surrounded.

Waffing's troops were dug in along a wide front in the flattened suburbs of western Lumb. From behind the cover of trenches and rude earthen embankments, thousands of Helder troops sent a continuous hail of bullets at the waves of Warriors that the Zind horde ceaselessly launched against their positions. From far behind the lines, the old Helder steam dreadnaughts lobbed high explosives onto the horde without fear of retaliation from the shorter ranged mortars of the Zind war-wagons. Thick clouds of acrid smoke obscured the air for miles along this front, and the din was nothing short of terrific.

By the time Feric's force approached the Zind rear echelon from behind, the horde, by sheer force of numbers, had established forward positions no more than a hundred yards from Waffing's front trenches, quite literally behind a huge embankment of dead Warriors, and directly in the face of withering machine-gun fire. As Feric watched from the crest of a rise, rank after rank of Warriors marched forward firing their rifles in synchronized mass volleys. Almost immediately, these creatures were torn to pieces by the Helder machine guns, but they were just as rapidly replaced by yet another rank of robotized ten-foot giants. Each new surge of Warriors brought the horde a foot or two closer to the Helder lines, though at enormous cost in manpower. The horde moved forward by a process of slow erosion, as imperceptibly, but as irresistibly, as a glacier moves down a mountain.

The vast horde that stretched before Feric marched steadily westward, endless rank after rank, straight into the barrels of Waffing's guns. Feric grinned wolfishly at Best. "The last thing the Doms expect is an attack from the rear!" he exclaimed. "We'll crush them between us like the insects they are!"

Peric waved the Steel Commander thrice overhead, and the SS shock troops went into terminal battle formation: thousands of motorcycles spread out along a broad front on either side of'Feric, with the tanks evenly interspersed amidst this forward wall.

164

Feric swung the Great Truncheon down through the air, gunned his motorcycle engine and led this grand troop of men and metal down the rise and across the charred and broken ruins of Lumb straight for the rear of the Zind horde. As the SS force swept forward, the tank cannon fired barrage after barrage into the ranks of the enemy, concentrating their fire on the war-wagons, blowing scores of them sky-high in a few short minutes, so that by the time the motorcycles and tanks actually reached the horde, dozens of Warrior formations had already been converted into mobs of drooling, panicked animals.

Feric fell on a score of Warriors from the rear, smashing their skulls from behind with a heroic blow of the Great Truncheon. Amazingly enough, the ranks of ten-foot giants continued to march forward toward Waffing's line, ignoring the SS motorcyclists and tanks even as this force tore them to pieces. The motorcycle SS mowed down rank after rank of Warriors with their machine guns without encountering resistance. Best cut down a score of the creatures with a single burst of his submachine gun, a look of utter incredulity on his face.

By the time the remaining Dominators managed to turn their rear echelons around to cope with the SS attack, Feric had led his men deep into the horde, inflicting incredible carnage on the enemy; moreover, so many war-wagons had been destroyed and Dominators slain that there were more rogue Warriors thrashing about insanely than there were disciplined troops. The Zind advance toward Waffing's positions fell apart in a mad melee of thrashing, shrieking, defecating animalism.

Seeing this and therefore knowing that Feric's men had arrived on the scene, every last man in Waffing's army erupted from the trenches and stormed forward in all-out do-or-die charge.

The Zind horde, already thrown into utter disarray, was now caught between two great advancing lines of Helder steel and heroism. The outcome of the battle under such conditions was a foregone conclusion.

Slashing his way through veritable seas of sour-smelling crazed Warriors who thrashed about pointlessly as they died, Feric was filled with a fierce elation. Each great blow of the Steel Commander felled another brace of obscene monstrosities; each Warrior slain was one less enemy left alive to bar his way to total victory. All around him, the SS

mowed down Warriors with an ever-increasing frenzy, sum-165

moning up vast reservoirs of hysterical strength, perhaps somehow drawing on the resources of the racial will itself.

Feric and his men were united in a battlefield communion of heroic and triumphant struggle in which time and fatigue were empty words devoid of meaning.

Feric had no concept of how long the battle had gone on. He drove his motorcycle forward into the boiling chaos of the totally panicked Zind horde slaying everything before him with the Great Truncheon. His black leather uniform was virtually dyed red with gore; blood ran down the silvery shaft of the Steel Commander soaking his right hand in rich camelian ichor. Yet he felt no sense of time's passage nor hint of waning strength. The Warriors before him existed to be slain, and he slew them; these were the only parameters of the universe of battle through which he moved.

Finally, there were clearly more dead Warriors strewn over the landscape than live ones milling about; soon Feric was dispatching the foul creatures one by one instead of in bunches because live targets for his mighty weapon were few and far between.

Peric spied two Warriors a few yards before him standing on a pile of their fallen fellows and half-heartedly belaboring each other with their huge truncheons. He drove his motorcycle toward this brace of giants, and swung the Great Truncheon of Held toward their heads for the kill. But before his weapon could strike home, one of the creatures suddenly shrieked and fell with its brains dashed out; Feric had to content himself with dispatching the other.

And quite suddenly, there before him stood the ponderous figure of Lar Waning, his field-gray uniform stained with blood, holding a large truncheon liberally caked with gore.

Feric brought his cycle to a screaming halt in front of the beaming Waffing and dismounted. A moment later Best pulled up at his side. The three men stood together silently for a moment as SS men in black leather greeted army troops in field-gray. The jaws of the trap had come together—the horde of Zind had been destroyed.

It was the ebullient Waffing who broke the solemn silence. "We've done it!" he exclaimed. "Heldon is saved!

This is the greatest moment in the history of the world!"

"No my dear Waning," Feric corrected him, "the greatest moment in the history of the world will be that 166

moment in which the last Dominator takes his last breath.

Rejoice at a battle well won, but don't mistake it for the end of the war."

Waning nodded, and the three men stood there in the setting sun regarding the late battlefield. Between the point at which they stood and the river Roul was a vast stretch of countryside completely carpeted with bodies of the enemy and the ruins of his equipment. SS and army mop-up squads were beginning to move about this huge midden; occasionally bursts of sharp gunfire fractured the solemn silence. The rich red rays of the setting sun seemed to form halos around the figures of Feric and his two paladins and bathed the triumphant battlefield in heavenly fire.

11

With the hordes of Zind temporarily confined behind the Roul, the building of the New Heldon proceeded at a pace that could only be called breathtaking. The victory of Lumb had buoyed the spirits of the Holder race, while the realization that it was only a matter of time before the Dominators would once more unleash their ghastly minions against sacred human soil moved them to incredible feats of fanatic self-sacrifice and unprecedented energy.

The Classification Camp program was the finest example of the qualities that the New Order embodied. Nothing pleased Feric more than to tour these Camps, for here the patriotic fervor sweeping the country was given its highest and most concrete expression.

It was therefore with a sense of keen anticipation that Feric entered the main gate of Heldon's newest Classification Camp near the northern margin of the Emerald Wood for an informal inspection conducted by Bors Remler himself. By his side, the SS Commandant fairly radiated patriotic fervor, and Feric reflected that not even Waning

—who had worked wonders with the army and the armaments industry—had performed feats on a par with those 167

of Rentier and the SS during these two months of feverish activity.

PhysicaBy, the Camp was a modest enough construct An oblong perimeter of electrified barbed wire surrounded a large processing shed and row after row of plain wooden barracks, the whole presided over by machine-gun towers at each corner. The barracks were spacious enough to accommodate perhaps ten thousand Helder at any given time; it was a measure of the superhuman efficiency of the SS that Remler had promised a complete turnover of the population in each of the three dozen Camps every five days, and thus far had if anything bettered this projected performance.

Needless to say, none of this would have been possible without the fanatic support of the people of Heldon, such as the two thousand or more folk whom Remler had lined up in neat ranks for Feric's inspection in the main exercise yard of the Camp. These were for the most part apparently blemishless specimens who had temporarily doffed their civilian clothes for the plain gray numbered tunics of the Classification Camp. Though the sojourn in the Camp was something of a hardship even for the overwhelming majority who gained recertification, Feric was pleased to note that there wasn't a sour face in the lot. No doubt the possibility of gaining admission to the SS was an important contributing factor to the high morale in the Camps, for hardly a moment passed when the inmates did not have the dashing sight of a tall, blond, physically perfect specimen of SS manhood in tight black leather and scarlet cape before their eyes as an inspiration and an example.

As Feric halted about ten yards from the front rank of Camp inmates, Remler came to a precise heel-clicking halt at his side, and gave a silent Party salute.

Immediately, a veritable forest of arms shot into the air, and the hearty shout of "Hail Jaggar!" reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the Classification Camp.

Peric returned the salute, and, as was his custom, made a few brief remarks to reward the inmates for their self-sacrificing patriotism.

"Fellow Helder, I congratulate you on your spirit of patriotic self-sacrifice. I understand that over half of you are volunteers. Such idealistic fervor is an inspiration not only to myself but to each and every true human living under the Swastika. Further, it is a message that will 168

strike fear into the Dominators of Zind and all who serve them at home and abroad. May not a Dom be found among youl May you all achieve recertification! May many among you be found worthy of entry into the SSI Hail Heldon! Hail Victory!"

With the answering roar of "Hail Jaggar!" still ringing in his ears, Feric led Remler toward the processing shed to complete his inspection of the Camp.

The processing shed was a large, low, rectangular building constructed of galvanized steel sheeting. A large crowd of Camp inmates presided over by tall blond SS men in spotless black leather milled about to one side of the main door. More SS men guarded four neat lines of inmates entering the building. As these lines moved rapidly inside, the SS continuously fed new inmates from the crowd into them, while SS squads now and then ushered groups of inmates from elsewhere in the Camp into the waiting area. The effect was of a continuously running process, an assembly line, as it were. Feric noted that the folk milling around in the waiting area talked among themselves quite animatedly, while those already queued up adopted a solemn dignity appropriate to the import of the occasion.

"I'm glad to see that the lines move so rapidly," Feric remarked to Remler. "For humanitarian considerations as well as those of efficiency."

Remler nodded crisply. "Some of these young fellows are so confident of admission to the SS that they try to trade off their rations for an earlier place in line," he said.

Feric beamed as Remler led him around to a side door; he could well sympathize with such fervor. Still, it would not do to have the best potential SS candidates sap their physiques by starvation!

' "Issue an order that any man caught trading off ms rations will be put back ten places in line," he commanded. "We can't let our best genetic purebreds starve themselves through misguided enthusiasm."

"Yes, my Commander!" Remler replied as they entered the corrugated-steel shed.

The unpainted interior of the shed was starkly functional. Each of the four lines filed past a long counter which ran half the length of the building; behind these were long ranks of SS genetic analysts in trim black leather armed with batteries of tests which were administered in sequence to the inmates. The four lines debouched into a small open area well guarded by a dozen SS armed with 169