They Fly at Ciron (18 page)

Rahm turned again with the ax—one of the soldiers was going backward on his knees, lots of blood on him that
wasn’t his. Rahm’s next chop took off most of a hand—not Kire’s—on the block edge. There
were
shouts now. Rahm dropped one hand long enough to rip off the hood and fling it from him over the grass: “Hey, friend Kire, do you know me now? Do we show them, now—?”

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 Kite 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,
“Vortair . .
!’˙’

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 which 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, that had 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 back-swing 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,
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 flyers 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!”