World without Stars (11 page)

“But—Hugh, listen, the Packs may outnumber the Herd detachment, but they’ll have to charge across open ground. I don’t care
how poorly laid an energy barrage is, they can’t survive. Not to mention arrows. Those Herd archers are good.”

“So who says we’ll charge?” Valland countered. “For our main operation, anyhow. I’ve got a plan. It should take the downdevils
by surprise. Everything you’ve told me fits in with what ya-Kela knows, and it all goes to show they can’t read minds. If
they could, they wouldn’t need to transmit words through those midget sensitives. The downdevils read Rorn’s emotional pattern,
all right, and shifted it for him. But that was done on a basic, almost glandular level. They couldn’t’ve known what he was
thinkin’, nor what we think.”

“Our men are hostages,” I reminded him. “Not to speak of our food tanks and the other equipment we need for survival.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” His tone was mild and implacable. “We’ll have to take chances, for the men as well as ourselves. Because
what have they really got to lose? If we get in fast—”

A shadow darkened the cave mouth. As he joined us, I recognized ya-Kela. He hailed me with the courtesy that most savages
throughout the universe seem to use, before he turned to Valland. I couldn’t follow his report, but he sounded worried.

Valland nodded. “’Scuse me,” he said. “Business.”

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, one of those silly things that’re always comin’ up. Some Pack chiefs decided they don’t like my ideas. If cut-and-run
guerrilla fightin’ by little independent gangs was good enough for granddaddy, it’s good enough for them, and to hell with
this foreign nonsense about unity and assigned missions. Ya-Kela can’t talk sense into them. I’ll have to. If we let anyone
go home, pretty soon everybody will.”

“Do you think you can stop them?” I fretted, for I knew something about pride and politics myself.

“I been doin’ it, since we started tins project. Now get some rest. You’ll need your strength soon.” Valland left with ya-Kela.
He had to stoop to get out.

I lay there, cursing my weakness that would not let me go too. Noises came to me, shouts, yelps, snarls. There was the sound
of a scuffle; Valland told me later that he had had to Underline a logical point with his fist. But presently I heard notes
like bugle and drum. I heard a human voice lifted in song, and I remembered some of those songs, ancient as they were,
Starbuck
and
La Marseillaise
and
The March of the Thousand
, forged by a race more warlike than any on this world; then he set his instrument to bagpipe skirls and the hair stood up
on my spine. The Packs howled. They didn’t comprehend the language, they hardly grasped the idea of an army, but they recognized
strong magic and they would follow as long as the magician lived.

W
E CAME DOWN
to the shore well south of our objective. By then time was short for Valland and me: little remained of our powdered food.
And what had gone on with our people these Earth-days of their captivity? Nevertheless we had to wait on the weather.

That didn’t take long, though, on this planet. Rain was succeeded by fog. The Packs divided themselves. A very small contingent
went with Valland, a larger one with me; the bulk of them trailed through the woods, ya-Kela at their head.

I was in charge of the waterborne operation, ya-Kela my lieutenant. He was also my interpreter, being among the few who could
understand my pidgin Azkashi; for I had no omnisonor to help. And as far as the crews were concerned, he was the commander;
I didn’t have Valland’s prestige either. But this was the key to our whole strategy. The Packs kept dugouts by the lake. They
had never used them for anything but fishing. How could it be expected that they would assault what amounted to a navy?

We glided through clouds that were chill and damp, redgray like campfire smoke. Nearly blind, I could only crouch in the bow
of my hollow log while six paddles drove me forward. The Azkashi saw better, well enough to maintain direction and formation.
But even they were enclosed in a few meters of sight. And so were our enemies.

I am no warrior. I hate bloodletting, and my guts knot at the thought that soon they may be pierced. Yet in that hour
of passage I wasn’t much afraid. Better to die in combat than starve to death. I dwelt on the people and places I loved. Time
went slowly, but at the end it was as if no time had passed at all.

“We are there,” ya-Eltokh breathed in my ear. “I see the thing ahead.”

“Back water, then,” I ordered unnecessarily; for my watch said we were in advance of the chosen moment. The waiting that followed
was hard. We couldn’t be sure that some boatload of impulsive hunters would not jump the gun and give us away. With a fortress
to take, we depended on synchrony as well as on surprise. When the minute came, I screamed my command.

We shot forward. The spaceship appeared before me, vast and wetly shimmering in the mist. Two canoes lay at the ladder we
had built to the above-water airlock. Their paddlers shrieked and fled as we emerged.

I grabbed a rung. Ya-Eltokh pushed ahead of me, up to the open entrance. A Herd soldier thrust down with a spear. Blowguns
sighed at my back. The giant yelled, toppled, and splashed into the lake. Ya-Eltokh bounded inside. His tomahawk thudded.

My mates boiled after him, forcing the doorway. I came last. Our crew had to be first, for only I could guide our party through
the ship. But my knowledge made me too precious to spend in grabbing a toehold.

I got into battle aplenty, though. Three of the Pack were down, ripped by soldiers who had come pounding at the alarm. Ya-Eltokh
dodged, slashing with his ax at two huge shapes. One of them spied me and charged. Valland had had something new made for
me, a crossbow. I had already cocked it. I pulled the trigger and the bolt slammed home. The corridor boomed with his fall.

Then more of our people were aboard. They formed a living wall around me. I cocked and fired as fast as I was
able. It wasn’t much help, but I did down a couple of worker Niao who had joined the fray. Ax, knife and spear raged around
us. Howling echoed from metal.

We needed only hold fast for some minutes, till an overwhelming force of hunters had boarded. There weren’t any guards on
the ship; no one had looked for this maneuver of ours. When the last of them fell, the workers threw down the tools they had
been using for weapons. I tried to stop my people from massacring them, but too much ancient grudge had to be paid off.

Ya-Eltokh came to me, his feet painted with blood. “I see the big boat now,” he rasped.

“Don’t let it near, but don’t let our boats attack it either,” I ordered. With fifty or so Azkashi to help, and a single doorway
to defend, he shouldn’t have a problem. I led a small troop to the lower decks, where we had commenced salvage operations
before the Niao arrived.

That job was not any further along. The Ai Chun had no interest in a spaceship as such. Their gangs had been stripping away
metal for more prosaic uses.

But Urduga was there, hastily bound when the fight started. I cut him loose and he wept for joy.

“How’ve you been?” I asked.

“Bad,” he told me. “They haven’t mistreated us yet, in a physical sense, I mean. We’re still being … explored, so they’ll
know exactly what they want to do with us. But I’d gotten to the point where I begged them to send me out here as a supervisor.”
He looked around with haunted eyes. “So far I’ve managed to keep them from damaging anything essential.”

“We’ve got to be quick,” I said. “The plan is that we draw most of their strength out on the lake. Then our shore force hits
them. But Hugh’s boys have to take the compound before the enemy thinks to wreck our survival equipment. What can we improvise
here against a warship?”

Urduga threw back his head and bayed like one of the Pack. “I’ll handle that!”

I left him in the laboratory while I went back topside to see how the fight was going. The galley stood off, barely visible
in the fog, deck crowded with soldiers. Those of our crews that had not boarded with us had prudently withdrawn from the neighborhood.
Thus far our scheme had worked. Rorn must feel sure that Valland and I had organized the attack. But he’d figure, we hoped,
that we knew better than to attempt storming the compound against energy weapons. Instead, we must expect to use the
Meteor
for a bargaining counter; and he in his turn must expect to besiege us here.

Valland couldn’t long delay his own move. And if then that shipload of giants returned to meet him—

An arrow whistled past me. I ducked back into the lock chamber. “What next?” ya-Eltokh growled. The hunters around him hefted
their weapons and twitched their tails. They could keep the galley at arm’s length, but it had them bottled up. Enclosed in
these hard walls, they grew nervous.

“Wait,” I said.

“Like beasts in a trap?”

“Wait! Do you follow ya-Valland or not?”

That quieted them a little for the necessary horrible minutes. But I was close to crying myself when Urduga joined us. Several
of the Pack, whom I’d detailed, accompanied him with a load of bottles.

He peered into the swirling grayness. “We’ll have to lure them closer,” he said.

I explained the need to ya-Eltokh. He turned to his folk. “Out!” he cried.

He led them himself, down the ladder into a sleet of arrows. They entered the water and swam toward their scattered boats.
A horn blew on the galley. Its oars chunked. It slipped alongside us. Now that the Pack had gotten so
desperate as to attempt a battle on the lake, the warriors could recapture the spaceship and then deal with our flotilla at
leisure.

Urduga struck fire to fuses. I helped him pitch out the bottles. Mostly they contained liquid hydrocarbon, but he’d found
some thermite as well.

Fire ran across the deck. Soldiers ululated when they burned, sprang overboard and were slain from our dugouts. A few got
onto the ladder. Such blowgunners as we had kept dealt with them.

An armored colossus, brave and cool-headed, shouted his command. The oars moved again. The galley started for shore. But flames
roared red throughout the hull. Dugouts and swimmers kept pace. If any of the Herd reached land, they would not be hard to
kill.

Wolf howls resounded from afar. Ya-Kela had seen, and led his charge out of the woods. Energy beams flashed like lightning
in the fog. They took their toll. But ya-Kela’s mission was simply to distract the defenders—

—while Hugh Valland and a small, picked cadre went unnoticed on their bellies, up to the stockade.

We’d built well. A battering ram could not have gotten the palisade down before the crew was shot from above. But he expended
his own pistol charges. Wood did not burn when those bolts hit. Cellular water turned to steam and the logs exploded. He was
through in a minute.

He sped for the food tanks. Soldiers and workers alike tried to bar his way. His gun was exhausted, but he swung an ax, and
his hunters were with him. They gained their position, formed a circle, and stood fast.

They would soon have died, for the diminished garrison still outnumbered them, and had those other firearms to boot. But they
had purchased ya-Kela’s opportunity. In one tide, he and his men reached the now ill-defended wall and poured through the
gap.

Yes—his
men
.

Combat did not last long after that. At such close quarters the Herd was slaughtered. Never mind the details. What, followed
was all that mattered. I have to piece it together. But this was when we lost everything we thought we had gained.

Valland broke through the remnants of the fight and led a few Azkashi toward our shack. The door was locked. His fist made
the walls tremble. “Open up in there!”

Rorn’s voice reached him faintly: “Be careful. I have Bren and Galmer here, and my own gun. I can kill them.”

Valland stood for a space. His followers growled and hefted their weapons. Unease was coming upon them like the fog that roiled
past their eyes.

“Let’s talk,” Valland said at length. “I don’t want to hurt you, Yo.”

“Nor I you. If I let you in, can we hold an honest parley?”

“Sure.”

“Wait a minute, then.” Standing in red wet murk that was still cloven by the yells and thuds of combat, Valland heard some
sounds of the Yonder language. A treble fluting responded.

His Azkashi heard too. A kind of moan went among them, they shuffled backward and ya-Kela exclaimed shakenly: “That is one
of the dwarfs. I know how they talk. Our scouts did not see that any of
them
had landed here.” He gripped Valland’s arm with bruising force. “Did you know, and not tell us?”

As a matter of fact
, the human must have thought,
yes
. He had not his omnisonor with him, to aid in shaping tones, but he managed to convey scorn. “Do you fear the downdevils
even when they are beaten?”

“They are not like the Shkil. They do not die.”

“We may find otherwise.” Somehow Valland made them stay put until the colloquy inside ended and the door creaked open.

The blind telepath stood there. Blackness gaped behind him. Rorn’s order rasped from within: “You come by yourself, Valland.”
As the gunner trod through, the dwarf closed the door again.

Rorn activated the lights enough for him to see. Bren and Galmer lay on two bunks, tied hand and foot. A pair of soldier Niao
flanked a great wooden tub filled with water. They crouched tense, spears poised, lips drawn back from teeth. Rorn stood before
the tank. His energy pistol was aimed at Valland’s midriff. His features were also drawn tight; but—maybe just because he
had put on a little weight—serenity remained beneath.

Valland glanced at his comrades. “How’re you doin’, boys?” he asked softly.

“All right,” Galmer said.

Bren spat. “Hugh, don’t let this cockroach use us against you. It’d be worth getting shot by him, as long as we know you’ll
squash him later.”