V
The loyalists charged in a living wave that roared as it surfed against the castle walls and spattered a foam of blood and steel. From three sides they came, weaving in and out of the hailing arrows, lifting shields above them, leaving their dead behind them.
The blaster cannon mounted on the walls spouted flame and thunder. Warriors were mowed down before that whirling white fury, armor melted when the lightning-like discharges played over it, but still the assault went on with all the grim bitter courage of the Khazaki race.
Old siege engines were appearing, dragged out of storehouses and hiding places where they had been kept against such a day of need. Now the great catapults and ballistae were mounted; stones and fireballs and iron-headed bolts were raking the walls. A testudo moved awkwardly forth up the steep hill toward the gates. It was blasted to flaming molten ruin, but another got underneath the walls and the crash of a battering ram came from under its roof.
Shadowlike in the blinding rain, the warriors flitted up toward the walls. No spot of cover was too small for one of those ghostly shapes; they seemed to carry their own invisibility with them. Under the walls—scaling ladders appearing as if out of nowhere—up the walls and into the castle!
The ladders were hurled down. The warriors who gained the walls were blasted by cannon, cut down by superior numbers, lost in a swirl of battle and death. Boiling water rained down over the walls on those below, spears and arrows and the roaring blaster bolts. But still they came. Still the howling, screeching demons of Krakenau came, and died, and came again.
Anse cursed, softly, luridly, pain croaking in his voice: “We can’t be with them. They’re being slaughtered and we can’t be with them.”
“We’re needed worse here,” said Janazik curtly. “If only Pragakech can maintain the assault for an hour—”
He and Anse loped in the forefront. Behind them came Gonzales, Ellen, and a dozen picked young Khazaki. They wove through a maze of alleys and streets and deserted market squares, working around behind the castle. The roar of battle came to them out of the gray mist of rain; otherwise there was only the padding and splashing of their own feet, the breath rasping harsh in their lungs, the faint clank and jingle of their harness. All Krakenau not at the storming of the citadel had withdrawn into the mysterious shells of the houses, lay watching and waiting and whetting knives in the dark.
The paths dipped steeply downward, until, when they came around behind the citadel and stood peering out of a tunnel-like alley, there was a sheer cliff-face before them. On this side the castle was impregnable. The only approach was a knife-edged trail winding up the cliff, barely wide enough for one man at a time. At its top, flush with the precipice edge, the wall was built. Against this wall, commanding the trail, there had in the old days been an archer post, but lately a cannon had been mounted there.
Yet that very security, thought Anse, might be a weakness. Except for that gun, the approach wouldn’t be watched, especially with the fight going on elsewhere. So—
“Give me your weapon, Alonzo,” said Janazik.
“Here.” Gonzales handed him the blaster pistol. “But it only has two charges left in it.”
“That may be enough.” Janazik slipped it under his cloak. Then he wound a gold brassard about his arm and started up the trail. A couple of his Khazaki came behind them, then Anse, Ellen, and Alonzo, and finally the rest of the warriors.
The trail was steep and slippery, water swirling down it, loose rocks moving uneasily beneath the feet—and it was a dizzying drop off the sheer edge to the ground below. They wound upward slowly, panting, cursing, wondering how much of a chance their desperate scheme really had.
Ellen slipped a little. Anse reached back and caught her hand. He smiled lopsidedly. “Now I don’t want to let go,” he said.
“I wonder—” Ellen looked away, then back to him, and her eyes were wide and puzzled. “I wonder if I want you to, Anse.”
His heart seemed to jump up into his throat, but he let her go and said wryly: “I’m afraid I have to right now. But wait till later.”
Up and up—Later! Will there ever be a later?
And if there is, what then? I’m still more than half a Khazaki. Can we live together in the great civilization I hardly comprehend?
It was simpler when Janazik and I were warring over the planet … Janazik! I wonder if two beings of the same race could ever know as close a friendship as that between us two aliens. We’ve fought and laughed and sung together, we’ve saved each other’s lives, sweated and suffered and been afraid, together. We know each other as we will never know any other being.
Well, it passes. We’ll always remain close friends, I suppose. But the old comradeship—I’ll have to give that up.
But Ellen—
Up and up—
Janazik whistled, long and loud, and called: “Hail Volakech! Friends!”
He could dimly see the looming bulk of the blaster cannon, crouched behind its iron shield. Above it the walls of the castle were high and dark and—empty.
The voice came from ahead of him, taut with nervousness: “Who goes there?”
“A friend. I have a message for His Highness.” Janazik moved forward almost casually. His eyes gleamed with mirth. It tickled his heart, this dicing with death. Someday he’d overreach himself and that would be the end, but until then he was having fun.
“Advance. … No, no one else. Just you alone.”
Janazik sauntered forward until he stood only a meter from the blunt ugly muzzle. He had his left arm out of his cloak, so that the golden brassard shone in plain view. Underneath, his right hand thumbed the catch of Alonzo’s pistol.
“Who are you?” challenged the voice from behind the shield.
“A messenger for His Highness from his allies in Volgazan,” said Janazik. “Seeing that there was still fighting going on, I and my men decided to come in the back way.”
“Well—I suppose I can let you in, under guard. But your men, will have to stay out here.”
“Very well.” Janazik strolled over behind the shield.
There were three warriors crouched there, in front of a small door in the wall. One of them was about to blow his trumpet for a guard detail. The other two poised their spears near Janazik’s throat. None of them thought that anyone outside the citadel might possess an Earth-weapon.
Janazik shot right through his cloak. In that narrow space, the ravenous discharge blinded and blistered him, stung his face with flying particles of molten iron. The hammerblow of concussion sent him reeling back against the wall. His cloak caught afire; he ripped it off and flung it down on the three blackened corpses before him.
Vision returned to his dazzled eyes. These Earth-weapons were hideous things, he thought; they made nothing of courage or strength or even cunning. He wondered what changes Galactic civilization would bring to old Khazak, and didn’t think he’d like most of them. Maybe Volakech was right.
But Anse was his comrade and Aligan had been his king. He whistled, and the others came running up.
“Quick,” rasped Janazik. “The noise may draw somebody—quick, inside!”
“Can’t we swing this lightning thrower around and blast them?” wondered a Khazaki.
“No, it’s fixed in place.” Anse threw his brawny shoulders against the solid mass of the door. It swung ponderously back and they dashed through the tunnel in the thick wall—out into the open courtyard of the castle!
The noises of the fight rose high from here, but there were only a few warriors in sight, scurrying back and forth on their errands without noticing the newcomers—a fact which did not surprise Anse or Janazik, who knew what vast confusion a battle was. The human remembered the layout now—the rocket would be over by the machine shops, near the donjon keep—“This way!”
They trotted across the court, around the gray stone bulk of the citadel’s buildings and towers, toward the long wooden shed which housed the new machine shop. The rain was beginning to slacken now, and the sun was up behind its gray veil, so that there was light shining through slanting silver. Against the dark walls, the lean torpedo shape of the rocket boat gleamed like a polished spearhead.
“Now—ahead!” Janazik broke into a run toward the boat, and they followed him in a close ring about Ellen.
A band of fighters came around the corner of the machine shop, in front of the rocket. The wet light shone off their brassards. Janazik swore bitterly, and his hand dropped to his sword.
One of the enemy warriors let out a yell. “Earthlings—two—three of them! Not ours—”
The blaster crashed in Janazik’s hand, and five dropped their charred bodies on the ground. With a spine-shivering yell, Janazik bounded forward, and after him came Anse, Alonzo, and a round dozen of the fiercest fighters in Krakenau. The blaster was exhausted now—but they had their swords!
The leader of the enemy band was a huge Khazaki, dark-furred and green-eyed. His men were scattering in panic, but he roared a bull-voiced command and they rallied about him and stood before the rocket.
Volakech. By all the thirteen hells, Volakech!
He must have been leading reinforcements to a threatened point on the wall, thought Anse in a fleeting moment, and his sharp mind had instantly deduced that the invaders were after the rocket—and that they could have no more blaster charges, or they would be using them. And Volakech’s band was still larger than theirs, and he had all the forces of the citadel behind him if he could summon them!
The two bands crashed together and steel began to fly. Anse stood before Ellen and lashed out at a spitting Khazaki who reached for his belly with a sword. The enemy dodged past his guard, drilled in close. Ellen shouted and kicked at the native’s ankles. He stumbled, dropping his defense, and Anse clove his skull.
Volakech roared. He swung a huge battle axe, and its shock and thunder rose high over the swaying tide of battle. Two of Janazik’s men leaped at him. He swept the axe in a terrible arc and the spike cracked one pate and the edge split the other’s face open. Alonzo sprang at him with furious courage, wielding a sword. Volakech knocked it spinning from his hand, but, before he could kill the engineer, Anse was on him.
They traded blows in a clamor of steel. Axe and sword clashed together, sheared along chain mail and rang on helmets. It was a blur of rake and slash and parry, with Volakech grinning at him behind a network of whirling steel.
Anse gathered his strength and pressed forward with reckless fury. His sword hummed and whistled and roared against Volakech’s hard-held guard. He laid open arms, legs, cheek; he probed and lunged for the rebel king’s trunk. Volakech snarled, but step by step he was driven back.
Warriors fell, but it was on the bodies of foemen and even dying they stabbed upward at the enemy. Bitter, bloody, utterly ruthless, the struggle swayed about the rocketship. It was old Khazak that fought, the planet of warriors, and, even as he hewed and danced and slew, Janazik thought bleakly that he was trying to end the gory magnificence of that age; he was bringing civilization and with it the doom of his own kind. Khazak of the future would not be the same world.
If they won—if they won!
“To me!” he yelled. “To me, men of Aligan! Hai, Aligan! Krakenau! Dougald!”
They heard and rallied round him, the last gasping survivors of his band. But there were few of Volakech’s men left, few.
“Volakech! Aid the king! To me, men of Volakech!” The rebel shouted at the top of his lungs. And Anse lunged in at him, beating against the swift armor of the axe.
“Anse!” Janazik’s urgent shout cut through the clangor of battle. “Anse, here! We’re blasting free!”
The human hardly heard him. He forced his way closer in against Volakech, his sword whistling about the usurper’s helmeted head.
“Anse!” shouted Janazik. “Anse—Ellen needs you—”
With a tiger snarl, Anse broke free from his opponent and whirled about. A rebel stood before him. There was an instant of violence too swift to be followed, and Anse leaped over the ripped body and up to Janazik.
The Khazaki stood by the airlock. There was a ring of corpses before him; his sword ran blood.
“Ellen?” gasped Anse. “Ellen?”
“Inside,” rasped Janazik. “She’s inside. We have to get out of here—only way to get your attention—Come on!”
Anse saw the armed band swarming at them from one of the outer towers, defenders who had finally noticed the battle at the rocket and were coming to aid their king. Not a chance against them—except the boat!
Man and Khazaki stepped back into the airlock. A storm of arrows and javelins broke loose. Anse saw two of his men fall—then Janazik had slammed the heavy outer valve and dogged it shut.
“Ellen!” he gasped. “Ellen—take the boat up before they dynamite it!”
The girl nodded. She was strapping herself into the pilot’s seat before the gleaming control panel. Only Alonzo was there with her, bleeding but still on his feet. Four of them survived—only four—but they had the boat!
Through the viewport, Anse saw the attackers surging around the hull. They’d use ballistae to crush it, dynamite to blow it up, blaster cannon to fry them alive inside the metal shell—unless they got it into the sky first.
“Take the engines, Alonzo,” said Ellen.
Gonzales Alonzo nodded. “You help me, Janazik,” he said. “I’m not sure I—can stay conscious—”
The pilot room was in the bows. Behind it, bulkheaded off, lay the air plant and the other mechanisms for maintaining life aboard—not very extensive, for the boat wouldn’t be in space long. Amidships were the control gyros, and behind still another bulkhead the engine controls. Rather than install an elaborate automatic feed system, the builders had relied on manual controls acting on light signals flashed by the pilot. It was less efficient, but it had shortened the labor of constructing the vessel and was good enough for the mere hop it had to make.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Janazik doubtfully.
“I’ll tell you what to do—Help me—” Leaning on the Khazaki’s arm, Alonzo stumbled toward the stern.
Anse strapped his big body into the chair beside Ellen’s. “I can’t help much, I’m afraid,” he said.
“No—except by being here,” she smiled.
Looking out, he saw that the assault on the castle was almost over—beaten off. It had provided the diversion they needed—but at what cost, at what cost?
“We might as well take off for the Star Ship right away,” he said.
“Of course. And that will end the war. Volakech can either surrender or sit in the castle till he rots.”
“Or we can use the ship to blast the citadel.”
“No—oh, Cosmos, no!” Her eyes were filled with sudden horror.
“Why not?” he argued angrily. “Only way we can rescue our people if he won’t give them up of his own will.”
“We might kill Carse,” she whispered.
It was on his tongue to snap “good riddance,” but he choked down the impulse. “Why do you care for him that much?”
“He’s my brother,” she said simply, and he realized that in spite of her civilized protestations Ellen was sufficiently Khazaki to feel the primitive unreasoning clan loyalty of the planet. She added slowly: “And when Father died, years ago, Carse took his place, he’s been both father and big brother to me. He may have some wrong ideas, but he’s always been so—good—”
A child’s worship of the talented, handsome, genial elder brother, and she had never really outgrown it. Well—it didn’t matter. Once they had the Star Ship, Carse didn’t matter. “He’ll be as safe as anyone can be in these days,” said Anse. “I—I’ll protect him myself if need be.”
Her hand slid into his, and she kissed him, there in the little boat while it rocked and roared under the furious assaults from without. “Anyone who hurts Carse is my blood foe,” she breathed. “But anyone who helps him helps me, and—and—”
Anse smiled, dreamily. The engines began to stutter, warming up, and Volakech’s men scattered in dismay. They had seen the fire that spurted from the rocket tubes.
And in the engine room, Masefield Carson held his blaster leveled on Alonzo and Janazik. “Go ahead,” he smiled. “Go ahead—take the ship up.”