Part 12 (1/2)
It was another scene of butchery on both sides. Mercenaries shot down half a dozen Peace Lords, then died under stamping feet and clawing hands and flas.h.i.+ng knives. Others kept their faces toward the oncoming people and died with arrows in their throats as they shot their attackers out of their chariots. None of the mercenaries could look in two directions at once and so all of them died in not much more than a minute.
By frantically waving the signal baton, Blade was able to keep the people's charge from cras.h.i.+ng straight into the Peace Lords. Blade's driver pulled the chariot to a stop just beyond the Peace Lords, between them and the three machines. Seen close up, the command machine looked identical to the one Blade had fought in Miros. The cargo machine was still a great featureless box. The machine carrying the dimension door was so highly polished that the sunlight reflected from it was almost blinding.
Several men scrambled out of the chariots of the third line, carrying sacks of bombs under their arms. They ran toward the door machine, zigzagging to make themselves harder targets. They were running to place their bombs beside the machine and destroy the Looters' road home.
No one fired at them. But twenty feet from the door machine they seemed to run into a solid wall. They staggered and began to crumple, sparks flas.h.i.+ng around them. As they fell their bombs exploded with tremendous crashes. Black smoke rolled up, concealing the door machine for a moment, and fragments of iron, armor, and bodies flew in all directions.
Blade turned to Silora and grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand, pointing at the Peace Lords with the other. ”Quick. Get over to them, tell them that we are friends. Also ask if anyone can help us break through the electrical field into the dimension door machine. Everybody else should arm themselves from the cargo machine or the bodies and then run for it.”
Silora nodded and leaped to the ground. As she began to run, a shadow swept over Blade. A moment later he heard the rattle of a Looter rifle. Silora stopped dead, then staggered and turned around to face Blade as she went down on her knees. From belly to throat she was nothing but chewed and b.l.o.o.d.y flesh. A final bullet had smashed her jaw, and as she tried to speak it sagged downward in a ruin of bone and blood. Her eyes met Blade's for a final second, then she collapsed face-down in the dust.
An icy coldness filled Blade. He looked upward, to see a Looter war machine sailing over the Peace Lords. On the rear platform knelt the Princ.i.p.al Technician of War, his jeweled belt flas.h.i.+ng in the sun, other flashes coming from the muzzle of his rifle as he fired into the Peace Lords.
With deadly precision Blade loaded his captured grenade launcher, raised it to his shoulder, sighted on the war machine's hatch, and fired. The grenade arched through the air and vanished exactly where Blade had aimed it.
The technician could think quickly enough when his own skin was in danger. He plunged head-first off the platform, turned a somersault in midair, and landed on hands and knees halfway between Blade and the Peace Lords. His rifle landed beside him. He was reaching for it when Blade s.n.a.t.c.hed a throwing spear from under the seat of the chariot and hurled it with the same deadly accuracy as the grenade. The technician was just rising to his feet when the spear took him in the neck, driving clear through from one side to the other and bursting out on the other side. He finished rising, stood erect for a moment, then went over backward. He made a neater corpse than Silora once he had stopped thras.h.i.+ng around, but he was just as dead.
Meanwhile the grenade went off inside the war machine. The hatch flew off its hinges, smoke and flame shot out of the turret, and the machine wobbled and lurched in the air. Then it nosed down and plunged toward the door machine. It struck the electrical field in an explosion of sparks, then drove through the last twenty feet to crash into the metal with a terrible clang. It bounced like a stone- skipping on a pond, sailed on a hundred feet farther, and thudded to the ground in a cloud of smoke.
Blade shook his head. The glistening metal of the door machine showed no sign of damage from the impact of the falling war machine, not a dent or a scratch. If it was that strong the people's explosives wouldn't do it much harm even if they could be dropped close enough to it.
Meanwhile, the dimension door was forming, just as Silora had described it. A great milky sphere appeared in the air a hundred yards beyond the door machine, as its power was focused. The sphere seemed to wobble and pulsate, as though it were a balloon tied to the earth by a cord, and glowed with an inner light. It looked both beautiful and monstrous, but Blade remembered from Silora's description that it would be some time before the door was open between Tharn and Konis.
The rattle of mercenary rifles broke into his thoughts. He turned and saw half a dozen figures in the open door of the command machine, all blazing away. Blade picked up the grenade launcher and was loading it again when several of the people got in their blows first. Trailing smoke, their grenades sailed through the air, two of them straight into the command machine's door. Smoke and flame erupted half a dozen times in as many seconds and bodies and pieces of bodies fell smoking out of the murk. Then people and Peace Lords together were running frantically toward the command machine. Blade leaped from the chariot and joined them in time to be only a few seconds behind the leaders in reaching the machine.
The battle in the dark, smoke-filled corridors of the command machine was still another butchery. Blade remembered guns roaring in his ears, strangling one mercenary with his bare hands, stamping on the chest of another until the ribs caved in, being grazed by pellets in half a dozen places. But that was all he remembered between the moment he entered the machine and the moment he stood looking, down at an open locker. In that locker lay another atomic bomb.
Calculations dashed through Blade's mind like the people's charging cavalry. Here was a weapon to destroy the dimension door and perhaps even destroy the mercenaries on the other side of it, in Konis. Blade had given up hope of doing that for a while. Now he felt his heart leap up at this new chance. Silora was beyond help, but not beyond vengeance, and this was the best vengeance he could offer to her valiant memory.
He grabbed one of the people and shouted in his ear. ”Run outside, take the signal baton from my chariot, and signal one of our war machines to come here. Run!”
He would have to move fast, before the door opened completely and more mercenaries perhaps came streaming into Tharn through it, or the people in the door machine realized what he was doing. He knelt to inspect the bomb, then ran outside, shouting for a dozen strong men. As fighters crowded around him, he noticed three of the captured Looter machines floating in above the chariots. The fourth was just landing almost beside the command machine. The hatch opened and Chara scrambled out. Good, sensible Chara. The four machines should keep the mercenaries at a safe distance while he finished the job.
There were crushed feet and broken arms as they hustled the bomb outside, but in five minutes it was safely inside Chara's machine. Again Blade knelt beside it, working furiously but carefully to arm it. He set the fuse for ten minutes from the moment the timer began counting, then ran a length of teksin cord from the fuse to the inside handle of the hatch. Now if anyone opened the hatch all the way, the cord would pull tight, setting off the bomb instantly. That was his insurance against curious mercenaries in Konis.
After setting the b.o.o.by-trap he stuck his head out through the hatch for a moment. Good. The other three machines had already lifted out, Peace Lords jammed shoulder to shoulder on the platforms and clinging to the turrets as well. Others were scrambling into chariots and some of the more athletic were climbing up behind the cavalrymen on their horses. As fast as each chariot or horse was loaded, the driver or rider turned it about and headed away across the plain as fast as it would go. Chara stood on the machine's platform, urging everybody on with shouts and yells. In one hand she waved the Princ.i.p.al Technician of War's jeweled belt, in the other she waved a Looter rifle. She waved it so wildly that Blade ducked back inside in case she accidentally fired it off. As he did, he saw two men loading Silora's body into a chariot.
Chara sprang down to the ground at a word from Blade. He lifted the machine into the air and turned it until the s.h.i.+mmering milky sphere that was the dimension door was centered in the forward screen. Then he gave it a small amount of forward speed, ducked through the half-open hatch, then closed it solidly behind him. He took a final careful look at the dimension door. At least he would be able to tell Lord Leighton what the d.a.m.ned thing looked like. The machine was perfectly on course. Then he took a quick look at the ground slipping past ten feet below, swung himself over the railing, and dropped.
He landed harder than one ankle could really take. But he closed his mind to the stab of pain and sprinted toward the chariots. His own was there, one of only half a dozen left. All the cavalry was gone, and so were all the Peace Lords. He leaped in just as his ankle gave up the struggle, sprawling on his face on the floor of the chariot. The driver needed no orders, but whipped up the horses. The chariot swung about and began to roll.
As Blade pulled himself to his feet he saw a Looter war machine sail low overhead. It was heading for the dimension door. As Blade watched, the door ceased to be s.h.i.+mmering and milky, and showed a clear view of rocks and gra.s.s and buildings rising beyond the gra.s.s. The door was open and through it he was looking into Konis. Among the buildings Blade saw a polished metal oval gleaming-the machine that kept open the door from the other end.
The first Looter war machine plunged through the door while Blade's bomb-carrier was still a hundred yards away. Blade's wobbled in the disturbed air behind the other and swung off course. For a moment it looked as if it would slide past the door. Then some force flowing from the door itself caught it, steadied it, guided it smoothly and surely through the door. Blade mentally uncrossed his fingers. Now his work was done, and there was nothing left but to wish for good luck and fast horses to get clear in a hurry. The bomb could be no more than five minutes from going off, less if the mercenaries in Konis got curious.
It was less. The chariots had gone no more than another two hundred yards when the heat and the light of the sun itself seemed to burst into Tharn. For one split second white incandescence gushed through the dimension door. Then the door died, leaving only a fire that now had no beginning and seemingly no end.
The flame licked out and caught the dimension door machine. The metal blackened and buckled and peeled. Something exploded inside and the vast machine heaved itself into the air. It rose high enough to turn end over end before it came down, trailing smoke and flame. It came down squarely on the cargo machine, crumpling it inward. How much ammunition was left in that machine Blade didn't know. He only knew the size of the explosion that followed, as a sheet of flame blotted out the whole scene behind him.
Bits of metal scythed down two of the chariot horses. They screamed and fell, tangling the other two. Blade clung to the chariot as it leaped into the air with a corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g motion. It was still in the air when the blast wave hit. Blade's grip on the chariot failed, and he spun helplessly through the air, to crash down on the ground and smash himself into blackness.
The first things Blade saw when he could see again were two faces bending over him, both wearing concerned expressions. One face was Chara's, disfigured by a ma.s.sive bruise that covered most of one cheek. The other was his son's. King Rikard's red gold hair was matted with blood, sweat, and the filth of a long day's battle. But he and Chara both smiled as they saw Blade's eyes flicker open.
”Have we won?” was the first question that came to Blade.
The others both nodded. ”We could not have won much more thoroughly than we have,” said the king. ”When the explosions came, it seemed that the mercenaries lost their courage. Many of them tried to surrender or run. They did not succeed. Others, who still had ammunition for their weapons, turned their weapons on themselves. Most of the mercenaries are dead by now, and those who are not dead now will mostly be dead before darkness comes.”
”How long have I been out?” was Blade's next question. He was taking an inventory of his aches and pains as he did so. His ankle was swelling, his head ached, he was bruised and sc.r.a.ped all over, and his chest felt as though a ballet troupe had been dancing on it in logging boots. Also there were gaps where two teeth had been.
”Nearly three hours,” said King Rikard. ”If you had not been breathing we would have thought you dead, and that would have been a grief to all of us. We have already lost many of the people this day, for the mercenaries fought well until they lost their courage. More than six hundred of the people will not see tomorrow's sun rise, and some of those hurt will not see many more. Anyara is among the dead.”
”I join you in mourning her. Tharn owes her much.”
”Yes. There is another whom Tharn owes much, also.”
”Silora?”