Part 12 (1/2)

”Of the 12th level, my Lord. I was apprenticed as a Maiduke monitor until Sutha appointed me to serve you.”

Blade could have wished the level higher, but it would have to do. He remembered that Moyna, the first neuter he had ever seen, had only been 4th level and Moyna managed pretty well until Honcho had destructed him.

”I would have you serve me,” said Blade.

Xeno made another slaveface. He was puzzled. ”But of course, my Lord Blade. What else am I for?”

Blade started to scowl, then his white teeth glinted through the black beard. Of course Xeno did not understand. It would have to be explained.

Blade was wearing an authority chain. It was of golden tinted teksin with a small pendant phallus. He took it from his own person and placed it around Xeno's neck. The young neuter stared down at it in fascinated puzzlement. What did it mean? Everything in Tharn was changing so fast!

Blade pointed a big finger at the neuter. ”I did not mean exactly that. Listen well. When I have finished you will tell me what you understand and what you do not.” Blade half smiled. ”If you do not understand enough I will take the chain back and send you to live with the ceboids. Now.

”I have appointed you my ADC. Adjutant. Lieutenant. Translate it into Tharnian as you wish. You will remain with me constantly, unless I send you on a task. You will take orders from me alone. Only me! That is most important, and that includes the High Priestess Isma and King Sutha of the neuters. Remember that - only I give you orders!

”I place you in command of all the ceboid-masters. And the ceboids, of course. About them I will give you more specific orders later.

”You will collect all the food in Urcit, and all the water, and you will have them stored where I tell you. You will do the same with all the unprocessed mani. You will also gather, in a place I will designate, all the stocks of raw teksin. That is important. I will need every bit of it. As soon as you leave me you will begin to do these things. But this is only the beginning, Xeno. We are going to have to work hard. And then fight hard. Now, is there anything you do not understand?”

Xeno was regarding Blade with eyes that reflected mingled perplexity and adulation. He fingered the chain Blade had bestowed on him.

Before the neuter could answer Blade added what he hoped would be the clincher. ”Serve me well, Xeno, well and faithfully, and intelligently, and when Sutha is finished I shall see that you have his place. Now I ask again - what do you not understand? Do not be afraid to ask. It is important that everything be perfectly clear to you.”

”I understand all that you have said, Lord Blade. But there is something...”

”What is it?”

”That.” Xeno pointed to the sky. ”It makes me afraid, Lord. What is happening?”

The curdled skim of Tharnian sky had cleared in the west. A single star glinted silver, pinned on a background of rose-blue. The sun was going down.

Blade smiled at Xeno. ”Do not be afraid.” he told the neuter. ”The sky is not falling down.”

Chapter Thirteen.

Blade had calculated, by converting Tharnian kronos into hours, the time it would take Honcho and Org about four days to bring the Pethcine host to Urcit. Blade did not sleep in those four days.

He managed to check incipient chaos before it could set in, but for a time events were in precarious balance. For the first time in millions of kronos Urcit, and all Tharn, was without the Power. Blade, almost literally, had a mob of bewildered children on his hands. For one thing he was grateful - they were not frightened. There was no panic. Tharn, Urcit especially, had lived so long in indolence and luxury, had been so long guarded by the magveils and other technical marvels, that they had forgotten the meaning of fear. They had also forgotten how to fight. There was a dim folk memory, among the People and the older neuters, of a long ago Pethcinian invasion; there was memory also of a revolt or two by the ceboids, but these had been quickly suppressed and memory scabbed over, and for a great many kronos now none of the People had actually witnessed murder and rapine. Ceremonial killing did not count, nor did the rare executions of ceboids. The latter had, in any case, been kept down to a minimum by order of Sutha.

The upshot of it all was that while Blade did not have an army - it was more of a semi-disciplined mob - he did have a corps eager to fight, if only someone would show them how. Many of the People had been bored without knowing it, and the emergency was an outlet. It did not take much, Blade noted, to arouse blood l.u.s.t among a group of beautiful woman who, by law, were permitted everything but s.e.x. Coi.

Isma surprised and pleased him by the manner in which she took over the command of the 927. At the first a.s.sembly in the Square of the Phallus, Isma appeared in a complete suit of golden-teksin armor. She carried sword and spear, a s.h.i.+eld barely larger than the one Blade had used at the Sacer of the Pethcines, and a helmet with a magnificent panache of feathered jewels. She was impressive, and Blade was especially impressed when he found that she could use the sword.

Isma's manner toward Blade was now cool and remote, and he knew that there would be a later reckoning. He did not concern himself with it and, after telling Isma what she must do, he stood aside as much as possible. And approved of the manner in which she appointed her officers and began to put the women through drills that were arduous enough.

Blade was curt, as stern as he had to be, and he did not have to repeat many orders. Discipline was no problem among the ceboids and the neuters, and not much of a problem with the Bearer Maidens and the Maidukes. They had all been educated and conditioned to obey. It was only from the People that he expected trouble. When the trouble did come he was thankful, and pleasantly surprised, that it was minor and that Isma handled it with alacrity and firmness.

One of the women had missed muster several times. At last she was found concealed in the Lordsmen's Cage, reeling with soka, and intent on working her way through the entire roster of the young Lordsmen in a sort of communal coi.

Isma did not ask Blade for advice. She had the erring woman dragged to the square, where she personally cut off the blonde head and showed it to the remaining 926. The women all seemed to get the message. The head was impaled on one of the many phalli gracing the square, where they could all see it as they drilled.

There were nights now in Tharn, with a moon and stars, but Blade hardly knew the difference. He kept driving. He was everywhere, inspecting and suggesting changes and snapping out orders. He ran Xeno nearly to death. Now and then Blade would receive a slate from Sutha, or send one, but there was not really much to say. Sutha remained at his post in the Power Cubicle, awaiting the word to restore the Power to Tharn, and only Blade knew that the word was never going to come.

At the end of three days and nights Blade knew that he had wrought a miracle. Whether it would bear up under duress was another matter.

On the northern side of the city the ceboid hovels had been torn down and made into barricades. Blade, personally supervising this, had built his crude forts as near a long teksin plant as possible, thus providing some protection for his rear. On the roof of the teksin plant he mounted the dozen catapults he had been able to make. These were manned by the Bearer Maidens, even those who were in advanced stages of insemination, under the command of a neuter chosen by Xeno. The catapults hurled great jagged chunks of teksin, flaming oil of teksin in bags, and two of the machines could fire a dozen long arrows at a time.

Blade, with a cunning eye, had chosen the one spot where the ground sloped sharply away to the north. A natural glacis. Into this he set long stakes of teksin, sharpened and barbed. Between the stakes he spun a web of very fine filaments of teksin, invisible until the sun caught them. He also bastioned the forts as best he could, and left adequate sally ports. He had one intent, one clear battle plan, and inherent in it was a large element of chance, of gamble.

He intended to bleed the Pethcines to death. He meant to goad and tempt them into a frontal attack. He was sure of Org. Org was a barbarian and knew only one way to fight. Direct attack. Totha might be more intelligent, but Org would be running this battle. Blade was counting on that because, while he did not see how Honcho could know much about actual fighting, he was still a most intelligent neuter. Honcho would see the trap and guess at Blade's strategy. Let him. So long as he could not override Org. King Org was going to come roaring against the forts in a frenzy of blood l.u.s.t.

Blade was prepared to offer Org a number of tempting targets. His scouts had not yet returned, they were on foot and Blade greatly d.a.m.ned the technical prowess that had long ago deprived Tharn of horseflesh, the wheel, and even metal. But for his great sword there was no trace of metal in Urcit. It did not appease him that teksin was superior to metal in many ways, and had a million uses, that it was flammable and malleable and under certain conditions could even be eaten. Blade would gladly have settled for the crude iron weapons of the Pethcines if he could also have had horses. He had sent a score of scouting parties out soon after the Power had died, and not one had returned.

But he had targets and he planned to be generous with them. Even in the absence of reports he did not reckon that the Pethcines would have much in the way of transport. They would have just so many arrows and spears. He planned to mulct the enemy of these weapons as soon as possible.

To that end, when on the third day he moved his forces into position, he stationed a heavy contingent of ceboids on either flank. This, he thought, would offer some slight protection to his flanks, and might draw some of Org's men off in diversionary attacks. Blade did not trust the ceboids to stand without neuters to whip them forward, and so he placed a line of ceboid-masters just behind the ceboids.

Behind the masters, the neuters, he then placed a line of specially selected ceboid officers, the more intelligent beasts, with orders to kill any neuter that ran. Blade had in person watched this order being translated to the ceboids, and he saw with what puzzlement and joy, it was received. The moist animal eyes examined Blade with awe and fear, but there could be no doubt of their obedience. Blade expected to lose them, all of them, but they would draw a lot of fire and it would take a lot of arrows and spears to kill them all. And they might even kill a few Pethcines.

Blade also planned to sacrifice the Lordsmen. Every one of them big enough to carry a sword into battle. They would be no great loss. He made them a Guard of Honor to Isma and placed them under her command. And his - when the time came.

The Second Neuter, in fact all the neuters of high rank, he kept around him as staff. They were not good for anything else, and they did exercise an awesome authority over the minor neuters and the ceboids. More than that - they were a nucleus. Blade was thinking far ahead.

On the fourth day, still without sleep, Blade constantly inspected his line of forts while keeping an anxious eye on the northern horizon. The twilight sky had all sloughed away now and the new Tharnian sun was mild, the visibility clear for miles, and still nothing moved out on the flat plain. And still no scouts returned.

Blade had instructed Isma in the techniques of the square and the phalanx. He had stationed the women, the 926 now, in his center. Everything, in the last a.n.a.lysis, depended on them. Everything. When the time came, when he had bled the Pethcines as much as possible, he meant to lead the women straight through the opposing center in a frontal attack of his own. Straight to the standards of Org and Totha. At the same time the ceboids would attack on the flanks.

He watched the tall beauties practice the intricacies of the square and the phalanx with mingled emotions. They were willing and anxious, these prima donnas, now full of song and bloodthirst, but they were still bacchantes and voluptuaries, still coi-hungry women to whom coi was forbidden. It might, Blade thought grimly, make them better killers.

The women shouted and sang as they drilled. Each had a Maiduke girl in attendance, as an arms bearer. On one of the flanks Blade was keeping a small contingent of the Maidukes in reserve. They were equipped with the antique air guns, of the type that Moyna had first shown him; he had been able to find about fifty of them. His troops were fighting with arfactis, obsolete weapons, because it was all he had.

Blade checked on the last-minute emplacement of bales of raw mani, they would absorb a lot of arrows and lances, and then returned to the Palace command post. He was weary to the bone, and for the moment his mood was dour. If he failed, and Tharn fell, it would be irony spelt large - a civilization that had advanced too far, too fast. Too much trust placed in advanced techniques. Old virtues forgotten before new ones were acquired. In his other life he had known a truism: the barbarians always won!

The terrace atop the Palace was now a busy place, aswarm with neuters and ceboids scurrying about on various errands. Blade settled himself at a large table and studied the slates on which he had sketched his battle plan. He could see no way to improve it. Let it stand. He did not expect the battle to go exactly to plan, they never did, but he had done all he could and he must, above all, retain a certain degree of flexibility.

Xeno came running up to the desk. ”A scout has returned, Lord.”

Blade forced his eyes open. He had been nearly asleep over the slates. ”Fetch him, then. Quickly.”

The returned scout was a neuter of the seventh level. He was disheveled and haggard and there was blood on the shoulder of his tunic. He made slaveface.

Blade scowled impatiently. ”Get on with it. What have you found out there?”

”Many Pethcines, my Lord Blade. They approach from the north. They will be here before the morning.”