A big Monkey landed near Hank and walked up to him.
"I am the king," he said. "King Iizarnhanduz the Third, you son of a bitch."
The king had to obey Hank, but he did not have to like it. It was evident from the loud and bitter complaints of his subjects that they, too, did not care for their sudden displacement. Whatever they had been doing, sleeping, eating, excreting, mating, playing, they had been snatched away to do some hard and probably dangerous task. It must have been very disconcerting to be snoozing away and suddenly find oneself a thousand miles away and falling through the alien air.
Hank told him exactly what must be done.
"For God's sake!" the king said. "If this keeps up, we'll become extinct!"
Hank felt sorry for him, but he said, firmly, "Get going! Now!"
Iizarnhanduz (Iron-handed) jabbed a finger at the simians on the field.
"Women and children, too? Have a heart, man!"
"No," Hank said. "They can stay out of it."
"Sure. And what will they do when all their menfolks are killed?"
"All I want is for those birds there to be killed or run off. And a little holding action... I told you what to do!"
"Yeah, and afterwards, if there is any afterwards, we have to fly all the way back home. You know how far that is?"
Whatever it was in the Golden Cap that moved and controlled the Monkeys, it must be losing its power, Hank thought. He suspected that there was some kind of machinery enclosed in the walls of the Cap and this was activated by the words he had spoken. What the energy source was, he had no idea. In any event, the king was showing much more reluctance than he had in any reported situation before.
"The last time the Cap was returned to you, by my mother, by the way," Hank said, "you people were supposed to be free forever from control by others. But you weren't smart. You didn't hide the Cap, and so it was stolen. I'll tell you what. I promise that after you carry out my orders, I'll put it some place where no one will ever find it. Will that make you happy?"
The king grinned, his long sharp teeth a fearsome sight.
"Very."
He turned and ran on all fours to his people. After a lot of jabbering, he arranged his males in formation on the meadow. Then, starting at the southeast corner, going into the wind, they began running. Their wings flapping, they leaped into the air and slowly ascended. Some seemed to be too heavy or too slow; they had to retreat to the corner and try again.
When the lead row had turned and was coming with the wind carrying them toward the birds now circling nearby, Hank led the two men to Jenny. Bargma, who had been hiding on the floor of the front cockpit, fluttered up to sit on the windshield edge.
"You get back there with Sharts and Blogo for now," Hank said.
Sharts, at Hank's direction, primed the carburetor with ether. He also spun the propeller when Hank yelled, "Contact!" so that Jenny would not have to use so much energy to get the engine started. It caught at once, and presently the 150-horse-power Hisso engine was roaring. Sharts and Blogo waited until the engine was warmed up, then they yanked out the logs that chocked the wheels. They ran to climb aboard while Jenny was moving slowly towards the takeoff point. She had to skirt the edge of the meadow because all of the male Monkeys had not yet gotten off the ground.
The trees protected the plane from gusts, but when she got into the open, she would be subject to ground loops. Hank depended upon her reflexes and the fact that she could use energy to lift or lower her wings to cancel the gusts.
By then the hawks and eagles had closed with the Monkeys. Most of them, anyway. Some of the birds had figured that there was no use being brave against such numbers. They fled, and, within a minute or two, those birds who could extricate themselves did so. None headed towards the east. They made a wide half-circle and sped southward. They did not care to face the queen's anger.
The farmland was on a lower level than the road on this side of the gate. Hank could not see what was happening there. However, he surmised that the Gillikin soldiers had charged. The Monkeys were flapping towards the road. All they had to do was to check the Gillikins' advance until Jenny was airborne.
The plane got to the takeoff point without dragging either end of its wingtips against the ground. She moved slowly into the wind, then began rolling forward swiftly. And she was up. He knocked on the instrument panel to indicate that he was now the pilot. After clearing the trees on the hills beyond the farm, he banked sharply and brought her around in line with the road. As he passed over the meadow, he noted that the Monkey females and children were jammed into the southeast comer. They were waiting until the plane had gone over before they started the southward migration.
He dipped Jenny's nose until she was only ten feet above the ground. Then he raised it, and he came up over the gate with the wheels a few feet above the fence. To the Gillikins and Monkeys struggling ahead of him, it must have looked as if the plane had been shot by a rocket from the landing field. He brought Jenny up sharply, remembering suddenly that there might be some Monkeys in the air. It would be ironic and not at all funny if he collided with a Monkey.
All of them, however, were on the ground in close combat with the van of the army.
Hank dived to bring Jenny close to the battle. The roar of the engine would notify the Monkeys that they could quit fighting and go home. However, that was not so easy. If they turned tail, they might be cut down from behind. Also, they could not get into the air without a long run, and they had no room for that on the body-strewn road.
Hank could not worry about them. It was every man—every Monkey—for himself. He zoomed down the road and pulled on the cable. Both machine guns fired. Good. He had been worried that they might jam. They had always seemed to do so just when he needed them while dogfighting or strafing over France.
The road was packed with troops. To make consternation, disorder, and panic, he loosed four bursts among them. Those who had not been hit were diving onto the side of the road or trying to.
Ahead near the crossroads on a field was something that stood out. A big white coach with eight moose hitched to it.
"The queen's," Hank muttered.
He lifted up, then made a shallow dive. The people standing around it began running. No. One had not. She was dressed in a long all-white robe. Erakna. Only witches were allowed to wear a dress which was entirely white. She sat on a chair near the coach. The scarlet object propped against it had to be her umbrella, the sign and symbol of a red witch.
Erakna sat calmly, or seemingly so, until Hank fired. Seeing the twin line of bullets striking the earth and racing toward her, she abandoned the chair and her dignity. She threw herself to one side.
Hank brought Jenny up while he cursed.
"Missed!"
He turned and dived again. Erakna was not in sight. She must be hiding on the other side of the coach.
His bullets tore into the coach, and the moose, recovering from their paralysis, or perhaps they had been obeying the queen's orders to stand still until then, pulled the coach away in mad flight across the meadow. Erakna was exposed now, but she had time to run. Lifting her long skirts with both hands, she sped like a rabbit with a hawk after her. She did not make the mistake of trying to run across the open fields but headed towards the mass of soldiers lying on the ground. There, no doubt, she would order some soldiers to throw themselves over her.
When Hank had turned and started another strafing run, he saw that soldiers were indeed clustered around. But when he started firing, the soldiers scattered. The queen was left alone, a white target.
Her hair was so blonde that it looked almost as white as her garment. Hank thought, irrelevantly, Glinda is a white witch with red hair, and Erakna is a red witch with white hair.
The queen threw herself to one side and rolled.