When I found the Cimbrians, I circled round at a good distance, locating the big fenced meadow where they kept their horses. The meadow had real grass, which I hadn't seen on Turania. I suspected that it had been brought from Earth to support the nags.
In the course of my circle, I found a stream that flowed away from the Cimbrian camp. When I drank from it, I was astonished to find it warm. No stream flowed into the camp from the other direction, so I thought the Cimbrians must have built their camp around a hot spring, of which there were several in this country.
When the first night came, I crawled close until I could hear the Cimbrians' twittering voices and see their fires. They sent a sentry out to patrol, but he did his job in a perfunctory manner, marching around the camp in a small circle and making all the noise in the world. Big and clumsy as I am, I avoided him.
When day came, I pulled back and climbed a tree that gave a view of the camp. The Cimbrians had the carcass of a reptile hung up by its feet. Whenever one of them got hungry, he cut off a steak and broiled it over a fire on a pointed stick. I supposed they had a due proportion of females, but I couldn't tell because sexual dimorphism is slight in this species.
Of Adrienne Herz I could see no sign. But then, she might have been in one of the log cabins. The biggest of these was built right over the hot spring. The water steamed as it flowed out under the wall.
On the second night I had a thunderstorm, so I could creep closer than before. I was within fifty yards of the camp when the sentry came out for his rounds. Another Cimbrian came with him, arguing. While I couldn't understand their twitter, I gathered that the sentry didn't want to slosh around in the dark, but the other insisted. If that was it, the sentry lost.
I got behind a tree as he passed me. I could hardly see him. When his back was to me, I stepped out and raised my spear.
Something warned him despite the noise and darkness. He turned and fumbled with his gun. I thought I was done for, but the gun didn't go off. I imagined him to be a tree trunk and let fly with the spear.
It hit. He fell, dropping his musket, and thrashed about. By the time I ran up to him he was almost still. He twittered feebly at me. I suppose I should have brained him with my hatchet, but I'm soft-hearted about animals.
I pulled the spear out of him, picked up his gun, and saw why he hadn't shot me. There was a piece of thin leather-bark tied around the lock to keep the wet out, and he had to untie this before he could fire.
Having been something of a gun crank, I knew pretty well how this firearm would work. I searched the Cimbrian and found his powder horn (a bucket-shaped leather container), his bag of balls, and another bag with thin little pieces at animal skin for wadding. By the time I had finished, the Cimbrian seemed dead.
The next step would be to convince the Cimbrians that they were surrounded and besieged. First I had to wait for the rain to stop.
I deserve no credit for thinking out this campaign. Being full of suppressed romanticism and all. I've read millions of words about fighting and adventuring on Earth in old times. I had only to imagine myself an American Indian, a medieval outlaw, or some such bushwhacker.
When the rain stopped, I couldn't untie the gun right away because of the drip from the trees. I was lying in a hollow and waiting when a twittering from the camp told me the Cimbrians were getting curious about their sentry. They put more wood on their fire, and a big party came out.
When I saw they were coming towards me, I wriggled away to one side and untied the gun lock. They found the sentry's body and clustered round it, chattering. I put the gun to my shoulder. It was awkward, as the stock was shaped for Cimbrian arms and shoulders, and I couldn't see the sights. I cocked it and pulled the trigger. There was a click and a little shower of sparks, but no shot.
I cocked the gun again, raised the firing-pan cover, scooped out the powder, replaced it by a pinch from my bucket, and tried again. The musket went off with a terrific bang and flash. I don't know if I hit any Cimbrians, but the group over the corpse flew apart as each Cimbrian dived for cover. A couple fired wildly in my general direction.
When my sight returned after the flash, I groped away from there on a circuit round the camp. When I had gone nearly halfway, I stopped and reloaded, listening to the chorus of excited Cimbrian voices. Reloading a gun like that in the dark without making any noise is one of the toughest jobs you can imagine. You wrap a patch round the ball, place it on the muzzle of the upright barrel, force it into the barrel with a bullet-starting lever hinged to the muzzle, and hammer or push it down the rest of the way with the ramrod. As these guns were rifled, it took a lot of push, but I didn't dare pound the rod down.
From the sounds, I judged the Cimbrians were spreading out to hunt me. I started hunting them in my turn.
Soon I got close enough to one to stick my spear into him before he saw me. He screeched and his gun went off. It didn't hit me, but there was an outburst of Cimbrian chatter. My victim pulled loose and stumbled back to the camp.
The flash brought all the others down upon me. I moved off to one side again, caught one against the campfire, and let him have it.
The kick nearly ruined me. I must have overcharged the gun in the dark. Now, though, I had two muskets. I had an advantage in that there was only one of me, so I didn't have to worry about killing anybody on my side.
After more twittering, all the Cimbrians ran back to the camp and piled into the houses. I could see musket barrels sticking out of the windows. Some of them moved things to make a rough barrier around the camp.
I fired a few more shots at long intervals to keep them awake and unhappy. When the first gray of the long Turanian dawn appeared through the trees, I crept forward and called out.
Intermundos is the interplanetary pidgin, based mainly on terran tongues. It was developed to be speakable by different species; hence it is phonetically simple, with only seven consonants and three vowels. It allows for variation in pronunciation: thus the s may stand for any voiceless fricative like f and h; n may be any nasal, and so on. (At that, it gives trouble to some species like the Serians who can't make nasal sounds.)
Like most artificial languages, it has a grammar of the un-inflected isolating type, like Chinese, because that's the easiest to learn. Having a rigid word order it is good only for bare statements, and it takes twice as long to make them as in any natural language. I called:
"Via las Sinvlianu! Na aki sal ain knaavu vun saaisu vun vuus?" meaning "Cimbrians! Where's your chief?" You see what I mean.
There was movement in the camp. More gun barrels pointed in my direction. I repeated, and then a fluty Cimbrian voice called back in Intermundos:
"Who are you and what do you want?"
"You are surrounded."
"So I see, but who are you?"
"We are the earthmen."
"Where did you get guns?" asked the voice.
"None of your business. Where is the woman you took?"
"None of your business. How many are you?"
"About three hundred. Do you still want to fight?"
"If you attack, we will kill the woman."
"Ah, then she is alive!" I said.
"She will not be for long, if you start shooting."
"If you kill her, we will kill all of you."
"If we give her up, you will kill us anyway, so we will keep her. But we will parley if you will send a man in."