"Will you seek the sun?" I laughed.
Could it be that, after all these years, the tactics of combat on tarnback remained so fresh, so vivid, in the eager, dark brain of my mighty mount? Could they be retained so perfectly, with such exactness, seemingly as terrible and sharp as in the days when they were first imprinted, high above grassy fields, the walls of Ko-ro-ba in the distance?
I fought for breath.
The mighty lungs of the tarn expanded. I could feel their motion betwen my knees. It drew the thin air deeply into those moist, widened cavities. Still we climbed.
Then we turned, the sun at our back.
The other tarns, strung out now, struggling, wings beating painfully, sporadically, against the thin air, hung below us. They were exhausted. Tehy could climb no further. They began to turn back.
Out of the sun struck the great tarn. As I had been trained to do I drew as deep a breath as possible before the dive began. It is not impossible to breathe during such a descent, particularly after the first moments, even in the rushing wind, but it is generally recommended that one do not do so. It is thought that breathing my effect the concentration, perhaps altering or complicating the relationship with the target. The bird and the rider, in effect, are the projectile. The tarn itself, it might be noted, does not draw another breath until the impact or the vicinity of the impact, if the strike fails to find its mark. Teh descent velocities in strike of this sort are incredible, and have never been precisely calculated. They are estimated, however, at something in the neighborhood of four hundred pasangs per Ahn.*
There were snappings, as of wood breaking, but it was not wood. The first tarn, that highest, was struck full in the back, the man broken between the two bodies. Its back was broken and perhaps the neck of the man in the same blow. As a hurricane can imbed a strw in a post so, too, are compounded the forces involved by the speed of the stroke.
Again the tarn aligned itself, smote downward, then lifted its wings, almost folded on either side of me, its talons, like great hooks, lowered.
It caught the second tarn about the neck, as it swerved madly, by the grasping talons of its left foot, and I was thrown about, upside down, the ground seeming to be over my head, and the two birds spun in the air and then my tarn disengaged itself, the neck of the other bird flopping to the side, blood caught in the wind, like red rain.
*No terrestrial conversion is supplied in the Cabot ms. for this figure. Equivalences supplied elsewhere in the Cabot mss. suggest a figure of a little over two hundred miles per hour. -J.N.
Its rider's scream alerted the third rider, but, in a moment, the talons had locked upon him, his bird exhausted, struggling in the air, and he was torn upward from the girth rope. He was released, falling through the clouds below us, disappearing. He would fall, I conjectured, through the Kinyanpi formation below, that formation being by now, I supposed, arrested by the other tarnsmen, those from Council Rock. Beneath those placid, fleecy clouds I had litte doubt there was bloody war in the air.
The forth rider made good his escape, descending through the clouds, disappearing.
I swung the tarn about, for a moment, over the clouds, and then entered them, several hundred feet from where the fow had disappeared.
An escape trajectory, if one is dealing with a wily foe, can pove to be a tunnel of ambush.
I took the tarn below the clouds and there again made visual contact with the foe. He was racing down to join his fellows.
This pleased me. I hoped that he would spread alarms among them.
I was less pleased by what else I saw and yet I knew I could have expected little that was different.
Our bold tarnsmen from Council Rock fought amidst circling Kinyanpi.
They were outnumbered easily by ten to one. The outcome of such an arrangement was surely a foregone conclusion unless some new ingredient might intervene, something unexpected or different, which might drastically alter the balances of battle.
That our men had lasted this long was a function of several factors, factors on which I had desperately relied. As nearly as I could determine, few tribes in the Barrens had mastered the tarn. That there were Kinyanpi had almost been taken as a matter of myth by the Kaiila until their dramatic appearance at the summer camp. This suggested that such groups were rare. Teh Kinyanpi, I conjectured, occupied a position rather analogous to that of Earth tribes who might have been among the first, in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, to master the horse. Due to lack of competition their battle skills, originally developed in connection with the kaiila, would presumably have declined. Similarly, due also to a lack of competition, and the merciless selections of war, they had not yet become to the tarn as the normal warrior in the Barrens is to his kaiila, namely, a member of a matched fighting unit. On the other hand, the shield and lance skills of the Kaiila were fresh, and our men were tried warriors. Secondly, I had had the men and their tarns train as fighting units, not only the man and his mount, but the men and their mounts, in pairs and prides, as well. Signals were conveyed not by tarn drums, however, but, in one of the manners of the Barrens, by Herlit-bone whistles.
In one of my calculations I had been disappointed. I had hoped that the mere appearance of the great black tarn would inspire terror in the Kinyanpi and that they would withdraw.
Five riders had done so, when it had appeared suddenly, unexpectedly, behind me, in the vicinity of a Yellow-Knife camp in which they had been sojourning, where we had captured the fifteen tarns.
The riders below, however, perhaps because of their numbers, or perhaps their leadership, or their confidence in their medicine, had not done so.
Discomfitted they might have been. Frightened they might have been. But they had not withdrawn.
"Down, Ubar of the Skies!" I cried.
Perhaps they had feared less than might have Yellow Knives, Fleer or Kaiila, because they were more familiar with tarns than such tribes. Perhaps they feared less because it was daylight. Perhaps they had feared less beause the tarn bore reins, a girth rope, a rider, and had approached them from Council Rock.
Their apprehensions must be restored.
I had formed a plan.
Down we pummeted into the midst of the Kinyanpi. Screaming, men scattered on thier tarns. We struck none. I had slung my weapons about me. My shield was at my hip.
The tarn hung, hovering, in the air, as the Kinyanpi regrouped.
I pointed to three of them, one after the other, and then, my arms folded, spoke a command to Ubar of the Skies. "One-strap." The bird began to ascend.
I had seen the surprise of the Kinyanpi when I had released the reins. Their eyes had widened when they had seen my arms were folded. Let it dawn on them that the tarn had obeyed my mere word. I did not look back, for fear of spoiling the effect. I hoped, of couse, that the three men would be following me.
As soon as I had entered the clouds I whipped out my small bow and put an arrow to the string, and held two in the bow hand, and, reseizing the reins, brought the tarn about, and yet it seemed it needed not guidance. Dark and silent in the fog it veered about. One by one the Kinyanpi, consecutively, as I had hoped, entered the cloud. This was the tunnel of ambush, as it is called. A trained tarnsman is taght to avoid it. Three tarns, riderless, returned to the formation below.
I replaced the bow. Again, allowing a suitable interval, I plummeted the tarn downward, again into the midst of the Kinyanpi.
Interestingly, as nearly as I could determine, no fighting had taken place in my absence.
My tarn braked in the air, spreading and beating its wings. Again my arms were folded. I pointed dramatically at a fellow. He shook his head wildly and pulled his tarn away. I pointed at another fellow. He, too, declined my invitation. One of the Kinyanpi struck his painted chest, crying out. I pointed to him. Then I pointed to two others. They looked at one another, uneasily. Then, regally. I looked away. "One-strap," I said to Ubar of the Skies.
We ascended again to the clouds.
I listened carefully, every sense alert. The fellow who had struck himself on the chest was eager. I barely had time to enter the cloud, with apparent leisure, than I had turned and he was upon me. I had no time to draw the bow. The lance thrust at me and I clutched at it, and then caught it. Tarn to tarn we grappled for the lance. I let him think he was wrenching it away from me. This freed my right hand for the knife. He took it, to the hilt, in his left side, under the ribs. I cut the girth rope on his tarn and drew him across to the back of my own tarn. I killed him there. I then took the tarn to a place in the clouds which I judged to be above the Kinyanpi formation. There I released the body. It would fall through the formation.