The slaves heard him and began boiling down off the gates, hitting the ground at a run, sprinting toward the solid safety of the Blue Eye formation. The Green Tower fighters heard him too and screamed curses and threats. Spears began to whistle toward him. One struck down a fighter standing beside him. Krog heard him and nodded slowly with a frown on his lean face. And Halda heard him, and the glare he saw her aim at him would have boiled an egg in its shell.
But there was no time to argue with her. The slaves were dashing frantically for the protection the Blue Eyes seemed to offer. Blade desperately waved them on toward the greater shelter of the tower itself. The Green Tower fighters were hacking their way through the slaves and rapidly gathering into a formation of their own just inside the gates. As more and more of them clambered over the gates and the bodies of the slaves and joined the formation, it became clear that the Blue Eyes would be badly outnumbered. Blade swallowed and met Krog's gaze with his own.
«How well did you train these-allies?» he asked.
«Too well, I think,» replied Krog with a sour grin. «Even so, with equal numbers, we win. But numbers won't be equal.»
«Two to one against us already,» said Blade curtly. «I'm damned if we'll wait until they've got it up to three to one.» His gaze swept over the formation of Blue Eyes. His voice rose in a shout designed to be heard both by them and by their massing enemies. «Spears-out! Pairs-form!» A moment's pause while the Blue Eyes shifted into their fighting pairs as Krog had taught them to do. The Green Towers stared uneasily. Blade and Krog strode out in front of their fighters and together raised their voices in one shout:
«Charge!»
The Blue Eye fighters charged at such a pace that Blade and Krog had to move fast to avoid being trampled by their own men. They angled out to each flank as the formation rolled forward, waving their swords and yelling encouragement to their own men and threats at the Green Towers. The Green Towers flinched. They were already giving ground toward the gate when the charging line smashed into them. .
And over them, and through them, and around them. Spears snapped forward with machinelike precision into the first rank of Green Towers. They screamed and reeled back or went down. The Blue Eyes kept right on going over the writhing or still bodies, swords out and blurring in the air in front of them, second spears held high for a downward stab. A mighty roar of clashing metal and screaming men filled the courtyard. And on either flank Blade and Krog leaped, bellowed, struck, and slew.
The first man Blade ran at flinched away. He saved himself, but he opened a path. Blade plunged through that path, deep into the Green Tower ranks, whirling about like a lethal dervish in a continuous blur of motion. The second rank of Green Towers suddenly found themselves attacked not only by the enemy in front but by this bloodstained giant in their rear. Part of that line broke and scattered. Those with a clear path to the gate scampered for it, leaped up, and vanished into the night. Those who found Blade between them and safety mostly died. Then Blade turned toward the enemy's center.
Here were their best fighters, the men who would not run, who would die where they stood. And die they did, although there were moments when Blade was not sure that he wouldn't die with them. A spear thrust at his face gashed his cheek and missed his eye by a fraction of an inch, and the shock as his down-plunging sword met the metal spear shaft sent a jolt up his arm. But the arm gave first, and the spear dropped down. Blade ran his own spear in through the opening into the man's throat.
Another opponent sprang into the place of the fallen man. This was a fighter nearly as large as Blade himself, armed with a two-handed sword that flashed and whirled like a berserk windmill. It chopped clean through Blade's spear shaft and missed Blade's arm by a hair. But in that split second Blade lunged in under the reach of the huge sword. The swordsman could not shorten his reach enough, and so he died with Blade's knife rammed up under his ribs into his heart.
As the man fell away to one side, a spear flashed so closely past Blade's head that he felt the whuff of disturbed air in his hair. He looked along the line of flight and saw Halda, her arm dropping down from throwing position. On her face was a look of disgust. Quickly Blade swung aside so she would not know that he had seen her. That spear had been aimed at him. If it had hit him, Halda would have told her father that she had been aiming at the swordsman and only hit Blade by accident. Whether or not Krog would have believed his daughter would have meant nothing to a dead man. Was Halda moving toward open hostility? He would have to walk carefully after the battle. A bold or foolhardy Green Tower broke from the enemy line to challenge Blade. His mind and body snapped back to the business at hand, and soon the man went down.
Eventually the battle came to an end. The Green Tower fighters who had not dashed off into the darkness or knelt and been bound as prisoners lay dead or dying on the ground. Counting those who lay dead in the courtyard with those who lay dead outside the walls, the Green Towers had lost more than two-thirds of their fighting men. By death or by desertion they had also lost many more than a hundred slaves. But there had been far too many Blue Eye losses as well.
«We must put off moving against the other gangs for a time,» said Krog, shaking a head made hideous by the caked blood from a cut scalp. The fight over, some of his normal eloquence was coming back. «The Green Towers are no longer a menace. But some of the other gangs may think they have done us so much damage that we can now safely be attacked and defeated. We have many weeks of work ahead of us before we can take the offensive again.»
Blade nodded wearily. He wanted only to sit or lie down, wash the sweat, blood, and filth from his body, and sleep for as many hours as possible. He did not care whether Halda shared his bed or not, Obviously she would now be looking for any possible opportunity to put him out of the way without her father's knowledge. There would be a great risk in associating with her. But there would be a greater danger to both himself and Narlena in rejecting her. He would have to plod on as before, seeking to take advantage of this delay in Krog's plans. He only hoped the Dreamers would do the same.
At least this battle had been a good night's work for the Dreamers. Blade doubted that Krog would have appreciated being told that. The battle had cost the Wakers close to two hundred fighting men. Not one Dreamer had raised a finger to bring this about, let alone a sword. Yet as he looked at the crumpled bodies and silently counted them, he had to force himself to call this slaughter a victory for anybody. He shook his head. Was it just that he was tired, or was he beginning to get tired of the endless fighting that seemed to be the rule in Dimension X?
Chapter Fifteen
Blade had no time to wish that he was in a dimension of pacifists and philosophers. After a good night's sleep and a good meal he found that there was too much to do to get the People of the Blue Eye back on their feet and ready for the next round. There was several days' work alone in disposing of the dead of both sides, caring for the wounded, repairing the damaged gates, making and storing new weapons for future battles. Patrols went out to scour the streets and keep an eye on the enemy. If the Green Towers were too busy licking their wounds to keep a proper watch, Krog had plans for leading a surprise attack on their camp some night. Other patrols roamed other parts of the city, watching for activity by other gangs-and by the Dreamers.
By casually questioning men who returned from patrols into Dreamer territory, Blade heard that Dreamer fighters seemed to be more numerous than ever before. Some parts of Dreamer territory where Waker gangs had previously been able to roam unmolested were no longer safe by day or night. There were even reports of the Dreamers building a fort in the southern part of the city. The Dreamers were apparently aware of the shortage of time, in spite of the recent self-inflicted slaughter among the Wakers. Were they still working hard to make themselves strong? Were they working hard enough? Could they work hard enough? Blade did not know. He also knew that he could do nothing to make the Dreamers work faster and harder. Besides, he had other worries.