From the whole of the city came a cry. Korkhann pointed with his winged arm. High up but sweeping downward in a long slanting curve, a glowing object came.
It was, or had been, a starship. Now all its vast bulk was breaking from a red-hot glow into actual flames. It shot down toward Hathyr like a plunging comet.
With a tremendous crash, the flaming star-wreck hit the planet far beyond the city. There was a shock-wave and a blast of searing wind that knocked them staggering.
"That was close enough," said Shorr Kan. "I wish the boys would be a little more careful where they drop their birds."
"There," said Gordon. "How's that?"
Much more distant, a second comet came flaming down out of the moonlit heavens. The impact was barely noticeable. Shorr Kan nodded.
"Much better. And hope they keep them that way. A direct hit in the city..."
He did not finish. There was no need to. Gordon had been thinking the same thing.
Now all at once there was a new sound, a crying of voices from the city. Gordon said in alarm.
"What's that?"
"Listen," said Korkhann. "They are cheering."
The sound came nearer. Presently they could see a great crowd surging toward them down the Avenue of the Kings, where the proud and time-stained statues seemed almost to have sprung to life, as the stroboscopic flashing of the missiles gave them a semblance of movement. In the midst of the crowd, in an open hover-car, Lianna moved slowly toward the palace. The people ran alongside, cheering her, and she raised her hand and nodded to them as calmly as though this were any ordinary peaceful procession.
In the past Gordon had resented her royal status and the protocol that surrounded her. Now he saw the other side of that, and his heart swelled with pride as she came up the steps, very erect and graceful, and turned and waved to the shouting crowd. Live or die, she seemed to be saying, you and I will go together, for we are Fomalhaut.
She left them, motioning to Gordon to follow her inside.
The missile salvos had now become unceasing, and the whole palace trembled with their vibrations. Gordon and Korkhann followed Lianna down to the Defense Room. This time Shorr Kan trailed coolly at their heels, and Gordon noted that the guards outside the room did not think to challenge him. In this hour when Fomalhaut Kingdom rocked on the brink of disaster, things were slipping a little.
Abro came through the knot of excited, sweating officers clustered by the screens. He spoke quickly to Lianna.
"No doubt about it now, Highness. The barons' fleet is headed in this direction at full speed."
Gordon felt a wave of sudden hope. The mighty Hercules barons were a match for almost any star-kingdom.
Abro must have seen a similar hope in Lianna's face, for he said grimly, "I regret to add, Highness, that their course is not toward Hathry, but toward Austrinus Shoals, where what is left of Engl's force is still fighting the counts."
With a sinking heart, Gordon realized that from a detached point of view that was the wise, indeed the only, course. Veterans of many a campaign, the barons were not going to rush to the rescue while a hostile fleet remained in space and able to catch them flat.
"I also have reports," Abro continued, "of at least twenty-four separate landings of Narath's transports in this quadrant of Hathyr. We destroyed many of the ships but we couldn't handle them all, and now they are coming in increasing numbers, while our missile installations are being put out of action."
"We will defend the city," Lianna said. "We can hold them until the barons are free to help us."
Gordon hoped she was right. He thought that if she was not, he had come a long way to die.
Looking into her eyes, he thought that if it came to that, it was worth it.
22
A Walpurgis Night of horror held Hathyr City, as one after another of its lines of defense went down.
For a night and a day and part of another night, the starship transports had continued to land on Hathyr. A great many of them landed as fusing, flaming wrecks. But as the advance forces spread and knocked out more and more of the missile batteries, increasing numbers came down intact, and out of these poured the seemingly endless hordes.
From a hundred wild worlds in the Marches of Outer Space they came, the not-men who followed with fanatical devotion the crimson banner of Narath Teyn, The Gerrn from Teyn itself, the giant four-footed cats with their centaurlike, quite human upper bodies, their slit-pupil led eyes aglow, springing with swift joy toward the battle. The Qhallas, a rushing winged ride of alienness, their raucous battle-cries rising in squawking fury. The Torr from far across the Marches, furred, towering, four-armed. The Andaxi, like great dogs trying to be men, teeth and eyes gleaming as they came toward the kill. And others, innumerable and indescribable others-hopping, gliding, vaulting-a phantasmagoria of nightmare shapes.
They had good modern weapons, supplied by the counts. Atom-pellets exploded like a bursting wave of white fire ahead of them, burning through the streets of Hathyr City. The guns of the men of Fomalhaut answered them. Inhuman shapes were scythed down, cindered, swept away, heaped up in tattered mounds to choke the crossings. But there were always more of them, and they always pressed forward. In the battle-fury many of them threw away their weapons and reverted to the simple, satisfying use of claw and fang. They came from all sides, a ring, a noose closing slowly around the heart of the city. And in the end there were just too many of them.
Fires burned red in scores of places across the city, as though a funeral pyre for the kingdom of Fomalhaut had been lit here and was majestically, slowly growing. The stately moons looked down upon a city illuminated by the flames of its own progressive destruction, and the pressing hordes became a macabre silhouette against the fire-glow.
Gordon stood with Lianna and Korkhann and Shorr Kan on the great balcony high in the palace that looked straight down the avenue of the stone kings. The fires and the fury and the clamor of battle were creeping closer to the palace area. Against the fires they could see the hover-cars of the Fomalhaut soldiery swooping down in desperate, continuous attacks.
"Too many of them," murmured Lianna. "Narath has worked for years to win the loyalty of the nonhumans, and now we see the fruit of his labors."
"How can a human man like Narath influence them so greatly?" Gordon gestured toward the smoke-filled, tortured streets. "They're dying, God only knows how many thousands of them, but they never even pause. They seemed to be glad to die for Narath. Why?"
"I can answer that," Korkhann. "Narath is truly human in body only. I have probed the edges of his mind, and I tell you that is an atavism, a mental throw-back to a time before the evolutionary paths diverged. Before, in short, there was any difference between human and nonhuman. That is why the beastlings love and understand him . . because he thinks and feels as one of them, as no normal human ever can."
Gordon stared out at the panorama of destruction. "Atavism," he said. "Then we can blame all this on one infinitesimal gene?"
"Do me one favor?" said Shorr Kan sourly. "Please. Spare me the philosophical lectures."
An officer, young and a little wild-eyed, hurried onto the balcony and made a hasty salute to Lianna.
"Highness, Minister Abro begs you to leave by hover-car before the fighting comes any closer."
Lianna shook her head. "Thank the minister, and inform him that I will not leave here while men are fighting and dying for me."
Gordon started to expostulate. Then he saw her face and knew that it would be useless. He held his tongue.
Shorr Kan had no such inhibitions. "When the fighting ends you may not be able to leave. Best to go now, Highness."