For that he would need power guns. And Zarouk had no power guns.
It looked like stalemate.
Later that day, Zarouk sent his warriors against the gate in full strength. The trees in the forest did not make the best rams imaginable, but they were all Zarouk had to work with and would have to do. Back on Mars, his raiders would have used stone pillars slung by chains from heavy braces for this purpose. Here it was still probably possible to find such resources in a quarry or outcropping, but he lacked the tools to chip or cut lengths of stone into the proper proportions.
For an hour or two his men toiled away against that portal of solid metal, finding it unyielding. The Stone Giants, or some of them at any rate, gathered atop the wall at the gate to observe the attack, but made no effort to injure the men who toiled below.
This was in itself curious. Surely, they could have striven to discourage the ram teams with spears or darts. Lacking these, they could have emptied cauldrons of boiling water or burning oil upon the men below. But none of these actions were undertaken by the stone colossi, who seemed content merely to observe the labor of the invaders.
It was as if, for some reason, they were forbidden to kill, and could only repulse an attack, not initiate one.
Ryker thought this was very queer.
After an hour or two of this, a few human observers appeared atop the battlements to watch the rams. One of these was a frail old man with a silver furcap, his lean body wrapped in gorgeous brocades. Ryker recognized him as Melandron.
Another was Valarda herself.
She was dressed like an empress, her slim golden body blazing with gems and precious metals, draped in rich fabrics. The black silk of her hair was caught in a net studded with winking purple rubies, and atop her proud head she wore a construction of curving gold loops and arabesques like a crown. From a clip of strange amber gems fixed to the browpiece of this odd-shaped coronet, glossy plumes of pink and peach and pistachio green floated behind her. Her small, firm breasts were cupped in shallow coils of golden wire.
He stared at her hungrily, his eyes slitted and hard and hating. She leaned over the parapet to observe the activity below, then turned her face to make some remark to a smooth-faced young princeling who stood beside her. Evidently, it was a jest, because he laughed and she smiled.
Then she looked down again and across the length of the causeway, and her eyes met those of Ryker.
She knew him in an instant, and her face went pale. Suddenly her great eyes became shadowed, her face drawn and somehow mournful. She said nothing, and made no sign, but looked at him for a long time with an expression on her perfect features that resembled sorrow.
Fat Houm had spied her as well, and sidled up to where Zarouk stood overseeing the toiling of the men at the rams. The greedy merchant whispered in Zarouk’s ear and drew his attention to the slim, graceful golden girl on the ramparts.
He barked an order, and his guards lifted to their lips the long black tubes they used with such deadly accuracy as blowguns.
Ryker stepped forward uncertainly, his lips shaping a cry which he never spoke—
The languid handsome youth beside Valarda saw all of this in the same instant. Languidly he raised to his own lips a long, slim-throated horn of glittering gold. A sharp liquid song pierced the air, shrilly calling. A beckoning sound, emphatic as a regal summons, rang forth.
Suddenly the air was filled with winged serpents.
Sleek, jewelled coils drifting and undulating on the air, upheld by the thrumming of those strange wings like fans of thick plumes, they darted about like hummingbirds.
Ryker watched the first of Zarouk’s marksmen loose the first of the poisoned darts.
A serpent plucked it from midair!
Then a veritable shower of the slim, deadly needles flew from the mouths of the black tubes. Not so much as one of these reached its mark.
The men lowered their tubes, grimacing lamely.
The golden horn sang forth again, a keen, peremptory command composed of three liquid notes.
The writhing cloud of airborne serpents who floated before Valarda to shield her from the darts, now flung themselves down upon the marksmen.
The men wavered, broke, fled in all directions, pursued by agile and flickering wings.
The serpents caught in their fanged mouths the slim black tubes and bore them away.
Then the aerial swarm turned its attentions upon the ram teams, in instantaneous response to a trilling of the golden horn.
Swarming in midair above the apprehensive warriors, they darted down to snap fanged jaws before the faces of the fearful warriors, who threw their hands before their eyes to protect them from the darting serpents.
They darted hither and thither—hovered to beat their plumes in the faces of the warriors—arrowed in writhing flights to snatch at their cloaks—buffeting them about the head and neck with beating wings—virtually snapping at their heels like a pack of mongrels.
The men blanched, threw down their rams, and ran for shelter.
The aerial serpents pursued them back to their camp, then rose in a twisting stream of glittering pink-and-azure forms, and floated back to the parapets.
While Ryker and the men near him stared in awe, Valarda laughed, caressing the graceful creatures as if to thank them. They fluttered away behind the walls, vanishing from view, but probably they did not go far and could be summoned again, swiftly and easily.
Then the Stone Giants dropped lines over the lip of the parapet, snagged several of the makeshift rams in the sharp teeth of the hooked grapnels affixed to the ends of the lines, and dragged about half of the beams up to the top of the walls.
The workers growled and grimaced and waved threatening fists, but none of them quite dared risk another attack by the flying snakes to return to the foot of the wall in order to retrieve the rams they had abandoned.
Zarouk vanished into his tent, his brow thunderous.
And it was still stalemate. In fact, now it was even more so.
The human inhabitants of the City lingered for a little while atop the battlements as if waiting for more action to commence. Finally, they drifted off lazily, vanishing from sight.
Valarda was the last to leave, and before she too turned to go she looked again at Ryker. Her face was sad and her eyes seemed eloquent and pleading. Then she sighed, and vanished from his view.
That evening he lay a long time under the misty skies, staring at nothing. His thoughts were disordered, his emotions in turmoil. If Valarda had laughed at him, mocked him, spurned him, he would have been easier in his heart.
But she had not. She had seemed to beg him wordlessly for forgiveness. And that he could not forget.
He had assumed her his enemy, and had hated her, despising himself for the ache of desire he still felt in his loins for the golden girl.
And he had accepted without quarrel or dispute the black and dire assessment of Zarouk upon the folk of Zhiam. The desert prince called them devil worshippers, and so Ryker had thought of them.
But could men who worship evil have raised so lovely a dream city as this?
Could such evil dwell in this Edenic garden world, among such exquisite loveliness?
Could horror find a home here, where even the beasts did not eat of each others’ flesh, but fed from ripe fruits, side by side, the lion lying down with the lamb?
Ryker was beginning, however reluctantly, to change his opinion of the Lost Nation. Despite what Zarouk and men like him said of this people, they appeared to be a serene and peaceful race, lovers of beauty, who lived in tranquility, and existed in harmony with this calm and lovely world they had found.