“You dare—” Storm checked herself. A moment she stood taut and still. Then she smiled, reached out and stroked his cheek. “I might have known,” she said. “Very well, I shall stay too.”
7
They came west across the meadows, the oak forest on their left, and the men of Avildaro stood to meet them. They numbered perhaps a hundred in all, with ten chariots, the rest loping on foot: no more than their opponents. When first he squinted through the brilliant noontide, Lockridge could hardly believe that these were the dreaded men of the Battle Axe.
As they neared, he studied one who was typical. In body the warrior was not very different from the Tenil Orugaray: somewhat shorter and stockier, his brown hair twisted into a queue and his beard into a fork, his countenance more Central European than Russian in its beak-nosed harshness. He wore a jerkin and knee-length skirt of leather, a clan symbol burned in, carried a round bullhide shield painted with the fylfot, and had for weapons a flint dagger and a beautifully fashioned stone axe. His lips were drawn wide in carnivore anticipation.
The chariot he followed, evidently his chieftain’s, was a light two-wheeled affair of wood and wicker, pulled by four shaggy little horses. A young boy, unarmed and clad merely in a loincloth, guided them. Behind him stood the master: bigger than most, wielding an ax so long and heavy it was a halberd, with two spears racked ready to hand. The chief had a helmet, corselet, and greaves of reinforced leather; a short bronze sword hung at his waist, a faded cloak of linen from the South fluttered off his shoulders, and a necklace of massy gold flashed beneath his shaggy chin.
Such were the Yuthoaz. When they saw the uneven line of fishermen, they slowed their pace. Then the lead charioteer winded a bison horn, the troop howled wolfish war cries, and the horses thudded into gallop. After them banged the wagons, leaped the yelping footmen, boomed the axes on drumhead shields.
Echegon’s gaze pleaded with Storm and Lockridge. “Now?” he asked.
“A little longer. Let them get close.” Storm shaded her eyes and peered. “Something about him in the rear—the others block my view—”
Lockridge could sense the tension at his back: sighs and mutters, feet that shifted, the acrid stink of sweat. Those were not cowards who waited to guard their homes. But the enemy was equipped and trained for war; and even to him, who had known tanks, the charge of the chariots grew terrifying as they swelled before his eyes.
He brought up his rifle. The stock was cool and hard along his cheek. Storm had grudgingly agreed to let the twentieth-century guns be used today. And perhaps the fact they were about to witness lightnings, even on their own behalf, stretched thin the courage of the Tenil Orugaray.
“Better let me start shootin’,” he said in English.
“Not yet!” Storm spoke so sharply, above the racket, that he gave her a glance. The feline eyes were narrowed, the teeth revealed, and a hand rested on the energy pistol she had said she would not employ. “I have to see that one man first.”
The charioteer in the van lifted his axe and swept it down again. Archers and slingers at the rear of the Yuthoaz halted, their weapons leaped clear, stones and flintheaded arrows whistled toward the seafolk.
“Shoot!” Echegon bellowed. He need not have done so. A snarl of defiance and a ragged volley lifted from his line.
At this range, no harm was done. Lockridge saw a missile or two thunk against a shield. But the Yuthoaz were in full career.
They’d be on him in another minute. He could make out the flared nostrils and white-rimmed eyes of the nearest horses, blowing manes, flickering whips, a beardless driver and the savage grin that split the beard behind, an axe upraised whose stone gleamed like metal. “To hell with this!” he cried. “I want ’em to know what hit ’em!”
He got that chieftain in his sights and squeezed trigger. The gun kicked back with a solidity that strengthened his soul. Its bang was lost in yells, hoofbeats, squeal of axles and rattle of wheels. But the target flung his arms wide and fell to earth. The halberd soared through an arc. The grass hid man and weapon alike.
The boy reined in, drop-jawed and scared. Lockridge realised at once that he needn’t kill humans, swung around and went for the next team of horses. Crack! Crack! One animal per bunch would do, to put a wagon out of commission. A stone glanced off the gun barrel, which rang. But the second chariot went over, harness tangled, tongue snapped across, left wheel demolished in the wreck. The live horses reared and neighed their fear.
Lockridge saw the charge waver. Two or three more of those battle cars stopped, and the invaders would bolt. He stepped forward to be in plain sight, his blood too much athrum for him to care about arrows, and let the sun flash off his metal.
The sun itself struck him.
Thunder exploded in his skull. Blinded, shattered, he whirled into night.
Awareness returned with a hurricane of anguish. Light-spots still clouded his vision. Through screams, whinnies, rumbling and booming, he heard the shout: “Forward, Yuthoaz! Forward with Sky Father!”
It was in a language the diaglossa knew, but not the Tenil Orugaray.
He groped to hands and knees. The first thing he saw was his rifle, half melted on the ground. That destruction had absorbed most of the energy beam. The cartridges had not gone off in the clip, nor had he himself suffered worse than a vicious burn on face and chest. But fire was in his skin. He could not think for the torment.
A dead man lay nearby. Little remained of the features except charred meat and bone. The copper band on one arm identified Echegon.
Storm stood close by. Her own weapon was out to make a shield. Brief rainbow fountains of flame played around her. The enemy beam passed on, to sickle down three young men who had gone sealing with Lockridge.
The Yuthoaz roared! In one tide, they swept over the villagers. Lockridge saw a son of Echegon—unmistakable, that countenance and that doggedness—ground his spear as if the horses earthquaking down upon him were a wild boar. Their driver swerved them. The chariot clattered past. The warrior who stood in it swung his axe with dreadful skill. Brains spurted. Echegon’s son fell by his father. The Yutho hooted mirth, chopped on the other side at someone Lockridge couldn’t see, hurled a spear at an archer, and was gone by.
Elsewhere, the village men were in flight. Panic had them, and they wailed as they ran into the forest. Pursuit ended there. The Yuthoaz, whose patron gods were in the sky, did not like those rustling twilit reaches. They turned back to dispatch and scalp any wounded of their enemy.
One chariot rushed toward Storm. Her energy shield made her lioness form shimmer; in Lockridge’s delirium it was as if he watched a myth. He had the Webley too. He fumbled for it, but consciousness left him before he got the weapon loose. His last sight was of the one who stood back of the driver—no Yutho—a man beardless and white-skinned, immensely tall, in a hooded black cloak that flapped after him like wings—
Lockridge awoke slowly. For a while he was content to lie on the earth and know he was free from pain.
Piece by piece, there came to him what had happened. When he heard a woman scream, he opened his eyes and sat bolt upright.
The sun was down, but through the doorway of the hut where he was, past the shore and the bloodily shining Limfjord, he glimpsed clouds still lit. The single room here had been stripped of its poor possessions and the entrance was burred with branches lashed together and fastened to the doorposts by thongs. Beyond, two Yuthoaz stood guard. One kept dancing inside and fingering a sprig of mistletoe against witchcraft. His mate’s eyes rested enviously on a pair of warriors who drove several cows along the beach. Elsewhere was tumult, deep-throated male shouts and guffaws, tramp of horses and clatter of wheels, while the conquered keened their grief.