He looked around his little group of warriors, wondering if his face was as pale as theirs. They had taken their swords in hand and were gazing at him with expressions which seemed to convey complete faith in his leadership. Their trust was probably a legacy from all those times when he had swaggered and boasted of his prowess in combat—and now he was appalled by the responsibility he had taken upon himself. These people knew they were facing death, and they were afraid, and in the moment of ultimate tribulation they were turning to the only source of hope they could find. It was quite likely that they now regarded Toller as a pillar of strength, and he was numbed with guilt and regret as he realized the extent of his unworthiness to play that role.
“If we advance too far to meet the enemy they will be able to outflank us and overturn the machine,” he heard himself say in a firm, clear voice. “We must form a defensive line outside the radius of safety—and take a solemn vow that none of the Vadavaks shall pass.
“There are many more things I would like to say—” Toller’s eyes locked fleetingly with Vantara’s and he repressed an urge to reach out and touch her face—“but now is not the time. We have important work to do first.”
Toller turned and ran on a curving path to a point which placed him exactly between the impeller and the oncoming force of Vadavaks. Within a few seconds the other humans had taken up stations on either side of him, at spacings which they instinctively felt could be protected by the sword. The Vadavaks were now only a hundred yards or so away, running fast, and the sound of their feet swishing through the grass could easily be heard by the defenders. Pinpoints of red light danced before them in a horizontal swarm.
Toller tightened his grip on his sword as he saw that the Vadavaks, in place of the rag-like garments of the ordinary Dussarran citizen, wore white helmets and armor. The latter was of a glistening material which seemed to have no effect on the wearer’s mobility in spite of covering torso and limbs. The livid, black-holed faces glaring from under the rims of the alien helmets gave the attackers the semblance of an army of corpses, indefatigable because they were already dead.
Toller raised his sword to the first readiness position and waited. I beg of you, Beloved Creator, the Xa’s words threaded down from the remoteness of the sky, do not kill me.
One of the Vadavaks outdistanced the others, nominating himself as Toller’s first individual opponent, and dived forward with twin black rods outstretched like stings. The alien must have been totally accustomed to routing docile and unarmed civilians, because he came at Toller with head and torso quite unprotected. Toller struck down into his thin neck and the alien went down and backwards in a fountain of blood, his head connected to his body by only a narrow strip of tissue. The rods he had been holding fell close beside each other at Toller’s feet.
Toller stamped on them, extinguishing the crimson glow at their tips, and his momentum took him into immediate conflict with two more Vadavaks. The pair apparently had not enough time to learn anything from the fate of their companion, because they remained close together and lunged at Toller with enervator rods held only a few inches apart. He took their arms off below the elbows with two transverse strokes which sheared the white armor as if it were paper.
The aliens dropped to their knees, their mouths black circles of silent agony, and doubled over the stumps of their forearms.
Toller paid them no further attention—they had ceased to be combatants—and ran his gaze along the line of battle. The Vadavaks were throwing themselves into the fray with undiminished vigor and ferocity, but Toller was heartened to notice that not one Kolcorronian had been laid low. Their lack of experience in handling swords was being more than compensated for by the incredible sharpness of the blades, and the Vadavaks were being cut down as quickly as they advanced. The defense line had lost its regularity, but it was remaining intact, and the white wave of alien attackers was now liberally stained with red as its members collided with and stumbled over their wounded.
Can it be possible? Toller wondered. Are we all to be spared, after all? There can be very little time left before the impeller does its work, and if the Vadavaks are stupid enough not to change their tactics…
From the corner of his eye Toller saw a flicker of white as an alien appeared beyond one end of the battle line and ran towards the rectangular shape of the impeller. Toller broke free and ran on a course which enabled him to intercept the Vadavak about halfway across the margin of safety. The alien slid to a halt in the grass and turned on Toller, the milky marbles of his eyes gleaming beneath the rim of his helmet. He was holding one of his enervator rods as though it were a sword, darting and slicing with the glowing tip, striving to make contact with the skin of Toller’s sword arm.
Toller dealt with him by making a sideways flick of his blade which lopped the end off the menacing rod. The alien threw it down, transferred his remaining rod into his right hand and resumed the duel, apparently quite unafraid. Toller—acutely aware that he was within the impeller’s radius of death—decided to end the matter speedily in a rain of unstoppable blows. He was on the point of lunging forward when he heard a sound close behind him. He spun around just in time to see a second Vadavak thrusting an enervator rod into his midriff. Toller did his utmost to twist clear of the spitefully gleaming tip, but it made contact with him and pain fountained up through his chest. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, and his two opponents—now moving at a much more leisurely pace, apparently relishing their moment of victory—closed in on him with black rods upraised.
A second touch from one of the red tips would bring about his death, Toller had been warned, and it was obvious that the Vadavaks intended to make sure of him by administering multiple contacts. But he had no intention of accepting death so easily, not with so much at stake. In spite of the debilitating pain which was washing through his body, he made a despairing effort to raise his sword to fend off the descending rods—and was thrilled to find his arms responding with close to normal speed and control.
The Vadavaks, abruptly realizing their peril, stabbed at him with their enervators, but his sword was now moving swiftly in a near-visible defensive arc. The black rods were destroyed and scattered in an instant as Toller rose to his feet. One of the aliens got away from him by sprinting off to safety; the other was transfixed as he turned to flee. Toller withdrew his sword from the twitching body and ran back to rejoin the main battle. He noticed a soreness in his legs for the first few paces, but it quickly faded and he deduced that a Dussarran enervator was a fairly inadequate weapon when used against a large and healthy human.
That seemed a favorable omen, but when Toller reappraised the continuing struggle he saw the situation had altered for the worse in the brief time that he had been sidetracked. One of the women was on the ground and surrounded by Vadavaks who were jabbing at her with red-glowing enervators. Fearing that the inert figure might be Vantara, Toller pounded his way towards her attackers with a hoarse cry of rage. He reached them simultaneously with Steenameert, taking them unawares, and in an impossibly short space of time—a time of raging red mists speckled with seething bright-rimmed corpuscles—the two humans had reduced at least five of the enemy to a bloody mass of carrion.
The woman on the ground was revealed as Corporal Tradlo. An enervator had been driven down her throat, her blonde hair was matted with blood, and it was obvious that she was dead.