By now I, like most of us, had had some instruction in the use of the far-speaker. I tuned it until the image of a Wersgor officer appeared in its screen. He had obviously been trying to tune in on me, so we had lost several minutes. His face was pale, almost cerulean, and he gulped several times before he could ask: “What do you want?”
Sir Roger scowled. Bloodshot, dark-rimmed eyes, in a face whose flesh seemed melted away by care, gave him a frightful appearance. I having translated, he snapped: Huruga.
“We … we shall not surrender our grath. He told us so himself.”
“Brother Parvus, tell that idiot I only want to talk to the duke! A parley. Haven’t they any idea at all of civilized custom?”
The Wersgor gave us a hurt look, since I told him my lord’s exact words, but spoke into a little box and touched a series of buttons. His image was replaced with that of Huruga. The governor rubbed sleep from his eyes and said with forlorn courage, “Don’t expect to destroy this place as you did the others. Darova was built to be an ultimate strong point. The heaviest bombardment could only remove the aboveground works. If you attempt a direct assault, we can fill the air and the land with blasts and metal.”
Sir Roger nodded. “But how long can you maintain such a barrage? he asked mildly.
Huruga bared his sharp teeth. “Longer than you can mount the assault, you animal!”
“Nonetheless,” Sir Roger murmured, “I doubt if you’re equipped for a siege.” I could find no Wersgor term in my limited vocabulary for that last word, and Huruga seemed to have trouble understanding the circumlocutions by which I rendered it. When I explained why it took me so long to translate, Sir Roger nodded shrewdly.
“I suspected as much,” he said. “Look you, Brother Parvus. These starfaring nations have weapons nigh as powerful as St. Michael’s sword. They can blow up a city with one shell, and lay waste a shire with ten. But this being so, how could their battles ever be prolonged? Eh? Yon castle is built to take hammer blows. But a siege? Hardly!”
To the screen: “I shall establish myself near by, keeping watch on you. At the first sign of life from your castle, I’ll open fire. So ’twere best that your men stay underground all whiles. At any time you wish to surrender, call me on the far-speaker, and I’ll be pleased to extend the courtesies of war.”
Huruga grinned. I could almost read the thoughts behind that snout. The English were more than welcome to squat outside, till the avenging armada came! He blanked the screen.
We found a good camp site well beyond the horizon. It lay in a deep, sheltered valley, through which a river ran clean and cold and full of fish. Meadows were dotted throughout the forest; game was abundant, and off duty our men were free to hunt. For a few of those long days, I watched cheer blossom fresh among our people.
Sir Roger gave himself no rest. I think he dared not; for Lady Catherine left her children with their nurse and walked among bowers with Sir Owain. Not untended — they were careful of the proprieties — but her husband would glimpse them and turn to snarl a command at the nearest person.
Hidden away in these woods, our camp was safe enough from shellfire or missiles. Its tents and leantos, our weapons and tools, were not a large enough concentration of metal to be sniffed out by one of the Wersgor magnetic devices. Such of our aircraft as maintained watch on Darova, always landed elsewhere. We kept trebuchets loaded, in case any activity were revealed about the fortress; but Huruga was content to wait passive. Sometimes a daring enemy vessel passed overhead, having come from some other spot on the planet. But it never found any target for its explosives, and our own patrol soon forced it away.
Most of our strength — the great ships and guns and war-wagons — were elsewhere all this time. I myself did not see the hunting Sir Roger undertook. I stayed in camp, busying myself with such problems as teaching myself more Wersgor and Branithar more English. I also started classes in the Wersgor language for some of our more intelligent boys. Nor would I have wished to go on the baron’s expedition.
He had spacecraft and aircraft. He had bombards to fire both flame and shell. He had a few ponderous turtle-cars, which he hung with shields and pennons and manned with a cavalryman and four men-at-arms each. He went out across the continent and harried.
No isolated estate could withstand his attack. Looting and burning, he left desolation behind him. He killed many Wersgorix, but no more than necessary. The rest he stuffed captive into the huge transport ships. A few times, the franidins and yeomen tried to make a stand. They had hand weapons only; his host scattered them like chaff and chivvied them across their own fields. It took him only a few days and nights to devastate the entire land mass. Then he made a quick foray across an ocean, bombed and flamed whatever he chanced upon, and returned.
To me it seemed a cruel butchery, albeit no worse than this empire had done on many worlds. However, I own I have not always understood the logic of such things. Certainly what Sir Roger did was ordinary European practice in a rebellious province or a hostile foreign country. Yet when he landed in camp again, and his men swaggered forth loaded with jewels and rich fabrics, silver and gold, drunk on stolen liquor and boasting of what they had done, I went to Branithar.
“These new prisoners are beyond my power,” I said, “but tell your brothers of Ganturath that before the baron can destroy them, he must take off my own poor head.”
The Wersgor gave me a curious look. “What do you care for our sort?” he asked.
“God help me,” I replied. “I do not know, save that He must also have made you.”
Word of this reached my lord. He summoned me to the tent he now used instead of his pavilion. I saw forest glades choked with captives, milling about like sheep, mumbling and terrified under the English guns. True, their presence was a shield to us. Though the ships’ descent must now have revealed our location closely enough to Huruga’s magnifiers, Sir Roger had taken care that the governor knew what had happened. But I saw blueskin mothers holding little wailing blue cubs, and it was like a hand about my heart.
The baron sat on a stool, gnawing a haunch of beef. Light and shadow. filtered through leaves, checkered his face. “What’s this?” he cried. “Are you so fond of yon pigfaces you’ll not let me have those we caught at Ganturath?”
I squared my skinny shoulders. “If nothing else, sire,” I told him, “think how such a deed must harm your own soul.”
“What?” He raised his thick brows. “When was it ever forbidden to set free the captive?”
My turn came to gape. Sir Roger slapped one thigh, guffawing. “We’ll keep some few, like Branithar and the artisans, who’re useful to us. All the rest we’ll herd to Darova. Thousands and thousands. Don’t you imagine Huruga’s heart will melt with gratitude?”
I stood there in sunlight and tall grass, while “Haw, haw, haw!” bellowed about me.
So under the jeers and spear-prods of our men, that uncounted throng stumbled through beck and brake, until they emerged on cleared land and saw the distant mass of Darova. A few stepped out of the crowd, timorous. The English leaned grinning on their weapons. One Wersgor began to run. No one fired at him. Another broke away, and another. Then the entire swarm of them pelted toward the fortress.
That evening Huruga yielded.
“’Twas easy enough.’ Sir Roger chuckled. “I had him bottled up in there. I doubted he had more than just enough supplies, for siegecraft must be a lost art in this country. So, first, I showed him I could lay his whole planet waste — which he’d have to answer for even if we were conquered in the end. Then I gave him all those extra mouths to feed.” He slapped my back. When I had been picked up and dusted off, be said, “Well, Brother Parvus, now that we own this world, would you like to head its first abbey?”