The Soaring Statue
L. Sprague de Camp
THE battle of Khye was decided by Semapova's charge. That young Tshimvian, scorning to obey his uncle's orders to slink in a wide detour to raid the Znaci baggage, led his tribe's light cavalry in a long uphill mass charge against the main array of the Znaci. The Znaci crossbowmen, standing four deep, piled their unarmored assailants in heaps, while the Znaci gunners, armed with weapons bought or stolen from the earthmen of Sveho, added to the confusion more by the noise of their weapons than by the accuracy of their fire.
Semapova reached the Znaci line alone, to fall with a Znaci pike through him and several crossbow-bolts sticking in his feathery pelt. The surviving Tshimvi riders fled. Soon thereafter Horko, the Znaci chief, rode up on his vaciza and tossed Semapova's head into the ranks of the Tshimvi.
The Tshimvi were at a disadvantage in trying to fight and move their entire tribe at the same time. Crafty old Zhewha (or more accurately Zhe3a, the numeral representing a whistle) had planned to hold off the Znaci by feints and raids until his noncombatants were safely through Khye Pass, but Semapova's folly ruined his plan.
The arrival of frantic fugitives from the charge shook the Tshimvi. Then at the onset of the Znaci they dissolved into a disordered mass of soldiery afoot and mounted, non-combatants, and beasts of burden, all trying to jam through the pass at once. The Znaci plowed into them, smiting all regardless of age or sex. The sun (that is, 61 Cygni A) went down on a scene of sanguinary carnage: bodies, severed members, dead vacizas, weapons, battle-standards, trumpets, drums, and all the other paraphernalia of barbarian war lying in tangled heaps and soaked with bright-blue blood.
With darkness, Zhewha slipped away with a few Tshimvi and spent the night rounding up survivors, though more than half of his nation had perished. Horko might have pressed the pursuit more closely had not another matter distracted his attention.
The baggage-train of the Tshimvi included a litter slung between a pair of vacizas in tandem. This conveyance, like all the others, got jammed in the panic-push into the pass so that the vacizas could do nothing but claw and peck. Horko, blood masking the glitter of his gilded scale-armor, rode up and abated even this activity by striking off the head of the leading vaciza with the sickle-like reverse-curved sword of his people. The fact that he was merely destroying valuable property would not have deterred him in his battle-madness.
As the vaciza collapsed, two smallish figures leaped out of the litter on the far side and tried to battle their way through the jam afoot. Horko recognized them as earthmen. One of his soldiers drove his mount around the litter to get at them, cutting down a female Tshimvi in his way. As the soldier got within reach of the earthmen, the larger of the two pulled out a small one-hand gun and shot the soldier.
Meanwhile two other Znaci had pushed to within reach of the earth-men from other angles. He whirled and shot one of these, but before he could shift his attention again the other hewed off his gun-arm and then his head. The remaining warrior turned his attention to the other earthman, who seemed unarmed. Before he could strike, Horko shouted:
"Give back! Take it alive!"
He had to repeat the command before it penetrated the blood-maddened mind of the fighter. But Horko was known as a chief not to be trifled with, and at last the other earthman was seized unharmed. Horko dismounted and approached the creature, which like most of its kind was covered with artificial fabrics so that Horko could not perceive its sex. He wiped and sheathed his sword, gripped the fabric in his clawed hands, and ripped.
"A female!" he said. He had never seen one of that sex so far from Sveho. He spoke to it in trade-pidgin:
"Who you?"
The Earthman was leaking at the eyes in the curious way the things did under stress of emotion. When it ceased its snuffling noises it replied in the mixture of Anglo-Terran and several Kteremian languages by which earthmen communicated with natives of the planet:
"Me female belong Chief Holm."
"Chief belong Sveho?" said Horko, cocking his head with interest.
"Yes. You hurt me, Chief Holm kill all Znaci."
If Horko had known how, he might have smiled. This capture opened up a new, and very interesting, line of thought. He indicated the remains of the male earthman:
"Who that?"
"Ivan Dolgoruki. Trader."
Horko told the warriors holding the surviving earthman: "Bring it along." He picked up the pistol and ammunition of the late I. Dolgoruki but paid no further attention to the corpse.
AMAURY Brisson sat in the Northern Cross drowning his sorrows and pouring his troubles into the ears of a fellow-savant named Iflatun Faruq. Brisson was a man of slightly below average height and inclined to plumpness, with thinning light hair, a toothbrush mustache, and a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses that gave him the look of an indignant owl.
"... so what the hell can I do?" said Brisson, almost upsetting his glass with the eloquence of his gestures."For fourteen days—no, fifteen—this species of camel has kept me sitting on my behind in his sacred offices. Every day it is the same: 'So sorry, but administrative difficulties prevent... ' or 'So sorry, but Governor Horn is on vacation... ' I have already missed one ship to earth, and it is probable that I shall miss another. What does he want? For me to die here, of old age?"
"You have not heard of the curious habits of Ricardo Holm?" said Iflatun Faruq, a slender swarthy man with the look of the Fertile Crescent about him.
"No. What to me are the eccentricities of some pig of a governor? I deliver myself therefrom. I am an archaeologist, me. I come, I dig, I go. I take my finds to my museum and write my reports. I mind my own business."
"What detriment!" said Iflatun Faruq, sipping delicately."I was warned before I left Baghdad, but fortunately Governor Holm's cupidity does not extend to small invertebrates."
"The animal wishes to be bribed, hein? I might have known."
"Yes, my friend, but not in the usual way."
"What is it you wish to say?"
"Ricardo Holm demands bribes of a particular sort before he will sign the exit-permit of any scientist. To be brief, he wants your collection—or a large part of it at least."
"Hm." Amaury Brisson made a remark reflecting upon Governor Holm's love-life."What is the object of this dirty pig? To sell these rarities that I and my colleagues have acquired with such pain and risk? That seems degraded even for a popularly-elected governor."
"No. This governor is a man of ample means, which he has no need to supplement by such extortion. In most respects he is even considered honest."
Brisson snorted. Iflatun Faruq continued:
"Ricardo Holm is a fanatical collector of what he considers curios and objects of art. And since it is not practical for him to roam the galaxy picking up samples, he extorts their finds from archaeologists visiting Kterem. His house, I am told, is something of the fabulous."
Brisson snorted again."No doubt with relics strewn about on mantle-pieces and whatnots, with no record of their provenance."
"Absolutely. He knows nothing of science, but knows what he considers pretty."
"Well, he shan't have my pieces. I'll see the rascal in the fire first."
"My poor Amaury! What will you do?"
"I shall expose the type."
"To What good? The kind of people one finds in such a place don't care. In fact they would admire him for thinking of such a smart trick. All one could do would be to stay over until the next election, enter politics, and try to displace this Holm."
Brisson shuddered."I deliver myself from politics! If there were only some sort of interplanetary government to whom one could appeal—"
"True, but there is not. And so..."