"I have no orders to turn them off," the Neshgai said. He was slumped down in his seat and breathing heavily through his mouth. The blood was still running from his wounds.
Ulysses was standing on the seat beside him, which had held another Neshgai officer, presumably left behind because he was dead or incapacitated. On Ulysses' right was a Neshgai driver. Behind him, in the space in the centre, Awina and seven Wufea were crowded together. The archers peered out through the slits into the darkness half-lit by the beams of the vehicles behind them.
"You have no orders?" Ulysses said. "Are you forbidden to turn them off unless you get orders to do so?"
Bleezhmag nodded. Ulysses said, "I am ordering you to turn off the lights. It may be too late now, but do so anyway."
"I am an armoured car corpsman, and you are an officer of the air force," the Neshgai said. "You have no authority over me."
"But I have been entrusted to you!" Ulysses said. "You are charged with delivering me to the capital. My life is in your hands! By not turning off the lights, you are endangering me! Not to mention my personnel, for whose lives I am responsible!"
"No orders," Bleezhmag said drowsily, and he died.
Ulysses spoke into the transceiver box. "Commander Singing Bear, speaking for Colonel Bleezhmag, who has delegated his authority to me because of his wounds. Turn off the lights!"
A moment later, the cavalcade rolled over the highway in the darkness. The road was whitish enough for them to follow it at a fifteen-mph speed, and Ulysses had hopes that they might get to the capital unattacked.
He pressed the button markedHQ in the Neshgai symbol on the side of the box. This would cause pressure on a nerve spot in the vegetable organism, and the frequency band would be shifted.
He got no reply to his repeated demands to be put through to the Grand Vizier or the general of the army. Even when he identified himself, he failed to get a response. He switched back to the frequency used among the cars and told the operator in the car behind him to send requests to HQ. Then he turned in on all the frequencies available to the transceiver, hoping to find out how the defence was coming. He heard a number of conversations, but he was left as confused as those he listened in on. Then he tried to cut in on some of these with the hope that he could get his request relayed to HQ, but he failed.
The Neshgai driver, peering through the slit, said, "Commander! I see something on the field just ahead!"
Ulysses told him to hold his speed and he looked through the slit. He saw a number of pale figures advancing swiftly across the fields, evidently intending to cut the train off. He switched on the lights, and the figures became somewhat clearer. Eyes gleamed redly in the reflection, and the paleness became leopard-spotted bipeds with tails. They held spears and round objects, which must be bombs. How had The Tree people gotten gunpowder?
He spoke into the transceiver. "Enemy on the right! About thirty yards, I'd say! Full speed ahead! Run over them if they get in the way. Archers, fire at will!"
The first of the running leopard-men got to the road. A red glow suddenly appeared, and then a sputter of fire. He had opened a firebox and applied it to the fuse of a bomb. The fire described an arc as the bomb flew toward the lead car. A crossbow twanged, and a bolt shot out of the front right slit. The enemy screamed and fell. There was a thump against the roof, and then an explosion that rocked the car and half-deafened them. But the bomb had bounced off the roof and onto the road by the side of the car. The car kept on going.
Other figures rushed up, some with spears and a few with open fireboxes and bombs. The spearmen tried to thrust their weapons through the slits, and the bombardiers tossed their weapons at the side of the car.
The spearmen fell, pierced by bolts. Bombs struck and bounced off the sides and the roof and blew up on the road, doing more harm to the enemy than to the carmen.
Then the lead car was past them, and the survivors were attacking the other cars. More than half of the enemy was left dead or wounded. One leopard-man, running desperately, leaped upon the sloping roof of the last car. He placed a bomb on the roof, leaped off, and was shot in the back. The bomb blew the two top layers off and cracked the third. The occupants could not hear for some time, but they were unharmed.
When the cavalcade rolled into the city, they found a few buildings burning and some minor damage. The bat-men had dropped bombs and shot down soldiers and civilians in the streets. A suicide team had flown through the windows of the fourth story of the palace (which had not been barred, though order had been given two weeks before to do so). They had killed many people with their poisoned arrows but had failed to kill the ruler and the Grand Vizier. And all except two of the team had died.
Ulysses learned this from Shegnif. He said, "Do not kill your two prisoners, Most Excellent. We can torture the secret of the location of their base city out of them."
"Then what?" Shegnif said.
"Then we use a new air fleet, much better than the first, to attack and destroy the base city of the Dhulhulikh. And we attack the Tree itself."
Shegnif was surprised. He said. "You are not at all downcast by what happened tonight?"
"Not at all," Ulysses said. "The enemy really accomplished very little, and they may have done us a service. If the blimps had not been destroyed, I might have had a hard time getting you to authorise the building of better craft. I have in mind much larger craft. My native tongue called themdirigibles. Directives, orsteerables, would be a good translation. These will require much more material, planning and time, but they will be more than adequate for the mission I plan."
He had thought the Vizier would be angry because of his assumptions, but Shegnif was pleased. He said, "This invasion — which is still going on, by the way, but is being contained — convinces me of one thing. You are right in that the enemy must be hit in the heart. We could fritter away our resources and personnel by just defending our borders. Though I do not see how we can harm The Tree, even if we kill its Eyes, the Dhulhulikh. Perhaps you have a solution?"
Ulysses outlined his plans. Shegnif listened, nodding his great head, feeling his tucks, tapping his forehead with the tendriled ends of his trunks. Then he said, "I'll authorise your plans at once. The Vignoom and the Glassim are being pushed back, and we're rushing more troops up. And we've taken about twenty more wounded bat-men."
"Some can give us information," Ulysses said. "And others can be used in the training of the hawks."
Again, he was very busy from dawn until long past dusk. He did have time to investigate the quarrel between Thebi and Awina. He had not seen the woman after leaving the office to go into the hanger, but she showed up a few days later. Her story was that she had staggered out into the open immediately after Ulysses left, and she had collapsed between the hangars. She awoke on the field by a group of corpses. Her wound had bled a lot but was not deep.
Both females admitted that they had been quarrelling about which was the highest in his affections and about who should be his permanent aid. Thebi had attacked Awina with her nails, and Awina had pulled her knife.
Ulysses decided not to inflict any imprisonment or physical punishment on either. He defined their duties and positions and how they should behave in the future. They must conform to these. Otherwise, both would be sent away for a long time.
Thebi wept, and Awina wailed, but they promised to behave.
One of the first things he did was to call in a large number of hawk trainers. These were free men whose only job was to raise and educate the several types of accipitrine birds for their masters, who liked to go ahawking. Instead of training these fierce birds to go after ducks, pigeons and other feathered prey, they would teach them to attack the bat-men. There were enough Dhulhulikh prisoners who would be expendable after they had recovered from their wounds.