Golden Torc - 2 (49 page)

Once he raised the visor of his helmet and vomited with discretion so as not to spook his mount. For the most part, the tall beast stepped carefully among the corpses while he tried to guide it in the direction of the ascending sun, which looked like a cut-out white disk heavily curtained in dusty haze. In that direction lay the eastern arm of the lagoon. If he reached the shore, it might be possible to swipe one of the Firvulag boats; and if his broken-down PK had a few watts left, he just might make it to Kersic.

Luck. Just a little luck. Didn't he deserve some after these months of living hell? Just keep up the good work, Horsie, and kick! Kick the crap outa those little turdlings when they come at us!

The chaliko fought well. And the Firvulag, he discovered, only threw their lances and never made use of arrows or darts, so he was fairly secure behind his shield in the high saddle until-

Something like a gigantic purple spider came scuttling out of the misty dazzle and got behind him. One of its appendages thrust up under the armored tailpiece of the chaliko's crupper.

The animal let out an earsplitting scream and fell heavily forward,

impaled by some kind of long-shafted pole-arm. Raimo was pitched from the saddle and hit the ground with a sound like a demolished xylophone. He saw the spider waver and dissolve, and then, cavorting around and around him and chortling in a falsetto squeal was a Firvulag in gore-smeared halfarmor, the spitting image of Grumpy the Dwarf in Disney's 2-D cinema classic.

"Now I gotcha! Now I gotcha!" the manikin shrilled, waving a black glassy blade with a terrible notched edge.

"Help!" Raimo cried. He tried vainly to rise. His chaliko thrashed in death agonies, its great claws almost on top of him. Helphelphelphelp...

Sweet houghmagandy, Chopper! That you?

Aik! Aik, for the love o'Christ!

A beam resembling that from a sodium-vapor searchlight stabbed from the clouds of dust. It flicked harmlessly over the collapsed pink knight, but when it detected Grumpy it steadied and intensified. The Firvulag warrior's limbs flew out in spasm and his obsidian sword arced away. Orange-yellow light licked up and down the exotic body, melting the cuirass and leaving a path of smoking wound. The Firvulag uttered piercing shrieks. A voice out of thin air said, "That's a good fix," and the astral beam swiveled to shine into the transfixed dwarf's open mouth. There was a small, exceedingly nasty explosion. "Open your eyes, Chopper. Your shining knight has come to the rescue."

Still prone, Raimo tilted up his visor. A huge black chaliko all armored in gold looked down at him, its benign eyes peering from the openings of a gilded chamfron. It had a monocerine faceted spike of amethyst mounted on its forehead. Sitting the magnificent beast was a diminutive human glowing as from a self-contained power source. He carried no weapon, no shield. But he held high a purple banner whose golden-hand blazon gave the finger to the Exile world. A black-and-viotet cape rippled unstained about Aiken Drum's gold-lustre armor. He grinned as he PK-hoisted Raimo to his feet.

"There you go, Chopper. Good as new and ready to raise hell! See you later!"

"Wait-" the former woodsman pleaded. But the Shining One was gone. The battle noise intensified and so did the clouds of smoke and dust. It sounded as though some desperate engagement were coming right at him.

He stumbled about until he recovered his sword and buckler. Avoiding the thrashing chaliko and the fearful mess that had been Grumpy, he started off in the direction opposite from the worst of the psychocreative detonations, away from the clang of glass and bronze weapons, the bellowing of thousands of human and inhuman voices that filled his ears and mind. Within a few minutes he was completely disoriented. There was no clue to show him the way to the shore, no sure route to escape. "What am I gonna do?" he whimpered.

Survive until sunset, something reminded him, and there would be a recess of three hours while the field was cleared of the wounded and the dead. If he could manage to hide until then-

He tripped over the two decapitated Firvulag and stopped his aimless flight. There was no natural cover on the Plain-so why not? Still shrouded in thick dust clouds, he flung himself down and burrowed among their dark-dripping limbs. Then he withdrew his consciousness into that inadequate little closet of refuge Aiken had taught him to use when the women drove him to the brink of madness. Unless someone beamed a thought right at him, he was safe. Almost all sensation, almost all pain ceased. Raimo Hakkinen waited.

The sun climbed high, heating the White Silver Plain and generating rising air currents that lifted the pall of dust. The warriors of both sides renewed hostilities. Great deeds of heroism were accomplished by Tanu and Firvulag alike, but the gray-torc levies were being decimated by the new tactics of the Little People, which placed the Tanu in a potentially dangerous position.

Raimo lay unmoving, even though some skirmishes took place only a few meters away from him. He suffered cramps and heat and thirst. Flies descended to feast on the blood and lay their eggs in dead flesh, and some of them crept into his helmet. Rousing from his stupor for a moment, he used the shreds of his psychokinetic power to squash them against the insides of the sallet. From time to time he groped deliriously for booze. The fuchsia and yellow feathers of his helmut crest shaded him slightly, but he still broiled in his shell of pink glass until late afternoon when the sun declined at long last and silhouetted the spine of Aven against blood-red light before it disappeared.

A single horn sounded a silvery note that reverberated in his mind.

The noises of battle faded. A wind of luxuriant coolness came rushing over the salt. The armies withdrew. Soon, Raimo told himself. Soon-when it was a bit darker. He was wide-awake now but still lying motionless. Unfortunately, he had concealed himself in a spot precariously close to the huge Tanu encampment. Redactors and farsensors on missions of mercy were spreading out onto the quiet Plain, guiding bearers to the wounded Tanu and human knights. And there were others as well, leaders mounted on fresh chalikos assessing the results of the first daylight action. If any of them detected him-!

He tried to suppress all thought projection, shrinking back into his little skull-closet. I am a dead thing let me be I am dead pass me by ignore me go away go away...

"Oh, you are, are you?"

The voice was in his mind and ear. He refused to open his eyes.

Laughter. "Come on now, Psychokinetic Brother. You don't look as badly wounded as all that!"

The Firvulag bodies, those precious sheltering bodies, shifted. He began to slip down onto the salt; but someone held his head, compelling him to look out through the opened visor of his sallet.

Two Tanu women-one in purple, one in redactor's red and silver. Behind them, a pair of stolid male barenecks with a litter. The stiffened Firvulag corpses lay like discarded headless mannequins beside him.

"He is not wounded at all, Sister," said the farsensor. Her deep-eyed face was grim and shadowed beneath the hood of her cloak.

"It's true," the redactor confirmed. "His mind also is untouched by the Foe. He is a malingerer. A craven!"

In a panic, Raimo scrambled to his feet. The cramped muscles of his legs refused to hold him up. He fell-and then the full force of Tanu coercion flowed from both women to his torc and held him in thrall. He stood perfectly still, a statue encased in jeweled pink plates crusted with other people's blood.

"You know the penalty for cowardice, Lowlife," said the farsensor.

He had to reply, "Yes, Exalted Lady."

"Go to the place then. Go where you belong!"

He turned from them and began to trudge across the battlefield, to where the Great Retort of glass stood waiting on its high scaffold.

Seven hundred kilometers to the west, the body of a young plesiosaur lay stranded on the rocks of the Alboran Volcano.

It had been hunting tunny-fish in the Atlantic, oblivious to any danger. And the tunnies themselves were chasing flying squid, and the squid in their turn had pursued a shoal of silver sardines that had been browsing upon the microscopic organisms of pelagic plankton. The unexpected current had seized them all, large creatures and small, and sucked them into the Gibraltar rift.

For a hellish quarter of an hour they had been buffeted and churned and then they were flung over the incredible waterfall. The young plesiosaur's graceful neck snapped as it impacted into the foaming pother of the new Mediterranean Sea. It died instantly. The tunnies, torn and battered against submerged rocks, succumbed not long afterward, as did the squid. Because of their small size, most of the sardines managed to traverse the falls shocked but physically unharmed. When their brains regained a measure of equanimity they attempted to go about life as usual, but the turbulent water filling the Alboran Basin was so full of silt that their tiny gills were clogged and every one of them suffocated. Of all the creatures that had been pulled through the newborn Straits of Gibraltar, only the hardy plankton survived.

The body of the plesiosaur had floated eastward until it came ashore on a slope of the Alboran Volcano that had once stood 600 meters above the floor of the adjacent dry basin. Gulls and carrion crows feasted on the carcass before the rising flood reclaimed it and set it adrift again in the misty dark.

8

IN THE RECESS BEFORE DAWN, NODONN FLEW OVER THE BATtlefield with Imidol and Kuhal and Culluket, studying the dismal results of the first round of the High Melee. The nearly full moon was setting and the stars shone dim. In keeping with their mood, the four brothers had dulled their own metapsychic illumination and rode the sky like wraiths.

Firvulag medics, firefly lanterns bobbing, were busy among the masses of dark bodies. Over in their camp was a great circle of bonfires signaling a warrior's collation in progress. The Little People were singing a loud polyphonic chant, punctuated by throbbing drums.

"I don't recall hearing that one," Imidol remarked.

"One of their fight songs," Kuhal said sourly. "The kind they sang when they used to win every other Combat back in the days when you were still clinging to Mother's skirts and learning to coerce black beetles. The song's a victory lay, actually. Let's hope it's premature."

"That they should dare to voice it at all-!" Culluket's face blazed momentarily crimson.

"We're not even behind in the banner tally," Imidol protested. "It was a shame about Velteyn, but Celadeyr of Afaliah can take over his Creator Battalion."

"What's left of it," Kuhal snarled.

The Battlemaster had offered no observation. Now he led them lower, to a large area where the scarlet-and-violet glow of Tanu agents of succor had concentrated. He said, "Velteyn was an impetuous fool to underestimate Pallol. He of all our battle-captains should have known the new mood of the Foe. And do not minimize the disaster, Youngest Brother! The ranks of the creators have been reduced by fully one-quarter of their number-and Celadeyr is not one of the Host."

Culluket was a shade too neutral.

"Well, it was your idea to have Mercy designate Vel as Second Creator. I warned you about his impaired judgmental outlook."

"And now," the truculent Kuhal appended, "our late brother of Finiah overlooks the Firvulag revels! Doubtless from empty, gold-socketed eyes."

"We have two more rounds," Imidol said, radiating confidence.

"This fiasco with the gray-torc cavalry was a fluke. We'll bounce back."

"The Skin pavilions are overflowing," Culluket warned. "I've been considering that," said Nodonn. "The most seriously wounded Tanu and human golds will have to be transferred to the healing rooms up in Redact House so that the field medics can devote their skills to patching up the battleworthy. We will undertake a second innovation as well. Culluket-you will farspeak the Lord Healer and instruct him to begin admitting the best of the fighting grays to the Skin. The wounded incompetents of our own race must resign themselves to sitting out the rest of the Combat in Muriah. We'll have no time for aging has-beens and bunglers in this war."

"Tana's teeth, Brother!" Kuhal exclaimed. "Thaggy will supernova if you go against tradition like that!" Nodonn was adamant. "Our customs can stand a little bending. We have more to worry about than the injured pride of traditionalists-or even the Kingly honor. I admit now that I made a serious mistake putting Velteyn in a position of command. I was moved by sentiment, and you saw how popular his designation was at the time."

"Celadeyr is a good leader, even if he isn't of the Host," Kuhal said. "But we've lost a sure High Table candidate in Velteyn, and we'll have to look sharp from now on... And I'm talking to you, Youngest Brother!"

Imidol blustered, "I'll take care of Leyr when the time's ripe! You just watch your own psychokinetic ass, Brother!" The eastern sky was deep violet. Venus hung over the gunmetal smoothness of the lagoon.

"This day," Nodonn told the three, "we must all take great care. The battalions will be fragmenting as the pressure of battle builds and the Firvulag Great Ones emerge to do personal combat. With so many grays and creators gone, we are even further outnumbered-but we still have the advantage in total mindpower. When you take to the field yourselves, be more prudent than our luckless brother, Velteyn. He erred in trying to gather outguild fighters to his personal banner too early by means of spectacular but foolhardy tactics. He gambled and lost. But let me remind you that there is another gambler fighting amongst our ranks... and he is playing a masterclass game for the highest possible stakes."

The four brothers talked over technicalities for some time after that, letting their steeds drift in the dawning. Down below, the Plain was being cleared rapidly. Firvulag dead were loaded into special coracles on the lagoon strand, to be immolated on the water during the return journey of the Little People to the mainland of Europe. The headless Tanu and human bodies were shrouded and stacked beneath the glass box of the Great Retort, where they would fuel the distillation of the imprisoned in the ultimate Combat offering of life and death.