He wasn’t sure
which god the other was calling upon, but complied at once.
Gil met him at
the bottom of the stairs, his knife returned to its sheath and weapon cradled
nervously. He looked at the Prince, who was grim-faced, with his sword covered
with blood, and whistled softly. “Find her?” Springbuck shook his head. “Me
either,” Gil admitted. “C’mon.”
They plunged
into the street and were off the square when the dragoons, drawn by the horn
and the submachine gun blast, charged into it from the opposite side. They ran
furiously toward the corner nearest them, from which the sergeant sprayed the
remainder of his magazine and fought a fresh one into the weapon while he ran.
A roaring came to his ears but he lacked the time to identify it. They raced
around another corner, screaming cavalrymen closing on them rapidly despite the
gunfire. Springbuck knocked Gil to one side as an arrow zipped into the rutted
dirt street. Gil spotted the archer on a nearby rooftop and stopped long enough
to shoot him.
“Listen!”
shouted the Prince. Without giving the sergeant a chance to, Springbuck dragged
him off at right angles to their previous course. They skidded to a stop as
they beheld
Lobo
bearing down on them, source of the roaring. Woods
pulled APC to a stop as Pomorski leaned over the .50 cupola and deadpanned,
“Want a good time, sailor boy?”
“Run!” Gil
bellowed, shoving Springbuck forward. He then spun and bracketed the
fast-approaching cavalry in his sight blades and emptied the full magazine,
pitching men and mounts to the ground in agony, and jumped for the track. He
got a helping hand from Olivier as Woods slewed
Lobo
broadside in the
cramped street and Pomorski and Handelman opened fire. Gil spotted the grenade
launcher on the floor of the APC, grabbed it and let fly a round at the massed
riders. He missed; the flip sights had been set for much longer range.
After seconds
of withering fire the terrified dragoons withdrew in a rout. They’d had the APC
explained to them by Ibn-al-Yed as a mere machine, but this was nothing that
they could cope with. Gil and Pomorski tried to talk coherently as Woods headed
the track back toward the castle. They’d barely left Erub when Olivier barked,
“Here they come again.”
Gil could never
figure out how anyone could convince those men to face
Lobo
again, but
evidently someone had done so. In fact, there were over a hundred men coming
breakneck after them. Without instructions, Woods veered Alpha-Nine to the
right.
“Where’s he
going?” Gil shouted.
“Don’t squawk,”
Pomorski cut in. “When you left, we set up a surprise, then came in after you.
We can shake those cowboys and then head back to the castle.”
Gil decided to
shut his mouth and let the Nine-Mob run things. They dipped into the gully with
a bone-wrenching jar and came to a stop in a spray of sand. There was a large
oak tree growing by the village side of the gully, and Pomorski jumped down and
ran to crouch behind it. “Everybody down,” he called, and they all pulled their
heads back inside the APC. Seconds later there was a deafening explosion and
Gil knew that his men had set up a claymore mine. The detonation had sent seven
hundred steel balls screaming through a sixty-degree arc. None of the pursuers
had been within the fifty meters or so wherein they would have been cut to
shreds, but many, both of the men and beasts, were wounded and possibly dead.
Gil thought about the destruction back in Erub and could feel pity only for the
horses. Those of the dragoons still able to do so fled.
Pomorski
returned. As Gil and Springbuck put dressing on their wounds, there was a good
deal of
whew
ing and quiet chatter. “You even managed to bring Junior
back with you,” Handelman laughed, but the sergeant reached over and partially
drew Bar from its sheath. It was still covered nearly to the hilt with the
rittmaster’s lifeblood, and they were all silent when they saw it.
“He does pretty
good by himself,” was the only comment Gil made. They looked at Surehand’s son
with new respect, and he in turn felt closer to them, initiated to their
peculiar brotherhood by violence, thinking that this Nine-Mob was close as
people are only in war, joined by necessity or force through laughter, tears,
death.
They went on,
rocking and swaying as the APC climbed back up in the meadow. They did not
bother to ground-guide. Before Woods had even cut the engine, Van Duyn was at
the rear hatch. He and Andre did not have to look within, though, for the
expression on Springbuck’s face as he emerged told them that Gabrielle had not
been found.
In halting
words the Prince told what had happened. The dumpy Andre looked close to crying
and Van Duyn’s mouth became a straight, bloodless gash in his face.
“I will consult
the auguries,” the magician said tiredly at last, “to see if I can perceive
whither they have taken her.”
The Prince sat
on the cobblestones, brief laughter forgotten, head buried against his knees,
despairing at his failure. The scholar just stared angrily into the night sky.
The Nine-Mob looked from one to the other.
“You’re all
very welcome,” said Gil MacDonald.
The
civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
HENRY THOREAU,
Walden
DAWN came chilly and clear with
Gil checking the ammo belt in its tray and trying to ignore Pomorski.
“Explain it
again, MacDonald,” the grenadier persisted. “Why am
I
the Lucky Pierre
who gets to bell the cat?”
Gil,
exasperated, said, “Look, if you don’t think you can do it, don’t. You’re the
fastest sprinter in the Nine-Mob and I’m the best fifty gunner, but I’ll change
off with you if you want.”
“Do it?”
snapped Pomorski, his nonvolunteer image saved here by chance for indignation.
“Do it? I could do this number with my boot in a bedpan and my butt in a cane
chair, even supposing this thingie shows. You just make sure you hit what
you’re aiming at, MacDonald, and nothing else.”
“I’m betting
this dragon or whatever doesn’t come,” Woods commented. “Nobody’s even seen it.
Primitive superstition.”
Springbuck,
seated on an interior bench studying
Lobo
and doing his best to stay out
of their way, said, “I think there will be a dragon, since Andre says there
will be. I only wish I could go with you; it’s a man’s place to fight his foes,
not watch others do it.”
Gil shook his
head. “Thanks for the offer, pal, but you’d be in our way.” He waved his arm
around the cramped track. “You see how limited we are for guest rooms. I mean,
we’d take you if you could drive or shoot or something, but from what you told
us about your stepmother and what-all, you’ll have plenty of hassling left to
do after we finish this little job and leave.”
“Hey, riddle me
this,” Olivier said. “How come we can speak to you people and you can
understand us? Why do you speak our lingo?”
Gil would have
echoed the question, but found that he couldn’t quite frame the word for his
native language, as if it wouldn’t come into focus in his mind.
The Prince
shrugged and answered, “Van Duyn says it’s the translational effect; when you
were brought here, an adaptational shift occurred. That’s all he’ll say.”
“Bet he doesn’t
know, either.”
“Mayhap not,
but you and he speak the common tongue of Coramonde as well as I—with your own,
um, personal nuances, that is.”
Van Duyn’s
voice came from outside. “Sergeant, it’s time.” He stuck his head in the rear
hatch. “Chaffinch will have been conjured by now, beyond our means to
interfere, and he’s on his way.”
“Let me
ground-guide,” Springbuck offered. “I can at least do that.”
Gil nodded. The
grass smelled fresh and sharp as
Lobo’s
foot-wide treads crushed endless
paths through the dew and Gil craned his head to watch the castle gates swing
to. They picked their spot near a stand of silver birch trees and took up
watch. Their antagonist wasn’t long in coming, with a slow, distant gale of
enormous wings. He came from the west, where Yardiff Bey had conjured him, and
they could see him well, high in the morning sun.
He was fully
the fifty feet promised and more. Gil couldn’t see how Chaffinch, even with his
impressive wingspan, could stay aloft. The dragon’s powerful claws were curled
up close to his belly and his head swung this way and that in search, some
enigmatic instinct of predation dictating his course. His armored hide shone
with many colors, green predominant, with a broad splotch of brightest crimson
along the underbelly.
“Let’s get at
it.” It was Pomorski who had spoken. His words roused them all from a
paralysis, and
Lobo
was off again, rolling forward a short distance.
Woods reached back and up with his right hand and worked the lever to lower the
rear ramp. Chaffinch noticed the movement and banked ominously toward the track
to see what strange thing it might be, though he was unworried that it might be
dangerous to him. Was he not Chaffinch?
At that moment
a figure all in white was flung out of the rear of the APC. Gauzy veils and
robes swirled as it hit the ground and lay stunned in a quivering heap.
Lobo
was instantly in motion, describing a tight circle around the body in
white, then drawing back to a position closer to the trees. Chaffinch’s baleful
eye swung to the lone form in the center of the circles left in the dew by the
track’s treads.
“Let’s hope,”
breathed Gil, “the big mother doesn’t gulp his meals without sizing them up.”
His thumb hovered nervously over the butterfly trigger of the machine gun.
The dragon
spiraled lower, regarding with reptilian glee the foolish offered sacrifice. He
didn’t particularly care whether she was a virgin or not; he had been without
mortal flesh for a tedious time now. First, he thought greedily, a bite to eat,
then the razing and ravaging of the other contemptibles in that ridiculous
withered husk of a castle.
He landed,
poised almost delicately on short, immensely strong legs and lazily approached
the still form, eyes glowing like green cinders and head weaving back and forth
hypnotically. He expanded his maw, opening his jaws wide, preparing for a
leisurely bite of his prey. Then, instantly, the cringing figure was standing,
Gabrielle’s best robes and veils flung aside with one brawny arm while the other
cocked back like a loaded catapult. Pomorski had pulled the pin from the white
phosphorus grenade he held when the monster had circled in. He’d released the
spoon, the grip safety, as he jumped to his feet. Now he let his trained body
launch the grenade with practiced accuracy, using all the seasoned muscle of
his arm and shoulder. He regretted that it couldn’t be fired from the launcher
like a fragmentation grenade, regretted it a great deal. The small canister of
the WP bulleted across the seven yards separating man and dragon, landing true
between the still-gaping jaws. Chaffinch recoiled in surprise, swallowing
reflexively at the object wedged so uncomfortably in his throat. Pomorski,
though, was not watching. The instant he’d released, he’d spun on his heel and
dashed to the right, headed for
Lobo,
feet pistoning the ground and
strides adrenalin-wide. His backup WP grenades slapped at his belt as he ran.
The monster had negotiated the bothersome thing in his craw before Pomorski had
taken eight steps. What happened next depended on the big soldier’s timing and
aim, which were accurate, and the WP grenade, which went off. Detonating, it
created 2500 degrees F. of blistering heat. The phlogiston-like substance in
Chaffinch’s fiery reservoir ignited, exploded. His neck went ramrod-stiff as
his body shook with a cataclysmic spasm. A huge spear of malodorous flame
gouted from his maw, licking out for a hundred feet. It was with this in mind
that Pomorski had cut off at right angles to the creature’s path, to avoid
being fried. It was fortunate that he was already several yards away; he felt
the heat scorch his back through his jungle fatigues but it only served to spur
his now-frenzied speed. He zigzagged, giving Gil what he hoped fervently was a
clear field of fire at the dragon in case the WP hadn’t worked.
Which it
hadn’t, not completely. Gil had hoped to see the monster blown to bits or
knocked out, but dragons have bellies like boilers, though the thing was dazed
and almost certainly injured. Chaffinch raised his head and roared dreadfully,
looking for the author of his hurt. He spied Pomorski’s pounding figure.
Chaffinch reared up, spreading his great wings and preparing to swoop after the
soldier just as the man was far enough out of the way for Gil and Handelman to
open fire. They aimed for the juncture of wing and body, bent on keeping the
creature from getting into the air. Gil watched his tracers, corrected his
elevation and was rewarded with sustained hits on the thing’s right wing.
Figuring one round of every six on the belt was a tracer, he estimated that at
least eight of the heavy rounds had slammed on target there, piercing the
gristle of the wing joint.
Then the
monster began to thrash, his other wing moving too fast to hit, his awesome
bulk coming partway off the ground. Gil and Handelman were concentrating on the
wounded pinion and shooting at the weaving head when Pomorski dove headlong
through the still-open rear ramp, just over twelve seconds after standing up to
confront Chaffinch. Woods hit the winch lever and the cable began to haul the
one-ton ramp back into position.
The dragon was
back on all four feet, his wings folded as far back as possible against his
body. In a life even longer than that of most of his kind, he had never
experienced such pain by the impudence and treachery of humans. He vowed to
cook them alive but was prevented by the damaged condition of his throat and
stomach. The bullets were still punching at his tender wing and bouncing from
his armored body as he threw himself in a rush at the metal thing menacing him.
With crocodilian speed he scuttled forward, head darting madly, an impossible
target at the end of the sinuous neck.