"We can bargain with the Darksiders. They may yet give us terms."
Flane took him by the arm and led him to the port window. They had
an unobstructed view of the plains from there. They saw the shaggy
_megathons_ racing with their bellies to the ground while their riders
shook pennoned lances over their heads, charging. A sword blade glowed
red in the sun, lifted into the air. A thundering of hooves rocked the
ground. Voices bellowed, roared their hate.
"Those are no warriors to give quarter. Not after what we have done to
their leaders and their engines of war!" Flane rasped.
He hit Harth across the chest with the back of his hand.
"Man, man! You bear weapons. Do you know how to use them?"
Harth nodded sullenly, watching the Darksiders come nearer and nearer.
He showed his teeth in a mirthless grin.
"They think us easy meat," Harth said softly. His eyes began to burn.
"We could find a cave somewhere in those mountains," Flane went on,
his eyes keen on Harth's face. "We could make a stand there. It could
be so costly that the Darksiders might leave us, so as not to miss the
_mekniks_."
Harth turned to him with a chuckle. "You are a sly dog, Flane. You
persuade a man that his death is a marvelous thing. Ah, well. You may
be right. We'll do as you say, as usual. I see no other course."
Flane leaped from the cabin, sped along the tilting deck on the
starboard side, half-running on the wall of the cabin. He shouted the
men out of their battle stations, swept them up in the whirl of his own
enthusiasm.
"Overboard with everything movable! Heave it over. Retain only food
and weapons. Everything else goes. We've got to get the ship up that
mountain!"
Aevlyn ran to him, to be near him, and to spur on the men with her
presence. She put soft white hands to lamps and cushions, carrying them
to the rail and casting them. Chairs and tables were borne by the men
who formed quick-moving lines at Flane's directions. Soon the cabins
lay stripped and bare, except for the men who clustered in them,
polishing and sharpening swords and lances.
Flane went with Aevlyn to the prow of the magniship, hearing Harth
bellow orders to the helmsman.
Inch by inch the crippled vessel went up. Scraping past the tops of
trees, grating its keel on a jagged lip of rock, it mounted steadily.
The trees fell away below, yielding place to massive rocks that lay
piled and scattered on one another like sleeping kittens. Like giants
slain and scattered in battle lay the boulders.
"There!" shouted Flane, pointing.
* * * * *
A bare space towered above the tossed rocks, flat on top and jagged
at the sides. A steep path rose sharply to the level of the empty
mesa, up which three men could walk abreast. It was the only means of
entrance to the fortress of stone, for behind it, as though sheared
by a gigantic sword, the cliff was cut away. Behind the mesa dropping
thousands of feet straight down, a gorge was sliced into the mountain.
"We could hold that mesa forever," Flane grinned, "given enough food
and water. Only three men can come at us at once. There is no way of
retreat, except by falling to our deaths in the gorge."
Even Harth grunted, "It isn't so bad. A man could die a good death
there, with his weapons red with his enemy's blood. As we all probably
will."
Flane sighed, "If only we could get word to the Klarnva in Moornal and
Yeelya! Then our stand here would be worth while. It would give the
cities time to unite, to put an army in the field."
Aevlyn was buckling on a cape fitted with cabin-mail at breast and
shoulder. She said suddenly, "One man might make Moornal in the
magniship. He could spread word."
"You!" said Flane and Harth in one breath, but Aevlyn came close to
Flane and shook her red mop of hair.
"No. I stay with Flane. I will never be separated from him again. Send
another. I will not go."
Flane cajoled and begged and finally commanded, but Aevlyn bubbled
laughter between her full red lips, and patted his hands. Her fiery
hair swirled as she shook her head, brown eyes a-dance.
"I stay with you, Flane, come death or life! Now stop, for time grows
short. Pick another who knows the ship and let him go."
Harth and Flane shrugged at each other and selected a man whose arm
had been broken by a catapult stone. They gave him food and drink, and
fastened him to the helm of the ship, but his weapons they took from
him. He could not use them, and there were men who would be desperately
in need of extra weapons soon.
"All Klarn rides your ship," Flane told him. "Summon the men of Yeelya,
too. You will not be in time to rescue us, but you may bring the threat
of the Darksiders to a sorry finish."
One after the other they dropped from the ship as it skimmed the mesa.
Swords in one hand and violet-gun in the other, Flane landed cat-like
and was up, racing toward the sloping adit to the level rock. A few of
the Darksiders could be seen in the distance, coming up over a ridge,
pointing lances toward them, shouting.
Aevlyn stood with hands clasped to her breasts, staring after the
drifting ship as it dipped into the gorge. It bounced a little as an
air current caught at it, then slipped along the channel between the
cliffs that an ancient river had eaten away in the solid rock.
"May the All-High have him ever in His sight," she whispered.
An arrow whined past her. She turned, seeing Flane at the approach to
the mesa, deflecting them, one after another, with the glittering sword
in his hand. Now the Darksiders were howling up the slope, racing on
foot, leaping from _megathon_ to stone, waving swords and axes.
Flane met them, grinning. His steel slipped and slithered past their
guards, drinking deep in chests and thighs.
The leading Darksiders would have fallen back, but now the horde was on
them, and a swirling maelstrom of battle-maddened men drove in low for
the kill. Only three of them could come at once up that slope, but they
came on in a steady wave that climbed over the bodies of the fallen,
throwing spears, slashing down and upwards with sword and battle-axe.
Flane fought until the breath whistled in his throat, until his arms
were scarred with wounds, and ran red blood. Someone yanked on him,
pulled him from the press, and he stood sobbing for air as Aevlyn
dabbed a dry cloth at his cuts. When she offered him white wine in a
copper flagon, he drank deep; with the back of his hand he dried his
mouth and grinned at her.
"It will be night presently," she whispered. "Then the men will have a
rest."
"So soon?" questioned Flane blankly, looking at the sun.
"You fought for hours there," Aevlyn smiled, kneeling to ease a dying
man's pains. "Some grumbled that you sought all the glory for yourself."
Flane chuckled, looking out at the tribes that hemmed them in, building
camps and fires, and erecting _kaatra_-hide tents. He whispered
savagely, "Glory enough for all at this fight." He shook his head, and
his green eyes narrowed. "There are many of them," he said slowly. "Too
many."
He lifted the violet-gun and carried it to a jagged edge of rock;
rested it in a crotch of stone, leaning cheek against the wooden stock.
He smiled mirthlessly to himself, thinking: I will reduce some of that
number, now. His finger pressed the button of the gun and a lavender
flame swept from the muzzle toward the assembled horde. Bolt after
bolt he fired, carefully, until the ullulating wail of the stricken
Darksiders reverberated from the cliffs.
The violet-gun clicked and made odd sounds.
* * * * *
Flane stared at it, wondering. The thought that it might need fuel to
work never occurred to him. He looked on the gun as supernatural, and
anything as mundane as ammunition for it was as foreign to his mind as
the stars.
There might be one more blast left, he reasoned, and gave it to Aevlyn.
It was dark now, and the three moons of Klarn swam slowly into the sky.
Red fires dotted the stone plateau before the mesa, where Darksiders
squatted or sat, eating. On the mesa, men hastily bolted food and ran
back to the entrance, drying their weapons. There was no concerted
night attack; there was worse, for soon the arrows began to arch among
them. Biting into leg and arm and chest, at random, the steel-tipped
shafts scattered the men, which sword and axe could not do. Soon they
were all huddled behind the uplifting rocks at the mesa-edge, where the
shafts could not follow.
A surprise attack caught a faceful of defending blades, and broke away,
as a wave from the seawall.
Dawn found the men of Moornal bloody and weary, but the hot sunlight
drove new strength into hack-weary arms and they met each new attack
with cries of scorn and defiance. Flane was everywhere: standing for
long hours in the pass, his sword singing; encouraging his men by the
magical slaughter of his blade, slapping them on backs, encouraging,
cajoling, commanding....
All day and all night they made their stand. Baked by the day and
frozen by the night, they grew gaunt and haggard, as lean as hunting
wolves, and as dangerous. Men did not talk on the mesa now. They lifted
lips in silent snarls. They cast dark glances from under lowering
brows. Their hands grew used to the hilt of sword and the haft of
lance. Some could scarcely unbend their fingers long enough to eat.
Of the lot, Flane looked most wolfish. His black hair drooped untended,
loose on his shoulders. His uniform was cut and torn, disclosing
blooded skin, brown flesh ripped by axe and sword-edge. But his muscles
still rolled as before, and the blade in his hand was a portal to
beyond for any who came face to point with it.
Aevlyn slept close to him during the night, tending the wounds received
during the day. Under hot sunlight she was always at his call, with
water and with cheer, for the men who were most in need of either.
On the next day, the Darksiders withdrew in order, going down the ramp
and assembling on the flat plateau. Flane leaned on his sword and
stared out over their heads, at a horseman who spurred his mount across
the tumbled rocks, lifting him in a jump.
"A _meknik_," Flane rasped, spitting. "Now the All-High must indeed be
smiling, for the fates could have no worse in store for us. They have
come to join the Darksiders."
A man, naked to the waist and bearing a broken lance in his hand as a
stabbing spear, laughed gutturally, "Good! I've wanted to take a few
of them with me when I went."
Flane smiled mirthlessly, "You'll have your wish, if the water holds
out."
He looked around, biting his lips. The axes and swords and arrows of
the Darksiders had been busy. Of the original forty who dropped to the
mesa, there were but six who stood erect; and of them, one was a woman.
Harth lay shorn from shoulder to navel on the rocks below. He had met
his hero's death. All of them were wounded. Even Aevlyn had a red rag
wrapped about an arm. Flane breathed harshly.
They had made a stand, they had!
_Aie!_ Let the harpers tell of this battle!
* * * * *
Flane glanced at his blade. It was chined and nicked, and hung by a
needle of steel to the hilt. Laughing shortly, he tapped it against a
lip of rock and watched it drop onto the stones below. He went and drew
the blue-hilted sword from the ornate scabbard and shook it in the air.
"By the dead hand that held you, you'll quench your thirst this day,
you blue beauty!" he howled.
The _mekniks_ were pouring onto the rocky plain now, and the Darksiders
greeted them with cries of delight. Beside Flane, Aevlyn said bitterly,
"Thousands more against us!"