The Mink he turns his blazing eyes
Up to the buttoned sky:
"This night I'll tear ye down from there
To see if gods can die!"
The gentry mass in stallioned ranks,
The priests have gone amuck;
The orbs and zanphs they now descend,
All-armed against the ruck!
--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
John staggered to his feet. "Brother! Maybe I was wrong. That was an
atomic city-buster if I ever heard one--and when the Tartarians were
over here, I did. Maybe the coal isn't so important to your damned orbs
after all." He went reeling to the open night. Revel and Nirea were
beside him now. Off to the west beneath the lurid light of the globes'
buttons rose another of the dark twin clouds.
"If they were trying to smack us, they could stand a refresher course in
pin-pointing ... let's get the thrower out here fast. Too many saucers
directly above us for comfort."
"There went another quarter of Dolfya," said Rack. "What power they
have!"
"You'll see their power come plummeting to earth if I can work the
machine," said John urgently. "Bring it out!"
The miners hauled it out, a titanic job even when men pressed tight
against men and uncounted hands lifted the great burden. John showed
them where to put it on the rock shelf. "Hoist me up on top," he
clipped. It was done. "Now watch."
Revel stared at the sky till his eyes began to ache. At last John
shouted, "I'm ready, but listen--I see a lot of torches coming up the
valley, and the men holding 'em are mounted!"
"Our rebels, likely," said Jerran.
"Send men to meet them," yelled Revel. "They might be gentry. Pickmen
and those with guns. Fast!"
"Okay, son," said John then, "watch the buttons just over us."
All heads tilted. A strange clanking came from the great box, a beam of
thick-looking purple light lanced upward from the gun-like projection on
top and fingered out toward the buttons. "Be ready," called John from
the top of the machine. "This'll nullify the diamond rays for a few
minutes, but then the things will be able to rise again. Your men must
go out and break into the buttons before the globes can get 'em up!"
Revel issued his orders quickly. The purple light had now touched a
button, which wavered from its fixed position, then as the beam caught
it fully, dropped like a flung stone. Hundreds of voices bellowed the
rebels' joy. Half a hundred miners leaped off into the night to attack
the fallen ship, which struck the earth some distance up the valley with
a shattering crash.
Already the beam, more sure now as John's hands grew confident of their
power, was flicking over other buttons. The least play of its purple
glow on the under surface of an alien ship was sufficient to send it
catapulting down. The other buttons were moving, sluggishly, then more
swiftly, coming toward the valley; and John could be heard swearing in a
strange foreign tongue as he wheeled his great gun around and around.
A ragged volley of shots broke out in the western end of the valley.
Revel jerked his head up. "They _were_ squires!" he said. "We've got to
get up there to help our men!" Rack motioned to the miners behind him
and went off into the gloom; Jerran shouted, "Some for the fallen
globes! Some have to stay to--"
Revel made a long arm, picked him up by the scruff. "Little man, are you
the Mink?"
Jerran struggled ineffectually. "No, damn it, no!"
"Then shut your mug till you're told to give orders!" Revel dropped him,
and roared out, "Two hundred men--Jerran, count 'em off as they pass
you--to the fallen buttons! Pickax the globes! Break the skull of every
zanph! The rest of you, up to the top o' this hill--spread round in a
ring that circles this ledge, and don't let a squire or enemy through!
We've got to protect John!" He turned, gripped Lady Nirea's wrist
urgently. "Have you quick eyes and hands, love?"
"Faster than most men's, save your own." Her slatey eyes glowed eerily
in the buttons' light.
"Then up you go," he said, and hoisted her up by the waist until her
hands clenched on the upper edge of John's machine. "Perhaps you can
help him. I can't spare a man yet. Luck, Lady!" He set off toward the
nearest button, tilted crazily with its rim in a cleft rock. At the
western end of the valley more shots were echoing and yells rose thin
and frightened. He wished he could be in several places at once but the
wounded ships were the place for a slayer of gods tonight.
* * * * *
The bottom projection, dark blue and some fifty feet across, had been
knocked open by the force of the fall. From the dark interior zanphs
were crawling, a veritable army of the six-legged, snake-headed beasts.
An occasional globe floated out, but moving slowly as if it were sick.
Pickmen were axing them out of the air with yells of glee, as the zanphs
milled, then spread out to attack.
He swept his weapon in a long looping arc that tore the head off one and
maimed another as it leaped toward him. It was the first blow in a
personal battle that seemed to last forever. When one batch of zanphs
and globes had been disposed of, another lay a few yards further on,
coming out of another ship and another and another, some ravening to
kill, some weak and sick, desiring only to escape. After the ninth
"saucer" as John called it, Revel gave up counting, and slew his way
from button to button, gore of red and yellow spotting and splashing
him, wounds multiplying in his legs and arms and chest, half the hair
burnt off his head by the energy auras of angry orbs.
His force dwindled. Men died with throats torn out by zanphs, with eyes
singed from the sockets by globe-radiation. Men stood numbed and
useless, hypnotized into immobility. Men sat looking at spilling guts
that fell from zanph-slashed bellies. But still the Mink slew on and on,
a tall dark wild figure in the uncanny light of the still-flying
airships of the alien globes....
John was bringing them down faster than ever, and Revel must needs split
up his small force even more, sending miners to each wreck to catch as
many entities as possible. Many spheres of gold managed to rise into the
sky, where they found sanctuary in other saucers: some zanphs went
scooting for shelter in the rocks and bushes, but most stayed to fight
and die.
He yearned to check his forces back on the hill, those protecting John's
machine, and the men who still fought the gunmen in the upper end of the
valley. But he dared not take his encouraging presence from the miners
here. A button came swooping to earth not three yards from him, spraying
him with clods of dirt, unbalancing him by the shock; a zanph gained
purchase on his shoulder and tore flesh and sinew and muscle so that his
left arm lost much of its strength and cunning. He killed it with the
pick handle and struggled on into a mob of the brutes, panting now and
blinking blood from his eyes.
Of his original two hundred, less than seventy remained. Still he dared
not draw any from the protective ring. Where were the rebels that Vorl
and Sesker and the others had gone to rouse? Probably raiding mansions
miles away. He should have told them ... oh, well. Surely the
concentration of noise and buttons and gods above the valley would bring
them soon.
A moment's respite allowed him to look at the sky. It was lightening a
little for the early dawn, and the buttons were less bold; most of them
hovered near the horizon, only an occasional one bravely sailing in at a
terrific speed to make a try at bombing the valley. John, perhaps with
Nirea helping him, had managed to bring down every one so far. But John
and Revel would run out of luck some time, as every man does; then John
would miss, Revel's arm would fail, and they would all die.
* * * * *
Even as he lowered his head a gargantuan blast shook the world below
him. He fell into a mob of zanphs, who were fortunately so demoralized
by the explosion that they ignored him till he could gain his feet and
begin to murder them once more. From the tail of his eye he saw a
mushroom cloud lowering just beyond the hill; he flicked his gaze
at the crest where his men had been stationed to guard the
_antiforcescreenthrower_--no human form showed against the gray sky. The
blast had hurled them to dust, together with every tree on the skyline.
Finally--the gods knew how long he had fought--he found with amazement
that no more foes were in sight. The buttons that had fallen were all
cleaned out. Zanphs lay thick in heaps and lines, emptied sacks of
globes dotted the bloody grass. He listened for the sound of firing from
the upper valley; yes, there were still isolated shots.
His forces there still held, then. He glanced again at the sky. No
buttons in range. They were giving John a respite--or was it a trick?
Revel's tired mind wondered if John and Nirea were dead, and the gods
playing with him this way....
He felt himself, his head, arms, chest, legs. He had been burned a dozen
times by energy auras, only his incredible animal quickness preserving
him, giving him the power to dodge away at first touch of the burning
and slay the golden globes. The zanph bites atop the thorn scratches and
hound gashes were rapidly stiffening his whole torso, his left arm, his
thick-thewed legs. But there were shots in the upper valley, and Revel
the Mink was needed there.
Wearily he gathered his men--twenty-six of them now, all as tired as
he--and trudged at a broken shuffling lope toward the light.
As he passed the rocks where the machine of John sat, he scanned it with
blood-shot eyes. A score of miners, perhaps thirty at most, stood around
it, and the man of the Ancient Kingdom sat on its surface, wiping his
face with a white cloth. Lady Nirea stood up beside him and waved her
hand as he passed. He swung his pick in a big arc to show he was still
hale and hearty, though the effort cost him much.
Through his dulled brain now ran one thought, one hope. It was a chant,
a prayer, a focus for his beaten spirit, for though he had won thus far,
he was so death-weary that he could not conceive victory coming to him
at the last.
_Just let me meet Ewyo. Only let me meet Ewyo without his horse. Give me
now one fair fight with Ewyo the Squire of Dolfya._
The first man he met was Rack, engaged in binding up a torn calf with
strips of his shirt.
"How goes it?"
Rack turned the walleye toward him, as though he could see out of it.
"We have eight or ten left. All their horses are dead or run away. We
stayed them in hand-to-hand combat, but when they drew back and began to
use their guns long-range, we lost heavily. Now we're dug in along that
rise, and they seem to be waiting for more squires, or horses, or
something. I think they have twenty or thirty left."
"Then we have thirty-five or so, and outnumbered them."
Rack let his good eye rest on his brother. "Your voice is the croak of a
dying frog, Revel. You must have lost a quart of blood. Your men are
like sticks and sacks and limp rag bundles. You call this force
thirty-five _men_?"
"We are still men, Rack." His voice, croak though it was, rang strong
and fierce. "I can plant this pick in any gnat's eye I desire. Now do
you lead us to the battle front."
"Yes, Mink." Rack turned and hobbled forward. "One of the slugs has
sliced half the tendons of this leg, I swear."
"That wound is in the fleshy part, and won't trouble you for a week. Is
that a man?"
"That's Dawvys."
* * * * *
Revel started back, appalled. The man lying behind the rise was red and
brown from short-cropped hair to waist, his back a mass of
blood--sparkling crimson in the light of dawn, where it had freshly
sprung leaks, and dirty mahogany color, where the scabs had dried and
cracked and flaked. It was a back that should have belonged to a dead
man; but Dawvys rolled over on it without a wince and grinned at his
leader.
"Hallo, Revel, bless your soul," said the former servant. "I'm glad to
see you alive."
"The same to you, Dawvys," said the Mink. "Did you have any trouble in
that pit?"
"I went to sleep when the hounds had passed, and never awoke till your
men found me tonight." He stretched and grunted with pain; then, "I
think I shall live."
Revel looked cautiously over the rise. Some fifty yards down the valley
the squires were grouped in a knot, their costumes gaudy in the early
light. A few of them were looking toward him, but most watched the far
end of the valley. They were looking, thought Revel, for reinforcements.
Time might be short.
He scanned the terrain. Where the squires stood, the valley was narrow,
scarcely more than sixty feet across. Above their knot, to Revel's left,
was the open mouth of a mine; the opposite hillside was bare and rocky,
without break. A familiar voice behind him said, "What's to do, Mink?"
"Greetings, Jerran. Why did you leave the machine?"
"Nothing doing there. The gods are sitting on the horizon. Have you a
thought?"
"See that mine?" He pointed with his gory pick. "Isn't that the western
entrance of the great mine of Rosk?"
Jerran took his bearings. "It is."
"Then the other entrance is back yonder, and through it we can traverse
the mine and come out that hole-above the squires."
Jerran nodded. "The best plan under the circumstances. Let's go."
Rack said, "I come too."
"Yes, all of us save four men," agreed Revel. "They must stay here to
create noise and pretend to be forty people. Give us ten minutes, and
the squires will find that mine shaft erupting death all over them!"