"At the hour of the Dog we hit the Citadel. There'll be so much
roistering going on we'll belt-whip every mother's son into the streets
that night, and make 'em yell to cover our movements. No one'll notice
us!
"We hit the Citadel from every street. Some of us will get through. Ten
streets, ten companies, each of them a flying wedge to get inside and
kill Stal Tay. That's our first job. After that...."
Red Angus talked on, sketching in the hot sands. He did not see a
bandaged Thordad come out of a tent and stand there, watching them, and
listening. Thordad turned away after a while and went back into the
tent where he sat shivering and staring down at his hands.
Neither did Red Angus see him that night when he daggered a guard and
fled on a haml across the desert for Karr City. They found the guard
but guessed him a victim of a jealous lover for he had a reputation as
a lady's man.
The days slid into weeks, and the fires burned and metal glowed, and
the forges and the anvils never stopped. Swords and shields and spears,
daggers and clumsy electrorays were turned out for eager hands.
They broke camp in the faint mists of an early dawn. On ewe-necked
haml and on foot, by cart and by stolen jetcar, they left the base of
the Bloody Cliffs. They came into Karr City by twos and threes and hid
themselves in the taverns and in the thatch-roofed houses. The city
knew them and the city swallowed them, and the city slumbered, waiting.
In the tavern of the Spotted Stag, Red Angus paced the floor. Tandor,
an arm around his gypsy girl, was sampling a new tun of imported wine.
Moana was white-faced, pale and silent at the table.
Angus said, "I don't like it. I don't like it. I have the feel of a
wolf sniffing at the jaws of a trap."
Tandor drew his lips from the gypsy's neck long enough to say, "It's
quiet, isn't it. What more do you want?"
"That's just it. It's too quiet. There are no Citadel guards out
hunting me. No arrests for five days. No street patrols, even!"
"Good. Then let's call it off and go back to Yassinan. You'll like
Yassinan, honey." Tandor nuzzled the girl's throat, "I have a big house
there. Much wine. Better wine than this!"
Angus stared at the man through slitted eyes, reached for a goblet and
lifted it. His hand poised the goblet, about to throw. Angus swore and
buried his nose in the cup. He flung it from him, and it broke against
the wall.
* * * * *
The city stayed quiet for five days. On the morning of the Night of the
Serpent it exploded with energy. Men and women, in masks and costumes,
paraded and sang. They drank and danced and the Citadel brooded down on
them.
The day wore on. Tandor and Angus were busy, keeping some semblance of
order in their fighting crews, keeping the men from the wine-barrels,
readying them for their assignments. Tandor went stalking into the
taverns and the wine shops with heavy hands, striking out as he walked,
often upending an unfortunate into a wine-tun after knocking in its
head with the head of the man he held upside down in his hands.
Red Angus went more circumspectly, fighting off the tipsy women and
armed footpads who waxed rich in the torchlight gatherings during the
long Night of the Serpent. He rounded up his crews and found them their
weapons.
"Tonight the stars revolt!"
At the hour of the Dog ten companies of hard-eyed fighting men came out
of the shadows of the ten cobblestoned streets that led by twisting
tiers to the Citadel. They went up the curving stone stairs to the
smooth Citadel streets and started forward....
And then the Diktor struck.
The sonicbeams came first, cutting the front ranks to bloody pulp.
Disintegrator rayed into action. Men went down silently under the
lightning-swift impact of purplish lances.
It was a rout.
Here, a naked mercenary from Fayalat would flesh his blade in a few
necks as he drove in behind a wall of dead flesh. There, a warrior
from Kor might take three of Stal Tay's soldiers with him before he
touched hands with his ancestors. But the beams and the rays slew in
the darkness and the rabble was driven back.
Where Red Angus fought with an electroray cart, sweeping the ringed
nozzle of his weapon in and out of the shadows, the men of the Lower
City stood a while. They fought with the ferocity of trapped thots, for
the pits of Stal Tay yawned for them.
"Hold firm!" roared Tandor, his sword a sweeping line of gray death
where it circled and darted.
"Fall back," cried Angus. "Back to reform! They've trapped us well, the
tricky dogs."
A man with a bandaged face stood out a moment from the shadows,
pointing. He cried, "Half a hundred _oblis_ to the man who brings down
Red Angus!"
"Thordad!" shouted Angus, and he knew now the manner of his betrayal.
Thordad had seen a chance for reinstatement and had taken it. He had
seen the rabble that served Red Angus and knew the disciplined power of
the Diktor's guards. He had gone with news of Angus' plans. This trap
was the result.
Red Angus forgot the others. He sighted the electroray carefully. A
thin beam of brilliance lanced out. It touched Thordad on face and
neck. A headless corpse rolled at the guards' feet as they came forward.
Their rush caught Angus and the men with him. It swept them backward
through the streets, rolled up their flanks. It clubbed the center with
sonicbeams until men screamed in the agony of mashed legs and caved-in
chests.
Angus fought like a maddened griff. He used the electroray like a
broom, sweeping it before him. He kicked the two-wheeled cart ahead for
without the dynamo in the cart the electroray was useless.
A sudden rush of guards caught Angus in a maelstrom of cursing, howling
men.
They hit him and drove him back against the glittering metal collar of
one of the black pools, yawning grim and silent in the cobblestoned
square. They hammered him with swordblades and pounded the cart with
metal-headed axes.
Angus stumbled, fell. He came up slowly, his back to the cold metal
collar of the pool, the ringed barrel of the useless electroray still
in his hands.
_It's all over_, he told himself, staring at the swords coming for him.
_I've failed, and I'll die, and so will Moana, and Tandor, and all
the rest of this motley crew who tried to pull themselves up by their
bootstraps._
Angus clubbed with the ringed barrel and a man fell whimpering at his
feet.
"Come on!" the pirate roared. "Here's my last stand, here at the edge
of the pool! You're done with Red Angus. See how a free man dies."
Angus broke off, eyes wide.
The pool!
One of the black pools of Karr....
* * * * *
What was it Stasor had said of those pools? "The pools are nothing more
than atomic radiation--sheer energy--bottled up in vast chambers lined
with stalahasil. Ready for use at any time."
Ready for use.
With the savage fury of the barbarian, Angus slammed the ringed barrel
at the faces pressing in on him. They wanted him alive and that gave
him the precious moment he needed.
He whipped the electroray high in the air, swung it so the weighted
powercord flailed high and far over the metal rim of the pool's collar.
It dropped down and down into the black depths.
Angus pressed the stud.
A ravening stream of black mist shot from the ringed nozzle. It touched
the oncoming soldiers of the Diktor, touched them, and....
Ate them!
When the black mist faded the Diktor's soldiers faded, too. They were
gone in that desolation of yawning street and crumpled walls. Where the
black mist had touched nothing remained.
Tandor bellowed.
The star-pirates roared their glee.
Angus moved the weapon and touched the stud again. The black mist
fled outward, up one street, down another. When he was finished there
were no soldiers facing them. The streets to the Citadel lay empty,
beckoning.
They went forward in a ravening wave of fury, the fury of roused
fighting men, who had looked the eyeless sockets of Death's skull in
the face and lived. The night held no more terrors for them for their
nostrils were tasting the fragrance of victory. Other men came up from
the Lower City to join them, men who bore home-made weapons, crude
clubs and axes.
Angus caught a sweat-streaked Tandor by the arm. "This gun! The
powercord that fell in the black pool. That's what did it. It's a
weapon of the Elders. The pool feeds it, gives it power...."
"What matters that?" bellowed Tandor, shaking a new sword in his hand.
"It worked!"
"But it won't work if I can't keep the powercord inside the pool."
Tandor blinked, grunting as understanding came to him. "Huh. That's
different. Bask. Gatl. Sonal. At the double, you riff-raff. To me."
He gave orders crisply, then swung to Angus. "They'll scour the Lower
City for copper wire. We'll couple an extension to the cord so you can
take it wherever you want."
Angus nodded. "Put a file of men on either side of it. Keep them there.
Make them fight for that cord with their lives. If they fail us, we
die."
Tandor handpicked his men, big men all, with the scars of many battles
speaking their experience. The cord was slit and fitted with gleaming
copper cable-lengths, insulated, and welded tightly.
Weapon in hands, Red Angus led his rabble army up the stone-block
roadway steps, upward from the mire and filth of the Lower City, upward
to the clean white reaches of the Citadel.
The Diktor's personal guards made a sortie against them, but the black
mist swept them away. When the Hierarch sent his troops to join those
of the Diktor the mist swirled around them once, and then blew away,
leaving the Citadel gardens empty of opposition.
It was over.
They walked through the gardens, into the halls and corridors of the
Palace. Men stood weaponless, fright tightening the lines of their
faces.