"No, frankly. But why did you help me?"
"To keep you busy."
"I see." He didn't. He scooped the bullets up, put them in one pocket,
and dropped the cartridges in another. He stood up.
"There wasn't any point in letting you get nervous," Myka explained.
"You can be quite a deadly boy in action, if what I've seen and heard
about you is any indication. I didn't want you killing any of our
friends." She was smiling at him without any malice whatsoever; rather,
with a definite degree of fondness. Geoffrey did not even feel resentful
at this business of being casually managed, as though he were liable to
do something foolish.
But he scrambled up to a place beside The Barbarian in a burst of tense
movement, and looked out toward the approaching tankettes. What Myka had
just said to him, and the cryptic smile on The Barbarian's face, and a
thought of Geoffrey's own, had all fitted themselves together in his
mind.
There was no reason, really, to believe that barbarians would be hostile
to barbarians, and certainly the inland raiders could not have returned
year after year without _some_ means of handling the mountain tribes.
Friendship, or at least an alliance, would be the easiest way.
And out on the slope of the nearest hill, bearded men in homespun
clothing were rolling boulders down on the advancing tankettes.
The slope of the hill was quite steep, and the boulders were massive.
They tumbled and bounded with a speed that must have seemed terrifying
from below. Tearing great chunks out of the earth, they rumbled down on
the tankettes while the tribesmen yelled with bloodcurdling ferocity and
fired on the tankettes with impossible rapidity. With respectable
marksmanship, too. The nobles were swerving their vehicles frantically
from side to side, trying to avoid the boulders, but their ability to do
so was being destroyed by bullets that ricocheted viciously off the
canted forepeak plating. All three of them were blundering about like
cattle attacked by stinging insects. Only the lead tankette was still
under anything like intelligent control. It lurched away from three
boulders in succession, swinging on its treads and continuing to churn
its way up the hillside.
Geoffrey saw the other two tankettes struck almost simultaneously. One
took a boulder squarely between its tracks, and stopped in a shower of
rock fragments. The track cleats bit futilely at the ground. The vehicle
stalled, the boulder jammed against it. The impact did not seem to have
been particularly severe; but the entire body of the tankette had been
buckled and accordioned. Possibly only the boulder's own bulk between
the tracks had kept them from coming together like the knees of a gored
ox. It was impossible to tell where, in that crushed bulk, the turret
and its occupant might be.
The other tankette took its boulder squarely in the flank. It began to
roll over immediately, hurtling back down the hill, its driver half in
and half out of its turret at the beginning of the first roll. Tankette
and boulder came to rest together at the bottom of the hill, the stone
nosing up against the metal.
Geoffrey looked at the scene with cold fury. "That's no fitting way for
a noble to die!"
The Barbarian, who was sprawled out and watching calmly, nodded his
head. "Probably not," he said dispassionately. "But that other man's
giving a good account of himself."
The remaining tankette was almost in among the tribesmen. It had passed
the point where a rolling boulder's momentum would be great enough to do
much damage. As Geoffrey watched, the man in the turret yanked his
lanyard, and a solid shot boomed through the straggled line of bearded
men. If it had been grape or canister, it might have done a good deal of
damage. But the cannon had been loaded with Geoffrey's tankette in mind,
and the tribesmen only jeered. One of them dashed forward, under the
cannon's smoking muzzle, and jammed a wedge-shaped stone between the
left side track and the massive forward track roller. The track jammed,
broke, and whipped back in whistling fragments. The tankette slewed
around while the unharmed tribesman danced out of the way. The noble in
the turret could only watch helplessly. Apparently he had no sidearm.
Geoffrey peered at him as the tribesmen swarmed over the tankette and
dragged him out of the turret. It was Dugald, and Geoffrey's arm still
tingled from the slap that had knocked the pistol irretrievably into the
night-shadowed brush at the battlefield.
"What are they going to do to him?" he asked The Barbarian.
"Make him meet the test of fitness, I suppose."
"Fitness?"
Geoffrey did not get the answer to his question immediately. The woods
all around him were stirring, and bearded men in homespun, carrying
fantastic rifles, were casually walking toward him. The Barbarian pushed
himself up to his feet without any show of surprise.
"Howdy," he said. "Figured you were right around."
One of the tribesmen--a gaunt, incredibly tall man with a grizzled
beard--nodded. "I seen you makin' signs while you was hangin' off that
tank, before. Got a mark?"
The Barbarian extended his right arm and turned his wrist over. A faint
double scar, crossed at right angles, showed in the skin.