"You--a woman?" he asked.
"I've sent more men to Earth than you ever did," she snapped. "From
here on, Rikard and I fight together."
"Well--I hate to risk such beauty being hacked up--but far be it
from me to oppose that beauty's lightest wish," laughed the Coper.
"Remember, though--you'll be among my own troops, and they don't take
kindly to traitors."
She smiled at him. "How could anyone betray you?" she whispered.
"The oldest trick in the world," sighed Rayth, "and it still works.
Very well, take what you wish from the armor chest over there."
She and Rikard equipped themselves with weapons--a sword for her, an ax
for him--cuirasses, and helmets. By that time they could hear the sound
of marching feet. Rayth buckled on his own armor, lifted his sword in a
mocking salute to his timorous comrades, and walked out into the hall.
* * * * *
It was a strong and well-trained force, filling the corridor with hard
bodies and edged steel, pikes and axes aloft, raising a shout that
roared and boomed down the hall as Rayth appeared. He put himself in
the van, with the barbarians in the second rank behind his, and the
troop started off to battle.
Clang of booted feet slammed echoing on the metal floor, rattle and
clash of armor, grim jests tossed from lip to bearded lip. These were
the killers, the professionals without fear of man or Earth, the
trained elite which formed an army within an army and the fulcrum of
the noble power. Watching them, marching with them, Rikard felt a
sudden sick doubt within him. Untrained barbarians had toppled before
this iron weapon--
They came to the closed gate, and Rayth unlocked it and led the way
down the ramp beyond. Level after level dropped past them, deserted
now, silent and empty, but the broken roaring from below had grown,
screaming its outrage, screaming for blood.
When they emerged on a landing at the ceiling of the Temple level and
looked down twenty feet, it was to a boiling pool of humankind, gray
workers, naked slaves, velvet merchants, leather artisans, women and
children, howling and trampling until the din shook the walls and
rattled the teeth in a man's skull. The surge of white, hating faces
reached beyond vision, mouths agape, eyes red and running, animal
voices barking and clamoring. Rikard had never seen a true mob before,
and the elemental violence of it shook even his calloused soul. It did
not occur to him to regret the fact that many of these people must die.
Rayth stood for an instant stroking his beard, thinking, and then he
lifted his sword and sprang over the rail. The lines followed him,
jumping one by one, a dozen men simultaneously floating down with pikes
reaching beneath them.
They landed among the mob, hewing a clear way even as they fell, and
struck out. The crowd surged back, leaving red remnants underfoot, and
the troopers continued to leap--forward ranks pressing toward the
Temple, while the rearward lines were still jumping. Rayth's blade
whistled and butchered; his face was alight with a dark glee. Rikard
and Leda, sandwiched between others, could do nothing but add the
weight of their bodies to the mass of the troop. The pack howled and
bayed and cursed around them.
Missiles began to fly, hammers, ore-lumps, crowbars, wrenches, anvils
hurled by brawny arms. A guardsman staggered and fell, his face cracked
open. Another was seized by the cloak, dragged into a group of women,
and carved with butcher knives. A third had his pike snatched from him,
and a big smith jabbed it into the throat of a fourth before he was
killed. The crowd gave way before the ruthlessly advancing soldiers,
but it closed behind them and filled the air with noise and flying
death.
"_They killed the Chief!_"
Leda's eyes were wide and her breast rose and fell behind the binding
corselet. Her voice came dimly to Rikard under the boom and howl of raw
voices. "They hate us!"
"So they do." He smiled bleakly.
Now the Temple was before them, its high wall looming over the trample
and clamor, a thin line of its own guards holding back the rioters.
Rayth's red blade lifted anew, and his bugler wound a single harsh
note. The troop moved forward on the double.
Vaguely, Rikard heard the prince calling to the guards, "Let us
through--Mayor's order--protect you--"
"No one goes in--you bloody swine!"
The bugle screamed again and the soldiers locked ranks and charged.
Swords and pikes clanged at the gate; the sudden recoil hurled the rear
lines backward. Rikard grabbed Leda's flowing hair and pulled her ear
close to his lips and muttered swiftly, "Listen, we're with the Temple.
First chance you get, break free and go over to them--once we're
inside!"
She clasped his hand, briefly, and then the sentries were down and the
troop rushed inside.
Beyond was a long narrow darkness of corridor. Nothing stirred, nothing
spoke; they hastened through a fumbling gloom with only their footfalls
and hoarse breathing and clash of metal for company. Rikard heard
Rayth's voice, puzzled. "Where are the others? The Temple has plenty
of its own guardsmen, where are they? Has everyone fled?" Then, he
laughed. "If so, why, it makes our task all the easier. Forward!"
They burst into the great audience chamber, and it was lighted and the
Temple was waiting for them.
The young Engineers were reinforced by commoners, weapons in hand and
armored in spacesuits.
The invaders let out one roar and the forward ranks hurled spears that
bounced off metal and plastic and tough cord. From the Engineers,
arrows suddenly darkened the air, the whistling death flamed among the
soldiers and the lines sagged amidst their toppling members.
There was a press from the rear, men driven forward, and in the
instant's bawling panic only Rikard knew what it was--the Temple
guardsmen, aided perhaps by armed commoners themselves, throwing their
power out of the rooms and side passages where it had lurked, blocking
the troop's retreat and falling on it from the rear!
The line eddied and swirled about him, spears flying, arrows and hurled
throwing-axes, the ranks of Rayth buckling under pressure from both
ends. Time to get out of here, before anyone suspected that he, Rikard
of Nyrac, had led them into the trap.
He turned on the man beside him and his ax hewed low, shearing through
flesh and bone of a leg. As the screaming warrior fell, he brought
his weapon up, a backhanded blow crashing into the face beyond. The
man behind him thrust from the side; he took the spear on his cuirass
and kneed viciously. Stooping over, he undercut another of his late
companions, and Leda reached over his back to slash down the soldier
beyond.
Rikard bent his knees and leaped, soaring over the fallen, a dozen
pikes stabbing up after him. He hardly noticed the sharp bright pain
where one raked his thigh; he was through their line and Leda was with
him. They drifted down among the Engineers.
* * * * *
A big red-faced young man snarled behind his space helmet and lifted
an ax as Rikard descended. Someone else grabbed his arm. The helmets
were left propped open, and his voice could reach. "No, Shan, those are
friends!"
"Oh, sorry--I forgot." Shan swung about and spattered the brains of the
nearest trooper.
The fight was now pressed into the audience chamber; men jammed
together, slashing and hacking at arm's range--there'd soon be more
room, thought Rikard grimly, and took his place in the Engineer line.
The Temple, though, had order and plans of a sort, however relatively
untrained its fighters were, while the invaders were broken up into
knots and fragments where their discipline could not exist. The
important thing was to hit them, and keep hitting them, so they didn't
get a chance to reform.
His ax smote, clanging off metal, raking the face and the arm behind.
A blade hacked at him; he caught it on his helve and turned the blow
and hewed back. Leda was beside him, her clear war-cry raising as she
stabbed and struck; Shan the Engineer was chopping and roaring pious
mottoes on his other flank: the Temple men pushed against the roiling
soldiers, took their blows on their heavier armor, and gave them back
with murder behind. The clamor of men and metal was a roar as of
sundering worlds.
Rayth was fighting like a demon, his blade whirling and shrieking,
his voice lifted in a rallying-cry that drew his scattered followers
together. He had courage, thought Rikard above the snarl of
combat--perhaps he was a fitter chief after all. But too late now!
Ha, there went another, tumbling with his head half off his
shoulders--so, a helmet crumpled, and the skull beneath it.
Back and forth the battle raged, breaking and tearing, ruining the
chamber and the lives of men, and over it lifted the great calm disc
of Earth and the million scornful stars. Back and forth, trampling,
sundering, killing and laming, and Rikard was painted with blood and
his arms grew weary from swinging the ax.
The chamber began to clear as men fell; it was floored with corpses and
one had room to cast a spear or take a flying leap down on the head
of an enemy. The soldiers had suffered hideously, but there were many
Temple dead, ordinary guardsmen, scantily armored commoners, Engineers
with their spacesuits pierced or their helmets cloven. The fight was
breaking into knots and clusters, small whirlpools of murder swaying
back and forth over the great blood-wet space, men springing through
the air at each other. It seemed to Rikard, as he raised blurred eyes
toward holy Earth, that the disc had grown noticeably gibbous--had they
fought that long?
"Over here! Stand and fight, men of Coper!"
It was Rayth, backed into a corner above a high heap of fallen Temple
men, foremost in a grim and haggard line of troopers hurling back wave
after wave. Rikard shook his head, a sudden dark sense of destiny on
him, and moved across the floor with lifted ax.
"You," said Rayth, very softly. "You--the triple turncoat--" Suddenly
he threw back his head and laughter pulsed in his throat. "Oh, it was
lovely, man, lovely, I never thought you had that kind of brains! Shall
we play the game out?"
He stepped from his line, tossing his sword and catching it again,
kissed his hand to Leda, and fell into an alert position before Rikard.
The barbarian growled, squared off, and fell on him.
Rayth danced aside from the shrieking ax, and his blade whipped in
against Rikard's throat. The rebel rolled, barely ducking the thrust,
and Rayth grinned without much malice and sprang at him. His sword
clattered and yelled, biting the Nyracan's arms, bouncing off the
hard-held guard to sing around his opponent's ears. Rikard fell back,
grunting in surprise, and Rayth pursued him, lightfooted, leaping,
playing with him.
Scream and clangor of steel, hoarse gasps for breath, bounding human
forms in a strange and terrible grace of murder, clash and bite and
two faces staring into each other's eyes across the web of flying
metal. Rikard hewed out again and again, cleaving empty air; his
phantom enemy was somewhere else to rake him until he staggered and
splashed his blood on the floor.
Leda yelled and sprang on Rayth from behind. His sword whirled around,
caught in the guard of hers and sent it spinning free, and slewed
back to meet Rikard's charge. He retreated before the rebel's rush,
laughing, parrying blow after clumsy blow, waiting for the end.
* * * * *
It came swiftly. Rikard's bull charge forced Rayth back into a corner
where he braced himself and smiled. As the ax whirred down toward his
skull, he lifted his blade to parry it as he had done before--and the
steel broke across.
Rikard stood gasping, reeling on his feet, looking down at the body
of his foe with a numbness stealing over him. He hardly noticed the
sobbing girl who flung herself into his arms; he stood mute for a long
while and when he spoke at last it was dully.
"That wasn't right. I didn't kill him--a flaw in his blade did--it
isn't right, somehow."
The Chief Engineer came to Rikard where he stood watching the first
harsh glare of sunrise creep over the heights of Copernicus. The
barbarian leaned heavily on his woman. He had taken many hurts.
* * * * *
Laon's old face was drawn with weariness; there was no great triumph in
him. "It's over," he said. "It was a bloody, horrible business, but we
hold the entire city now, all levels; the nobles are our prisoners and
the Mayor is our puppet and the Temple is victorious. Thanks to you, my
friend."
"There is more to do," said Rikard. "The armies will hear about this,
out in the conquered provinces, and many of them, at least, won't like
it. There'll be hard fighting to hold what we have."
"Oh, yes. Though I think with some diplomacy, and with the provinces
restless at their backs, they may decide--well, we must see. And
afterward there is much more to do, generations of work--Are you with
us, Rikard?"
"I suppose so. I'll have to think about it. Nyrac should not be a mere
province, but--well--I'll think about it."
"At least," said Laon, "we can rest a little while now."
"It's over, darling, darling," whispered Leda. "The fight is over."
Rikard held her close, but he was thinking of the armies beyond the
city, and the restlessness of the conquered towns and the ruthless
will of those still free; of the long task of raising men turned into
brutes by centuries of injustice and oppression, of making them free
and fit to use their freedom, and of all the evil elements which would
be seeking to thwart that goal; of the still greater war to be fought
by quiet men. In the Temple, the war to regain the lost wisdom of the
ancients, the battle which would hammer out the long road back to Earth.
"No, Leda," he said, very softly, "it's just beginning."