The courtyard was filled with Khazaki warriors, standing silently in
the slow heavy rain. It was the darkness of early morning, and only an
occasional wan lightning flash, gleaming on spears and axes, broke the
chill gloom. Anse was aware of softly-moving supple bodies pressing
around him, of night-seeing eyes watching him with an impassive stare.
It was he and Janazik who had the plan, and who had the most experience
in warfare, and the rest looked to them for leadership. It was not
easy to stand under that cool, judging scrutiny, and Anse strode forth
into the street with a feeling of relief at the prospect of action.
As they moved toward the castle, along the narrow cobbled lanes winding
up the hills, their army grew. Warriors came loping from alleys, came
slipping out of the dark barricaded houses, seemed to rise out of
the rainy night around them. All Krakenau was abroad, it seemed, but
quietly, quietly.
And throughout the town other such forces were on the move, gathering
under the lead of anyone who could be trusted, converging on the
citadel and the rocketship it guarded.
_Tonight--victory, or destruction of the boat and a drawn battle ... or
repulsion and ultimate shattering defeat. The gods are abroad tonight._
Somewhere, faint and far through the dull washing of rain, a trumpet
blew a harsh challenge, once and again. After it came a distance-muted
shouting of voices and a clattering of swords.
"One of our bands has come across a patrol," said Janazik
unnecessarily. "Now all hell will be loose in Krakenau. Come on!"
They broke into a trot up the hill. Rounding a sharp turn in the
street, they saw a close-ranked mass of warriors with spears aloft.
Guardsmen!
The two forces let out a simultaneous yell and charged at each other
in the disorderly Khazaki fashion. It was beginning to lighten just a
little; Anse could make out enough for purposes of battle. Hai-ah--here
we go!
He smashed into a leading guard, who stabbed at him with his long pike.
The edge grazed off Anse's heavy chain mail as the Earthling chopped
out with his sword. He knocked the shaft aside and thrust in, hewing
at the Khazaki's neck. The guard intercepted the blow with his shield,
and suddenly rammed it forward. The murderous spike on its boss thudded
against the Terrestrial's broad chest and the linked rings gave under
that blow--just a little, just enough to draw blood. Anse roared and
chopped down across the other's right arm. The Khazaki howled his pain
and stumbled back.
Another was on the Earthling like a spitting cat. Swords hummed and
clashed together. Leaping and dodging, the Khazaki lashed out with a
blade like a flickering flame, and none of Anse's blows could land on
him.
The Khazaki leaped in suddenly, his edge reaching for the human's
unprotected throat. Anse parried with his sword, while his left fist
shot out like an iron cannonball. It hit the native full in the face,
with a crunch of splintering bones. The guard's head snapped back and
he fell to the blood-running street.
Janazik was fighting two at once, his sword never resting. He leaped
and danced like the shadow of a flame in the wind, and he was
laughing--laughing! Anse hewed out, and one of the foemen's heads
sprang from its neck. Janazik darted in, there was a blur of steel, and
the other guardsman toppled.
Axe and sword! Spear and dagger and flying arrows! The fight rolled
back and forth between the darkling walls of houses. It grew with time;
Volakech's patrols were drawn by the noise, loyalists crouched in
hiding heard of the attack and sped to join it. Anse and Janazik fought
side by side, human brawn and Khazaki swiftness, and the corpses were
heaped where they went.
A pike raked Anse's hand. He dropped his sword and the enemy leaped in
with drawn knife. Anse did not reach for his own dirk--no human had a
chance in a knife fight with a Khazaki--but his arms snaked out, his
hands closed on the native's waist, and he lifted the enemy up and
hurled him against another. They both went down in a crash of denting
armor and snapping bones. Anse roared his war-cry and picked up his
sword again.
* * * * *
Janazik leaped and darted and fenced, grinning as he fought,
demon-lights in his yellow eyes. A spear was hurled at him. He picked
it out of the air, one-handed, and threw it back, even as he fought
another guardsman. The rebel took advantage of it to get in under
Janazik's guard. Swifter than thought, the warrior's dagger was in his
left hand--and into the rebel's throat.
Back and forth the battle swayed, roaring, trampling, and the rain
mingled with blood between the cobblestones. Thunder of weapons,
shrieking of wounded, shouting of challenges--lightning dancing
overhead!
Suddenly it was over.
Anse looked up from his last victim and saw that the confusion no
longer snarled around him. The street was heaped with dead and wounded,
and a few individual battles were still going on. But the surviving
guardsmen were in full flight, and the victorious warriors were
shouting their triumph.
"That was a fight!" panted Janazik. He quivered with feral eagerness.
"Now on to the castle!"
"I think," said Slavatozik thoughtfully, "that this was the decisive
struggle as far as the city is concerned. Look at how many were
involved. Almost all the patrols must have come here--and now they're
beaten. We hold the city!"
"Not much good to us while Volakech is in the castle," said Anse. "He
need only sally forth with the Earth-weapons--" He leaned on his sword,
gasping great lungfuls of the cool wet air into him. "But where's
Ellen?"
"We've had heralds out shouting for her, as you suggested," said
Slavatozik. "Now that the city is in our control, she should come out.
If not--"
"--then I know how to blow up the boat," said Gonzales Alonzo bleakly.
"If we can get inside the citadel to it."
The loyalists were reassembling their forces. Warriors moved over the
scene of battle, plundering dead guardsmen, cutting the throats of
wounded enemies and badly mutilated friends. It was a small army that
was crowding around Anse's tall form.
His worried eyes probed into the dull gray light of the rainy dawn.
Of a sudden, he stiffened and peered more closely. Someone was
coming down the street, thrusting through the assembled warriors.
Someone--someone--he knew that bright bronze hair....
_Ellen._
He stood waiting, letting her come up to him, and his eyes were hungry.
She was tall and full-bodied and supple, graceful almost as a Khazaki,
and her wide-set eyes were calm and gray under a broad clear forehead
and there was a dusting of freckles over her straight nose and her
mouth was wide and strong and generous and--
"Ellen," he said wonderingly. "Ellen."
"What are you doing?" she asked. "What have you planned?"
No question of how he was, no look at the blood trickling along his
sides and splashed over his face and arms--well--"Where were you?"
he asked, and cursed himself for not being able to think of a better
greeting.
"I hid with the family of Azakhagar," she said. "I lay in their loft
when the patrolmen came searching for me. Then I heard your heralds
going through the streets, calling on me to come out in your name. So I
came."
"How did you know it wasn't a trick of Volakech's?" asked someone.
"I told the heralds to use my name and add after it--well--something
that only she and I knew," said Anse uncomfortably.
* * * * *
Janazik remained impassive, but he recalled that the phrase had been
"Dougald Anson, who once told you something on a sunny day down by
Zamanaui River." He could guess what the something had been. Well, it
seemed to happen to all Earthmen sooner or later, and it meant the end
of the old unregenerate days. He sighed, a little wistfully.
"But what did you want me for?" asked Ellen. She stood before Anse in
her short, close-fitting tunic, the raindrops glittering in her heavy
coppery hair, and he thought wryly that the question was in one sense
superfluous. But in another sense, and with time so desperately short--
"You're the only one of us who can plot a course for the rocket," he
said. "Alonzo here, or almost anyone, should be able to pilot it, but
you're the only one who can take it to the Star Ship. So that, of
course, is why Carson and Volakech were after you, and why we had to
have you too. If we can get into the citadel, capture the rocket and
get up to the Star Ship, it'll be easy to overthrow Volakech. But if he
gets there first, all Khazak couldn't win against him."
She nodded, slowly and wearily. Her gray eyes were haunted. "I wonder
if it matters who gets there," she said. "I wonder why we're fighting
and killing each other. Over who shall sit on the throne of an obscure
city-state on an insignificant planet? Over the exact disposition to
be made of one little spaceship? It isn't worth it." She looked around
at the sprawled corpses, lying on the bloody cobblestones with rain
falling in their gaping mouths, and shuddered. "It isn't worth that."
"There's more to it than that," said Janazik bleakly. "Masefield Carson
and his friend--his puppet, I think--Volakech would use the ship to
bring all the world under their rule. Then they would mold it into a
pattern suited for conquering a small empire among the neighboring
stars."
"Volakech always talked that way, before his first revolution," said
Ellen. "And Carse used to say--but that can't be right! He can't have
meant it. And even if he did--what of it? Is it worth enough for
brothers to slay each other over?"
"Yes." Janazik's voice was pitiless. "Shall the freemen of Khazak
become the regimented hordes of a tyrant? Let all this world be blown
asunder first!"
"Shall the innocent folk of the other stars become his victims?" urged
Alonzo. "Shall Khazak become a menace to the Galaxy, one which must
be destroyed--or must itself destroy? Shall there be war with--Earth
herself?"
"To Shantuzik with that," growled Anse. "These are our enemies, to be
fought and beaten. Out there is the great civilization of the Galaxy,
and they would keep us from it for generations yet, and make it in the
end our foe. And Volakech is a murderer with no right to the throne of
Krakenau. I say let's get at his liver!"
"Well--" Ellen looked away. When she turned back, there was torment in
her eyes, but her voice was low and steady: "I'm with you in whatever
you plan. But on one condition. Carse is not to be harmed."
"Not harmed!" exploded Janazik. "Why, that dirty traitor deserves--"
"He is still my brother," said Ellen. "When Volakech is beaten, he
will not be able to do any more harm, and he will see that he was
wrong." Her eyes flashed coldly. "Whoever hurts Carse will have me for
blood-enemy!"
"As you will," shrugged Anse, trying to hide the pain in his heart.
"But now.... Our plan is to storm the citadel. We can't hope to take
it, but we'll keep the garrison busy. Meanwhile a few of us break in,
get the rocket, and take it back out here, where you will have an orbit
plotted--"
"I can't make one that quickly. And who can pilot it well enough to
land it here without cracking it up?"
* * * * *
They looked at each other, and then eyes turned to Gonzales Alonzo. He
smiled mirthlessly. "I can try," he said. "But I'm only an engineer; I
never imagined I'd have to fly the thing. Chiang Ching-Wei was supposed
to be the pilot, but he's a prisoner now."
"If we smash the rocket--well, then we smash it," said Anse heavily.
"It'll mean a long and hard war against Volakech from outside, and
he'll have all the advantages of the new weapons. We may never
overthrow him before he gets another boat built. Still--we'll just have
to try."