Fire Time

TWENTY-THREE

Arnanak drew sword. Light flamed off the blade. “Forward!” he shouted.

A mighty sound arose as two dozen strong warriors strained against pushbars. Slowly, creaking, groaning, the bridge rocked into motion. Dust and cinders smoked from its wheels, sought eyes, ears, noses, mouths, plants. Sun and Marauder blazed ruthless in a glaring sky above a sere land. To the right, the river shone like brass. The earthworks and walls ahead loomed unreal through haze and heat-shimmer.

Yet the bridge toiled onward. Arnanak paced it at a distance. Its crew needed what heartening he could give. He and his big legionary shield would take their chances when he came within bowshot.

Pride swelled in him afresh whenever he glanced at the crude, ugly contraption. This was his thought, his doing. The engineers of the Gathering had never made anything like it; their foes had never built towns as well fortified as Port Rua. The beds of three wagons in a row carried massive timbers which jutted far enough ahead to cross the ditch. A load of stones at the rear balanced them. Behind, a bulkhead and roof warded those who shoved the huge weight along. Hardly a thing could stop it save the heaviest boulder a trebuchet might throw; and he had spent lives and his remaining captured huriers to wreck every northside bastion.

Arrows whistled from the stockade. Many bore fire, and several struck home. But it was hard to kindle balks this big, which had furthermore gotten well wetted while being rafted down from Tarhanna and afterward by bucket brigades. Arnanak dodged to and fro. Regardless of weather, the surge of muscles felt good as he played tag with the shafts.

He still failed to see Larreka’s banner. It had been gone for days, ever since the Zera inflicted that disaster at the riverside which made Arnanak order suspension of attacks other than bombardment and completion of his unfinished, untried device, no matter how much the warriors griped. Had the commandant fallen? If so, sleep well, Brother Among the Three. Yet Larreka was canny, and—

And they were at the gap!

A thunderstorm of joy broke from the massed Tassui when the bridge crashed snout against embankment. Arnanak whirled and sped back. The weary crew took out the pegs which held their shelter in place and retreated behind it. Trumpets on the walls bade archers stop uselessly shooting.

Arnanak signaled. The next engine moved, the last of those taken from Wolua’s luckless band, a ram hung on chains under a testudo shifted by full sixty-four males. Though the copper that fireproofed its roof was tarnished, he could not look straight at it beneath the suns.

“Stand ready to charge,” Arnanak told his guards. That word rolled on outward through the horde where it milled unrestful. Weapons blinked in roiling dust. Arnanak trotted clear of it for a view across the territory.

Flags wigwagged at him from afar. He laughed. “Aye, I awaited this.” The east gate had swung wide and the drawbridge come down. Again he drew brand and broke into a run. His household troops torrented after.

Gallop, gallop, gallop! Light leaped fierce off armor yonder. A detachment had left the fortress to try to catch the ram crew, slay them, and bring back their tool, before it reached the walls.

Those soldiers were not few. They expected having to cut their way to safety. When they saw the Tassui bear down on them, they changed from close order to assault array and countercharged. Loss of them would sorely weaken the garrison.

“Spread out,” Arnanak called. “Zigzag. Come at them fanwise.” However much he had drilled his crack fighters, a reminder was best. Their old wild ways lay very shallowly buried.

He spoke none too soon. Portable catapults began sending whole bundles of darts, farther than a bow could reach. Through and through the sighing death he sped. He glimpsed males who struck the ground and rolled. Some got back up, limped rearward or continued ahead; some lay still, abristle, and their blood purpled a soil baked too hard to drink it. But the smitten were few, and the time was short before the Tassui were upon the southerners.

Arnanak aimed himself and eight guards at a trio of heavy troopers in armor like his. Together they shocked upon the legionaries.

Shield bosses thrust, shield edges chopped, sword or hatchet hewed from above or around rims. Arnanak and a soldier strained, pushed, sought to find or force a gap in defense. Blows clanged on the helmet cages, thudded on backplates and greaves. Companions of his rallied around. With scant mail of their own, they could not stand before one that fully protected. But while their Overling held him engaged, they hacked and stabbed through any joint, any crack, any bareness. Erelong a pike head ripped the wight’s underbelly. He shrieked when his guts spilled out, crumpled in the heap of them, and composed himself to die. His mates, worse outnumbered, were already slain.

Arnanak spied a light trooper nearby and attacked. That fellow could have outrun him, weighted as he was, but stood fast with his squad. Arnanak hooked his shield aside and slammed sword-edge into spine.

Elsewhere, too, the skilled males of Ulu had served their end. They had broken the legionary formation, on which untrained barbarians oftenest broke themselves. Arnanak sped from the strife and winded horn. In a bellow and rattle and drum roll of footfalls, the horde came at the scattered soldiers and swamped them.

As dust settled, Arnanak saw that the testudo was across his bridge, up the slope, against the wall. He heard the ram boom. “Ohai-ah!” he roared in glory, and led his housecarls that way. They must not let a sortie cut off their sappers. They’d be under heavy fire till the stockade broke; and after that there’d be only a narrow gap, desperately defended; but the Tassui would get through. This day they would be in Port Rua.

Sixty-four years hence, we will be in Sehala.

A whine pierced the sky. Arnanak looked thither. A metal shape glided down as if out of the Demon Sun. His hearts quivered. Humans! What do they seek?

From the vessel, something gaunt streaked at the massed warriors.

In flame the hue of lightning, heaven burst open.

Hurled on high, Arnanak flew. The noise was too great to hear, it filled him, had him. was him, and every bone of him tolled. He struck ground which heaved like the sea. The feel of his burns overtook him. His soul splintered in a scream.

Yet a part held fast. It was a stone called Arnanak, and though fire seethed over it in tide after tide, at its core lived the will to be a lodestone. Across a white-hot blindness where monster winds ran, it dragged home the tattered and destroyed soul of Arnanak. After a million cycles of the Cruel Star, he was.

He drew aside from agony and raised his eyes. He lay on an earth gone ashen quiet—for he could not hear the mangled whom he saw struggle amidst the heaped dead, he could not hear a sound. From the field a cloud lifted, taller than belief and on the top spread widely out, the phantom of an enormous phoenix. The town stood unharmed, ram abandoned beneath ramparts. I must have been near the edge of the blast, dripped through him.

I will go find my sons. But his hindquarters would not stir. When he saw how spearheads and knife points of bone stuck out of the seared flesh, he knew why. He hitched himself onto hands, rowed with forefeet, dragged the dead half of him along.

“Tornak,” he tried to call, “Uvemi, Akio, Tatara, Igini,”—no, Igini died on the gentle sea, didn’t he?— “Korviak, Mitusu, Navano”—his sons who had been here in pride and honor, but he could not remember the rest of their names—“Kusarat, Usayuk, Innukrat, Alinark” —friends, wives, everybody dear all whirling together while darkness ate at the edges of awareness—but he couldn’t hear if he had any voice left.

“Humans, why?” maybe he called. “I would have been your friend, too. I would have brought you my dauri and the Thing.” Peering aloft, he was unsure if the slaughter ship hovered, as dim as his sight had grown. Nor was he sure if the corpse beside which he must stop, because he could go no further, belonged to anyone he knew. He thought in the maelstrom that it might be Tomak’s but it was too cooked for him to tell. Was he near the middle of the weaponstrike?

If he could reach that far in his weakness, then… then not everybody was slain. Belike most had lived to flee, most would return home and some outlive Fire Time. If the humans did not vengefully follow— Why should they? The humans had no need. They were almighty.

Arnanak sighed and lay down to rest. The Night came on. Too swiftly for a death dream? No. It must not. He would not let it. He was no animal that merely died, he was the Overling of Ulu.

He rose and drew blade. “Give me my honor,” he told the faceless. Light flew off the steel. It struck at the black wings which stormed around and around, rang against beaks and talons. They wailed, those winds.

Arnanak walked toward. He was on a whistling gray heath where cold blew till his sword sang with it. Claw grew there and raked at him, but he was well buskined. Packbags balanced across his back, armor secured above them, shield slung from shoulders so his hump took the weight, head high and eyes held steady, right front-left rear, left front-right rear/

The Zera had joined them, for a bridge must be forced. “What a winterful country I picked to be born in!” Larreka said, an obscenity bouncing after. “Best thing about Haelen is the ship that carries you away from it.”

“You won’t like mine any better,” Arnanak warned.

“No. I didn’t. We had to get through the world somehow.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Of course not.”

“Nor I.”

The bridge was blade-edge thin. It trembled and glimmered above that canyon where the ocean plunges roaring into hell. They who stood on it radiated dread.

“We’ll have to take them by a rush,” Arnanak decided, Larreka agreed. When they were armored, he took steel in his left hand. In that wise they two went shield by shield, warding each other.

Arnanak threw his spear. It burned in among the enemy. He and Larreka followed. Hew! They cast their foes down to the mist and querring of the waterfall, and passed over.

On the far side was a vast and tilted land, mountains athwart heaven, valleys scorched raw, silent under the suns. Its fieriness smote the bones. “Now do you understand why this has to be set free?” Arnanak asked. “But come. I know the way.”

They were all there in the hall at Ulu to bid riotous welcome, sons, comrades, loves, strength after strength embracing him. He led Larreka to the place of pride. Here the air lay cool, a little dusky though lamplight gleamed off weapons hung on the walls. That whole night, merriment rang aloud. They feasted, drank, boasted, made love, swapped stories, wrestled, played games, clamored forth songs, never grew weary, and remembered—remembered—remembered.

At dawn the males took arms again, said their last farewells, and streamed outside. Ohai-ah, what a valiant sight! Spears leaped among banners, plumes tossed, blades and axheads clanged on shields, as with a single deep shout the host hailed its two captains.

“It is the time,” Arnanak called, and, “Yai” Larreka said. Joyous, every Tassu and legionary who had ever fallen in battle followed them, upward on the windy ways to where the huge red chaos of the Rover awaited their onslaught.