Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 17

Blade knew that the Looter machines had made mistakes that day which they probably would not make again. Nobody else seemed to care about this. Everyone was feeling too good. After a few hours Blade gave up trying to remind them of unpleasant possibilities. It didn't matter that much for now, anyway, as long as they didn't get sloppy in keeping the guards and scouts posted.

Besides, they had done well, and it had really been a memorable victory. Six Looter machines gone-four crippled and captured in usable condition, two smashed to twisted wreckage by the errors of their own computers. Only one of the people dead, and only a few minor injuries. They had won a battle, not a war. But they had won, and winning had lowered the Looters' strength a good deal and raised the spirits of the people even more.

Blade made a quick round of the sentries and scouts on horseback. Then he dismounted, stripped, and joined those who were celebrating the victory in the lake. He heard several people wishing there was some beer. But everybody was already feeling too happy to need any.

The celebration went on for a good many hours, until night fell on the expedition's camp. Then those who had guard duty took up their posts. Those who didn't fell asleep with dreams of bigger and better victories to come.

Originally Blade planned to withdraw after the first successful encounter with the Looters. But they had been so successful that he decided on a new plan. They would stay in and around Miros and wait for the next wave of Looters to move in. Blade was sure there would be another one. If it was weak or badly commanded, the people would fight. If it was strong and well commanded, they could disperse and lay ambushes.

Some of the towers of the city were more than a quarter of a mile high, offering a magnificent view over the plain. The lake would provide water, some of the bushes bore fruit and berries, and the neighborhood seemed rich in game for the people and grass for the horses. They could sit almost in the lap of luxury and wait for the Looters to appear.

That optimistic plan left out a few things, of course. Blade mentioned some of them to Anyara.

«If they use one of the superbombs that make the flat topped clouds, they can wipe out all of us. The only way we could avoid that is to disperse so far that we could not attack effectively.»

«What about their rockets?»

«I am less afraid of those. They are powerful, I admit, and they will do a great deal of damage if we let them. But I doubt if the Looters bring very many of them from their homeland. They probably cannot afford to fire them off the way we fire arrows. If we do not give them a tempting target, I doubt that we will have much to fear from them. I have even been thinking of ways of attacking the big machines, the ones that carry the rockets and the red rays.»

«That is something you did not speak of before.»

«I did not expect that we would have any more of the smaller war machines to use against the Looters. But we do.»

Blade had discovered that the legs of the captured machines could be retracted manually by someone cranking a wheel inside the cabin. After that, all four of the captured machines could move and fly almost as well as before. Blade, however, was the only one who could fly a Looter machine.

«Their weapons do not work, Mazda, and I do not see how we are going to repair them.»

«We are not. But I do not think we will need the weapons if my plans work.»

The next day Blade spent several hours maneuvering one of the captured machines around the streets of Miros. After that, he spent the rest of the day and all of the next working with twelve particularly good fighters from the expedition. When he finished that, he told Anyara that he had plans ready for meeting any of the big Looter machines.

«But I do not know how much chance I have of coming out of that battle alive,» he added.

«When will you know that, Mazda?» said Anyara, her face pale. «It is not good to think of the death of Mazda, even in victory.»

Blade smiled grimly. «It may happen, Anyara, whether you find it pleasant to think about or not. Accept that fact. As for when we shall know if I am going to live or not-we shall know that the next time the Looters come.»

The Looters did not come during the rest of that week. The roof of the highest building in Miros was manned day and night by particularly keen-sighted fighters. They kept an endless watch over the plain, waiting for the flash and flicker of metal to break the even line of the distant horizon.

It never did.

Blade used the unexpected gift of time to start training several volunteers in the basics of piloting a Looter war machine. It was easy enough to learn, provided you weren't paralyzed by fear of the power and weapons you had at your command.

This was hard for the younger people to do. They had never controlled anything more powerful than a team of plow-horses. But some of them controlled their fear well enough to learn faster than Blade expected.

Chara turned out to be the best of these new pilots. Blade gave her the job of rescuing the watchers from the top of the tower when the fighting started. After that she would ride with him as a spare pilot for his own machine.

The days ran on into the second week. Many of the people were openly wondering if the Looters had lost their courage. Even Anyara could not help thinking out loud.

«They sent six machines against Miros, and it must seem as though they have all sailed away to another world in the sky. Those six are gone. This is not something that has ever happened to them before. Are they brave enough to try again?»

«I don't think their courage has that much to do with it,» was all Blade would say. In his own mind, he was far less certain. The empty horizon perhaps did mean that the Looters were stunned by the disappearance of the six machines, stunned and paralyzed.

It could also mean that they had finally realized a deadly enemy was lurking somewhere out there, an enemy with new skills. They might be busily making plans to send a stronger force against this enemy. Perhaps they were even making plans to come forth themselves, instead of relying on their rugged but fatally inflexible machines.

Yet Blade was sure of one thing. Sooner or later, in one way or another, the Looters would return.