say was happening. How that information, that I was a Krozair, had shattered Susheeng! Genal and Pugnarses had little conception; I was still Stylor to them. And I was still their military commander. I ordered the Prophet to be found.
He came up, his beard as defiant as ever. Holly, Pugnarses, Genal, and Bolan gathered at the head of slaves and workers from all over the warrens. I climbed onto the roof of our hovel to harangue them. What I said was a long series of cliches about liberty, freedom, what we had planned, vengeance for our dead. I roused them. I pointed out that from our barricaded warrens we stood a chance of defeating the mailed men.
In the uproar and the driven dust, a furry form glided to the front, leaped up beside me. Sheemiff, the girl Fristle, screamed for attention. When some quiet returned, she shouted:
“We must fight, or we must die. If we die without fighting, what better off are we if we die having tried and struggled to win? This man Stylor, he is a great Jikai — follow him! Fight!”
“My comrades!” I shouted. “We will fight. And we can win by using the weapons we have made and trained ourselves to use. We will fight — and we will win!”
After that there followed all the bustle and hectic activity attending the preparations for a siege as we dragged our clumsy barricades across the mouths of alleys, set our rope and spike traps, brought out the pikes and the shields, the crossbows and the sheaves of bolts. Finally, like a field of daffodils opening all together in the yellow sun of my old Earth, we donned our yellow-painted vosk-helmets. Then, accoutered, ready to fight and die, we took our posts.
Other leaders were appointed to take command of the groups. We four — Bolan, Pugnarses, Genal, and I — would each take a point of the compass, north, south, east, and west, and hold it. We swore to hold until death. We gripped hands, and went to our posts.
I looked up into the sky and saw a white dove circling up there. I swallowed down a knot in my throat. The Savanti, then, had not forgotten me. It had been a long time.
The mailed men, the overlords of Magdag, rode out to crush the slave revolt. With them marched their half- human, half-beast mercenaries: Fristles, Ochs, Rapas, Chuliks, all bent on our destruction. I placed Holly in command of the sextets of steel-bowed crossbowmen. The shields were raised, carried by lads whose task it was to shield our men from the shafts of the foe. The pike phalanxes waited, ready to thrust out on my command. I intended to leave the Prophet to handle a great deal of my post, that facing away from the city, for I wished to be everywhere the attack was most hotly pressed. Pugnarses had insisted on taking the post facing the city of Magdag. He licked his lips. Though he wore a long sword scabbarded to his hip, he carried a halberd.
We had all snatched time for a little sleep, but a sailor’s life had inured me to working through long periods of sleeplessness. The last of the youngsters, boys and girls both, returned from scattering the caltrops in the spaces before the alley openings into the warrens. Various ugly chevaux-de-frise had likewise been fixed across openings. Horses would not face them and I did not think the sectrixes would, either. I would not have dreamed of lifting a zorca against them, and I would have thought twice of the ability of a vove to surmount them. Behind our crude but, I hoped, effective barricades, our weapons in our hands, our eyes bright, and our breaths hard and short, we awaited the onslaught from the mailed men, the overlords of Magdag.
A little wind lifted the dust. Birds were singing with incongruously cheerful notes into the early air, and a gyp — a brown and white spotted gyp, I recall, very like a Dalmatian — lolloped yelping and alone between the caltrops.
The overlords, confident in their muscle, might, and habitual authority in riding down at will the workers and slaves, attacked firmly and in strength and directly. They knew we had made weapons for ourselves, for Genal, not without the agony of remorse burning him, told me he had shown them an example of a halberd and a glaive. Getting a pike and a crossbow out of the warrens and into the palace had not been possible, for obvious reasons. I sensed that Genal, if not Pugnarses, had regretted his weak decision to betray us for love of a girl at a very early stage. Pugnarses — and I believe he could not rid himself of the sight of Rophren dying on the stairs — remained sullen and hating and determined to prove himself what he truly was: a worker, never an overlord.
That first furious onslaught when the overlords tried to charge into the warrens in their usual fashion foundered on the cruel iron spikes of the caltrops and the chevaux-de-frise. The mailed cavalry drew off, surprised but undaunted, and the half-human mercenaries ran forward to remove the obstructions covered by a brisk barrage of arrows. Looking down from our barricade I could see the quick movements of the Ochs and the Rapas. Chuliks, of course, would be reserved for more positive and noble kinds of fighting. Pugnarses stood next to me. He looked haggard, lean, and wolfish. He said: “Shall we shoot them down?”
An arrow sailed past our heads, to carom from the upraised shield of a young armor-bearer. I looked at him and, instinctively, he straightened up from his flinch and his jaw set stubbornly.
“No. I want to reserve the bows for the overlords.”
“Hah!” said Pugnarses. He looked extraordinarily mean.
When a lane had been cleared through the caltrops the mailed might charged again. They came straight for us in a great thundering roll of mail and upraised swords. I lifted my own long sword, the one I had retrieved from the straw of my bed, the long sword that was the gift of Mayfwy. I slashed it down. At once the shooters of the crossbows discharged their bolts. With a smooth and practiced flow of action the shooters handed the discharged bow to the hander, took a freshly-loaded bow, and let fly with that. Behind the shooter his loaders and spanners worked like maniacs to maintain the rate of discharge I demanded. Bolts whickered through the hot air. Mailed men reared back in their saddles. Quarrels struck through their mail, pierced their mounts, lanced into their faces. A shrill screaming arose. The mailed charge lashed in confusion, like a sea running all crisscross on a rocky coast. And all the time the crossbows twanged and clanged and scattered their death upon the overlords of Magdag.
The overlords had never experienced this before. They reeled back. Their sectrixes galloped away. Dismounted men ran after their comrades and my marksmen shot them down without mercy, for we expected none.
Six times they charged.
Six times we cut them to pieces.
Because there was nowhere near enough mail to equip all my men, I disdained it. Also, I felt a savage affection for people and places and things long past. So I wore a scarlet breechclout strapped around with the leather belt from which swung the long sword. I fancied old Great Aunt Shusha would have smiled could she see me in that moment on the barricades of the warrens. And Maspero, too — for this was a pale replica of the Savanti hunting leathers I had grown to know so well. On my head I wore a yellow-painted vosk skull, like my men, for there were vosk skulls to spare. On the seventh charge, just as it was falling back in confusion, an uproar began over on the flank of the warrens fronting the river. Here Genal commanded. And here the overlords while keeping us in play with their own mailed cavalry had sent in the Chuliks. Those savage and prideful warriors with their yellow skins and their uprearing tusks had fought through the arrow storm and were now at hand-strokes all along the barricades linking the alley mouths. I had known, given the extent of the warrens, that complete defense at every point would be well-nigh impossible, but the Chuliks had stormed through more rapidly than I liked.
With a shout of good cheer to Pugnarses I hurried off toward the river flank. The Chuliks met me in a plaza, scattering before them a spray of running slaves who dropped their weapons the better to run.
Everything happened very fast, as is the way during moments of crisis. I shouted to Holly as her crossbows fanned out.
“Fast and accurately, Holly!”
She nodded. Her breast heaved beneath the gray tunic with its mailed coat beneath — a hauberk I had insisted she wear — and the yellow and black badges flashed bravely. She rattled out her orders; the sextets formed, like a series of wedges, and then they went into action. I watched, filled with suspense, for this was a severe trial for my bowmen.
“May Zair shine on you now!” said I. “Shoot straight!”
Over the open plaza the Chuliks, strong and agile, should have reached the slave and worker bowmen with ease. But, for a reason those in command could not at first understand, the Chuliks were falling, lying in heaps and droves across the dust and the bloodied mud. Those that did pass through the arrow storm were met by the halberdiers and the swordsmen of the support groups, protecting the bows. We shot and shot. The Chuliks hesitated; they turned — Holly shouted: “Up, all!
And every sextet let fly with six bolts.
The Chuliks were never a force in the battle after that.
