“Then we’ll give them some action they can understand,” Narth snapped, his face flushing with irritation. “We’ll drag them out by their heels!”
The Gerns advanced purposefully, three of them holstering their blasters to make their chains ready. When they had passed under the canopy and could not be seen from the ship Humbolt spoke:
“All right, Jimmy.”
The Gerns froze in midstride, suspicion flashing across their faces.
“Look up on the roof,” he said in Gern.
They looked, and the suspicion became gaping dismay.
“You can be our prisoners or you can be corpses,” he said. “We don’t care which.”
The urgent hiss of Narth’s command broke their indecision:
“Kill them!”
Six of them tried to obey, bringing up their blasters in movements that seemed curiously heavy and slow, as though the gravity of Ragnarok had turned their arms to wood. Three of them almost lifted their blasters high enough to fire at the steps in front of them before arrows went through their throats. The other three did not get that far.
Narth and the remaining six went rigidly motionless and he said to them:
“Drop your blasters—quick!”
Their blasters thumped to the ground and Jimmy Stevens and his bowmen slid off the roof. Within a minute the Gerns were bound with their own chains, but for the officer, and the blasters were in the hands of the Ragnarok men.
Jimmy looked down the row of Gerns and shook his head. “So these are Gerns?” he said.
“It was like trapping a band of woods goats.”
“Young ones,” Schroeder amended. “And almost as dangerous.”
Narth’s face flushed at the words and his eyes went to the ship. The sight of it seemed to restore his courage and his lips drew back in a snarl.
“You fools—you stupid, megalomaniac dung-heaps—do you think you can kill Gerns and live to boast about it?”
“Keep quiet,” Humbolt ordered, studying him with curiosity. Narth, like all the Gerns, was different from what they had expected. It was true the Gerns had strode into their town with an attempt at arrogance but they were harmless in appearance, soft of face and belly, and the snarling of the red-faced Narth was like the bluster of a cornered scavenger-rodent.
“I promise you this,” Narth was saying viciously, “if you don’t release us and return our weapons this instant I’ll personally oversee the extermination of you and every savage in this village with the most painful death science can contrive and I’ll—”
Humbolt reached out his hand and flicked Narth under the chin. Narth’s teeth cracked loudly together and his face twisted with the pain of a bitten tongue.
“Tie him up, Jess,” he said to the man near him. “If he opens his mouth again, shove your foot in it.”
He spoke to Schroeder. “We’ll keep three of the blasters and send two to each of the other front groups. Have that done.”
Dusk was deepening into darkness and he called Chiara again. “They’ll turn on their searchlights any minute and make the town as light as day,” he said. “If you can keep them blacked out until some of us have reached the ship, I think we’ll have won.”
“They’ll be kept blacked out,” Chiara said. “With some flint-headed arrows left over for the Gerns.”
He called Lake and Craig, to be told they were ready and waiting.
“But we’re having hell keeping the unicorns quiet,” Craig said. “They want to get to killing something.”
