them and reported: “Two strong squads, one in the righthand street, one in the left. Doorways, walls, plenty of cover. Radiocoms, I think. The commanders talk at their own wrists, anyhow, and we can’t jam short-range transmissions, can we? If we have to handle long-range ones too? Other men keep coming to join them. A team just brought what I suppose must be a tripod blastgun.”
Karlsarm rephrased the information in bird language and sent messengers off, one to a chief of infantry, one to the monitors.
The latter arrived first, as proper tactics dictated. The beasts—half a dozen of them, scaled and scuted crocodilian shapes, each as big as two buffalo—were not proof against Imperial-type guns. Nothing was. And being stupid, they were inflexible; you gave them their orders and hoped you had aimed them right, because that was that. But they were hard to kill… and terrifying if you had never met them before. The blast-gunners unleashed a single ill-direCted thunderbolt and fled. About half the group barricaded themselves in a warehouse. The monitors battered down the wall, and the defenders yielded.
Meanwhile the Upwoods infantry dealt with the opposition in the other street. Knifemen could not very well rush riflemen. However, bowmen could pin them down until the monitors got around to them, after which a melee occurred, and everyone fought hand-to-hand anyway. A more elegant solution existed but doctrine stood, to hold secret weapons in reserve. The monitors were expendable, there being no way to evacuate crea: tures that long and heavy.
Karlsarm himself had already proceeded to capture the skyscraper and establish headquarters. From the top floor, he had an overview of the entire town. It made him nervous to be enclosed in lifeless plastic, and he had a couple of the big windows knocked out. Grenades were needed to break the vitryl. So his technicians manning the communication panels, a few floors down, must en—dure being caged.
A messenger blew in from the night and fluted: “The field of dragons has been taken, likewise a fortress wherein our people were captive—”
Karlsarm’s heart knocked. “Let Mistress Evagail come to me.”
Waiting, he was greatly busied. Reports, queries, suggestions, crisis; directives, answers, decisions, actions. The streets were a phosphor web, out to the icy moon-lands, but most of the buildings hulked lightless again, terror drawn back into itself. Sporadic fire flared, the brief sounds of clash drifted faintly to him. The air grew colder.
When Evagail entered, he needed an instant to disengage his mind and recognize her. They had stripped her. They had stripped off her buckskins and gold furs, swathed the supple height of her in a—shapeless prison gown; and a bandage still hid most of the ruddy-coiled hair. But then she laughed at him, eyes and mouth alive with an old joy, and he leaped across a desk to seize her.
“Did they hurt you?” he finally got the courage to ask.
“No, except for this battle wound, and it isn’t much,” she said. “They did threaten us with a… what’s the thing called?… a hypnoprobe, when we wouldn’t talk. Just as well you came when you did, loveling.”
His tone shook: “Better than well. If that horror isn’t used exactly right, it cracks apart both reason and soul.”
“You forget I have my Skill,” she said grimly.
He nodded. That was one reason why he had launched his campaign earlier than planned: not only for her sake, but for fear that the Cities would learn what she was. She might not have succeeded in escaping or in forcing her guards to slay her, ‘before the hypnoprobe vibrations took over her brain.
She should never have accompanied that raid on Falconsward Valley. It was nothing but a demonstration, a. test… militarily speaking. Emotionally, though, it had been a lashing back at an outrage committed upon the land. Evagail had insisted on practicing the combat use of her Skill; but her true reason was that she wanted to avenge the flowers. Karlsann wielded no authority to stop her. He was a friend, occasionally a lover, some day perhaps to father her children; but was not any woman as free as any man? He was the war chief of Upwoods; but was not any Mistress of a Skill necessarily independent of chiefs?
Though a failure, the attack had not been a fiasco. Going into action for the first time, and meeting a cruel surprise, the outbackers had nonetheless conducted themselves well and retreated in good order. It was sheer evil fortune that Evagail was knocked out by a grazing bullet before she had summoned her powers.
“Well, we got you here in time,” Karisarm said. “I’m glad.” Later he would make a ballad about his gladness. “How stands your enterprise?”
“We grip the place, barring a few holdouts. I don’t know if we managed to jam every outgoing message. Mistress Persa’s buzzerwave bugs could have missed a transmitter or two. And surely our folk now handling the comcenter can’t long maintain the pretense of being ordinary, undisturbed Domkirkers. No aircraft have showed thus far. Better not delay any more than we must, though. So we ought to clear out the population—and nobody’s stirred from their, miserable dens!”
“Um-m, what are you doing to call them forth?”
“An all-phones announcement.”
Evagail laughed-anew. “I can imagine that scene, love-ling! A poor, terrified family, whose idea of a wilderness trip is a picnic in Gallows Wood. Suddenly their town is occupied by hairy, skinclad savages—the same terrible people who burned the Moon Garnet camp and bushwhacked three punitive expeditions in succession and don’t pay taxes or send their children to school or support the Arulian war or do
Evagail clicked her tongue. “Did you learn nothing about civilization while you were there; Karlsarm?” she finished.
“I was too busy learning something about
“Let a more soothing image make reassuring noises for a while. Best a woman; may as well be me.” Karlsarm’s eyes widened before his head nodded agreement. “Meanwhile,” Evagail continued, you find the mayor. Have him issue the actual order to evacuate.” She looked down at her dress, grimaced, pulled it off and threw it in a corner with a violent motion. “Can’t stand that rag another heartbeat. Synthetic… dead. Which way is the telephone central?”
Karlsarm told her. Obviously she had already discovered how to use grayshifts and slideways. She departed, striding like a leontine, and he dispatched men on a search for city officialdom.
That didn’t take long. Apparently the mayor had been trying to find the enemy leader. Toms led him and another in at the point of a captured blaster. The weapon was held so carelessly that Karlsarm took it and pitched it out the window. But then, Toms was from the Trollspike region—as could be told from his breech-clout and painted skin—and had probably never seen a gun before he enlisted.
Karlsarm dismissed him and stood behind the desk, arms folded, against the dark broken pane, letting the prisoners assess him while he studied them. One looked almost comical, short, pot-bellied, red-faced and popeyed, as if the doom of his city were a personal insult. The fellow with him was more interesting, tall, yellow-haired, sharp-featured, neither his hastily donned clothes nor his bearing nor even his looks typical of any place on Freehold that Karlsarm had heard of.
“Who are you?” the little man sputtered. “What’s the meaning of this? Do you realize what you have done?”
“I expect he does,” said his companion dryly. “Permit introductions. The mayor, Honorable Rikard Uriason; myself, John Ridenour, from Terra.”
An Imperialist! Karlsarm must fight to keep face impassive and muscles relaxed. He tried to match Ridenour’s bow. “Welcome, sirs. May I ask why you, distinguished outworlder, are here?”
“I was in Domkirk to interview, ah, your people,” Ridenour said. “In the hope of getting an understanding, with the aim of eventual reconciliation. As a house guest of Mayor Uriason, I felt perhaps I could assist him—and you—to make terms.”
