“No! Run parallel! I want to be seen.”
“Okay, okay.” Soft sounds of death whispered down. Johanna kept one hand on his shoulder as they ran across the field. She felt Scarbutt falter. The arrow had caught him in the thick of his shoulder, centimeters from a tympanum. “I’m okay! Stay down, stay down.”
The front line of Woodcarver’s force was rallying toward them now, a dozen packs racing across the terrace. Pilgrim bounced up and down, shouting with a voice that punched like physical force. Something about staying back, and danger from the sky. It didn’t stop their advance. “They want you away from the arrows.”
And suddenly they noticed that the fire from the castle had stopped. Pilgrim scanned the sky, “It’s back! Coming from the east, maybe a kilometer out.”
She looked in the direction he was pointing. It was a lumpy thing, probably space-based though it had no ultradrive spines. It bobbled and staggered. There was no sign of jets. Some kind of agrav? Nonhumans? The thoughts skittered through her mind, alongside the joy.
Pale light flickered from a mast on its belly and dirt geysered around the troops who were racing to protect her. Again the stuttering thunder, only now the light was marching right across her friends toward her.
Amdijefri was on the battlements. Steel hid his glares from the two. There simply was no help for it; Ravna had demanded Jefri be by the radio to guide the strike. The human was not completely stupid. It shouldn’t make any difference. An army looks like an army whether it is foe or friend. Very soon the army beyond these walls would cease to exist.
“How did the first run go?” Ravna’s voice came clearly from the commset. But it wasn’t Jefri who answered: all eight of Amdiranifani was poking around the battlements, some of him sitting on the crenellations practicing stereo vision, others eyeing Steel and the radio. Telling him to stay back had no effect. Now Amdi answered the question with Jefri’s voice. “Okay. I counted fifteen pulses. Only ten hit anything. I bet I could shoot better than that.”
“Damn it, that’s the best I can do with this [unknown words].” The voice was not Ravna’s. Steel heard the irritation in it. Everybody can find something to hate in these pups. The thought warmed him.
“Please,” said Steel. “Fire again. Again.” He looked over the stonework. The air attack had taken out a band of enemy by the edge of the near terrace. It was spectacular destruction, like enormous cannon blows, or the separate landing of twenty starships. And all from a little craft that fluttered like a falling leaf. The enemy front line was dissolving in panic. Up and down the ramparts, his own troops danced about their stations. Things had been bleak since their cannon were knocked out; they needed something to cheer about. “The archers, Shreck! Shoot upon the survivors.” Then, continuing in Samnorsk: “The front ranks are still coming. They are—they are—” Damn, what’s the word for “confident'? “They will kill us without more help.”
The human child looked at Steel in puzzlement. If he called that a lie, then… A moment later Ravna said. “I don’t know. They’re well back from your walls, at least all that I can see. I don’t want to butcher…” Rapid fire conversation with the human in the flier, perhaps not even in Samnorsk. The gunner did not sound pleased. “Pham will pull back a few kilometers,” she said. “We can come back instantly if your enemy advances.”
“Ssssst!” Shreck’s Hightalk hiss was like a physical jab. Steel wheeled, glaring. How dare—But his lieutenant was wide-eyed, pointing toward the center of the battlefield. Of course Steel had had a pair of eyes on that direction, but he hadn’t been paying attention: The other Two-Legs!
The mantis figure dropped behind an accompanying pack, mercifully before Amdijefri noticed. Thank the Pack of Packs that puppies are near-sighted. Steel swept forward, surrounding some of Amdi, shouting at the others to get off the parapet. Both of Tyrathect ran in close, physically grabbing for the disobedient wretches. “Get below!” Steel screamed in Tinish. For a second all was confusion, as his own mind sounds mixed with the puppies’. Amdi tumbled away from him, thoroughly distracted by the noise and the rough handling. And then in Samnorsk Steel said, “There are more cannons out there. Get below before you’re hurt!”
Jefri started for the parapet. “But I don’t see—” And fortunately there was nothing special to see. Now. The other Two-Legs was still crouched behind one of Woodcarver’s packs. Shreck took the human child in paw and jaw. He and one of Tyrathect hustled the protesting children down the stairs. As they departed, Tyrathect was already embellishing on Steel’s story, reporting on the troops it could see from below the crest of the hill.
“Blow up the lesser powder dump,” Steel hissed at the departing Shreck. That dump was near empty, but its destruction might persuade the spacers where words could not.
After they were gone, Steel stood for an instant, silent and shivering. He had never seen disaster so narrowly avoided. Along the ramparts, his archers were showering arrows upon the enemy pack and the Two-Legs. Damn. They were almost out of range.
In the castle yard, Shreck detonated the lesser dump. The explosion was a satisfying one, much louder than an artillery hit. One of the inner towers was blown apart. Flying rock showered the yard, the smallest pieces reaching all the way to where Steel stood on the ramparts.
Ravna’s voice was shouting in swift Samnorsk, too fast for Steel to understand. Now all the planning, all the hopes, all balanced on a knife edge. He must bet everything: Steel leaned a shoulder close to the comm and said, “Sorry. Things go fast here. Many more Woodcarver come up under smoke. Can you kill all on hillside?” Could the mantises see through smoke? That was part of the gamble.
The gunner’s voice came back, “I can try. Watch this.”
A third voice, thready and narrow even by human standards: “It will be fifty seconds more, Sir Steel. We’re having trouble turning.”
Good. Concentrate on your flying and your killing. Don’t look at your victims too carefully. The archers had driven the human back, part way under the cover of smoke. Other packs were rushing out to protect her. By the time the Visitors circled back, there would be lots of targets, the human lost among them.
Two of him caught sight of the spacer floating down through the haze. The Visitors would have no clear view of what they were shooting at. Pale light flickered from beneath the craft. A scythe swept across the hillside toward Woodcarver’s troops.
Pham was bounced around his perch as Blueshell turned the boat back to the target. They weren’t moving fast; the airstream couldn’t have been more than thirty meters per second. But every second was full of the damnedest jerks and tumbles. At one point Pham’s grip on the gun mount was all that kept him indoors. Forty some hours from now the deadliest thing in the universe is going to arrive, and I’m taking potshots at dogs.
How to take out the hillside? Steel’s whiny voice still echoed in his ears. And Ravna wasn’t sure what OOB was seeing beneath all the smoke. We might do better without automation than with this bastard mix. At least his beamer had a manual control. Pham embraced the barrel with one arm while he reached with the other. At wide dispersion the beam was useless against armor, but could burst eyes and set skin and hair afire—and the beam width would be dozens of meters across at ground level.
“Fifteen seconds, Sir Pham,” Blueshell’s voice came in his ear.
They were low this time. Gaps in the smoke flickered past like stop-action art. Most of the ground was burned-over black, but there were precipices of naked rock and even sooty patches of snow trapped in crannies and shadowed pits… Here and there was a pile of doggy bodies, an occasional gun tube.
“There’s a crowd of them ahead, Sir Pham. Running near the castle.”
Pham leaned down and looked forward. The mob was about four hundred meters ahead. They were running parallel to the castle walls, through a field that was a spinehide of arrowshafts. He pressed the firing stud, swept the beam out from below the boat. There was plenty of water under that dried cover; it exploded in steam as the beam passed over it… But further out, the wide dispersion wasn’t doing much. It would be another few seconds before he’d have a good shot at the hapless packs.
Time for the little suspicions. So how come the enemy had muzzle-loading cannon? Those they must have made themselves—in a world with no evidence of firearms. Steel was the classic medieval manipulator; Pham had spotted the type from a thousand light-years out. They were doing the critter’s dirty work, that was obvious. Shut up. Deal with Steel later.
Slanting in on the packs, Pham fired again, sweeping through living flesh this time. He fired ahead of them and on the castle side; maybe they wouldn’t all die. He stuck his head further into the slipstream, trying for a better view. Ahead of the packs was a hundred meters of open field, a single pack of four and—a human figure, black- haired and slim, jumping and waving.
