Forty-three falans was 430 rotations of the star patterns, where the sky rotated every seven and a half days. In forty falans Valavirgillin had made herself rich, had mated, had carried four children, then gambled her wealth away. These last three falans she had been traveling.
Forty-three falans was a long time.
She asked or tried to ask, “Was that when the clouds came?”
“Yes, when the old Thurl boiled a sea.”
Yes! This was the place she sought.
Kaywerbrimis [sic-should be Kaywerbrimmis] shrugged it off as local superstition. “How long have you had vampires?”
Paroom said, “Always there are some. In this last few falans, suddenly they are everywhere, more every night. This morning we found nearly two hundred Gleaners, all dead. Tonight they will hunger again. The walls and our crossbows hold them back. Here,” said the sentry, “bring your wagons through the gap and prepare them to fight.”
They had
And the light was going.
It was crowded inside the walls. Grass Giant men and women were unloading their wagons, pausing frequently to eat of the grass. They looked up as the Machine People moved among them; they gaped, then returned to work. Had they ever seen self-propelled cruisers? But vampires were a more urgent concern.
Already men in leather armor lined the wall. Others were heaping earth and stones to close the gap.
Vala could feel the Grass Giants staring at her beard.
She could count roughly a thousand of them, as many women as men. But women outnumbered the men among Grass Giants elsewhere, and she didn’t see
A great alien silver shape strode down the slope to meet them.
It lifted its crested helm to reveal a golden mane. The Thurl was the biggest of Grass Giant males. The armor he wore bulged at every joint; he looked like no hominid Vala had ever seen.
“Thurl,” Kaywerbrimmis said carefully, “Farsight Trading has come to help.”
“Good. What are you, Machine People? We hear of you.”
“Our Empire is mighty, but we spread through trade, not war. We hope to persuade your people to make fuel for us, and bread, and other things. Your kind of grass can make good bread; you might like it yourselves. In return we can show you wonders. The least are our guns. These handguns, they’ll reach farther than your crossbows. For close work we have flamers—”
“Killing-things, are they? Our good luck that you have come. Yours, too, to reach cover. You should move your guns to the wall now.”
“Thurl, the big guns are mounted on the cruisers.”
The wall stood twice the height of a Machine Person. But Valavirgillin remembered a local word. “Ramp. Thurl, is there a ramp that leads up the wall? Will it carry our cruisers?”
The day’s colors were turning charcoal-gray. It was starting to rain. Far above these clouds, the shadow of night must have nearly covered the sun.
And there wasn’t any ramp, until the Thurl bellowed his orders. Then all the huge males and females broke from their labor and began moving earth.
Vala noted one woman climbing, guiding, shouting. Big, mature, with a voice to shatter rocks. She caught a name: Moonwa. Perhaps the Thurl’s primary wife.
Metal payload shell and metal motor, and wide timber running boards a hand thick: a cruiser was heavy. The ramp tended to crumble. The cruisers went up one by one, with the wall brushing their right sides and ten Grass Giant males lifting and steadying on the left. How would they get the cruisers
The top was as wide as a cruiser wheelbase. Sentries guided them. “Face your weapons starboard-spin. Vampires come from there.”
The wagonmasters placed their vehicles, then met to confer. Kay asked, “Whand, Anth, what do you think? Shrapnel in the cannon? They might bunch up. They often do.”
Anthrantillin said, “Have the giants gather some gravel. Save our shot. This will be handgun work, though. Spread out?”
Whandernothtee said, “That’s what the giants want.”
“Me, too,” Kaywerbrimmis said.
Vala said, “The Grass Giants have crossbows. Why are they worried? Crossbows won’t have the reach of guns, but they’ll outreach vampire scent.”
The wagonmasters looked at each other. Anth said, “Grass eaters—”
“Oh, no. Elsewhere they’re considered scary fighters,” Whand said.
Nobody answered.
Whandernothtee’s cruiser and Anthrantillin’s rolled off in opposite directions. They were almost invisible in the rain and dark before the Grass Giant warriors stopped them.
Kaywerbrimmis said, “Barok, you on the cannon, but keep your guns handy. I’m on handguns. Forn, reload.” She was too young to be trusted to do more. “Boss, do you like the flamer?”
Vala said, “They’ll never get that close. I throw pretty good, too.”
“Flamer and fistbombs, then. I hope we do get to use the flamer. It’d help if we could show them another use for alcohol. Grass Giants don’t need our fuel, they pull their own wagons. Vampires aren’t intelligent, are they?”
“The ones near Center City aren’t.”
Forn said, “In most languages it’s
Language wasn’t Kay’s interest. “Do they charge, Boss? One big wave?”
“I only fought vampires once.”
“That’s one more than me. I hear stories. What was it like?”
“I was the only survivor,” Valavirgillin said. “Kay? Just stories? Do you know enough to use towels and fuel?”
Kay’s brow furrowed. “What?”
— and Vala’s head whipped around at a sentry’s bass call.
All was shadows now, and a sound that might be wind through taut cords, and the whisper of crossbows. The Grass Giants were being chary of their bolts. Bullets weren’t replaceable, either, where there was no client race to make more.
Vala couldn’t see anything yet. For the Grass Giants it would be no darker, but these plains were their home. A crossbow whispered, and something pale stood up and fell over. The wind picked up… that wasn’t wind.
Song.
“Look for white,” Forn called unnecessarily. Kay fired, changed guns, fired.
It was well that the cruisers were spaced far apart. The flash of their handguns was blinding. Vala thought it over, while the fire balloons in her eyes faded. Then she rolled under the cruiser and pulled the flamer and the net bag of fistbombs after. Let the cruiser shield her eyes from the flash.
And the cannon?
They were firing around her. Her sight was back. There, a pale hominid shape. Another. She could see twenty and more! One fell, and the rest backed away. Already most of them must be beyond crossbow range. Their song plucked at her nerves.
“Cannon,” Barok commented, and she closed her eyes just as he fired.
Fire was trying to light in the stubble. There were pale bodies, six… eight. Thirty or forty vampires stood in plain view, still in gun range, she thought.
Why would men with crossbows fear vampires? Because nobody had ever seen so many vampires together!
It was bizarre, insane. How could so many feed themselves?
