The Ringworld Throne

High Rangers Trading Group had died in a tower in a deserted city, forty-three falans ago. High Rangers had fought no more than fifteen, that night. Killed no more than eight. All the rest had died, and only a fluke had saved Valavirgillin.

She remembered the song wafting up from the street. The vampires pale, naked, beautiful. The terror. High Rangers had fired from tenth-floor windows, and posted sentries down along the stairwell. One by one the sentries had disappeared, and then-

Kay said, “The wind’s blowing right.”

Barok said, “Cannon.”

She clenched her eyelids against the flash. Barok’s cannon roared, then one from farther away, barely heard.

Barok’s voice was faint. “They could circle.”

“They’re not sapient,” Kay said.

To left, another distant cannon fired. To right, another.

Vampires carried no tools, wore no clothing. Reach into the lovely wealth of ash-blond hair on a vampire’s corpse: you would find too much hair around a small, flat skull. They built no cities, formed no armies, invented no encircling movements.

But the warriors on the wall were buzzing among themselves, pointing, firing bolts into the dark to spin and starboard and antispin.

“Kay? They’ve got noses.”

Barok looked down. Kay said, “What?”

“They don’t have a battle plan,” Valavirgillin said. “They’re just avoiding the smell of fifteen hundred Grass Giants served by a primitive sewer system. It’s the same smell that brought them here! When they get upwind of that, the smell won’t bother them anymore. And then we’ll be downwind from them.”

“I’ll get Whandernothtee to move his cruiser around,” Barok said, and ran.

Vala bellowed after him. “Cloth and alcohol!”

He came back. “What?”

“Pour fuel into a towel, just a splash. Tie it around your face. It keeps the scent out. Tell Whand!”

Kay spoke from overhead. “I still have targets here. Boss, they’re not in throwing range. You go tell Anth to move. Tell him about towels and fuel. Then the Grass Giants might not know, either. Boss? Remember I wanted to show them some use for fuel?”

Idiot. She splashed a towel for herself and took two more with her. This could turn urgent.

In the dark, with a drop on either side, she had to watch her footing. It had stopped raining. The song of the vampires rode the wind. She breathed alcohol fumes from the towel around her face. It made her dizzy.

She heard distantly, “Cannon.” Closed her eyes, waited for the roar, walked on toward a square shadow. She called, “Anthrantillin!”

“He’s busy, Vala.” Taratarafasht’s voice.

“He’ll be very busy, Tarfa. The vamps are circling round. Get your towels out, splash them with fuel, tie them over your mouths. Then move the truck a sixth around the arc.”

“Valavirgillin, I take my orders from Anthrantillin.”

Fool woman. “Get the cruiser into place or you can both tell it to the Ghouls. Get a towel on Anth, too. But first give me a fuel jar for the giants.”

Pause. “Yes, Valavirgillin. Do you have enough towels?”

The fuel jar was heavy. Valavirgillin was terribly conscious of the weapons she wasn’t holding. When the big shape loomed before her, she was embarrassingly relieved.

The Grass Giant didn’t turn. “How goes the defense, Valavirgillin?”

Vala said, “They’re circling us. You’ll smell them in a minute. Tie this—”

“Fowh! What stink is that?”

“Alcohol. It moves our cruisers, but it may save us. Tie this around your neck.”

The guard didn’t move, didn’t look at her. He wouldn’t insult an alien guest. So: Valavirgillin has not spoken.

She didn’t have time for games. “Point me toward the Thurl.”

“Give me the cloth.”

She threw it to him underhand. He snorted in disgust, but he was tying it around his neck. He pointed then, but she’d already seen the shine of the Bull’s armor.

The Bull looked at the cloth in her hands even as he backed away from the stink. “But why?”

“You don’t know about vampires?”

“Stories come to us. Vampires die easily enough, and they don’t think. As for the rest… should the cloth cover our ears?”

“Why, Thurl?”

“So that they cannot sing us to our deaths.”

“Not sound. Smell!”

“Smell?”

Grass Giants weren’t idiots, but… they’d been unlucky. First somebody has to live through a vampire attack. Even if a child survives, he won’t know why the adults all went away. She, Kay, someone should have raised this subject, no matter the rush.

“Vampires put out a mating scent, Thurl. Your lust rises and your brain turns off and you go.”

“The stink of your fuel, it cures the problem? But isn’t there another problem? We hear of you Machine People and your empire of fuel. You persuade other hominid species to make alcohol for your wagons. They learn to drink it. They lose interest in work and play and life itself, anything but the fuel, and they die young.”

Vala laughed. “Vampire scent does all of that before you can take a hundred breaths.” Still, the Thurl had a point. Do we want crossbowmen drunk while vampires circle the wall?

“Is fuel better? Try strong herbs?”

“When can you pick these herbs? I have fuel now, not tomorrow.”

The Bull turned from her and began bellowing orders. Most of the males were on the wall now, but women began running. Bales of cloth appeared. Women climbed up the wall and along the top to the cruisers. Vala waited with what patience she could muster.

The Bull roared, “Come!” He entered an earthen building, the second largest.

It was fabric stretched over the top of a dirt wall and one central pole. Here were tall heaps of dried grass, but other plants too, a thousand scents. The Bull crushed leaves under her nose. She shied back. A different leaf; she sniffed gingerly. Another.

She said, “Try all of those, but try fuel too. We’ll find out what works best. Why do you store these?”

The Bull laughed. “Flavoring, these, pepperleek and minch. Woman eats this, makes her milk better. Did you think we eat only grass? Wilted or sour grass needs something for taste.”

The Bull gathered armfuls of plants and strode out bellowing. She could have heard his roar in Center City, she thought. His voice and the women’s, and presently the scuff of their big feet as they climbed.

Vala retrieved her fuel bottle and climbed after.

From the top she watched the big shadows, warriors motionless, women moving among them distributing impregnated towels. Vala intercepted a big, mature woman. “Moonwa?”

“Valavirgillin. They kill by smell?”

“They do. We don’t know what smell protects best. Some men already have alcohol-scented towels. Leave them those, give the Thurl’s plants to the rest. We’ll see.”

“See who dies, eh?”

Vala walked on. The alcohol fumes were making her a little giddy. She could handle it, and for that matter her towel was nearly dry.

This morning Vala had been thinking that Forn was mature enough to practice rishathra, or perhaps to mate straight off. Forn had beaten that prediction. She could hardly be remembering the smell of vampires. She’d