Twilight at the Well of Souls

“Serge, how many people you got here? I mean all told, except for us?”

“Sixty-four,” he replied. “We had to travel fast and light and I was cashing in I.O.U.s as I went on a target of opportunity basis. Got a lot of good equipment, but not much else. They’re all good people, though, Nate, and the position’s incredible.”

“Sixty-four,” Brazil repeated. “Against Gunit Sangh’s battle-hardened two thousand.”

Ortega grinned. “About even, I think. Oh, I don’t think we can hold forever, but we don’t have to. First we get you down to the bottom by crane or whatever it takes, get some food in your bellies, then you get the hell out of here. We did a sweep up and down the Avenue this morning—there won’t be any nasty surprises. We eliminated them for you.” His expression turned serious for a moment. “I had seventy-six when I started. Would have been worse if this high-tech hex didn’t abut the Avenue. You get on down there, now. We haven’t a lot of time to waste.”

Nathan Brazil looked up at the huge Ulik and cursed his inability in this animal body to express what he was feeling inside now. It was odd; until a few minutes ago, he would have sworn such emotions had died within him thousands of years before. Finally he said, “You could come with us, you know, Serge.”

“I thought about it,” he replied. “Thought about it a lot. But, now, standing here, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He stared hard at Brazil’s huge animal’s eyes. “I think you understand. You, of all people, should be the one to understand.”

Brazil gave an audible, long sigh. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I think I do.” He looked over at the crane. “Let’s get on the road, then.”

Serge Ortega nodded. “Good-bye, Nate. For all of it, it was fun, wasn’t it?”

“That it was,” Brazil responded a little wistfully. “That it was. So long, you old bastard. Give ’em hell.”

Ortega grinned. “Haven’t I always?”

High, towering cliffs rose from both sides of the Avenue as it made its way from the swampy lowlands up to the Equatorial Barrier. Wind whipped through the pass, creating an eerie, wavering whistle that also carried the subtle undertones of a crashing sea, although there was no sea nearby. The Avenue here was on two levels, a fairly deep center filled with crystal-blue water that allowed the summer melt to drain off, creating the Quilst swamp far to the south; the bank on either side was wide and smooth, although weather-worn and covered with a fine layer of silt and occasional rocks from the slides. It was quite a natural-looking valley except that the stream ran almost dead straight for the length of the border, more a canal than a river.

The valley ranged from twenty or more kilometers across to less than fifty here at the Borgo Pass. Large rock and mudslides had closed it in over the ages to such an extent that, from a practical standpoint, there was only two-or-three-meters clearance on the Ellerbanta side, even less on the Verion. The walls of the canyon, however, were not sheer and never less sheer than now, at the pass; craggy outcrops every ten or so meters on both sides of the narrow section made ideal emplacements and outposts.

Serge Ortega surveyed the scene from almost ground level with some satisfaction. Things were getting set up pretty good; as darkness fell there was little left to do.

Marquoz walked up to him and looked around, admiringly. “It’s damned good organization,” he told the Ulik. “I’m impressed.”

Ortega turned and gave an odd half-smile. “I am always this way,” he told the Hakazit. “Even more, now, at what might be the climactic point of my life.” He settled back on his huge tail and smiled fully now, eyes looking beyond the other, toward places only he could see. “Consider the life I lived,” he reflected. “It’s been a damned full one, an important one, I think. Rebel, privateer, smuggler, soldier-of-fortune, star pilot—you name it, I’ve done or been it. Then I came here where, in a very short time, I became a politician, then ambassador, statesman, and, ah, world-coordinator. I’ve romanced thousands, drank, fought, generally had one hell of a good time doing it all, too. Now I’m tired and I’m bored. The only thing I haven’t done is die.”

“You picked a hell of an exit,” the Hakazit noted good-naturedly.

“Hah! Think I could end a life like mine rotting away in some retirement home? A nice, peaceful death propped up by some nurses so I could gaze lovingly at the stars? Bullshit on that! No, sir! Never! When I go out it’ll be like Asam. They’ll make up songs about me for generations. The bards will tell the tales by firelight and my enemies and their children and their children’s children shall drink toasts to my glorious memory!”

“And use your memory to scare hundreds of races’ children into being good little kiddies,” Marquoz cracked. “Hell, man, you’ve been around so long they won’t believe you’re dead when they see your body.”

Ortega considered it. “That would take the cake, wouldn’t it, now? Marquoz, I want you to pass the word. When I go, they’re to burn my body beyond recognition, beyond any hope of even identifying what sort of creature I was. I want nothing of me left. That’ll scare the hell out of the bastards for two generations.”

The Hakazit chuckled. “It’ll be done,” he assured the other. He looked out and down the dark pass. “How soon do you think we’ll have company?”

“Advance scouts and patrols any time now,” Ortega told him. “No main force until dawn, though. A fly couldn’t get through this pass at night against those heat-ray generators up there. The cliff face and slides are in our favor, too. They can’t get a clear shot at any of them without exposing themselves.”

“In fact, I would come now,” Marquoz came back. “A small force, one traveling light and with skill and silence, with a large part nocturnals and the rest with sniperscopes and computer-guided lasers. I’d do it between midnight and dawn, positioning them just so, knocking out emplacements one by one and quietly. Then I’d charge up here with everything I had at dawn.”

“I’ve already considered that possibility,” the Ulik replied. “If there’s any hint of movement, we can hit floodlights throughout the fifty or so meters in front of us, radar controlled and tracker types, too. Some of my boys see just fine in the dark, too, and they’re up toward, on the watch. We’re cross-coding our emplacements, too. Every position fires a slightly changing code to its neighbors every ten minutes. No signal, we light up the place anyway and investigate. There’s challenge and reply codes, too, from one point to another. Now, Gunit Sangh probably assumes this, so he’ll try it anyway, not to expect anything but just to test out our defenses a little and keep us all awake until dawn when his well-rested troops will make the assault.”

Marquoz, who was somewhat nocturnal himself, looked again at the pass. “Hell of a thing, though, asking t oops to march up that. If there’s another way, he’ll take it.”

Ortega chuckled. “What are troops to him? He knows the score pretty well, too. Two thousand against sixty-six counting you and the Agitar.”

“I know, I know. The terrain is a leveler, but it’s not that much of a leveler. Not thirty to one. Not when you’ve got nice, mobile high-tech weapons carried by creatures that can climb sheer cliffs and others that maybe could swim right up that deep current there in the middle.”

Ortega shrugged. “The high-tech favors us,” he insisted. “They have only what the. brought with them and could drag through that gap. No armored vehicles, for example, that could really cause trouble. No aerials, not in this confined space. A full frontal attack through that little gap is what he can do best. He can’t even go over and around, as Nate found out.”

“But thirty to one…” Marquoz said doggedly.

“This is similar to a number of situations in my own peoples history,” Ortega told him. “My old people’s — and Mavra’s, and Nate’s, too, I think. Not the flabby, engineered idiots of the Com you knew. The ones who started with a flint in caves and carved out an intersellar empire before they’d run their course. The histories were full of stuff like that, although they probably don’t teach it any more. Six hundred, it was said, held a pass wider than this for days against an army of more than five thousand. Another group held a fortress with less than two hundred against a well-trained army of thousands for over ten days. We need only two. There are lots of stories like that; our history’s full of such things. I suspect the history of any race strong enough to carve civilization out of a hostile world has them.”

Marquoz nodded. “There are a few such examples in the history of the Chugach,” he admitted. “But, tell me, what happened to those who held that pass after their time limit was reached? What happened to those people in that old fort after the ten days?”

Ortega grinned. “The same thing that happened to the Chugach in your stories, I think.”

“I was afraid of that,” Marquoz sighed. “So we’re all going to die at the end of this?”