A BARNSTORMER IN OZ by Philip José Farmer

by A Barnstormer In Oz V1. 1(Lit)

  The archers immediately drew arrows from their quivers and fitted them to the bowstrings. They were to fire at will now. Hank began firing short bursts, and he killed or wounded ten hawks. But, before the second volley from the bowmen was loosed, the hawks were among them, screeching, wings beating, talons and beaks tearing at the men’s eyes and faces.

  Hank stepped back, and soldiers formed around him. He continued shooting, aiming over their heads at the second and third ranks of the hawks. His guard chopped at the birds with their swords or thrust with their spears. Niklaz whirled the ax, slicing hawks in half or cutting off wings.

  Two men in front of Hank dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, trying to tear away the ravening furies on their faces. Hank wanted to drop the BAR, pick up a sword, and slash at the hawks. But he kept on shooting, swiveling from right to left, then reversing, replacing the twenty-round box magazines as soon as one was emptied. He got most of the second rank and much of the third before he had to drop the hot weapon and defend himself with a sword.

  Two hawks fell half-severed to the ground. A third fastened herself on the back of his head, talons digging through his leather helmet and setting on fire his scalp and neck. He fell backwards hard, banging the hawk and his head on the ground. Stars shot before his eyes, but the hawk did not let loose. He leaped up, screaming, and tore the helmet and the attached hawk off. He jumped up and came down with both feet on the bird, crushing it.

  He put a hand to the back of his head. It came away smeared with blood. A burning coal seemed to be frying his head and neck. He ignored it, picked up the sword again, leaned down, grabbed a flopping wing, and cut the wing off. The hawk, which had been tearing up the face of a man on the ground, collapsed. But its talons did not come loose from her victim’s flesh.

  Suddenly, the melee was over. For a while, at least. The surviving hawks were flying away, or, if too badly wounded, were staggering away on the ground.

  Hank pried the dead hawk’s talons from their grip on his helmet and put it on his head. His goggles were lying ten feet away; he decided that he would wear them to protect his eyes. The hawks had lost heavily. Fifty were dead or too hurt to be effective. None of the men were killed, but ghastly face wounds had put seven out of action. Four seemed to be blinded in one or both eyes. Several had missing noses and ears.

  Niklaz had the badly wounded taken into the barn where the medicos could take care of them.

  “I don’t hate easily,” the Tin Woodman said. “But I hate that Erakna. All this is totally unnecessary.”

  Hank thought so, too, but he said nothing. He went into the barn to make sure that no hawks had gotten in there and damaged Jenny. Three birds had entered, but they had been killed before they could get to the plane. He went back to the men outside.

  Niklaz said, “I wonder how the battle is going.”

  “What?” Hank said. Then he understood that the king was referring to the conflict they had seen on the plains just before landing.

  “If the Gillikins break through,” Niklaz said, “it won’t take them long to get here. We might be able to hold off the hawks and Monkeys, but we can’t stand up against an army.”

  “Will they have hawks, too?” Hank said.

  The tin mask smiled fixedly through the blood.

  “You’re worried that their hawks will reinforce the others. Yes, they’ll have hawks and eagles. But not many. They’ll be used primarily as scouts, not fighters. Erakna doesn’t have thousands at her command any more than Glinda does. Most birds prefer to be wild. Glinda has about five hundred who serve her, and half of these are scattered through the land. I imagine that Erakna has about the same.”

  “Here comes one of hers now,” Hank said, pointing. Niklaz turned to look at a duckhawk which had just landed on the branch of an oak near the edge of the meadow. However, the duckhawk yelled at them not to shoot. He was Rakya, one of theirs. He had come to report on the plains battle.

  “Oh, yes, I recognize him now,” Niklaz said.

  The duckhawk lighted before them. He was missing some feathers and had some blood on his breast. One eye was swollen and closed.

  “Sire, I have bad news. Your army is retreating in panic, most of them trying to get to the castle. The Gillikins are hot on their heels, and a cavalry outfit, archers and camels, are heading this way.”

  “When will they get here?” Niklaz said.

  “In about an hour.”

  Niklaz looked at the rugged yellowish heap on the top of the hill.

  “Maybe we should withdraw to the castle.”

  “No,” Hank said. “We can’t leave Jenny here.”

  “Could we take her with us?”

  “We’d all be too exposed, too vulnerable,” Hank said. “We have to smash them first, make them too discouraged to pursue us.”

  He indicated the mass of hawks and Monkeys to the east. They looked like a swirling cloud, a confusion, but he was sure that the hawk leader and whoever had replaced the Monkey-King were conferring. The disorder would become order soon enough.

  “All right, we’ll stand off one, maybe two, charges,” Niklaz said. “Then we’ll have to make a break for the castle.”

  “No, I won’t leave Jenny. They’ll tear her apart.”

  “You’re as stubborn as your mother,” the king said. “I esteem your loyalty, but loyalty can become stupidity. I have to consider the welfare of my people, and I won’t be helping them if I allow myself to be captured.”

  Hank went into the barn. A medico washed off his wounds with soap and cold water, patted them dry with a towel while Hank bit his lip to keep from crying out, poured a liquid over the gashes and applied taped bandages.

  He went to Jenny. “If things get too bad, take off by yourself.”

  “It’s that desperate?” she said.

  “Not yet. It might be. If the enemy kills or captures me or I have to run off into the woods, take off. If I manage to hoof it back to Suthwarzha, I’ll see you then.”

  Jenny’s tone was undeniably sad.

  “And if you don’t get back...?”

  “Glinda will take care of you.”

  He had the barn doors fully opened so that Jenny could get out. He also hurriedly requisitioned a soldier to put ether in the carburetor if she did have to take off.

  Jenny’s voice trembled. “I’m so upset. I don’t want to be parted from you. I wish I could be like you humans and weep.”

  “Don’t be sad,” Hank said. “Be mad. Gee, I almost forgot! Your wing is damaged. You’ll have to watch it; more fabric might tear off. By the way, does your damage—I mean, injury—hurt you?”

  “No. I can feel it, but it doesn’t hurt. At least, I don’t think so. I’m not sure just what you mean by hurt.”

  It was strange. She, the Scarecrow, and the Woodman had the sensories to locate damage, but they were spared pain. Physical pain, that is. They could feel emotional injury.

  He dipped a ladle into a tin bucket of water and drank deeply. Though the air was cool, he had sweat so much that his clothes were soaked. His mouth was as dry as an Army manual.

  He went out and told the Woodman what he had in mind.

  “I need about twenty men to surround me when I go to the woods. Two won’t come back, me and my ammo handler. Do you think it’ll work?”

  “The hawks have very keen eyesight, but they’re about a mile away,” Niklaz said. “They might not count you as you go in. But they will wonder why the group went into the trees. They’ll check that out.”

  “Have the men pretend to crap,” Hank said. “That’ll fool them, I hope. Anyway, from the smell here, I think that some have already filled their pants. Have them shake the stuff out of their pants.”

  “Yes, it is pretty strong, isn’t it?” Niklaz said.

  Baum had said that the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman couldn’t smell odors. That wasn’t true. They could see with their similitudes of eyes and hear with the similitudes of ears. Since they had similitudes of noses, t
hey could also smell. But they did not have the sense of taste.

  By then the hawks and the Monkeys were organizing formations. Hank filled in the men he needed on his plan, and presently he was duckwalking toward the woods so that his head would not be above the group around him. A squint-eyed Winkie named Nabya the Sneezer carried the magazines.

  When they reached the massive one-hundred-foot-tall, beautifully flowering, indigenous trees lining the meadow, the group opened out. Hank and Nabya went into the cover of the woods, where their sense of smell almost reeled under the dense but exquisite odor of the blooms. They went south, then east. When they were about a hundred yards from the barn, they walked to a spot about forty feet in from the meadow. They crouched behind a bush and got ready.

  They had gotten into the woods just in time. A bald eagle flew over the barn and circled, then flapped northward. It must be a scout sent by the Gillikins. It would soon be telling the cavalry that the Winkie king was here and his route to the castle would be cut off.

  Niklaz had seen the eagle, but he apparently was going to stay at the bam.

  “Here they come!” Nabya said. He spat out a plug of tobacco.

  The hawks were not flying at top speed; they were hanging back so that the Monkeys could keep up with them. Both groups were at a hundred feet altitude. The hawks were three lines deep in the van, and the simians were four lines deep. The birds were silent, but the Monkeys were screaming war cries and shouting insults at the enemies and encouragement at each other.

  Hank shook his head. These creatures were unnatural in that they had not evolved into their present form. Surely, they were the products of artificial genetic engineering. The Long-Gones had made them.

  They were said to be, pound for pound, the strongest beings in the world. They would have to be to lift their forty pounds or so and fly at an average rate of twenty miles an hour. That two each could have lifted Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman was evidence of their powerful muscles. Twelve of them had carried the Cowardly Lion at the ends of ropes to the castle of the West Witch. But it had been a short distance.

  The hawks were a hundred yards from the barn. Hank said, “Let’s go,” and he stood up and walked to a tree on the meadow edge. Stationing himself on one side of it, he raised the BAR and began shooting. Nabya handed him the box magazines.

  At least thirty hawks went up in feathers and blood, the bullets going through two or three at a time. Hank then pointed to the left and raked the front line of monkeys. Over fifteen, he thought, were hit, including the big brute leading them.

  Hank continued firing into the mass as it swept over the meadow. He wished he had a Thompson submachine gun. It had a 50-round drum magazine and would not have required changing as often as the 20-round box magazine of the BAR. Also, it was much lighter and less cumbersome. It took a strong man to stand up and handle the 18.5-pound BAR. The rifle was fitted with supports attached to the barrel so that the operator could lie prone on the ground and shoot with most of the weight on the support. Unfortunately, Hank’s targets were mostly in the air. He had to tilt the weapon at considerable and varying angles.

  Nevertheless, he worked carnage and panic over the meadow. There were at least two hundred and fifty Monkey carcasses on the bloody grass and many hawks and eagles.

  Then he was out of ammunition.

  He put the BAR on his shoulder, making sure that the hot barrel was not on the leather. He said to Nabya, “Follow me!”

  About ten Monkeys were brave enough to fly towards him. He had six rounds in his revolver. Even if he got six of the enemy, he would not have time to reload before the survivors were on him.

  His long legs left Nabya behind. He stopped when he heard a cry, and he whirled. The pseudo-simians were bounding along on all fours, their wings folded, close behind the Winkie. Nabya, who was burdened with a knapsack holding the empty magazines, had turned to face the attackers. He lifted a sword and stood ready.

  Hank dropped his rifle and raced toward Nabya while he took his revolver from his holster. He shouted, “Lie down! Lie down, Nabya!”

  The Winkie either did not hear him or was afraid that he would be too easy a prey if Hank missed. He slashed at the first of the Monkeys and cut its paw off. Then he was hurled to the ground on his back by a screeching Monkey.

  Hank held the .45 in both hands, and he loosed three bullets. The two behind the simian which had attacked Nabya fell. The Winkie and the Monkey were rolling over and over on the ground. Unable to shoot from a distance without endangering Nabya, Hank ran up to them. When he got the chance, he fired, and the bullet went through the back of the creature’s head and blew its face all over Nabya.

  The surviving Monkey ran off but collapsed before it got sixty feet away.

  Nabya did not move. His throat was torn open.

  Hank cursed. He rolled the Monkey off from Nabya and turned Nabya over so he could remove his knapsack. He picked that up and ran to the rifle. He decided that he should reload the revolver before going on. He did that, and then, carrying the sack and the BAR, returned to the edge of the forest.

  The Woodman and ten soldiers and medics were the only ones on their feet. Before and around them were piles of dead and wounded attackers. Two dozen Monkeys, about fifty feet away, were jumping up and down, howling obscenities at the defenders and encouragement to each other. They were trying to work themselves into a frenzy for another charge.

  Hank emptied the revolver into them, reloaded, and advanced, firing again. By then the Monkeys were running away, heading past the barn into the wind and toward the farmhouse. They went very fast on all fours, then stood up, their birdlike legs moving. Their bone-and-skin-wings were flapping hard, but they just did not have a long enough runway. They could never get into the air and clear the farmhouse or the trees behind it.

  Realizing this, they stopped, howling, and reversed course. Five of them made it, finally rising slowly and heavily.

  Niklaz said, “Erakna has paid a heavy price. But so have we.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t use all the Monkeys at her disposal,” Hank said. “If she’d sent the whole horde, we’d all be dead now.”

  Niklaz said, “Yes. When we were with your mother, the West Witch sent the entire pack against us when we approached her castle.”

  “How many?”

  “Oh, I’d say a thousand.”

  “Then she has plenty left.”

  He looked eastward. There were approximately fifty flying away. These had never landed but had turned when they saw their fellows ahead of them tumbling from the air under the fire from the BAR.

  “I wonder,” he said, “when Erakna will summon them back to her.”

  “Those? She won’t. She’d have to use a second wish to recall them. She’s abandoned them. They’ll have to get back to their pack as best they can. It’ll be a long way, too.”

  Hank sent two men to get his weapons and the belts. He then said, “What’re you going to do, Your Shininess?”

  “You may call me Niklaz. What will I do? I could hole up in the castle. It’s provisioned for a long siege. But my people would be without a general to lead them. I’m going to retreat into the forest and reorganize my army. I’ve already sent a messenger to tell the people in the castle to leave it.”

  “Good fortune, Niklaz,” Hank said. “I’m taking off right now. The Gillikins will be here soon.”

  “What a vast stupidity,” the Tin Woodman said. “All these deaths and hurts and suffering. And for what?”

  “That’s the way it is on Earth, too,” Hank said. “Only there, this goes on all the time. At least, you’ve had thirty-three years of peace and no wars or rumors of wars until now.”

  “I don’t even have time to bury the dead.”

  “They won’t care.”

  The wounded were being carried on improvised stretchers towards the woods. Jenny had been trundled out of the barn, her path cleared of corpses and carcasses. Hank saluted Niklaz and said, “No time fo
r a leisurely farewell.”

  “Don’t I know it,” the king said. He pointed at the north. Hank turned and saw two camels standing on top of a hill a mile away. Presently, one turned and disappeared behind it.

  Hank put the knapsack and BAR in the back cockpit and got into the front seat. Ten minutes later, he was airborne. The Winkies had been swallowed by the trees by then. The Gillikin cavalry was racing down the nearest hill, camels in the front and camels bearing archers behind them. Beyond them, people were pouring out of the castle, joining a throng from the north, the beaten and fleeing army of Niklaz the First and Only.

  Hank went back to the Emerald City. Jenny badly needed her wing repaired. She was lucky—Hank, too—to get there without folding up. The city and the area around it were unusually crowded. Refugees from the north had come to it with all the household goods they could pack into wagons. As yet, however, the invaders were stalled in the forest. Forced to march in narrow columns, they could not mass for a battle. The Oz army was ambushing them, cutting columns off, shooting from the cover of trees, snipping off pieces here and there. The defenders were greatly helped because the wild animals were their allies. The Cowardly Lion had enlisted the local beasts and birds and also brought with him many lions, cougars, sabertooths. bears, mammoths, mastodons, and wolves from his realm in the forests in the north of Quadlingland.