D & D - Tale of the Comet

by Roland Green

  They learned it, or at least as much of it as anyone ever would, when they met the enemy. Among the enemy were the Doomed, and among the Doomed were men of the first patrol.

  "He says he saw his old sergeant—Finlaysdotl, or something like that—his best friend, men he'd sat and drank with. None of them with any soul in their bodies or look on their faces. Just fire-throwers, like the ones on the golems, only smaller.

  "One of the archers hid, Erick says," Chakfor continued. "Then he started shooting at the ghouls. They didn't have much armor—helmets and breastplates made of stuff . . . stuff like that monk's water bottle."

  Ohlt did not look at Jazra. In spite of that, she itched from the cold sweat that suddenly broke out all over her.

  "This archer hit one in the face and he—it—went down. Stayed down, too. Other archers, though, hit them in the leg or the arm. They just pulled the arrows out and kept coming. Kept spitting flame, too, and throwing those poison-smoke pots. Some of them fell down later. Bled out, I suppose.

  "By then Erick, brave as he was, ran." Chakfor said. "Barely in time, for the golems appeared to reinforce the ghouls, and behind the golems came something else. Something the kid here couldn't quite . . ." Chakfor didn't know how to finish.

  It seemed to Jazra, as she understood the dwarf's version of the rest of Erick's half-coherent tale, that the "something" was a firestorm tank that used its flamethrower freely, and also launched grenades, with no regard for the fate of the Doomed. It seemed more careful about the spider drones, and that was how Erick had escaped—running so close to one of them that the tank would not fire, and vanishing into the trees before the spider drone could finish him.

  He had the burns, then, from a near-miss by the flamethrower, but he was otherwise intact until he ran blindly off a twenty-foot drop in the forest, and landed among a tangle of fallen trees and rocks at the bottom. It was there he broke an arm, a leg, and several ribs, and it was there he would have died if Chakfor Stonebreaker had not happened by, trailing the enemy with grim persistence.

  The rest of the tale was of Chakfor's struggle to keep Erick alive, and both of them moving, which jazra swore to listen to as many times as the dwarf wanted to tell it, on some other occasion. There were also several conclusions of tactical value to be drawn from the report, but Jazra hoped to have those from a living Erick Trussk himself.

  Meanwhile, M'lenda had done nothing visible. She had barely spoken aloud, in casting whatever spells she used. What Jazra had heard appeared to be in a language for which her de-cryptor lacked data.

  Hellandros was certainly speaking an unknown tongue, and not giving the decryptor much material on it. He was using the same four syllables—or, perhaps, the same four one-syllable words—over and over again. Jazra counted at least thirty repetitions while she listened.

  At the same time, he passed his staff back and forth over the wounded soldier, from waist to throat, over the entire burned area. The staff balanced as though it could be used as a weapon, and seemed to be of plain wood, but Jazra noticed that it had a cap and toe of something shiny—silver?

  Each time the staff passed over the burned area, a drop of water fell from the wood. Trussk was still senseless; he made no sound as the water fell. Then Jazra noticed that the water was falling from the staff, but not touching the soldier's body.

  Each drop vanished into the empty air.

  Then the air was no longer empty. A pale, silver-blue mist was gathering over Erick Trussk's burn. It seemed to eddy slightly, and send out wispy tendrils toward his face and groin, but each pass of the staff brought it back under Hellandros's command.

  Cold radiated from it. In armor, at her distance, Jazra could not feel it, but she saw the mist around Trussk condense to rain—and the raindrops too were swallowed in the mist, which grew fatter as it gorged itself on more water.

  Not as pure water as Jazra had given Hellandros—rain water never could be—but on this planet, where neither industry nor war had yet polluted far and wide, adding rainwater to the mist would at least do no harm.

  The cold and the moisture would do good. Irrigating burns with cold water was elementary first aid, taught to Rael schoolchildren in their second year out of home tutoring. This natural law, Hellandros apparently understood, and was creating a cold mist to irrigate the burn without putting any pressure on it, or moving Trussk's limbs, or doing anything else that could harm him.

  He was creating the cold mist, to apply a natural law, by unnatural means. By magic.

  But was magic unnatural? Or was it merely not part of nature as the Rael's scientific observations defined it? And if it existed in the open light of day on this world, did the Rael's scientific observations cover all of reality?

  They obviously covered more of it than the observations of the folk of this world. Otherwise, with magic added to science, the humans would have long since had their own starships racing across the Rael's sky.

  She had to find some way of gaining the confidence of these people, to learn where nature ended and magic began—for them.

  Trade knowledge for knowledge. That seemed the best way. The humans had spoken of "learning" magic, so it was not something like hair color or complexion, transmitted genetically.

  Jazra's hands were twitching, from tension, and from the sweat pouring into her gloves. She could not risk taking off the gloves, but she could at least raise her head to ease the cramp in her neck. Eric Trussk was not going to die, sit up and sing a song, or grow wings in the next few moments, no matter what spells Hellandros might be casting.

  Jazra's keen, trained eyesight caught movement in the trees on the slope. An infrared scan of the same area confirmed it as living. Indeed, the temperature was right for a group of Rael in armor. They were moving with such excellent fieldcraft that they had to be Fworta marines; undetectable by the humans.

  Which meant the marines would have total surprise if they were coming after the humans, thinking Jazra was in danger, perhaps? She wanted to laugh and weep at the same moment.

  Instead, she switched on her radio. Any breaking of radio silence was dangerous—and now to the humans, as well as to her—but she had to keep her fellow survivors from alienating the humans, or even surprising them, so that they fought back by sheer reflex.

  Which they might. They were facing a new and terrifying situation that they could not understand, on their familiar home world. The Rael faced a situation that their soldiers at least were trained to meet, although on a world that would have been strange even without the magic.

  Who would be more ready to shoot?

  The answer came from high above. A blaster rifle seared through the mist. It struck among the trees, well wide of the three Rael. Jazra expected them to return fire, and rejoiced when they did not.

  The enemy was trying to provoke them into revealing their position by returning fire. They would not be provoked.

  They had bought Jazra some time to help her humans.

  Fedor Ohlt's mind began racing like the sails of a windmill in a gale. In moments, his tongue caught up.

  "Brinus, Elda! Into the forest!"

  Elda made an explicit gesture of refusal. "With the ghouls?" she added, in a tone that made it plain she thought Ohlt slow of wits or dim of eye.

  "I'm not asking you to bed them!" Ohlt shouted. "Remember what Chakfor said about two kinds of sky-folk?"

  More fire tongued out across the valley, and more flames erupted amid the trees. So did a cloud of smoke. Ohlt saw something manlike scurrying away into the smoke.

  With his eagle-keen sight, Brinus saw more clearly. "Ohlt's right!" he called. "These are the kind Chakfor said were shaped like us. They're enemies to the golems and ghouls, as much as we are."

  Whether sense or survival moved the Ha-Gelhers, they did move. Neither of them was slow of foot, hut to avoid attracting notice they did not run headlong into the treeline, Elda had her bow ready, Brinus a spear in one hand, and a dagger in the other, and both looked almost as dangerou
s as they were—at least to human foes.

  "Chakfor, you bring up the rear and tell us what you see," Ohlt went on. "Hellandros, you and I can take the litter. It will go faster with two. M'lenda, scout ahead and see that we're not going into enemy-held forest."

  "I'm not yet done with the full—" the wizard began.

  "If Erick can last until we get to the forest, you are," Ohlt cut him off, more roughly than he felt. "We thank you. He thanks you. But if we aren't out of sight before the enemy up on the cliff can attend to us, we won't be healing burns. We'll be charcoal that Chakfor can put in his forge, and use to smelt iron!"

  Hellandros, with more haste than dignity, extracted a crystal vial from under his robes, and waved his staff three times more. The mist rose like an asp, then dove into the vial like the same asp diving down a mouse's hole. Hellandros laid it on the litter, picked up one end with a grunt, and glared at Ohlt until he did the same with the other.

  "What of the monk?" the dwarf shouted. Each tongue of fire left echoes rolling up and down the valley, and now the echoes were colliding with one another. The valley now might have been a forge with a dozen smiths all at work.

  "The monk, if he's—" Ohlt began, but then the fire-tongues flared again, and nobody heard him. When Ohlt looked back toward where they had left Aston Tanak's body, it was gone. So was the monk.

  "Run off, by the Great Hammer!" the dwarf swore.

  Ohlt made no reply. If he had not kept himself busy shouting commands that he hoped had made sense, he might have done some running himself. Down the valley, out of the mountains, and all the way to Aston Point if there were no friendly faces any closer. And maybe beyond the town, swimming across Paradise Lake to take refuge with the sirines until this madness from beyond the stars had passed from the world!

  But his voice and legs had not betrayed him, and he had not betrayed his comrades. Ohlt supposed this was the sort of beginning most heroes made.

  • ® •

  Jazra was panting by the time she dragged Aston Tanak's body out of sight behind the boulders at the foot of the cliff. Had the prophet not been thin by nature, austerity, and age, she might have had to leave him.

  Humans, she decided, were rather heavier in proportion to their height than the Rael. A human the height of the average Rael could easily weigh twice as much, if well-fed or muscular.

  By the time she was hidden as safely as she could contrive, the humans were nearly to the trees. She had to commend Ohlt for his swift commands, and the others for their prudent obedience.

  She also wiped from her mind the concept of the band as "her" humans. She knew them better than any others of their race, but that gave her no claim to them. It did not even let her predict their actions.

  Forgetting the humans for a moment, she switched her radio to scan through the tactical frequencies. It was only moments before an unfamiliar, querulous, but unmistakably Rael voice rang in her ears.

  "—Authority-forsaken firestorm comes down, we'll have made a diversion all right, but I thought diversion meant—"

  "Stop complaining, Krykus. You wanted a fight, I give you a fight, and now all you do is whine! Put down another smoke, and head for that tree with the black underside to its leaves, bearing one-seven-zero, about fifty yards."

  "Zolaris!" Jazra shouted. She had the absurd thought that the marine corporal would have been able to hear her across the valley and over the battle noise, without the radio, she had called so loudly.

  "Commander Jazra?" Zolaris sounded delighted, skeptical, and surprised all at once.

  She gave him her code name, and a couplet from a lewd song composed only a few days ago, that no one who had not been aboard Fworta could know.

  "By the great stellar gasses, it's good to hear your voice!" Zolaris said. She noted that, shrewd as usual, he did not ask where she was. He would have long since been more than a corporal, if he hadn't been right so often that he couldn't resist reminding the occasional officer about it.

  "Good," Zolaris said. "Any orders? Do you want covering fire for joining us?"

  Jazra looked at the width of the valley, the ruggedness of the ground, and the distance to the trees. The humans were closing in on at least temporary safety.

  "No. Protect those humans."

  "Is that what they're called?"

  "It's what they call themselves. Protect them if they need it. Do not harm them, or I will pull your arm out of its socket, and beat you to death with it."

  Zolaris laughed. He was older than Jazra, but could have handled two opponents her size, barehanded, and called it healthy exercise. "I had a bet that you would favor contact with the—"

  He broke off, then continued in a more urgent tone. "Commander, there's a spider drone coming down the cliff. Either lie low or be ready to shoot. No, lie low and be ready to shoot."

  Again, he prudently said nothing to reveal her location, but if the enemy was going to be close enough for her to use a blaster pistol effectively—

  Two long metal rods with pincers on the end thrust themselves into jazra's field of vision. One set of pincers held a grenade, the other a blaster rifle. Then two more rods, these jointed, with clawlike feet at the ends, and then two more.

  As usual with quickly made replicator products, the spider drone's body was just large enough to contain the minimum communications, computer, and sensor apparatus that allowed it to move and fight. It did not look as if the replicator had even tried to match metal in the components, and the body was half patches and welds.

  She waited until the body seemed almost close enough to touch, then whipped out her pistol and fired.

  She used the standard three-round burst, but she could have done as well with fewer. Her first shot caught a leg where it joined the body and severed the joint. This unbalanced the drone. It swung free, clinging with one last claw, then crashed thirty feet to the ground. The impact set off an explosive discharge of the power cell, which in turn set off the grenades in the pouch under the body.

  One grenade and the blaster rifle survived the fall. The ruined drone was smoking and sparking so fiercely that Jazra did not hesitate to run out and salvage both weapons. Of necessity, the Overseer's organic foes had become as ruthless as the constructs in salvaging from their fallen enemies.

  Jazra returned to her refuge considerably cheered. One drone down, and smoke, mist, and gas effectively hiding her tracks. She had a longer-ranging weapon than her pistol, even if only seven charges for it.

  Best of all, the grenade was one of the high-powered incendiaries. Clasp it against her chest, pull the pin—and when the smoke cleared, she would never be one of the Doomed.

  Ohlt had slumped against a tree, for a moment unable to stand without help, when he heard Chakfor Stonebreaker cheering. He looked out from behind a tree, just in time to see one of the golems—shaped like a monstrous spider— struck from the cliff face by a tongue of fire.

  He joined the cheering as the golem crashed to the ground and spewed more fire, as well as odd sparks and smoke that Ohlt was glad he could not smell. He turned, as Chakfor gripped his arm.

  "Well, the monk's a friend after all, and no coward. Maybe he lied about not being a fighter, but I'll hold my peace if you will."

  Ohlt still doubted that the monk had been telling the whole truth; certainly he had said nothing about having a ring of magic missiles under his robes. But the shipwright was not going to quarrel with a friend. Seeing Erick even partly healed, and in even the briefest safety, seemed to have mightily cheered the dwarf.

  Meanwhile, Ohlt was trying to devise some scheme for aiding the friendly sky-folk, if they were, in fact, enemies to the golems and their creators. But in a battle of fire and iron, a cudgel or even Elda's long-ranging and sure-striking arrows seemed not much more than a child's toy sword and buckler.

  "Unnnhhh—" came from behind Ohlt, a groan audible in a brief lull in the fire-hurling. "Gredin?"

  M'lenda said soothing words, not the blessing she had used before the h
ealing, possibly even nonsense. They seemed to calm the young soldier. When Ohlt looked back, the ranger-cleric was kneeling beside Trussk, holding his unburned hand against her thigh. The soldier's eyes were wide but hardly seeing. Then they turned toward Ohlt, and seemed to clear.

  Before Trussk could shape his cracked lips to speech, a new din echoed down the valley. Something whined like a gigantic marshfly, something else clanked like rusty armor, and a third something roared like a small dragon in a rage against the world.

  "Ahhhh—" was all that came out of Trussk, but Chakfor Stonebreaker spoke more coherently.

  "It's that—that golem shaped like a moving iron cottage, the one with the flame breath. It's come for us."

  Chakfor paused long enough to unsling a rather formidable axe from his back. "Well," he continued, "this time it will have to face Drakesbane."

  He was only of average height for a dwarf, but his axe was noticeably larger than the average for that favorite dwarven weapon. It was singularly plain, but if its edge and temper were of the usual dwarven quality, it would shear clean through an unarmored opponent.

  The problem was that none of their opponents were unarmored, except perhaps some of the ghouls. There was too much smoke to see what they wore, but Ohlt saw that some of them did, indeed, move like men.

  Hellandros caught up with the dwarf at the edge of the trees. For a moment Ohlt thought the wizard's restraining hand was going to keep the dwarf safely under cover. Chakfor shook off the wizard's hand, and marched out into the open with that curiously stumping dwarven gait that could cover ground faster than one might expect.

  Ohlt ran down the hill, and practically screamed in the wizard's ear, "Why didn't you stop him?"

  "He would have turned the axe on me, and I think I can make it do more good out there."

  Ohlt groaned. "Another spell you've done before at the school?"

  "Twice: once at the school, and once outside. It does work, I tell you. If only he doesn't change his mind about throwing the axe—ah, here's the lead."

  Hellandros held up in one hand a black pellet that looked more like owl dung than lead, and his staff in the other hand. He began to chant, something that sounded like the chittering of a horse-sized squirrel. Between the chitterings came grunts that sounded like a man with a flux who could not find a private place to sit down and relieve himself.