Space Chantey

by R. A. Lafferty

  Crewmen Fairfeather and Birdsong and Crabgrass were speared with stone-headed spears and killed, but each of them took an ogre with him. These crewmen died with curious whoops of laughter, quite unmanlike, quite ogrelike.

  Crewmen Di Prima and Kolonymous were knocked off their slabs and killed in their fall to the ground. Crewman Oldfellow was cloven from crown to crotch with a stone battle-ax, and he died in the both parts of him. And every blaster shot by every man had missed. Only Fairfeather and Birdsong and Crabgrass had killed ogres, and only these had taken stone spears after the unsuccess of their blasters.

  “To ground, to ground,” Roadstrum ordered. And all the hornet craft men grounded their slabs. “The low air is the element of the ogres and we can’t get them there,” Roadstrum explained. “We’ll stay on the ground where we can take steady aim, for we cannot do it on those wobbly slabs in flight. And they’ll have to come down to our level to try to spear us. Here, here, let’s form in rings of about five men each, and one can blast them front-on from whichever direction they come.”

  They formed so. The Laestrygonian ogres swooped around on their slabs in the low air and devised tactics. And then a large stone slab hung in the air directly over every five-man group.

  “Blast up,” Roadstrum ordered.

  All blasted up, and they tore some holes in the stone slabs. But they could not tell whether they killed any ogres. And not one blast in five went all the way through its slab. Those were good stones.

  “We wait them out,” said Roadstrum. “They cannot spear us unless they expose themselves, and we have them outranged. We wait while the poor giants make up their slow minds. I wonder what signal they use for surrender?”

  “Whup! Whup! Whruuupp!!!” It was like an earth-blast shaking the very ground under all of them. One of the stone slabs had dropped suddenly in dead-fall and had smashed and killed all five men stationed under it. Blood running in little rivulets from under the edges of the stone slab, and wild hooting laughter from the low skies!

  “Scatter,” roared Captain Roadstrum. “Scatter,” roared Captain Puckett. And the men all scattered pretty nimbly.

  “Crewman Bramble, go up on a small slab and scout,” Roadstrum ordered. “Find us an open-face cave or a haven of some kind under an overhang where they must come in to us and cannot drop on us.”

  Crewman Bramble scraped his feet on a small stone slab and was airborne, followed by whooping giants with stone-tipped spears.

  “Up and fly at random,” Roadstrum ordered them all. “Stall and evade and blast. We will learn the low-air tricks. We have them outranged, and there is no excuse for letting them kill us so easily.”

  So they were all up in the air.

  But the only one who was doing any good was Deep John the Vagabond, called by Captain Roadstrum their native light-horse auxiliary. The old hobo had a very thin, very small stone slab, with a sharp cutting edge which he made to be the forward edge. He was able to attain very rapid flight on this and come in behind the flying giants. At first he used his handy rock in its swinging sling, crashing it into what should have been the brain-base of the giants, but he could attain nothing against their bull-humps. Then he used his slab itself for a weapon, swooping in beyond them at a very high speed and calculated height, and just plain slicing their heads off with the forward cutting edge of his slab. Their heads hit the ground with thunderous thumps, and the crewmen could keep track of the kills of their ally.

  But say, those giants did have a happy time of it, no matter that a few of them were beheaded. They swooped in on the men on their flying stones, fluttering and banking and using their slabs like shields, and then suddenly struck with their long spears and spitted the men. There was laughter that made the low skies ring like bells whenever they did this. There was even louder laughter on the part of the giants when one of their own folk was killed and blown apart by a blaster. It seemed to be the funniest thing they had ever seen.

  And in truth it was funny to see one of them blown apart and come down in huge bleeding hunks, the great head usually broken free and landing with a brain-spewing crash. There was never a folk who took such delight in bloody slaughter as did the Laestrygonians.

  After a long while, Crewman Bramble came sailing back to the men, a spear quite through his shoulder giving him a rakish and almost heroic appearance.

  “Follow, follow,” Bramble called. “It isn’t much, but I have found something.”

  They followed him to a huge stone platform under an overhanging ledge, and all the remaining men landed on this. It was at the end of a pocket, the smaller bit of a wedge, and it could be defended. It had a natural parapet, breast-high, and all were behind it with their blasters. There weren’t many of them left though, six or seven, and more than twenty had been killed by the giants. How many giants were left they did not know. The men had never counted them, and they did not know them all. The giants all looked very much alike to the men. Here the giants could come at them only one at a time, and they would be fair shot for every blaster.

  One of them swooped in on his slab and was blasted to bits very close. His slab staggered away and crashed into the cliff-side very near the haven. The men were covered with a rubble of broken stone and were drenched with the giant’s blood.

  Another came in, and another. One came in all the way, leaped from his slab, and killed both Crewmen Burpy and Fracas with a single spear-thrust, and was then blasted to death by Captain Puckett. But the shattered bulk of the giant near crowded them out of their haven and left them knee-deep in blood behind their parapet.

  Still could be heard the idiot ear-rupturing laughter and hooting of Vetur and Fjall and many nameless giants in the low sky. Still could be heard the happy strong voice of Bjorn.

  “Little boy-men, did you ever have so much fun a fight as this? Hey, it’s a rousing thing, is it not? We always like to show our guests a good time.”

  Quite a few hours had gone by in all this. It wasn’t swift. It had been all the tedious maneuvering of battle that is not done in an instant. But the men were all soldiers and they began to enjoy it. And still they were incomparably weary.

  “One hour the break,” came the big voice of Bjorn from the swooping low sky. “It is the noon. Come out and loosen up, and the women bring the water.”

  “Is it a trick?” asked Captain Puckett.

  “No, they are not capable of tricks,” said Captain Roadstrum. “Let’s get out of here for a while.”

  They got onto their stone slabs, rubbed their feet, and lurched out into the sunny soft air. The big women of the Laestrygonians were rising on stone slabs with huge jars of water for the giants, and Margaret the houri came with a pretty fair sized jug for the men.

  “I will not let those cows bring water to you,” she announced. “I bring the water to you myself. Hey, I’ve been killing some of those cow-women, one at a time, and unbeknownst to the others. Bjorn is right. This killing can be a lot of fun.”

  “So far this is the oddest day I’ve ever half spent,” growled mighty Roadstrum, as he took his noontime ease on a stone floating in the low sky. “I don’t understand the setup here at all. There is neither rime nor reason to it.”

  “I bring rime,” Bjorn called in his loud voice. “Who needs reason?”

  The grinning Bjorn slid his slab near to that of Roadstrum. Then he blew a solid note on a jug flute that he had between his legs. And then he declaimed:

  “The little bug has got the glitter eyes of him,

  You can’t go by the pepper-picking size of him.

  We look and hoot, ‘That must be only half of him.’

  We laugh at him and laugh at him and laugh at him.

  He be tall eater and a taller topian,

  No mind the little fellow’s microscopian.

  We pitch a party, sling the dangest dangeroo.

  Whoop, whoop and holler! He’s a hero-hangeroo!”

  “What in hound-dog heaven is come over you, Bjorn?” Roadstrum asked in wonder.
“Is that Laestrygonian verse?”

  “Sure is not, little Roadstrum. That is Road-Storm verse, your own high epic. We make verses of it here also, as do folks everywhere. It is so long a time since we have had a certified hero in our place. You think we be so nice to you if we do not know who you are?”

  The grinning giant dripped rivers of sweat onto the earth below, and his voice was full of thunder. Roadstrum remembered an old mythology where the first rain was the sweat of such a deity-hero, and the first thunder was such a voice. But now Bjorn changed and became all business.

  “The noon is over!” he cried in a voice that made big cracks in a high cloud. “All back and make ready for the fight. Scoot, little men, back to your haven. Last one there gets killed!”

  The last one back to the haven was Crewman Ursley, and he was killed at the very entrance of it.

  Now came the rocks thrown by the slab-hands of the giants, rocks near as big as the men themselves. This was the mortar attack from cover. Crewman Mundmark was struck by such a rock. His limbs were unstrung, he burst asunder, and he died. Crewman Snow was similarly slain, but in louder fashion. The rock didn’t strike him full but it sheared near half of him away. He howled and roared and screamed. Crewman Snow was very reluctant about the dying business, but he died nevertheless.

  And yet the men were killing possibly two for one. They blasted arms off the giants that were reared back to throw. They blasted every one dead who ventured into the open. And there hadn’t been many giants, or men.

  “How many of us left?” Captain Roadstrum asked as though he were counting patrols and batteries and battalions.

  “I see myself. I see you,” said Captain Puckett. “I do not see any others.”

  “How many of you dog-hearted giants are left?” Roadstrum called loudly.

  “Only myself,” came the strong voice of Bjorn. “Come out the two of you and we will see who is dog-hearted.”

  “I go,” said big Captain Puckett. “I always did want to die a hero’s death.”

  Puckett went out with his blaster blasting. He smashed rocks open as though they were eggs. He knocked an arm and shoulder off of Bjorn when he had only half a shot at him, and the happy laughter of Bjorn over it was one of the great things.

  “I will show you a hero, a hero,” Captain Puckett swore.

  “Dead hero, dead hero, come to me,” Bjorn jibed. They were out of Roadstrum’s sight now. The sun was in his eyes as he peered, and it would soon be dusk.

  There were a dozen more blasts, a dozen more hooting laughs almost too big even for a giant, and then a last blood-clabbering scream.

  “The little boy-man was a hero after all,” Bjorn called. “Shall I toss your dead hero to you, Roadstrum?”

  “Toss him,” Roadstrum called. And the body of Puckett, impaled on the great spear, came sailing in. Roadstrum caught him somewhat, stretched him out, and gave him the hero’s salute.

  “Hurry!” Bjorn called with some urgency. “The sun sets, and we two are left.”

  “What is the hurry?” Roadstrum called. “I fight well in the dark.”

  “No, no!” the giant cried. “Be you not difficult! All must be dead before the sun goes down. Hurry out and be the hero too.”

  “A hero I am not, Bjorn,” Roadstrum blared. “Alive I will bide a while, and it is now my brain against yours.”

  But Roadstrum lied, hardly realizing it. Some time before, in the time of the ten-year war, Roadstrum had caught the heroes’ disease during one of the campaigns. It is infectious, and it stays with one to some degree forever. It usually took him every third day along about sundown, coming with a sudden chill and a quick steep fever. Always he had taken precautions so that he would do nothing rash while the heroic fever was upon him. But this was the third day at sundown and the fever came suddenly; and this time Roadstrum had not taken precautions.

  He jerked Bjorn’s great spear out of the body of Captain Puckett. He selected a stone slab, rubbed his feet on it, and veered out of the haven.

  “Up and at it, Bjorn of the dog-liver!” he called boldly. “We fight your way to the death.”

  “Have we time?” the giant cried. “Thunder! Have we time? The sun goes down.”

  “In the high air it shines yet,” Roadstrum called. “Up and at it, Bjorn.”

  There were two giants laughing in the sky! Roadstrum had turned himself into a giant with as boisterous and happy a laugh as the best ogre of them all. Now they came at each other on wild pitching stone slabs, the most rampaging stallions ever. Bjorn had his second spear, shorter but heavier than the first, and Roadstrum had found the strength to heft and haft the great spear itself. A pass, and both were slashed and gouged, and each left a hunk of meat on the other’s spear.

  “Higher,” Bjorn called, “the sun fails. Faster, the final sortie. Up, up, Roadstrum, the sun must catch both our spears.”

  They went up very high. The sun was on the bloody points of both their spears, and all the world below was dark. Then they charged, each on his snorting stone slab that neighed and surged and had come alive. Roadstrum caught big Bjorn in the middle of the belly, where it is mortal to an ogre. To swerve then, in the millionth of a second! But there was not time to swerve. Bjorn’s eyes laughed at Roadstrum as he died, and his heavy spear had the man through the center breast. Roadstrum’s slab was the higher, and it sliced Bjorn through at the groin. The two heroes came together in death, transfixed on each other’s spears, and fell a very very great way to the ground that was now in night darkness.

  “Ah, well, I died a hero and a giant,” Roadstrum said, for every man is allowed one sentence after death.

  So now all were dead on both sides. It had been close, though. For a while it seemed that they were not going to make it. The giants had told the men that the fun is all spilled out and lost if all are not dead by the fall of night.

  Dead and splattered. Gathered up and carried. By what? By whom?

  But even in dreams they are not. They are on the other side of dreams. It was incredible enough that one of them could carry Roadstrum, a giant among men. But how could one carry Bjorn, who was a giant among giants?

  Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it. There is the forgetfulness and the loss of identity. The spirit, even as the body, is unstrung and burst and scattered. One goes down to the death, and it leaves a mark on one forever.

  “Come to the breakfast!” boomed a voice so vast that it shook the world and all the void between the worlds. “Come to the breakfast!”

  And there was another voice rilling on in saucy silver, that of Margaret the houri.

  “I see that I am going to have to make some changes here,” Margaret was shrilling angrily. “You eat, you fight, you die, you sleep, you wake up, and you eat again. But where does that leave the women? You are going to have to find an hour every day for them.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Skel and Mus and Fleyta and Belja and Toa and Glethi and Vinna and Ull and Raetha, and all those other Laestrygonian dames with the more difficult names, “you are going to have to find one hour in the day for us.”

  “I think for a long time there is something missing,” big Bjorn was saying, “but there is no time for anything else. We breakfast, and then we fight till all are killed, and then it is night. We are dead all the night, and then we sleep for a very little while at first sun. Then is it time for breakfast again. Look yourself at the sundial, little witch-child. Can you see any time for anything else on the sundial?”

  Margaret the houri lifted a boulder larger than herself and smashed the sundial.

  “I will make a new dial,” she said. “I will make it different and with an extra hour. There has to be time for the women. And now I will instruct the women on what they will do in that hour.”

  “How did I get back here, Maggy?” Roadstrum asked the houri. “Was I not dead?”

  “Of course you were. And I was Valkyrie last night (the others
showed me how to be one) and I carried you back from the battlefield. Sprained a shoulder doing it.”

  “But how was I dead and now I am alive?” Roadstrum persisted.

  “Do you not understand yet, little Roadstrum?” Crewman Birdsong asked him. “Hey, it was a rollick, wasn’t it?”

  Little Roadstrum? From Crewman Birdsong? Roadstrum was not little, he was a giant of a man, he topped Crewman Birdsong by a head.

  No he didn’t. He didn’t come up to the nether ribs of Birdsong. Crewman Birdsong had become a giant, as had Crewman Fairfeather.

  “Why has it happened to you two, and not to great Roadstrum and to great Myself?” Captain Puckett asked, for now he was alive and awake again.

  “Some have it and some do not,” said Crewman Birdsong. “You two, and the most of you, must have had mental reservations when you went into the thing. I thought all along that you fellows weren’t as joyous and wholehearted in the battle as you might have been. If you let yourselves go completely today and enter into it with a happy howling heart, then I believe you can make it.”

  “But what is it? How does it happen? Where are we really?” Roadstrum asked.

  “No? You really don’t know? Valhalla, of course. Here the heroes fight to the death every day in glorious and cloud-capping battle. And every morning they are reborn to fight and die again. I can see where it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

  “Doesn’t it become kind of tiresome after a while, Bjorn?” Roadstrum asked the giant of giants.

  “Why no, not really, Roadstrum. You know how it is with everything. They all pall a little after the centuries begin to mount. But this is better than most things. Stay with us; you will be a mighty fighter yet.”

  “We have a choice to make, Captain Puckett,” said Roadstrum.

  “Let us first go see if we do have a choice, Captain Roadstrum,” said Puckett.

  They gathered their men, except Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather, who had already become giants and who would remain in any case. They went down to their hornet crafts to see if anything at all could be done to repair them on this world, to see if the mad boy Hondstarfer had left anything of them.