The Complete Margaret of Urbs

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  CHAPTER II

  Old Einar

  THREE weeks in Selui had served to give Hull Tarvish an acquaintance with the place. He no longer gaped at the sky-piercing ruins of the ancient city, or the vast fallen bridges, and he was quite at home in the town that lay beside it. He had found work easily enough in a baker’s establishment, where his great muscles served well. The hours were long, but his pay was munificent-five silver quarters a week.

  Ordinarily Hull was quick to make friends, but his long hours hindered him. He had but one, an enormously old man who sat at evening on the step beyond his lodging, Old Einar.

  “I wonder,” he said to old Einar, staring at the crumbling towers of the Ancients glowing in the sunset, “what the Ancients were like. Were they men like us? Then how could they fly?”

  “They were men like us, Hull. As for flying—well, it’s my belief that flying is a legend. There was a man supposed to have flown over the cold lands to the north and those to the south, and also across the great sea.

  “But this flying man is called in some accounts Bird and in others Lindbird, and surely one can see the origin of such a legend. The migrations of birds, who cross land and seas each year, that is all.”

  “Or perhaps magic,” suggested Hull. “There is no magic. The Ancients themselves denied it, and I have struggled through many a moldy book in their curious, archaic tongue!”

  “You can read!” Hull exclaimed. “That in itself is a sort of magic.”

  Old Einar settled himself on the step and puffed blue smoke from his pipe. “Shall I tell you the true story of the world, Hull—the story called History?”

  “Yes. In Ozarky we spoke little of such things.”

  “Well,” said the old man comfortably. “I will begin, then, at what to us is the beginning, but to the Ancients was the end. Great steel wagons once roared over the iron roads of the Ancients. Men crossed the oceans to east and west. The cities were full of whirring wheels, and instead of the many little city-states of our time, there were giant nations with thousands of cities and a hundred million—a hundred and fifty million people.”

  Hull stared. “I do not believe there are so many people in the world,” he said.

  Old Einar shrugged. “Who knows?” he returned. “The ancient books—all too few—tell us that the world is round, and that beyond the seas lie one, or several other continents, but what races are there today not even Joaquin Smith can say.”

  He puffed smoke again. “Well, such was the ancient world. These were warlike nations, so fond of battle that they had to write many books about the horrors of war to keep themselves at peace, but they always failed. During the time they called their twentieth century there was a whole series of wars, not such little quarrels as we have so often between our city-states, nor even such as that between the Memphis League and the Empire, five years ago. Their wars spread like storm clouds around the world, and were fought between millions of men with unimaginable weapons that flung destruction a hundred miles and with ships on the seas, and with poisonous gases.”

  “I love fighting,” said Hull.

  “Yes, but would you love it if it meant simply the destroying of thousands of men beyond the horizon? Men you were never to see?”

  “No. War should be man to man, or at least no farther than the carry of a rifle ball.”

  “True. Well some time near the end of their twentieth century, the ancient world exploded into war like a powder horn in a fire. It was not only nation against nation, but race against race. And then came the Gray Death.”

  “I have heard of the Gray Death,” said Hull.

  “At any rate, the Gray Death leaped suddenly across the world, striking alike at all people; six out of every ten died.

  “By the first century after the Plague, there was little left of the Ancients save their ruined cities where lurked robber bands that scoured the country by night. They had little interest in anything save food or the coined money of the old nations, and they did incalculable damage. None or few could read, and on cold nights it was usual to raid the ancient libraries for books to burn, and to make things worse, fire gutted the ruins of all cities, and there was no organized resistance to it. The flames simply burned themselves out, and priceless books, vanished.”

  “Yet in N’Orleans they study, don’t they?” asked Hull.

  “Yes. I’m coming to that. About two centuries after the Plague—a hundred years ago, that is—the world had stabilized itself. And then, into the town of N’Orleans, built beside the ancient city, came young John Holland.

  “Holland was a rare specimen, anxious for learning. He found the remains of an ancient library and began slowly to decipher the archaic words in the few books that had survived. Little by little others joined him, and the Academy was born.

  “It was a group of studious men living a sort of communistic, monastic life. One day a youth named Teran had a dream—no less a dream than to recondition the centuries-old power machines of N’Orleans, to give the city the power that travels on wires!”

  “What’s that?” asked Hull. “What’s that, Old Einar?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, Hull. It didn’t stop Teran to realize that there was no coal or oil to run his machines. He believed that when power was needed, it would be there, so he and his followers scrubbed and filed and welded away, and Teran was right. When he needed power, it was there.

  “This was the gift of a man named Olin, who had unearthed the last, the crowning secret of the Ancients, the power called atomic energy. He gave it to Teran, and N’Orleans became a miracle city where lights glowed and wheels turned. Men came from every part of the continent to see, and among these were two called Martin Sair and Joaquin Smith, come out of Mexico with the half-sister of Joaquin, the Satanically beautiful being sometimes called Black Margot.

  “Martin Sair was a genius. He found his field in the study of medicine, and it was less than ten years before he had uncovered the secret of the hard rays. He was studying sterility, but he found—immortality!”

  “Then the Immortals are immortal!” murmured Hull.

  “It may be, Hull. At least they do not seem to age, but—Well, Joaquin Smith was also a genius, but of a different sort. I think he dreams of an American Empire, or”—old Einar’s voice dropped—“a World Empire. At least, he took Martin Sair’s immortality and traded it for power.

  “The Second Enlightenment was dawning and there was genius in N’Orleans. He traded immortality to Kohlmar for a weapon, he offered it to Olin for atomic power, but Olin was already past youth, and refused. So the Master seized the secret of the atom despite Olin, and the Conquest began.

  “Smith raised his army and marched north, and everywhere cities fell or yielded willingly. Joaquin Smith is magnificent, and men flock to him, cities cheer him. Only here and there men hate him bitterly, and speak such words as tyrant, and talk of freedom.”

  “What are they like, the Immortals?”

  “Well, Martin Sair is as cold as mountain rock, and the Princess Margaret is like black fire. Even my old bones feel younger only to look at her, and it is wise for young men not to look at her at all, because she is quite heartless, ruthless, and pitiless. As for Joaquin Smith, the Master—I do not know the words to describe so complex a character, and I know him well. He is mild, perhaps, but enormously strong, kind or cruel as suits his purpose, glitteringly intelligent, and dangerously charming.”

  “You knew him!” echoed Hull, and added curiously, “What is your other name, Old Einar, you who know the Immortals?”

  The old man smiled.

  “When I was born,” he said, “my parents called me Einar Olin.”

  CHAPTER III

  The Master Marches

  JOAQUIN SMITH was marching. Hull Tarvish leaned against the door of File Ormson’s iron worker’s shop in Ormiston, and stared at the blue mountains of Ozarky in the south. Report had it that Ozarky was already under the Master’s sway. As for Selui, the Master, encamped above
Norse, had requested the city’s surrender.

  Selui wasn’t going to yield. Already the towns of the three months’ old Selui Confederation were sending in their men, from Bloomington, from Cairo, even from distant Chicago on the shores of the saltless sea Mitchin.

  Hull knew there was fighting ahead, and he had come to take part in it.

  Ormiston was his home for the present, since he’d found work here with File Ormson, the squat iron-worker, broad-shouldered as Hull himself and a head shorter.

  A voice sounded at his side. “Hull Tarvish! Are you too proud to notice humble folk?”

  It was Vail Ormiston. He remembered pleasantly an evening two days ago when he had sat and talked with her on a bench by a tree.

  And he remembered the walk through the fields when she had shown him the mouth of the great ancient storm sewer that had run under the dead city, and still stretched crumbling for miles underground toward the hills.

  And then he recalled her story of how, when a child, she had lost herself in it, so that her father had planted the tangle of blackberry bushes that still concealed the opening.

  He grinned, “Is it the eldarch’s daughter speaking of humble folk? Your father will be taxing me double if he hears of this!”

  Her eyes twinkled.

  “I’d like to talk to you again this evening, Vail,” he cried boldly.

  “Would you?” she murmured demurely.

  “Yes, if Enoch Ormiston hasn’t spoken first for your time.”

  “But he has, Hull.”

  He knew she was teasing him deliberately. “I’m sorry,” he said shortly.

  “But—I told him I was busy,” she finished.

  “Then what a misfortune it is that I have work to do,” Hull said.

  “What does File make?” asked Vail.

  Instantly Hull’s smile faded. “He forges—a sword!”

  Vail, too, was no longer the joyous one of a moment ago. Over both of them had come the shadow of the Empire. Out in the blue hills of Ozarky Joaquin Smith was marching.

  Later that evening Hull watched the glint of a copper moon on Vail’s copper hair, and leaned back on the bench near her house at the edge of town. Behind them the stone house loomed dark, for her father was scurrying about in town on Confederation business, and the help had availed themselves of the evening of freedom to join the crowd in the village square. But the yellow daylight of the oil-lamp showed across the road in the house of Hue Helm, the farmer who had brought Hull from Norse to Ormiston.

  It was at this light that Hull stared thoughtfully.

  “I like fighting,” he repeated, “but somehow the joy has gone out of this. It’s as if one waited the onslaught of a thunder cloud.”

  “How,” asked Vail in a timid, small voice, “can one fight magic?”

  “There is no magic,” said the youth, echoing Old Einar’s words.

  “Then why is it that Joaquin Smith has never lost a battle?”

  “Knowledge,” said Hull. “The knowledge of the Ancients.”

  “The knowledge of the Ancients was magic,” said the girl. “If Holland, Olin, and Martin Sair are not sorcerers, then what are they? If Black Margot is no witch, then my eyes never looked on one.”

  “Have you seen them?” queried Hull.

  “Of course, all but Holland, who is dead. Three years ago during the Peace of Memphis my father and I traveled into the Empire. I saw all of them about the city of N’Orleans.”

  “And is she—what they say she is?”

  “The Princess?” Vail’s eyes dropped. “Men say she is beautiful.”

  “But you think not?”

  “What if she is?” snapped the girl almost defiantly. “Her beauty is like her youth, like her very life—artificial, preserved after its allotted time, frozen. That’s it—frozen by sorcery.”

  “At least,” Hull returned, “there’s no magic will stop a bullet save flesh and bone. Yes, and the wizard who stops one with his skull lies just as dead as an honest man.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she breathed timidly. “Hull, he must be stopped. He must! If Joaquin Smith takes Ormiston, my father is the one to suffer. His lands will be parceled out. He’s old, Hull—old. What will become of him then? I know many people feel there is magic in the very name of Joaquin Smith, tor he marches through armies that outnumber him ten to one.” She paused. “But not Ormiston!” she cried fiercely. “Not if the women have to bear arms!”

  “Not Ormiston,” he agreed gently.

  “You’ll fight, Hull, won’t you? Even though you’re not Ormiston born?”

  “Of course. I have bow and sword, and a good pistol. I’ll fight.”

  “But no rifle? Wait, Hull.”

  In a moment she was back again. “Here. Here is a rifle and horn and ball. Send me a bullet through the Master’s skull. And one besides between the eyes of Black Margot—for me!”

  “I do not fight women,” he said.

  “Not woman but witch!”

  “None the less, Vail, it must be two bullets for the Master and only the captive’s chains for Princess Margaret.”

  “Yes!” she blazed. “Oh, yes, Hull, that’s better. If I could ever hope to see that—” She rose suddenly, and he followed her to the gate. “You must go,” she murmured, “but before you leave me, you can—if wish it, Hull—kiss me.”

  Of a sudden he was all shy mountainy again. He faced her flushing a furious red, but only half from embarrassment, for the rest was happiness. He circled her with his great arms and, very hastily, he touched his lips to soft ones.

  “Now,” he said exultantly, “now I will fight if I have to charge the men of the Empire by myself.”

  CHAPTER IV

  The Battle of Eaglefoot Flow

  THE men of the Confederation were pouring into Ormiston all night long. There was a rumble of wagons, bringing powder and ball from Selui, and food as well, for Ormiston couldn’t even attempt to feed so many ravenous mouths. A magnificent army, ten thousand strong, and all of them seasoned fighting men.

  The stand was to be at Ormiston, and Norse, the only settlement now between Joaquin Smith and the Confederation, was off to its fate. Experienced leaders had examined the territory, and had agreed on a plan. Three miles south of the town, the road followed an ancient railroad cut, with fifty-foot embankments on either side, heavily wooded for a mile north and south of the bridge across Eaglefoot Flow.

  Along this course they were to distribute their men, a single line where the bluffs were high and steep, massed forces where the terrain permitted. Joaquin Smith must follow that road; there was no other. An ideal situation for ambush, and a magnificently simple plan.

  It was mid-morning when the woods runners that had been sent into Ozarky returned with breath-taking news. Joaquin Smith had received the Selui defiance of his representations, and was marching, was close. His forces? The runners estimated them at four thousand men, all mounted, with perhaps another thousand auxiliaries. The Master’s army was outnumbered two to one!

  The time was at hand. In the little room beside File Ormson’s workshop, Hull was going over his weapons while Vail Ormiston, pale and nervous and very lovely, watched him.

  “Before you go,” Vail whispered, “will you—kiss me, Hull?”

  He strode toward her, then recoiled in sudden alarm. For he heard a series of the faintest possible clicks, and Hull fancied that he saw for an instant a glistening of tiny blue sparks on candle-sticks and metal objects about the room, and that he felt for a brief moment a curious tingling.

  Then he forgot all of these strange trifles as the powder horn on the table roared into terrific flame, and flaming wads of powder shot meteorlike around him.

  For an instant he froze rigid. Vail was screaming—her dress was burning! He moved into sudden action, sweeping her from her feet, crashing her sideward to the floor, where his great hands beat out the fire. Then he slapped table and floor; and finally there were no flames.

  He turned, coughi
ng and choking in the black smoke, and bent over Vail, who gasped half overcome. Her skirt was burned to her knees.

  “Are you hurt?” he cried. “Vail, are you burned?”

  “No—no!” she panted.

  “Then outside!” he snapped, reaching down to lift her.

  Outside there was chaos. He set Vail gently on the step and surveyed a scene of turmoil. Men ran shouting, and from windows along the street black smoke poured. A dozen yards away a powder wagon had blasted itself into a vast mushroom of smoke, incinerating horses and driver alike.

  “What—happened?” gasped Vail. “Hull, what—?”

  He comprehended suddenly. “The sparkers!”[4] he roared. “Joaquin Smith’s sparkers! Old Einar told me about them.” He groaned. “There goes our ammunition.”

  He rushed toward the milling group that surrounded bearded old Marcus Ormiston and the Confederation leaders. He plowed his way fiercely through, and seized the panic-stricken graybeard.

  He glared at the five leaders. “You’ll carry through. Do you see? For powder and ball there’s bow and sword. Gather your men and march!”

  And such, within the hour, was the decision. Hull marched with the men of Ormiston. The Ormiston men were first on the line of the Master’s approach, and they filtered to their forest-hidden places as silently as foxes. Hull let his eyes wander back along the cut and what he saw pleased him, for no eye could have detected that along the deserted road lay ten thousand fighting men. They were good woodsmen, too, these fellows from the upper river and the saltless seas.

  Down the way from Norse a single horseman came galloping. Old Marcus Ormiston recognized him, stood erect, and hailed him. They talked; Hull could hear the words. The Master had passed through Norse, pausing only long enough to notify the eldarch that henceforth his taxes must be transmitted to N’Orleans.

  The informant rode on toward Ormiston, and the men fell to their quiet waiting. A half hour passed, and then, faint drifting on the silent air, came the sound of music. Singing; men’s voices in song. Hull listened intently, and his skin crept and his hair prickled as he made out the words of the Battle Song of N’Orleans.