The Chief drew his breath carefully, looking from the approaching troops to the plainly baffled alien leader. However the alien might have been affected by Evertrue's tone, he could hardly guess the effect of that particular call to assemble by the colors. Neither could he tell by the purposeful advance whether conceivably an attack on the fortress was in progress, or an open changing of sides in the teeth of his own superiority.
The Chief let the uncertainty stretch out till he saw the alien leader turn to a messenger. Then he turned back toward the central tower and spoke very clearly.
"Let Evertrue sound the Welcome."
A cheerful call climbed into the air.
A shout of mingled relief and exultation burst from the armored troops as they realized they were welcomed back into the fold. They could have been treated as traitors, and once close enough, greeted with bolts, arrows, and taunts of contempt.
The Chief, feeling the sudden increase in strength like a man waking from a nightmare, reminded himself the odds were still none too good, and he had now the problem of getting these reinforcements into the fortress. The outer walls were mostly down. The mounted men among them could never get across that shambled of tumbled blocks. The palisade still stood, but from here he could see that its normal entrance, ordinarily dominated by the outer wall, was buried under a wreck of fallen masonry. But to judge by the clear ground that he could see, the main gate of the fortress still stood, and almost certainly the tunnel was undamaged.
Once inside the palisade, the way into the fortress, through the main gate or the tunnel, should be clear. But exactly how could he get these troops inside the palisade?
The leaders of the approaching armor were evidently contending with the same problem, and the called orders and direction of march showed that they intended to try to get in as close to the normal entrance as possible, over the fallen blocks, or through a gap in the palisade where the blocks had thrown down the upright logs.
The Chief glanced at Arion.
"We have to hold the palisade. Otherwise, the aliens will be over the outerworks and hit our men as they come in."
"Summa's men are still handy. I'll send the main body through the gate. The tunnel's too slow. Then I'll be back."
Down below, as if caught in a dream, the invaders stood unmoving. Then the alien leader, possibly uncertain at first what the shout of the armored troops had meant, turned sharply to the men around him. The messengers raced out with signal flags. The massed enemy horsemen gave a sudden roar, and surged forward.
Down below, the armored men, caught between the collapsed wall and a host of attackers, turned to fight. Behind them, on the palisade, armored men appeared. The mounted aliens were greeted from the fortress with flights of arrows and heavy bolts. But before the fight could be truly joined, from the far distance came a remote but clear golden tone.
This tone climbed, turned in the air, climbed again. It wasn't Evertrue, but it had Evertrue's ability to pin the mind, to stop the thoughts.
The clash below died away, everyone staring into the distance, no-one certain what this meant.
The Chief turned back toward the main central tower.
"Let Evertrue sound the Welcome!"
The passage of the chant rang in his head:
"Shall Evertrue call for help in vain?
No! Where was one, there shall be twain!"
The silver tone rose behind him.
From the distance, the golden tone responded, note for note.
Out there now, he could see dust drifting up, in the distance.
A quick glance showed him the alien chief, rapping out orders. Messengers raced over the field. The enormous host of horsemen moved like a single living thing, and now the enemy had changed position, and was drawn up with his main body facing to the west.
And there, passing across the flank of the enormous host of aliens, came a glitter and flash, and now the Chief could make out a small band—At once, even at this distance, he recognized the strange armor—that marched with solid unvarying tread straight for the fortress. The armor told him it was the star men. But now, for the first time, he felt a touch of fear.
They were few.
They had come. Years, decades, in the past, he had helped them. Across what unknown spaces the call had reached them—it must have gone out in some way from the ring—he could not know. But they had not hesitated. They were here.
But they were few.
Here seemed the first break in the accuracy of the prophetic chant, and the Chief damned himself for having felt relief. There was a tradition that the star men might, occasionally, mingle in human affairs—but that when they did, they would not openly use the tools and weapons of their full power. How had he imagined that the trouble was over because the star men had come? They had come to share the danger with him, that was all.
With equal illogic, he at once felt cheerful.
Let the aliens consider the meaning of such courage.
Arion, beside him again, and watching intently, gave a low exclamation.
"What?" said the Chief.
"I was," said Arion, "frightened at first by the smallness of their numbers. Now—"
"The aliens are not hastening to the attack."
"No," said Arion drily.
The Chief's vision, less sharp than Arion's, now revealed to him a curious fact. Where the little group of star men in armor walked, dust rose from the contact of their feet with the ground. That, at first, seemed natural. What was curious was that the dust continued to rise after the armored men had passed.
Looking from that compact little group, back across the field to the distant point where they had emerged from the forest, an unvarying drift of dust was rising still, fresh and none too thin.
Leaning forward at the parapet as the Star Men approached, the Chief caught his breath. He had begun to notice the details.
Before the staring motionless aliens, the armored men moved with a briskness unusual for men in armor. To move with such ease suggested that they bore a light weight. Yet, behind each of them in the packed dry earth, there stretched a line of footprints, and these footprints, looked at even from this distance, appeared to be two or three inches deep.
The only conclusion the Chief could reach was that the few men approaching in glittering armor were no ordinary warriors. Each individual must be bearing a weight of metal far beyond that of any normal armor. That they bore it so lightly could only suggest the strength of giants.
There was a movement in the close-packed ranks of the watching aliens, as if those in front, closest to the star men, and best aware of their nature, sought to draw away, while those behind, and hence less afraid and more curious, tried to get a better look. Only the alien leader and those close around him stayed truly unmoving.
Now the star men were passing the alien chief, and as if in greeting, salute, or possibly just out of exuberance, they did something that caused those around the alien leader to suddenly draw back, openly staring. For an instant, the Chief could not grasp it.
The star men were marching in unison, the left foot of each striking the ground at the same time. At this distance it was possible to hear the good-natured rhythmic chant with which they kept the beat of their pace. Their shields as they marched, hung on their left arms, while their right arms bore short thick spears slanted back across their right shoulders—save for their leader, who carried a naked broadsword in his right hand.
Except for the thickness of the spears and the size of the sword, there was nothing unusual in any of that. But as they passed the alien chief, the leader of the star men gave what appeared to be a greeting or salute with his sword—there was no menace in the gesture itself—and his men behind him at once changed their hold on shields and spears to the sound of a clashing of arms so harsh, loud, and ringing that it briefly left the Chief, looking down, feeling faint and dizzy.
There below, the Star Men marched, and as the right foot of each struck the ground, the shields were ab
ruptly on their right arms, and the spears slanted back across their left shoulders, and the marchers enthusiastically banged the butts of their spears—the long sharp points thrust straight up in the air—twice against the shields.
Then, as their left feet struck the ground, the shields were again on their left arms and the spears on their right shoulders, and again there was a mighty ringing clash as the butts of the spears were banged twice on the shields. It happened so fast there was no way to see how it was done, yet it was done good-naturedly, exuberantly, as a boy tosses a ball and catches it in his hand.
And now something that had no doubt already dawned on the massed aliens dawned on the Chief. That deafening volume of sound could never have come from so few men. He took another look.
Down there, the dust was still rising where the Star Men marched, and now they were close enough so the Chief could get a better look behind them. Coming along in back of them were another set of fresh footprints, and another, and another—until it dawned on him that while he could see only a few men, the sounds, the visible dust, the trampling of the dirt—all the indications were of an uncountable host of fighting men in massive armor, and of such might as to bear such armor lightly. And most of these men could not be seen.
They were still passing the near end of the aliens, who were drawing back, and now they tossed their spears in the air and caught them. Now they clashed their spears on their upraised shields, making a clanging noise that hurt the ears at this distance. Then the head of the column was approaching the fallen walls, and there appeared ladders, and the ladders were swung up, so that the upper ends leaned forward as if against walls still there to receive them.
The sun was now low enough so that, even holding up his hand to protect his eyes, the glare was dazzling. Leaning forward, the Chief peered again at the ladders. They were up above the collapsed masonry, to where the walls had been before they had been brought down, and the ladders remained solidly upright, but now bent slightly as if unseen weight bore down upon them.
Now, passing the alien host as the sun descended, came different prints in the soil, and the Chief recognized the dust and the hoofmarks suggesting a formidable host of armored knights, invisible like the rest, that drew up outside the walls and faced the enemy.
At the fallen walls of the fortress, fresh lines of footprints reached the ladders, and there was the clang of metal, the scuff of feet, the clink and rattle of an uncountable host coming up the ladders and along the walls, spreading out on the vanished battlements ready for the fight—if anyone here should care to make a fight—and there was nothing wrong with it anywhere save that there were no walls, no battlements, no outer towers there to defend, but that did not trouble the Star Men. From them, now, there came a clash of spears on shields that traveled from the walls back up the dusty trail to echo from hill to hill from the fortress down the valley up into the forest and out of sight in the distance.
The sun was now low in the west, and the Chief peered down at the enormous and motionless host of silent alien horsemen. Amongst these horsemen, he located the enemy chief, looked at him steadily, and the enemy chief slowly turned his head and looked back. Written in the slowness with which he turned his head, and in the wideness of his eyes, was an acknowledgement of defeat. Solemnly, the Chief looked back, feeling no triumph but only a great relief as the prophecy completed itself.
Before the motionless and wide-eyed aliens, the dust was still rising. The earth where the Star Men passed was churned and pitted to such a degree that the entire surface looked beaten down below the general level of the fields to either side. From time to time, a good-natured clashing of weapons on shields broke out somewhere among the invisible marching host, to travel in both directions, and roll and echo like iron thunder, back and forth, from the walls to the valley, to the forest and back again.
Each time, this clashing was louder, and the sound now from atop the walls, as the walls would have been before they fell, was such as could have been equaled only by a solid mass of troops, shoulder to shoulder drawn up on the battlements three or four deep. And now a none too subtle change was there to be heard in the clash and shout and the gathering steady throb of drums—The sound was no longer so good natured. It began to carry a threat. It began to suggest the gnashing of the teeth of innumerable large and hungry beasts of prey.
The Chief looked down at the leader of the aliens.
The alien chief looked back. Then he glanced around.
The dust no longer rose from the beaten ground before him.
Abruptly the mounted messengers with their pennants raced in either direction along the front of the silent mass of horsemen. How it was done, the Chief couldn't grasp, but abruptly the huge mass moved, almost as one man, and with a pound that seemed to shake the earth, they went across the fields, over the hill, up the far side of the valley into the forest, and away.
They were gone.
The Chief exhaled slowly, and thanked God.
Arion gripped his arm.
The Chief turned.
There before him in the fading light was the armor he knew from long ago. The voice, too, was familiar, and this time the words were in his own tongue:
"We star men, as you call us, differ among ourselves, as you differ among yourselves—But there are those among us who believe in paying our debts. Your ring is like a knot in a net made of strands of force, and this force can defend you, while waves moving along the strands can travel at speeds well above that of light. So we learned of this trouble and came to try to repay you."
The Chief said carefully, "I have no way to thank you. Any debt is more than repaid." He twisted off the ring, and held it out.
The voice from the armored suit was warm, but no hand reached out to take the ring.
"Perhaps we have repaid our debt, but such things are hard to measure. And there is more to it."
A second figure in armor stepped forward to clasp the Chief's arm. The voice was like the first, but less deep:
"I was in the cradle that you saved from the wreck. This is my first chance to thank you."
"When," said the first voice, "we find those who do what is right, we remember them. We cannot be truly friends, because of such things as disease, and differences in customs and skills. But it is a pleasure to help, albeit that our help is at times mostly illusion. But there is a part that is real, as our gratitude is real. You risked your life for us, and we have not forgotten."
When they were gone—and their departure was a simple thing compared to their coming—the Chief saw that his friend, Arion, was standing apart, tears rolling silently down his cheeks. It struck the Chief with a pang, and he felt, found the ring again where it had been, on his finger, and was about to twist it off to try to comfort his friend; but Arion held out his own hand, where on his finger a wide silver band showed a lion seated, with two tiny bright white stones for eyes.
"The young Star Man," said Arion. "When he passed, he clasped my hand. He said, 'For courage,' and afterwards this ring was there. It soothes my soul, but it isn't right." He began to twist at the ring. "I showed no courage. I was afraid to go back to that burning ship."
"You were with me when we saved the boy. It is that that counts."
"When you saved him, not I. And I would not have given him back. I was afraid. I do not deserve this ring."
"H'm," said the Chief. "It is a ring from the Star Men, Arion. Who knows what power it may possess. It should not be lost."
"Then you take it," said Arion. "I am ashamed to cry, but I cry only that I do not deserve it."
The Chief turned the new ring in his hand, but did not put it on. Neither did he put it in the small leather pouch at his belt. He examined it, and then looked up.
"It is very pretty."
Arion did not reply, but nodded miserably.
"Arion," said the Chief, "I am not only your friend since childhood. I am also your Chief and your King. As you know, I have the power to reward those who deserve it. Now t
hat you have given this ring into my care, I have, I think, the right to reward someone who has been true to his duty, who has courageously stood with me against hosts of alien horsemen so thick they covered the ground. So courageous as not even to think of this as courage. I am speaking of you."
"But that was my duty."
"It was also courage, beyond any doubt. Cup your hand so we do not lose this over the edge. If you had wavered, who knows who else would have gone over to the other side? The younger star man said, 'For courage.' He spoke truly."
Arion, eyes wondering, took the ring in his cupped hand, hesitated, then put it on. He smiled, looking at it, then looked up. "It eases a hurt, from long ago."
"Perhaps he sensed it." The Chief looked around at the wreckage in the moonlight. "Would that we had the skills of the Star Men. To rebuild this—" He paused.
Arion shook his head.
"We can never rebuild this, except as a monument."
"True. It would be useless against such weapons. In the future, our fortresses must be different."
They went down the steps to where the newly lighted torches smoked and flared in their brackets against the blackened stone of the tower. Tomorrow, they would start to think about correcting such of this terrible wreck as could be made right.
But, he thought with relief, at least, now, there could be a tomorrow, and at that thought, he felt also a flood of gratitude to the Star Men. Where, he wondered, were they now? What inconceivable deeds did they perform, up among the stars?
****
Colonel Valentine Sanders, speechless, watched his son, Lieutenant Colin Sanders, say earnestly to the General, "Sir, for weeks we've been immersed in the records from the spy devices. These are real people! It's impossible not to act toward them as we would toward our own people."
"Listen," said the General, "you were sent down there to straighten out that mess, not to compound it. To have one guard ring down there is bad enough. Why did you have to deliver another one?"
Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 3 October 2006 Page 17
