The Dragon Masters

by Jack Vance

  Carcolo laughed, a cackle of mirthless glee. Bast Givven looked at him sidelong. Had Ervis Carcolo become addled? He turned away. A matter of no great moment.

  Carcolo came to a sudden resolve. He stalked to one of the Spiders, mounted, swung around to face his men. “I ride to Banbeck Vale. Joaz Banbeck has done his best to despoil me; I shall do my best against him. I give no orders: come or stay as you wish. Only remember! Joaz Banbeck would not allow us to fight the Basics!”

  He rode off. The men stared into the plundered valley, turned to look after Carcolo. The black ship was just now slipping over Mount Despoire. There was nothing for them in the valley. Grumbling and muttering they summoned the bone-tired dragons, set off up the dreary mountainside.

  Ervis Carcolo rode his Spider at a plunging run across the Skanse. Tremendous crags soared to either side, the blazing sun hung halfway up the black sky. Behind, the Skanse Ramparts; ahead, Barchback, Barch Spike and Northguard Ridge. Oblivious to the fatigue of his Spider, Carcolo whipped it on; gray-green moss pounded back from its wild feet, the narrow head hung low, foam trailed from its gill-vents. Carcolo cared nothing; his mind was empty of all but hate — for the Basics, for Joaz Banbeck, for Aerlith, for man, for human history.

  Approaching Northguard the Spider staggered and fell. It lay moaning, neck outstretched, legs trailing back. Carcolo dismounted in disgust, looked back down the long rolling slope of the Skanse to see how many of his troops had followed him. A man riding a Spider at a modest lope turned out to be Bast Givven, who presently came up beside him, inspected the fallen Spider. “Loosen the surcingle; he will recover the sooner.”

  Carcolo glared, thinking to hear a new note in Givven’s voice. Nevertheless he bent over the foundered dragon, slipped loose the broad bronze buckle. Givven dismounted, stretched his arms, massaged his thin legs. He pointed. “The Basic ship descends into Banbeck Vale.”

  Carcolo nodded grimly. “I would be an audience to the landing.” He kicked the Spider. “Come, get up, have you not rested enough? Do you wish me to walk?”

  The Spider whimpered its fatigue, but nevertheless struggled to its feet. Carcolo started to mount, but Bast Givven laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. Carcolo looked back in outrage; here was impertinence! Givven said calmly, “Tighten the surcingle, otherwise you will fall on the rocks, and once more break your bones.”

  Uttering a spiteful phrase under his breath, Carcolo clasped the buckle back into position, the Spider crying out in despair. Paying no heed, Carcolo mounted, and the Spider moved off with trembling steps.

  Barch Spike rose ahead like the prow of a white ship, dividing Northguard Ridge from Barchback. Carcolo paused to consider the landscape, tugging his mustaches.

  Givven was tactfully silent. Carcolo looked back down the Skanse to the listless straggle of his army, set off to the left.

  Passing close under Mount Gethron, skirting the High Jambles, they descended an ancient watercourse to Banbeck Verge. Though perforce they had come without great speed, the Basic ship had moved no faster and had only started to settle into the vale, the disks at bow and stern swirling with furious colors.

  Carcolo grunted bitterly. “Trust Joaz Banbeck to scratch his own itch. Not a soul in sight! He’s taken to his tunnels, dragons and all.” Pursing his mouth he rendered a mincing parody of Joaz’s voice: “‘Ervis Carcolo, my dear friend, there is but one answer to attack: dig tunnels!’ And I replied to him, ‘Am I a sacerdote to live underground? Burrow and delve, Joaz Banbeck, do as you will, I am but an old-time man; I go under the cliffs only when I must.’”

  Givven gave the faintest of shrugs.

  Carcolo went on, “Tunnels or not, they’ll winkle him out. If need be they’ll blast open the entire valley. They’ve no lack of tricks.”

  Givven grinned sardonically. “Joaz Banbeck knows a trick or two — as we know to our sorrow.”

  “Let him capture two dozen Basics today,” snapped Carcolo. “Then I’ll concede him a clever man.” He stalked away to the very brink of the cliff, standing in full view of the Basic ship. Givven watched without expression.

  Carcolo pointed. “Aha! Look there!”

  “Not I,” said Givven. “I respect the Basic weapons too greatly.”

  “Pah!” spat Carcolo. Nevertheless he moved a trifle back from the brink. “There are dragons in Kergan’s Way. For all Joaz Banbeck’s talk of tunnels.” He gazed north along the valley a moment or two, then threw up his hands in frustration. “Joaz Banbeck will not come up here to me; there is nothing I can do. Unless I walk down into the village, seek him out and strike him down, he will escape me.”

  “Unless the Basics captured the two of you and confined you in the same pen,” said Givven.

  “Bah!” muttered Carcolo, and moved off to one side.

  Chapter X

  The vision-plates which allowed Joaz Banbeck to observe the length and breadth of Banbeck Vale for the first time were being put to practical use. He had evolved the scheme while playing with a set of old lenses, and dismissed it as quickly. Then one day, while trading with the sacerdotes in the cavern under Mount Gethron, he had proposed that they design and supply the optics for such a system.

  The blind old sacerdote who conducted the trading gave an ambiguous reply: the possibility of such a project, under certain circumstances, might well deserve consideration. Three months passed; the scheme receded to the back of Joaz Banbeck’s mind. Then the sacerdote in the trading-cave inquired if Joaz still planned to install the viewing system; if so he might take immediate delivery of the optics. Joaz agreed to the barter price, returned to Banbeck Vale with four heavy crates. He ordered the necessary tunnels driven, installed the lenses, and found that with the study darkened he could command all quarters of Banbeck Vale.

  Now, with the Basic ship darkening the sky, Joaz Banbeck stood in his study, watching the descent of the great black hulk.

  At the back of the chamber maroon portieres parted. Clutching the cloth with taut fingers stood the minstrel-maiden Phade. Her face was pale, her eyes bright as opals. In a husky voice she called, “The ship of death; it has come to gather souls!”

  Joaz turned her a stony glance, turned back to the honed-glass screen. “The ship is clearly visible.”

  Phade ran forward, clasped Joaz’s arm, swung around to look into his face. “Let us try to escape! Into the mountains, the High Jambles; don’t let them take us so soon!”

  “No one deters you,” said Joaz indifferently. “Escape in any direction you choose.”

  Phade stared at him blankly, then turned her head and watched the screen. The great black ship sank with sinister deliberation, the disks at bow and stern now shimmering mother-of-pearl. Phade looked back to Joaz, licked her lips. “Are you not afraid?”

  Joaz smiled thinly. “What good to run? Their Trackers are swifter than Murderers, more vicious than Termagants. They can smell you a mile away, take you from the very center of the Jambles.”

  Phade shivered with superstitious horror. She whispered, “Let them take me dead, then; I can’t go with them alive.”

  Joaz suddenly cursed. “Look where they land! In our best field of bellegarde!”

  “What is the difference?”

  “‘Difference’? Must we stop eating because they pay their visit?”

  Phade looked at him in a daze, beyond comprehension. She sank slowly to her knees and began to perform the ritual gestures of the Theurgic cult: hands palm down to either side, slowly up till the back of the hand touched the ears, and the simultaneous protrusion of the tongue; over and over again, eyes staring with hypnotic intensity into emptiness.

  Joaz ignored the gesticulations, until Phade, her face screwed up into a fantastic mask, began to sigh and whimper; then he swung the flaps of his jacket into her face. “Give over your folly!”

  Phade collapsed moaning to the floor; Joaz’s lips twitched in annoyance. Impatiently he hoisted her erect. “Look you, these Basics are neither ghouls nor angels of deat
h; they are no more than pallid Termagants, the basic stock of our dragons. So now, give over your idiocy, or I’ll have Rife take you away.”

  “Why do you not make ready? You watch and do nothing.”

  “There is nothing more that I can do.”

  Phade drew a deep shuddering sigh, stared dully at the screen. “Will you fight them?”

  “Naturally.”

  “How can you hope to counter such miraculous power?”

  “We will do what we can. They have not yet met our dragons.”

  The ship came to rest in a purple and green vine-field across the valley, near the mouth of Clybourne Crevasse. The port slid back, a ramp rolled forth. “Look,” said Joaz, “there you see them.”

  Phade stared at the queer pale shapes who had come tentatively out on the ramp. “They seem strange and twisted, like silver puzzles for children.”

  “They are the Basics. From their eggs came our dragons. They have done as well with men: look, here are their Heavy Troops.”

  Down the ramp, four abreast, in exact cadence, marched the Heavy Troops, to halt fifty yards in front of the ship. There were three squads of twenty: short men with massive shoulders, thick necks, stern down-drawn faces. They wore armor fashioned from overlapping scales of black and blue metal, a wide belt slung with pistol and sword. Black epaulettes extending past their shoulders supported a short ceremonial flap of black cloth ranging down their backs; their helmets bore a crest of sharp spikes, their knee-high boots were armed with kick-knives.

  A number of Basics now rode forth. Their mounts, creatures only remotely resembling men, ran on hands and feet, backs high off the ground. Their heads were long and hairless, with quivering loose lips. The Basics controlled them with negligent touches of a quirt, and once on the ground set them cantering smartly through the bellegarde. Meanwhile a team of Heavy Troopers rolled a three-wheeled mechanism down the ramp, directed its complex snout toward the village.

  “Never before have they prepared so carefully,” muttered Joaz. “Here come the Trackers.” He counted. “Only two dozen? Perhaps they are hard to breed. Generations pass slowly with men; dragons lay a clutch of eggs every year …”

  The Trackers moved to the side and stood in a loose restless group: gaunt creatures seven feet tall, with bulging black eyes, beaked noses, small undershot mouths pursed as if for kissing. From narrow shoulders long arms dangled and swung like ropes. As they waited they flexed their knees, staring sharply up and down the valley, in constant restless motion. After them came a group of Weaponeers — unmodified men wearing loose cloth smocks and cloth hats of green and yellow. They brought with them two more three-wheeled contrivances which they at once began to adjust and test.

  The entire group became still and tense. The Heavy Troopers stepped forward with a stumping, heavy-legged gait, hands ready at pistols and swords. “Here they come,” said Joaz. Phade made a quiet desperate sound, knelt, once more began to perform Theurgic gesticulations. Joaz in disgust ordered her from the study, went to a panel equipped with a bank of six direct-wire communications, the construction of which he had personally supervised. He spoke into three of the telephones, assuring himself that his defenses were alert, then returned to the honed-glass screens.

  Across the field of bellegarde came the Heavy Troopers, faces heavy, hard, marked with down-veering creases. Upon either flank the Weaponeers trundled their three-wheeled mechanisms, but the Trackers waited beside the ship. About a dozen Basics rode behind the Heavy Troopers, carrying bulbous weapons on their backs.

  A hundred yards from the portal into Kergan’s Way, beyond the range of the Banbeck muskets, the invaders halted. A Heavy Trooper ran to one of the Weaponeers’ carts, thrust his shoulders under a harness, stood erect. He now carried a gray machine, from which extended a pair of black globes. The Trooper scuttled toward the village like an enormous rat, while from the black globes streamed a flux, intended to interfere with the neural currents of the Banbeck defenders, and so immobilize them.

  Explosions sounded, puffs of smoke appeared from nooks and vantages through the crags. Bullets spat into the ground beside the Trooper, several caromed off his armor. At once heat-beams from the ship stabbed against the cliff walls. In his study Joaz Banbeck smiled. The smoke puffs were decoys, the actual shots came from other areas. The Trooper, dodging and jerking, avoided a rain of bullets, ran under the portal, above which two men waited. Affected by the flux, they tottered, stiffened, but nevertheless, they dropped a great stone which struck the Trooper where the neck joined his shoulders, hurled him to the ground. He thrashed his arms and legs up and down, rolled over and over; then bouncing to his feet, he raced back into the valley, soaring and bounding, finally to stumble, plunge headlong to the ground and lay kicking and quivering.

  The Basic army watched with no apparent concern or interest.

  There was a moment of inactivity. Then from the ship came an invisible field of vibration, traveling across the face of the cliff. Where the focus struck, puffs of dust arose and loose rock became dislodged. A man, lying on a ledge, sprang to his feet, dancing and twisting, plunged two hundred feet to his death. Passing across one of Joaz Banbeck’s spy-holes, the vibration was carried into the study where it set up a nerve-grinding howl. The vibration passed along the cliff; Joaz rubbed his aching head.

  Meanwhile the Weaponeers discharged one of their instruments: first there came a muffled explosion, then through the air curved a wobbling gray sphere. Inaccurately aimed, it struck the cliff and burst in a great gush of yellow-white gas. The mechanism exploded once more, and this time lobbed the bomb accurately into Kergan’s Way — which was now deserted. The bomb produced no effect.

  In his study Joaz waited grimly. To now the Basics had taken only tentative, almost playful, steps; more serious efforts would surely follow.

  Wind dispersed the gas; the situation remained as before. The casualties so far had been one Heavy Trooper and one Banbeck rifleman.

  From the ship now came a stab of red flame, harsh, decisive. The rock at the portal shattered; slivers sang and spun; the Heavy Troopers jogged forward. Joaz spoke into his telephone, bidding his captains caution, lest counter-attacking against a feint, they expose themselves to a new gas bomb.

  But the Heavy Troopers stormed into Kergan’s Way — in Joaz’s mind an act of contemptuous recklessness. He gave a curt order; out from passages and areas swarmed his dragons: Blue Horrors, Fiends, Termagants.

  The squat Troopers stared with sagging jaws. Here were unexpected antagonists! Kergan’s Way resounded with their calls and orders. First they fell back, then, with the courage of desperation, fought furiously. Up and down Kergan’s Way raged the battle. Certain relationships quickly became evident. In the narrow defile neither the Trooper pistols nor the steel-weighted tails of the Fiends could be used effectively. Cutlasses were useless against dragon-scale, but the pincers of the Blue Horrors, the Termagant daggers, the axes, swords, fangs and claws of the Fiends, did bloody work against the Heavy Troopers. A single Trooper and a single Termagant were approximately a match; though the Trooper, gripping the dragon with massive arms, tearing away its brachs, breaking back its neck, won more often than the Termagant. But if two or three Termagants confronted a single Trooper, he was doomed. As soon as he committed himself to one, another would crush his legs, blind him or hack open his throat.

  So the Troopers fell back to the valley floor, leaving twenty of their fellows dead in Kergan’s Way. The Banbeck men once more opened fire, but once more with minor effect.

  Joaz watched from his study, wondering as to the next Basic tactic. Enlightenment was not long in coming. The Heavy Troopers regrouped, stood panting, while the Basics rode back and forth receiving information, admonishing, advising, chiding.

  From the black ship came a gush of energy, to strike the cliff above Kergan’s Way; the study rocked with the concussion.

  Joaz backed away from the vision-plates. What if a ray struck one of his collecting lenses? Migh
t not the energy be guided and reflected directly toward him? He departed his study as it shook to a new explosion.

  He ran through a passage, descended a staircase, emerged into one of the central galleries, to find apparent confusion. White-faced women and children, retiring deeper into the mountain, pushed past dragons and men in battle-gear entering one of the new tunnels. Joaz watched for a moment or two to satisfy himself that the confusion held nothing of panic, then joined his warriors in the tunnel leading north.

  In some past era an entire section of the cliff at the head of the valley had sloughed off, creating a jungle of piled rock and boulders: the Banbeck Jambles. Here, through a fissure, the new tunnel opened; and here Joaz went with his warriors. Behind them, down the valley, sounded the rumble of explosions as the black ship began to demolish Banbeck Village.

  Joaz, peering around a boulder, watched in a fury, as great slabs of rock began to scale away from the cliff. Then he stared in astonishment, for to the Basic troops had come an extraordinary reinforcement: eight Giants twice an ordinary man’s stature — barrel-chested monsters, gnarled of arm and leg, with pale eyes, shocks of tawny hair. They wore brown and red armor with black epaulettes, and carried swords, maces and blast-cannon slung over their backs.

  Joaz considered. The presence of the Giants gave him no reason to alter his central strategy, which in any event was vague and intuitive. He must be prepared to suffer losses, and could only hope to inflict greater losses on the Basics. But what did they care for the lives of their troops? Less than he cared for his dragons. And if they destroyed Banbeck Village, ruined the Vale, how could he do corresponding damage to them?

  He looked over his shoulder at the tall white cliffs, wondering how closely he had estimated the position of the sacerdotes’ hall. And now he must act; the time had come. He signaled to a small boy, one of his own sons, who took a deep breath, hurled himself blindly away from the shelter of the rocks, ran helter-skelter out to the valley floor. A moment later his mother ran forth to snatch him up and dash back into the Jambles.