She managed to laugh at herself. Even before spaceflight, that would have made god-awful science fiction. Here and now, it was simply ridiculous. If anything went wrong, the best she could do was scream for help; all other alternatives were worse.
She turned down the temperature in her cabin till it was just above chilly, then dug out blankets and wrapped them tight around her. She finally fell asleep, but it was not the sort of warm embrace she wanted to enjoy.
II
"They aren't four times our size, are they?" Prince K'Sed spoke with a certain amount of wonder as he studied the drawn-up ranks of the enemy.
"You knew that, Your Highness," Greenberg observed, hoping to hearten the T'Kai leader. "You've received M'Sak ambassadors often enough at your court."
"Ambassadors are different from soldiers," K'Sed answered. Now he could see the M'Sak were G'Bur much like the ones he commanded, but it did not seem to hearten him.
Eyeing the force ahead, Greenberg understood why the prince remained apprehensive. The ranks of the M'Sak were grimly still and motionless, while the T'Kai milled about and chattered as if they were still on march or, better image yet, gabbing about this and that while they tried to outdo one another in the marketplace. For the most part, they were merchants, not soldiers, by trade. The M'Sak, unfortunately, were soldiers.
The master merchant slowly realized that went deeper than the discipline the northern warriors showed. Everything about them was calculated to intimidate. Even their banners were the green of an angry G'Bur, not the unmartial bronze under which the T'Kai mustered. Greenberg wondered how many such clues he was missing but that were playing on the psyches of K'Sed and his army.
And yet, the T'Kai owned an edge no soldiers on L'Rau had ever enjoyed. "They cannot hide from us," he reminded K'Sed. "We will know all their concealed schemes and be able to counter them." Only once the words were out of his mouth did he stop to think the one might not be the same as the other.
* * *
Something of an odd color moved with a peculiar sinuous motion through the ranks of the T'Kai. V'Zek wondered if the southrons had lured ghosts to fight for them. Trying to suppress superstitious dread, he put the question to Z'Yon.
"Anything is possible, my master, but I have detected no signs of this," the shaman said. "I think you are seeing instead a Soft One."
V'Zek gave a clattery shudder of disgust. The Soft One moved like?like? V'Zek took a long time to find a comparison. Finally he thought of water pouring from a jug. That did not make him feel much better. Live things had no business moving like water pouring from a jug.
He waved to his drummers. Their thunder signaled his warriors forward. He spent only moments worrying about being watched from the sky. Once it was pike against pike, things would happen too fast for that to matter. And he felt fairly sure the sky-things could not read his thoughts. If they could, reading his hatred would have burned them down long since.
* * *
"They're advancing," Jennifer reported.
Greenberg's voice was dry as he answered, "I'd noticed. Let's check the screen and see what they're up to." After a pause, he spoke again. "Two lines, no particular weighting anywhere along them I can see. Whatever cards he's holding, he doesn't want to show them yet."
"No," Jennifer agreed. She paused herself, then added, "Maybe we shouldn't have let him get used to the idea of having the drones up there."
"Maybe we shouldn't. Why didn't you say something about that sooner?"
Jennifer hated blushing, but couldn't help it. Luckily, the link with Greenberg was voice-only. "I just thought of it now."
"Oh," Greenberg said. "Well, I didn't think of it at all, so how am I supposed to criticize you? We're all amateur generals here. I just hope it doesn't end up costing us. Do you suppose we shouldn't have shown the northerners the Flying Festoon, either?"
"We'll find out soon enough, don't you think?"
"Yes, I expect we will. This is a tad more empirical than I'd really planned on being, though. Wish us all luck."
"I do," Jennifer said. "You three especially, because you're on the ground."
The master merchant did not answer. Jennifer sighed. She sent the Flying Festoon whizzing low over the battlefield. The roar of cloven air filled the cabin when she activated the outside mike pickup. Then she shut it off again and turned on the ship's siren. It reverberated through the hull, even without amplification, and set her teeth on edge.
She studied the pictures the drones gave her. After reading about so many imaginary battles in Middle English, she fancied herself a marshal. She soon discovered the job was, as with most jobs, easier to imagine than to do. She found no magic strategic key to V'Zek's maneuvers. If anything, she thought him over-optimistic, advancing as he was against a strong defensive front: the T'Kai right was protected by a river, the left anchored by high ground and a stand of trees.
She wondered if he knew something she didn't, and hoped finding out wouldn't be too expensive.
* * *
B'Rom sidled up to Greenberg crabwise?an adverb the master merchant applied to few G'Bur but the vizier. "Soon now," B'Rom declared. The translator should have given his clicks, hisses, and whistles a furtive quality, but that, sadly, was beyond its capabilities.
"Soon what?" Greenberg asked, a trifle absently. Most of his attention was on the forest of oversized cutlery bearing down on the T'Kai. The Flying Festoon's histrionics left his ears stunned. He hoped the M'Sak were quaking in the boots they didn't wear.
Then his head whipped around, for B'Rom said, "Soon the assassination, of course. What better time than when the savages are in the midst of their attack?"
"None, I suppose," Greenberg mumbled. His hand eased on the stunner. Maybe he wouldn't have to use it after all.
* * *
The racket overhead was appalling and confusing, but V'Zek was proud of the way his warriors pressed on toward the waiting enemy. The Soft Ones had blundered in showing their powers too soon. That relieved V'Zek: ghosts or spirits never would have made such a foolish mistake. The Soft Ones were natural, then, no matter how weird they looked. V'Zek was confident he could handle anything natural.
A warrior whose carapace was painted with a messenger's red stripes rushed up to the chieftain. V'Zek's eyestalks drew together in slight perplexity?what could be so urgent, when the two armies had not even joined? Then the fellow's left front grasping-claw pulled a war hammer from its concealed sheath under his plastron. He swung viciously at the M'Sak chieftain.
Only V'Zek's half-formed suspicion let him escape unpunctured. He sprang to one side. The hammerhead slammed painfully against him between right front and rear grasping-legs, but the chisel point did not penetrate. By the time the would-be assassin struck again, V'Zek had out his own shortspear. He turned the blow and gave back a counterthrust his enemy beat aside.
Then half a ten M'Sak were battling the false messenger. Before their chieftain could shout for them to take him alive, he had fallen, innards spurting from a score of wounds. "Are you all right, my master?" one of the soldiers gasped.
V'Zek flexed both right-side grasping-legs. He could use them. "Well enough." He looked closely at the still shape of his assailant. The curve of the shell was not quite right for a M'Sak. "Does anyone know him?"
None of the warriors spoke.
"I suppose he is of T'Kai," the chieftain said. The soldiers shouted angrily. So did V'Zek, but his fury was cold. He had wanted the southrons for what they could yield him and his people. Now he also had a personal reason for beating them. He reminded himself not to let that make him break away from his carefully devised plan. "Continue the advance, as before," he ordered.
* * *
"Some sort of confusion for a moment there around the chieftain." Jennifer's voice sounded in Greenberg's ear. With the M'Sak so close, he had put away the vision screen. He let out his breath in a regretful sigh when she reported, "It seems to be over now."
"Damn." Marya and Koniev sa
id it together. All three humans were on the right wing?the right claw, they would say on L'Rau?of the T'Kai army, not far from the river. Since V'Zek led the invaders from their right, he was most of a kilometer away, out of their view.
Closer and closer came the M'Sak. They were shouting fiercely, but the din from the Flying Festoon outdid anything they could produce. "Shoot!" cried an underofficer.
G'Bur held bows horizontally in front of themselves with their front pair of grasping-claws, using the rear pair to load arrows?sometimes one, sometimes a pair?and draw the weapons. The M'Sak archers shot back at the T'Kai, lofting arrows with chisel-headed points to descend on their foes' backs.
Every so often, a warrior on one side or the other would collapse like a marionette whose puppeteer had suddenly dropped the strings. More commonly, the shafts would skitter away without piercing their targets. Exoskeletons had advantages, Greenberg thought.
An arrow buried itself in the ground less than a meter from his left boot. He shuffled sideways and bumped into Marya, who was unconsciously moving away from an arrow that had landed to her right. Their smiles held little humor. She said, "Shall we give them something to think about?"
Greenberg and Koniev both nodded. The three humans leveled their stunners at the M'Sak. The gun twitched slightly in the master merchant's hand as it fed stun charges one after another into the firing chamber.
One after another, M'Sak began dropping; pikes and halberds fell from nerveless grasping-claws. The invaders' advance, though, took a long moment to falter. Greenberg realized the M'Sak, intent on the enemies awaiting them, hadn't noticed their comrades were going down without visible wounds.
Then they did notice, and drew up in confusion and fear: for all they knew, the felled warriors were dead, not stunned. Greenberg took careful aim and knocked down a M'Sak whose halberd had a fancy pennon tied on below the head?an officer, he hoped. "Good shot!" Koniev cried, and thumped him on the back.
"I only wish we had a couple of thousand charges instead of a hundred or so," Marya said, dropping another M'Sak. "That would end that, and in a hurry, too."
By no means normally an optimist, Greenberg answered, "We're doing pretty well as is." The M'Sak left was stalled; had they been humans, the master merchant would have thought of them as rocked back on their heels.
The officers who led the T'Kai right did not have that concept?or heels, for that matter?but they recognized disorder when they saw it. "Advance in line!" they ordered.
The T'Kai raised a rattling cheer and moved forward. They chopped and thrust at their foes, who gave ground. For a heady moment, Greenberg thought the M'Sak would break and run.
They did not. Faced by an assault of a sort with which they were familiar, the invaders rallied. Their polearms stabbed out at the T'Kai, probing for openings. The opposing lines came to close quarters. For a long time, motion either forward or backward could be measured in bare handfuls of meters.
The humans stopped shooting. They had to be careful with charges, and friend and foe were so closely intermingled now that a shot was as likely to fell a T'Kai as an M'Sak. If the enemy broke through, stunners could be of value again. Without armor, the humans were useless in the front line.
Koniev laughed nervously as he watched the struggle not far away. He said, "I never thought there would be so much waiting inside a battle."
"I notice you're still holding your stunner, not your mace," Marya said.
Koniev looked down as if he had not been sure himself. "So I am." The mace was on his belt. He touched it with his left hand. "If I have to use this thing, odds are we'll be losing. I'd sooner win."
Greenberg's own personal defense weapon was a war hammer. He had almost forgotten it; now he noticed it brush against his thigh, felt its weight on his hip. He nodded to himself. He would just as soon go on pretending it wasn't there.
* * *
"The savages are mad, mad!" Prince K'Sed clattered, watching the M'Sak swarm up the slope toward his waiting soldiers. "All the military manuals cry out against fighting uphill." Like a proper ruler, he could stand on any walking-leg. He had studied the arts of war even though they bored him, but had never expected the day to come when he put them to practical use.
B'Rom clicked in agreement. "No law prevents our taking advantage of such madness, however." He turned to the officer beside him. "Isn't that so, D'Ton?"
"Aye, it is." But the general sounded a little troubled. "I had looked for better tactics from V'Zek. After all, he?" D'Ton had at least the virtue of knowing when to shut up. Reminding his prince and vizier that the enemy had won every battle thus far did not seem wise.
"Let us punish him for his rashness," B'Rom declared. D'Ton looked to K'Sed, who raised a grasping-claw to show assent.
The general scraped his plastron against the ground in obedience. He had no real reason not to agree with the prince and vizier. Knowing when and by what route the M'Sak were coming had let the army choose this strong position. Not taking advantage of it would be insanely foolish. He filled his book lungs. "Advance in line!"
Lesser officers echoed the command. Cheering, the prince's force obeyed. They knew as well as their leaders the edge the high ground gave them. Iron clashed and belled off iron, crunched on carapaces, and sheared away limbs and eyestalks.
With their greater momentum, the T'Kai stopped their enemies' uphill advance dead in its tracks. The two lines remained motionless and struggling for a long moment. Here, though, the stalemate did not last. The T'Kai began to force the M'Sak line backward.
"Drive them! Drive them! Well done!" D'Ton shouted. V'Zek truly had made a mistake, he thought.
Prince K'Sed, gloomy since the day he learned of the M'Sak invasion, was practically capering with excitement. "Drive them back to M'Sak!" he cried.
"Driving them back to level ground would do nicely," B'Rom said, but as he spoke in normal tones, no one but K'Sed heard him. The T'Kai warriors picked up the prince's cry and threw it at the foe. "Back to M'Sak! Back to M'Sak!" It swelled into a savage chant. Even B'Rom found a grasping-claw opening and closing in time to it. Irritated at himself, he forced the claw closed.
* * *
"Hold steady! Don't break formation! Hold steady!" V'Zek heard the commands echoed by officers and underofficers as the M'Sak gave ground. He wished he could be in the thick of the fighting, but if he were, he could not direct the battle as a whole. That, he decided reluctantly, was more important, at least for the moment.
"Back to M'Sak! Back to M'Sak!" The shout reached him over the din of battle and the yells of his own warriors.
"Amateurs," he snorted.
"They aren't fond of us, are they?" Z'Yon observed from beside him.
"They'll be even less fond of us if they keep advancing a while longer." And, V'Zek thought but did not say, if my own line holds together. He would never have dared try this with the T'Kai semirabble. Even with good troops, a planned fighting retreat was dangerous. It could turn unplanned in an instant.
But if it didn't… if it didn't, he would get in some fighting after all.
* * *
Being a trader was different from what Jennifer had expected. So was watching a battle. It was also a good deal worse. Those were real intelligent beings trying to kill one another down there. Those were real body fluids that spurted from wounds, real limbs that lay quivering on the ground after being hacked away from their former owners, real eyestalks that halberds and bills sliced off, real G'Bur who would never walk or see again but who were in anguish now and might well live on, maimed, for years.
She tried to detach herself from what she was seeing, tried to imagine it as something not real, something only happening on the screen. Koniev or Marya, she thought, would have no trouble doing that; about Greenberg she was less sure. She knew she had no luck. What she watched was real, and she could not make herself pretend it was only a screen drama. Too many of these actors would never get up after the taping was done.
So she watched an
d tried not to be sick. The really frustrating thing was that, in spite of having a full view of the whole battlefield, she could not fathom what, if anything, V'Zek was up to. The T'Kai right wing was holding; the left, by now, had actually advanced several hundred meters.
This, she thought with something as close to contempt as her mild nature allowed, was the sort of fighting that had made V'Zek feared all through the T'Kai confederacy? It only showed that on a world with poor communications, any savage could build up a name for himself that he didn't come close to deserving.
* * *
F'Rev had no idea what the battle as a whole looked like. The commander-of-fifty had his own, smaller problems. His troop was in the T'Kai center. The line he was holding had stretched thin when the army's left claw drove back the barbarians: it had been forced to stretch to accommodate its lengthened front.
Now it could not stretch any further. He sent a messenger over to the troop on his immediate right, asking for more warriors.
The messenger returned, eyestalks lowered in apprehension. "Well?" F'Rev growled. "Where are the reinforcements?"
"He has none to send, sir," the messenger said nervously. "He is as thin on the ground as we are."
"A pestilence!" F'Rev burst out. "What am I supposed to do now?"
* * *
V'Zek's guards almost killed the red-striped messenger before he reached the chieftain?after one try on their master's life, they were not about to permit another. But when the fellow's bona fides were established, he proved to bring welcome news.
"There's a stretch in the center, three or four troops wide, my master, where they're only a warrior or two thick," he told V'Zek.
Z'Yon, who heard the gasped-out message, bent before V'Zek so that his plastron scraped the ground. "Just as you foretold, my master," the shaman said, more respectful than V'Zek ever remembered hearing him.
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