From one knee, her mate looked up at neKrol. “They … they march on the waterfall,” he said, still breathing heavily.
“The waterfall!” the bitter speaker repeated. “Since the death of winter, they have broken more than twenty pyramids, Arik, and their powerwagons have crushed the forest and now a great dusty road scars the soil from their valley to the riverlands. But they had hurt no Jaenshi yet this season, they had let them go. And all those clans-without-a-god have gone to the waterfall, until the home forest of the waterfall folk is bare and eaten clean. Their talkers sit with the old talker and perhaps the waterfall god takes them in, perhaps he is a very great god. I do not know these things. But I do know that now the bald Angel has learned of the twenty clans together, of a grouping of half-a-thousand Jaenshi adults, and he leads a powerwagon against them. Will he let them go so easy this time, happy with a carved statue? Will they go, Arik, will they give up a second god as easily as a first?” The speaker blinked. “I fear they will resist with their silly claws. I fear the bald Angel will hang them even if they do not resist, because so many in union throws suspicion in him. I fear many things and know little, but I know we must be there. You will not stop us, Arik, and we cannot wait for your long-late lasers.”
And she turned to the others and said, “Come, we must run,” and they had faded into the forest before neKrol could even shout for them to stay. Swearing, he turned back to the bubble.
The two female exiles were leaving just as he entered. Both were close to the end of their term, but they had powerbows in their hands. NeKrol stopped short. “You too!” he said furiously, glaring at them. “Madness, it is the very stuff of madness!” They only looked at him with silent golden eyes, and moved past him toward the trees.
Inside, he swiftly braided his long red hair so it would not catch on the branches, slipped into a shirt, and darted toward the door. Then he stopped. A weapon, he must have a weapon! He glanced around frantically and ran heavily for his storeroom. The powerbows were all gone, he saw. What then, what? He began to rummage, and finally settled for a duralloy machete. It felt strange in his hand and he must have looked most unmartial and ridiculous, but somehow he felt he must take something.
Then he was off, toward the place of the waterfall folk.
NeKrol was overweight and soft, hardly used to running, and the way was nearly two kilometers through lush summer forest. He had to stop three times to rest, and quiet the pains in his chest, and it seemed an eternity before he arrived. But still he beat the Steel Angels; a powerwagon is ponderous and slow, and the road from Sword Valley was longer and more hilly.
Jaenshi were everywhere. The glade was bare of grass and twice as large as neKrol remembered it from his last trading trip, early that spring. Still, the Jaenshi filled all of it, sitting on the ground, staring at the pool and the waterfall, all silent, packed together so there was scarcely room to walk among them. More sat above, a dozen in every fruit tree, some of the children even ascending to the higher limbs where the pseudomonks usually ruled alone.
On the rock at the center of the pool, with the waterfall behind them as a backdrop, the talkers pressed around the pyramid of the waterfall folk. They were closer together than even those in the grass, and each had his palms flat against the sides. One, thin and frail, sat on the shoulders of another so that he too might touch. NeKrol tried to count them and gave up; the group was too dense, a blurred mass of gray-furred arms and golden eyes, the pyramid at their center, dark and unmovable as ever.
The bitter speaker stood in the pool, the waters ankle-deep around her. She was facing the crowd and screeching at them, her voice strangely unlike the usual Jaenshi purr; in her scarf and rings, she looked absurdly out of place. As she talked, she waved the laser rifle she was holding in one hand. Wildly, passionately, hysterically, she was telling the gathered Jaenshi that the Steel Angels were coming, that they must leave at once, that they should break up and go into the forest and regroup at the trading base. Over and over again she said it.
But the clans were stiff and silent. No one answered, no one listened, no one heard. In full daylight, they were praying.
NeKrol pushed his way through them, stepping on a hand here and a foot there, hardly able to set down a boot without crunching Jaenshi flesh. He was standing next to the bitter speaker, who still gestured wildly, before her bronze eyes seemed to see him. Then she stopped. “Arik,” she said, “the Angels are coming, and they will not listen.”
“The others,” he panted, still short on breath. “Where are they?”
“The trees,” the bitter speaker replied, with a vague gesture. “I sent them up in the trees. Snipers, Arik, such as we saw upon your wall.”
“Please,” he said. “Come back with me. Leave them, leave them. You told them. I told them. Whatever happens, it is their doing, it is the fault of their fool religion.”
“I cannot leave,” the bitter speaker said. She seemed confused, as so often when neKrol had questioned her back at the base. “It seems I should, but somehow I know I must stay here. And the others will never go, even if I did. They feel it much more strongly. We must be here. To fight, to talk.” She blinked. “I do not know why, Arik, but we must.”
And before the trader could reply, the Steel Angels came out of the forest.
There were five of them at first, widely spaced; then shortly five more. All afoot, in uniforms whose mottled dark greens blended with the leaves, so that only the glitter of the mesh-steel belts and matching battle helmets stood out. One of them, a gaunt pale woman, wore a high red collar; all of them had hand-lasers drawn.
“You!” the blond woman shouted, her eyes finding Arik at once, as he stood with his braid flying in the wind and the machete dangling uselessly in his hand. “Speak to these animals! Tell them they must leave! Tell them that no Jaenshi gathering of this size is permitted east of the mountains, by order of the Proctor Wyatt, and the pale child Bakkalon. Tell them!” And then she saw the bitter speaker, and started. “And take the laser from the hand of that animal before we burn both of you down!”
Trembling, neKrol dropped the machete from limp fingers into the water. “Speaker, drop the gun,” he said in Jaenshi, “please. If you ever hope to see the far stars. Let loose the laser, my friend, my child, this very now. And I will take you when Ryther comes, with me to ai-Emerel and farther places.” The trader’s voice was full of fear; the Steel Angels held their lasers steady, and not for a moment did he think the speaker would obey him.
But strangely, meekly, she threw the laser rifle into the pool. NeKrol could not see to read her eyes.
The Squadmother relaxed visibly. “Good,” she said. “Now, talk to them in their beastly talk, tell them to leave. If not, we shall crush them. A powerwagon is on its way!” And now, over the roar and tumble of the nearby waters, neKrol could hear it; a heavy crunching as it rolled over trees, rending them into splinters beneath wide duramesh treads. Perhaps they were using the blastcannon and the turret lasers to clear away boulders and other obstacles.
“We have told them,” neKrol said desperately. “Many times we have told them, but they do not hear!” He gestured all about him; the glade was still hot and close with Jaenshi bodies and none among the clans had taken the slightest notice of the Steel Angels or the confrontation. Behind him, the clustered talkers still pressed small hands against their god.
“Then we shall bare the sword of Bakkalon to them,” the Squadmother said, “and perhaps they will hear their own wailing!” She holstered her laser and drew a screechgun, and neKrol, shuddering, knew her intent. The screechers used concentrated high-intensity sound to break down cell walls and liquify flesh. Its effects were psychological as much as anything; there was no more horrible death.
But then a second squad of the Angels was among them, and there was a creak of wood straining and snapping, and from behind a final grove of fruit trees, dimly, neKrol could see the black flanks of the powerwagon, its blastcannon seemingly trained right at
him. Two of the newcomers wore the scarlet collar—a red-faced youth with large ears who barked orders to his squad, and a huge, muscular man with a bald head and lined bronze skin. NeKrol recognized him; the Weaponsmaster C’ara DaHan. It was DaHan who laid a heavy hand on the Squadmother’s arm as she raised her screechgun. “No,” he said. “It is not the way.”
She holstered the weapon at once. “I hear and obey.”
DaHan looked at neKrol. “Trader,” he boomed, “is this your doing?”
“No,” neKrol said.
“They will not disperse,” the Squadmother added.
“It would take us a day and a night to screech them down,” DaHan said, his eyes sweeping over the glade and the trees, and following the rocky twisted path of the waterwall up to its summit. “There is an easier way. Break the pyramid and they go at once.” He stopped then, about to say something else; his eyes were on the bitter speaker.
“A Jaenshi in rings and cloth,” he said. “They have woven nothing but deathcloth up to now. This alarms me.”
“She is one of the people of the ring-of-stone,” neKrol said quickly. “She has lived with me.”
DaHan nodded. “I understand. You are truly a godless man, neKrol, to consort so with soulless animals, to teach them to ape the ways of the seed of Earth. But it does not matter.” He raised his arm in signal; behind him, among the trees, the blastcannon of the powerwagon moved slightly to the right. “You and your pet should move at once,” DaHan told neKrol. “When I lower my arm, the Jaenshi god will burn and if you stand in the way, you will never move again.”
“The talkers!” neKrol protested, “the blast will—” and he started to turn to show them. But the talkers were crawling away from the pyramid, one by one.
Behind him, the Angels were muttering. “A miracle!” one said hoarsely. “Our child! Our Lord!” cried another.
NeKrol stood paralyzed. The pyramid on the rock was no longer a reddish slab. Now it sparkled in the sunlight, a canopy of transparent crystal. And below that canopy, perfect in every detail, the pale child Bakkalon stood smiling, with his Demon-Reaver in his hand.
The Jaenshi talkers were scrambling from it now, tripping in the water in their haste to be away. NeKrol glimpsed the old talker, running faster than any despite his age. Even he seemed not to understand. The bitter speaker stood open-mouthed.
The trader turned. Half of the Steel Angels were on their knees, the rest had absent-mindedly lowered their arms and they froze in gaping wonder. The Squadmother turned to DaHan. “It is a miracle,” she said. “As Proctor Wyatt has foreseen. The pale child walks upon this world.”
But the Weaponsmaster was unmoved. “The Proctor is not here and this is no miracle,” he said in a steely voice. “It is a trick of some enemy, and I will not be tricked. We will burn the blasphemous thing from the soil of Corlos.” His arm flashed down.
The Angels in the powerwagon must have been lax with awe; the blastcannon did not fire. DaHan turned in irritation. “It is no miracle!” he shouted. He began to raise his arm again.
Next to neKrol, the bitter speaker suddenly cried out. He looked over with alarm, and saw her eyes flash a brilliant yellow-gold. “The god!” she muttered softly. “The light returns to me!”
And the whine of powerbows sounded from the trees around them, and two long bolts shuddered almost simultaneously in the broad back of C’ara DaHan. The force of the shots drove the Weaponsmaster to his knees, smashed him against the ground.
“RUN!” neKrol screamed, and he shoved the bitter speaker with all his strength, and she stumbled and looked back at him briefly, her eyes dark bronze again and flickering with fear. Then, swiftly, she was running, her scarf aflutter behind her as she dodged toward the nearest green.
“Kill her!” the Squadmother shouted. “Kill them all!” And her words woke Jaenshi and Steel Angels both; the children of Bakkalon lifted their lasers against the suddenly surging crowd, and the slaughter began. NeKrol knelt and scrabbled on the moss-slick rocks until he had the laser rifle in his hands, then brought it to his shoulder and commenced to fire. Light stabbed out in angry bursts; once, twice, a third time. He held the trigger down and the bursts became a beam, and he sheared through the waist of a silver-helmeted Angel before the fire flared in his stomach and he fell heavily into the pool.
For a long time he saw nothing; there was only pain and noise, the water gently slapping against his face, the sounds of high-pitched Jaenshi screaming, running all around him. Twice he heard the roar and crackle of the blastcannon, and more than twice he was stepped on. It all seemed unimportant. He struggled to keep his head on the rocks, half out of the water, but even that seemed none too vital after a while. The only thing that counted was the burning in his gut.
Then, somehow, the pain went away, and there was a lot of smoke and horrible smells but not so much noise, and neKrol lay quietly and listened to the voices.
“The pyramid, Squadmother?” someone asked.
“It is a miracle,” a woman’s voice replied. “Look, Bakkalon stands there yet. And see how He smiles! We have done right here today!”
“What should we do with it?”
“Lift it aboard the powerwagon. We shall bring it back to Proctor Wyatt.”
Soon after, the voices went away, and neKrol heard only the sound of the water, rushing down endlessly, falling and tumbling. It was a very restful sound. He decided he would sleep.
The crewman shoved the crowbar down between the slats and lifted. The thin wood hardly protested at all before it gave. “More statues, Jannis,” he reported, after reaching inside the crate and tugging loose some of the packing material.
“Worthless,” Ryther said, with a brief sigh. She stood in the broken ruins of neKrol’s trading base. The Angels had ransacked it, searching for armed Jaenshi, and debris lay everywhere. But they had not touched the crates.
The crewman took his crowbar and moved on to the next stack of crated artifacts. Ryther looked wistfully at the three Jaenshi who clustered around her, wishing they could communicate a little better. One of them, a sleek female who wore a trailing scarf and a lot of jewelry and seemed always to be leaning on a powerbow, knew a smattering of Terran, but hardly enough. She picked up things quickly, but so far the only thing of substance she had said was, “Jamson’ World. Arik take us. Angels kill.” That she had repeated endlessly until Ryther had finally made her understand that, yes, they would take them. The other two Jaenshi, the pregnant female and the male with the laser, never seemed to talk at all.
“Statues again,” the crewman said, having pulled a crate from atop the stack in the ruptured storeroom and pried it open.
Ryther shrugged; the crewman moved on. She turned her back on him and wandered slowly outside, to the edge of the spacefield where the Lights of Jolostar rested, its open ports bright with yellow light in the gathering gloom of dusk. The Jaenshi followed her, as they had followed her since she arrived; afraid, no doubt, that she would go away and leave them if they took their great bronze eyes off her for an instant.
“Statues,” Ryther muttered, half to herself and half to the Jaenshi. She shook her head. “Why did he do it?” she asked them, knowing they could not understand. “A trader of his experience? You could tell me, maybe, if you knew what I was saying. Instead of concentrating on deathcloths and such, on real Jaenshi art, why did Arik train you people to carve alien versions of human gods? He should have known no dealer would accept such obvious frauds. Alien art is alien.” She sighed. “My fault, I suppose. We should have opened the crates.” She laughed.
The bitter speaker stared at her. “Arik deathcloth. Gave.”
Ryther nodded, abstractly. She had it now, hanging just above her bunk; a strange small thing, woven partly from Jaenshi fur and mostly from long silken strands of flame red hair. On it, gray against the red, was a crude but recognizable caricature of Arik neKrol. She had wondered at that too. The tribute of the widow? A child? Or just a friend? What had happened to Arik duri
ng the year the Lights had been away? If only she had been back on time, then … but she’d lost three months on Jamison’s World, checking dealer after dealer in an effort to unload the worthless statuettes. It had been middle autumn before the Lights of Jolostar returned to Corlos, to find neKrol’s base in ruins, the Angels already gathering in their harvests.
And the Angels—when she’d gone to them, offering the hold of unwanted lasers, offering to trade, the sight on those blood-red city walls had sickened even her. She had thought she’d gone prepared, but the obscenity she encountered was beyond any preparation. A squad of Steel Angels found her, vomiting, beyond the tall rusty gates, and had escorted her inside, before the Proctor.
Wyatt was twice as skeletal as she remembered him. He had been standing outdoors, near the foot of a huge platform altar that had been erected in the middle of the city. A startlingly lifelike statue of Bakkalon, encased in a glass pyramid and set atop a high redstone plinth, threw a long shadow over the wooden altar. Beneath it, the squads of Angels were piling the newly harvested neograss and wheat and the frozen carcasses of bushogs.
“We do not need your trade,” the Proctor told her. “The World of Corlos is many-times-blessed, my child, and Bakkalon lives among us now. He has worked vast miracles, and shall work more. Our faith is in Him.” Wyatt gestured toward the altar with a thin hand. “See? In tribute we burn our winter stores, for the pale child has promised that this year winter will not come. And He has taught us to cull ourselves in peace as once we were culled in war, so the seed of Earth grows ever stronger. It is a time of great new revelation!” His eyes had burned as he spoke to her; eyes darting and fanatic, vast and dark yet strangely flecked with gold.
As quickly as she could, Ryther had left the City of the Steel Angels, trying hard not to look back at the walls. But when she had climbed the hills, back toward the trading base, she had come to the ring-of-stone, to the broken pyramid where Arik had taken her. Then Ryther found that she could not resist, and powerless she had turned for a final glance out over Sword Valley. The sight had stayed with her.
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