City Of The Living Dead rb-26

by Джеффри Лорд

  «That is true,» said Blade. «I'm glad you've seen this without my having to tell you.» Unseen in darkness, he smiled. Were any of Geetro's qualities as important to Sela as his probably being the next ruler of Mak'loh? Blade wondered.

  Well, Geetro might end up ruling Mak'loh, but Sela would very likely rule Geetro. The city and its people could do much worse.

  Blade stood at the bottom of the hill and watched the flyer swooping low over the Wall. Sela was at the controls of the flyer, and at a radio signal from her the explosives placed under a section of the Wall would be detonated. The way into Mak'loh would be open for the army of the Warland villages.

  Blade turned and looked at the fighting men of the villages, twelve thousand of them drawn up and ready to march. They carried spears, swords, bows, and axes. The two thousand shock rifles they'd been promised would be handed out when they reached Mak'loh.

  As Blade turned, the sun glinted from a massive collar he wore around his neck, over his faded black Authority coveralls. Each piece of the collar was a bar of gold weighing nearly a pound, and Blade felt that it would crumble his collarbone into powder if he had to wear it much longer.

  It was the War Collar of a High Chief of all the villages. Blade smiled as he remembered what Naran had said as he fastened the collar around Blade's neck.

  «We have seldom needed a High Chief, we don't really need one now, and we probably won't need one after all this is over. If we do need one, you'll have to give the collar back. Meanwhile, though, you're doing what a High Chief is chosen to do-leading all the villages into a great war. So we might as well give you the collar.» Then he lowered his voice and spoke so that only Blade could hear, «I do this also out of gratitude for what you did for Twana.»

  Blade looked up at the hill, raised his rifle, and fired into the air three times. Sela's flyer climbed away from the Wall, until it circled above the Warlanders. The radio signal flashed down from it, and suddenly half a mile of Wall vanished in gray smoke.

  Seconds later the roar of the explosion reached Blade's ears, and the ground began to shiver under his feet. The roar and the shivering built steadily, and the smoke billowed higher and higher, as if the earth were catching fire. In the grayness Blade saw darker chunks, first rising and then falling-bits of the wall hurled into the air.

  At last the smoke began to drift away, and Blade saw more bits of the Wall rolling down the hill toward him. Long before they reached him, the last of the smoke was gone. Along the whole half mile the Wall was crumbling into dust and gravel. Behind him Blade could hear the swelling cheers of the Warlanders.

  In throwing Mak'loh open to its new allies, Geetro had certainly chosen to make a grand gesture!

  Chapter 21

  The march of the Warland villagers started off with a literal bang, but rapidly became a first-class headache for Richard Blade. The villagers had great enthusiasm and great endurance, but they had no real discipline. They straggled behind, they ran on ahead, they made camp when and where they pleased, they built fires until Blade was sure the smoke would warn the Shoba's army. None of the men would willingly follow the orders of any chief but his own, and none of the chiefs would take orders from anybody at all except Blade and Naran. Blade was certain these people would be brave enough on the battlefield-if he could get them that far without throttling half of them in sheer frustration. He was not at all sure if that courage would be enough against the disciplined advance and firepower of the Shoba's infantry or the hammering charges of his cavalry.

  The villagers could not really hope to face the Shoba's army in the open field. Neither could the people and androids of Mak'loh, not when the Shoba's archers could outrange the shock rifles. How could they avoid such a battle, though, unless the Shoba's men could be baited into an attack on the city itself?

  Blade's beard grew longer and his temper grew shorter as he led the twelve thousand villagers in a wide swing to the south. They came up on the opposite side of the city from the Shoba's army and made camp under cover of the forest beyond the range of the enemy's scouts. It was five days since they'd passed through the breach in the Wall.

  Luck was on their side. The Shoba's commanders knew their business well-too well to risk dispersing their forces in the face of an enemy whose powers had not yet been fully revealed. So they set up a vast, fortified camp three miles from the northern edge of the city. That was well beyond the range of the mortars, and Blade wondered at first if the enemy had guessed Mak'loh's secret weapon. A quick flight over the camp set his doubts to rest. The camp site had been chosen because it lay between two streams, and therefore had plenty of fresh water.

  The camp was a formidable thing, a square over a mile on a side. It was surrounded by a protective ditch, high earth embankments, and a palisade of sharpened logs on top of the embankment. It would take the mortars to do much against the camp, but to get within range they would have to be brought out of the city. In that case they'd have to be protected, and protecting them against the Shoba's army would take every man the city and the villagers had between them. Otherwise, the mortars would be quickly overrun, and with them would go Mak'loh's best chance of victory.

  It would have to be a battle in the open field, however unsuited this weirdly assorted army Blade led might be for such a battle. He resigned himself to this fact and set about planning the best tactics.

  The Shoba's army kept a close watch on the northern wall of the city. In fact, they cleared all the ground between their camp and the city until nothing larger than a rabbit could get in or out without being noticed. On the other three sides of the city, they kept watch with nothing more than occasional cavalry patrols. They seemed to be waiting for Mak'loh to show its hand.

  Blade would be happy to let them wait as long as they pleased. The night after the Warlands army made camp, a convoy of trucks rolled out of a gate in the south wall of the city. It brought to the camp a month's food and the promised two thousand shock rifles, then returned before dawn brought the enemy's patrols. Doubtless the drun-riders saw the wheel tracks, but could not follow them up. Druns were stronger than horses and faster on level ground, but much less surefooted. As long as the villagers were shielded by the forest, they'd be safe from detection.

  A number of Geetro's people came out in the convoy to instruct the villagers in using the rifles. Blade gave them their orders, then flew back into the city, and sat down with Geetro and Sela to make their plans for the battle.

  Mak'loh had a number of assets that could give it a resounding victory if they were properly used. There were the mortars. There were the six-wheeled trucks. There were the robots-the last few Watchers and all the work models. There were the thousands upon thousands of worker androids. They could build or tear down anything that might be needed for any plans Blade might make. Finally, there was the wall around the city. Blade had often cursed it, for Twana had died there. Now he was grateful for it. It kept the Shoba's men out of the streets of Mak'loh and completely concealed from them anything that might go on there. The androids patrolled it too well for anyone to climb it. The Shoba's men could only stare at it from a distance and wonder who and what lay behind it.

  Dawn, and Blade was climbing up through the branches of a tree on the edge of the forest nearest the enemy's camp. The leaves were still damp.

  He found a high branch that would bear his weight and crawled out on it. The camp was already coming awake in the gray light, with drums and trumpets, smoke curling up from cook fires, and the clink of armor and thud of feet as the night guard marched in and the morning guard marched out. Both lines of men marched with the snap and precision Blade had always seen in the Shoba's men. Their discipline and training were unbroken.

  Surrounded by their own palisade, three wooden siege towers rose to the left of the camp. Each tower stood fifty feet high and was mounted on solid wheels that were sections of whole trees. Three more were under construction. All six would soon be spearheading an assault on the walls of Mak'loh. They would
be virtually invulnerable to the shock rifles or to any weapon the Warlanders carried. As Blade had expected, it wasn't safe to leave the initiative to the Shoba's soldiers. They could do too much with it. An army like that had to be confronted with an attack so violent and so sudden that it simply couldn't react fast enough.

  Behind him under cover of the forest lay the twelve thousand fighting men of the Warlands villages. They were stripped to weapons and loinguards for speed and ease of movement. Their chiefs walked among them now, promising death to any man who held back or who spoke above a whisper before the High Chief Blade gave the signal. They needed surprise.

  Beyond the camp, the rising sun was beginning to strike fire from the high towers of Mak'loh. Blade had lived among them for so long that he'd forgotten their beauty. Now he was more aware of that beauty than ever before, with the heightened awareness that sometimes came to him as he waited for battle.

  He'd have to wait for quite a while this morning. Sela and Geetro had to make the first move.

  Sela stood at the head of her company and looked behind her. Three thousand humans and six thousand soldier androids were drawn up in lines by the city wall. Around them on the other three sides rose lower walls, built from demolished buildings by the hordes of worker androids. Anyone coming in through the new gates in the city wall would find himself boxed in by these walls. He would then find himself under fire from android riflemen and even the mortars.

  Sela hoped the mortars wouldn't be needed to hold the city today. They could do so much more in the battle in the open that was now less than half an hour away. Much depended on how fast the Shoba's men responded to Mak'loh's challenge, of course. Blade thought they wouldn't resist a chance to crush a weaker foe, and Sela hoped he was right.

  Sela raised her hand and signalled. Three sharp explosions sounded from the city wall. The metal plates that disguised both sides of the new gates tottered and fell, inward and outward. Sela looked through the center gate to see green grass rolling away toward the distant sprawling mass of the enemy's camp.

  Then she raised her hand again, fired her rifle into the air, and led her people toward the gateways.

  Sela's humans and androids came out of the gates faster than Blade had dared hope. There would be no danger of the Shoba's army launching a quick attack in the hope of catching their enemy divided and unformed. Good. Such an attack might not win the battle for the Shoba, but it would certainly make it far more costly for Mak'loh. It would probably mean Sela's death, at the very least.

  Before the Shoba's soldiers realized what was going on, nearly all of Sela's army was out of the city. Then the trumpets and drums began to sound, building into a steady din that was almost painfully loud even to Blade. The soldiers ignored it, bustling around with the furious purposefulness of ants. A thousand riders mounted up and trotted out to support the morning guard. Another column marched off to protect the siege towers. Other detachments went off to guard the camp and the slaves. All the rest formed into a massive column and marched out of the camp toward Sela's army.

  By that time Sela had formed her army for battle, with two lines of androids in front and a third line of humans. A small reserve of androids stood behind the humans. It was a simple formation, as Blade had intended. His total plan for today's battle was complex, but each individual piece of it was fairly simple. It had to be that way-no one under his command was really a trained soldier. If the Shoba's men had come two years later- But they hadn't.

  Now the Shoba's army was nearly all out of the camp and forming up for battle. With their gleaming armor and bristling weapons, the Shoba's men looked far more warlike and ferocious than Mak'loh's army with its coveralls and rifles. They formed a line stretching two miles from end to end; and they moved forward with drums, trumpets, and the steady thud of more than thirty thousand pairs of marching feet. The archers led this time, with the musketeers behind. On the flanks rode the cavalry, their massed druns looking like great patches of some weird fungus creeping across the earth. In the gaps between the massed infantry, the cannon rolled forward.

  Blade was impressed. It was easy to say that the Shoba's army was formidable. It was another thing to see it going into action and realize just how formidable it was, how much work had gone into creating that discipline and those well-chosen formations.

  Blade hoped Sela's army would not crumble away at the mere sight of the enemy's advance. The androids would probably not retreat without human orders, but if panic swept the humans ….

  Now the Shoba's army was within mortar range of the city. They were coming straight down to the attack, as Blade had hoped. He shifted his gaze to the camp. Soldiers were still moving about inside the palisade, but only a comparative handful. Three or four thousand, at most-not enough to defend the camp against any serious attack, if the palisade were breached.

  Silver-gray smoke suddenly gushed up behind Sela's army, swiftly forming into a wall. Blade shrugged. That wasn't quite according to plan. Apparently Sela had decided her people could no longer simply stand and watch the enemy come at them. They had to do something. So she'd ordered the smokescreen laid down. A little ahead of time, to be sure. But of all the things she could have done, it was the one least likely to alarm the enemy.

  In fact, it didn't seem to be alarming the enemy at all. The cavalry was reining in, but it didn't matter whether it charged or not. The infantry was marching steadily on, and now the range was down to no more than five hundred yards. They would be within easy range for the mortars inside the walls of Mak'loh.

  Sela saw the enemy's cannon pulling to a stop and their crews scurrying about to load and aim them. She felt a cold fluttering in her stomach at the thought of those balls of solid iron smashing into her people. She hoped she'd done enough to steady them, by ordering the smokescreen laid down.

  Brrroooommm. A long, ragged explosion, as half a dozen of the cannon went off together. A ripping sound overhead, like an enormous piece of fabric tearing apart. Then thuds and screams as the balls struck. They'd landed among the reserve androids to the rear. A shiver went along all three lines. Sela tried to will every set of feet in her army to stay rooted to the ground.

  The advancing enemy was slowing down. The archers took two extra steps as the musketeers behind them stopped. Then they nocked arrows, drew, and let fly.

  Ten thousand arrows whistled down on Sela's army. She heard screams of both fear and pain as they struck, but not many. Every human and android wore a helmet and new armor that protected not only the body but the limbs. Ten thousand arrows that should have cut down half the army killed and wounded less than a hundred.

  Without raising her head, Sela lifted her radio to her lips and spoke quickly. «They've opened fire, Geetro. Time for the mortars.»

  «Understood, Sela.» A faint chuckle, then silence.

  A second volley of arrows whistled down, and a third. Then there was a long pause. The Shoba's archers seemed to have trouble understanding why the enemy was still on its feet after so many arrows pumped into the ranks. They began to shoot individually at picked targets, rather than in massed volleys.

  Before they could shoot many more arrows, the first mortar salvo arrived. Twelve short savage whistles were followed by twelve thunderous explosions. Twelve columns of smoke mushroomed up, carrying with them weapons, bits of armor, chunks of flesh. Around the base of each column was a wide circle where mangled soldiers lay or crawled blindly, as if a giant hand had crushed them flat. The explosions died away. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the screams of the wounded and the whistles as a few hardy archers let fly. Then the second mortar salvo came down, the shells falling almost where the first twelve had. Again the smoke and the flying pieces of what had been human beings; again the ear-pounding roars, again the screams.

  Sela raised her rifle and fired twice into the air. On either side of her, human and androids dashed forward. A few went down to lucky arrows. More started to go down as the archers realized they were facing a cha
rge and began shooting flat instead of lofting their arrows, hitting unprotected faces. Musketeers swarmed forward and opened fire. White smoke spread along the enemy's front, joining the gray smoke of the mortar bursts. The cannon kept shooting, and some of their balls plowed into Sela's advancing lines.

  None of it did any good. A hundred and fifty yards from the enemy more than eight thousand humans and androids of Mak'loh threw themselves flat on the ground. They raised their rifles and their grenade launchers, and suddenly the air between them and the enemy seemed to turn into white fire.

  Now it was as if the great hand had slapped every soldier in the Shoba's front rank in the face. They went down by the hundreds, lying still or kicking furiously, eyes staring, faces bleeding or blackened, smoking patches on chest or stomach or thigh. The riflemen didn't try to aim; they simply pointed their weapons and held down the triggers.

  A rapid pop-pop-pop sounded as powder exploded in muskets or in musketeer's pouches. A louder series of explosions crashed out, as the grenades started falling around the cannon. The men were suddenly bloody rags, the cannon sagged as wheels were smashed, and barrels of gunpowder ready for loading went off with terrifying roars. On top of it all, the mortar shells still came down, the salvoes growing ragged as some crews fired faster than others.

  Now the commanders must have started giving orders, because the Shoba's men began to move back. It was an orderly retreat by men who hadn't lost their courage or forgotten their skills, in spite of the sudden horrors all around them. Both musketeers and archers kept their faces to the enemy and kept firing. They didn't hit very often. Sela's people stayed flat on the ground as they fired. A rifle had the edge over a bow or a musket that way. A man did not have to stand to use it or even load it.

  They left bodies behind every step of the way, but eventually the Shoba's men drew out of rifle range. Sela kept her people from leaping up and dashing in pursuit. That would bring them under the mortars, and Blade had many horrible tales of what happened to soldiers who ran in under their own artillery. Sela thought that seeing what the mortars did would be enough. There were broad patches of ground completely carpeted with bodies, not one of them intact, and sodden with blood and pulped flesh.