The Days of Glory Page 18

SECOND REVENGE

  Richard Stormwind dropped Alexander Blackstar’s body into the sea, all except for the hands, which he sent, together with his own severed hand, to Starbird. Starbird declared his intention to kill Stormwind. Not even his brothers gave him any real chance of doing so.

  When Stormwind’s ship had rejoined the fleet on Diadema, he told his story to Eagleheart and the fleet. Eagle-heart relayed the story to the galaxy in person. His speech was sickly with praise and platitudes. But the people who heard, on a thousand worlds, listened closely and believed. They loved their heroes, and Stormwind had just proved that their faith had not been misplaced after all. The story of Stormwind and Blackstar was told and retold, and grew with enthusiastic exaggeration.

  The story assumed enlarged proportions in the mind of Stormwind himself, as well. The disorientation of Slaves-dream’s death and the burial of his decision to withdraw no doubt played some part in the distortion of the incident Whatever the reason, his memory now seemed to stop with the death of Blackstar. Little else mattered. He was committed now to following up his action. There was nothing left to be done except fight and fight. The current of events had him firmly in its grip.

  He demanded another attack. He asked the Beasts to follow him again, and there was no question of their refusing. The Beast ships took to space again and flew for Home. They poured out of the sky over the steppes and swooped toward the Human camp.

  The ships landed to the west of the Human camp and discharged their cargoes of fighting men. Stormwind was the spearhead of the attack while Eagleheart and Chaos led the left flank and Skywolf and Hornwing the right Stormwind dragged his men forward at a fast pace, hoping to derive some advantage from the suddenness of the attack.

  But there was no advantage to be gained. The Humans had been waiting for the attack for hours. Starbird had read Stormwind’s mood exactly. As the Beast swept down on the Human camp, they met absolutely no resistance. Such Humans as were visible were all retreating rapidly. Stormwind pressed forward in hot pursuit, while the wings held back a little. Stormwind was vulnerable, but he hardly noticed and did not care. He pushed on and on into the desolate moorland.

  The Humans made their move at last, to bring both Eagleheart and Hornwing under fire. The Beast formation was stretched still further while Stormwind was in the process of deciding whether to help or go on with his pursuit. Wisely, but too late, he decided to turn and rejoin the rest of the Beasts. The whole center section turned, and began to move quickly backwards, with Judson Death-dancer now leading and Stormwind himself in the rear.

  Neither Eagleheart nor Hornwing was under severe pressure. They were being harried by quick-moving Human fighters whose numbers were far inferior to those of the Beasts. The attempted retaliation from the Beast riflemen was wild and ineffective: there was never anything substantial to hit. Concentrated fire dropped the Humans one at a time, but their objective—holding both flanks well behind Stormwind’s cohort—was easily attained.

  During the long minutes while Eagleheart was delayed, Stormwind brought his men back up the valley down which they had chased the retreating Humans. There had been no sign of any danger when they had passed through the first time, and the firing from some way off indicated that there would be none now. Judson Deathdancer and the Felides were well clear of the valley when Starbird sprung his trap.

  The Humans came down the hills on either side at top speed, firing furiously. With consummate ease they cut the Ursides in two: Stormwind himself cut off in the rear, and the smaller fragment isolated from help. The Felides and the Lutrides, together with most of the Ursides, were safe, with Eagleheart and Hornwing coming up quickly behind them.

  But Stormwind was in dire trouble. He stood his ground for a few desperate seconds, and then was forced gradually back up the valley. Help was obviously not going to get through the massed Humans defending the slopes, and so Stormwind settled for full flight even though he knew the men he had been chasing would now have turned and he would have to pass through them.

  As he ran, he curved away to the north with some idea of circling right back round to the Beast ships, but with the prime object of evading the forces which threatened to surround him completely. In doing so, he did exactly what Starbird wanted him to. Starbird’s sole intention was to separate Stormwind from the rest of the Beasts by as great a distance as possible. He was uncomfortably aware of how thinly his forces were spread, and how little real resistance they could put up if the Beasts made a concerted effort in the right direction. If they could organize themselves, they could shrug off the thin lines of riflemen which slowed them and smash clean through the men who held Deathdancer and his men in the neck of the valley. Had Stormwind stayed where he was, he would certainly have lost a lot of men, and probably his own life, but as it was—completely cut off with nowhere to run—he seemed absolutely doomed.

  So Starbird let him wander where he would, and followed him as best he was able. Scouts tracked Stormwind’s progress while Starbird did his best to organize the disengagement of his forces from the confused but powerful Beasts. This was accomplished principally by the simple strategy of firing the moorland. The dry, dusty vegetation and the coarse grass did not burn well, but it made a satisfactory quantity of smoke. Even though the wind blew into the faces of the Beasts as they tried to follow the withdrawal, they were in no real danger from the flames. But the nuisance value of the smoke proved adequate to discourage the Beast lords. None of them wanted to march his men through the burning steppes.

  The Beasts gradually lost the coherency of their formation without finding any substantial opposition to take to task. Eventually they gave up and dropped slowly back toward their own ships.

  Starbird was allowed to redirect his full attention to Stormwind. The Beast lord was still under surveillance, and had not gone far. Starbird was able to deploy his troops at his leisure, to cut him off completely.

  The jaws of his trap were closed.

  THE STEPPES OF HOME

  The steppes of Home were always a lonely place. Even in the terrible years of crowding, the Human race crept only slowly into the steppes. The steppes were never successfully drowned by humanity and completely transformed in the image of Human civilization. When the stars emptied Home, there was enough of the steppes left to reclaim what the people had stolen, and it was not necessary for the Humans to launch a deliberate programme of erasure. They smashed the roads and the small townships, and the farms and the factories and the railways and the powerlines. But it was a hasty job. There was not the single-minded dedication to the task which had turned thousands of square miles around the House of Stars into desert. So the steppes were left to finish the job. And the steppes, unlike the Humans, were in no hurry. Ten thousand years to them was a matter of little significance. So some shards of the reign of terror still remain here.

  The steppes are what they were before the Humans came, little altered by changes elsewhere on the globe. They are unfriendly but in a casual, negative fashion. Men would not have to fight the steppes to be allowed to live there. Man could take back the gaunt factories and skeletons of homes which the steppes had not destroyed without much of a struggle.

  The small parcels of history are not necessarily easy to find. They do not show except on close inspection, or the Humans would never have tolerated them. They are swept under the carpet, out of sight and out of mind.

  After all, nobody ever goes into the steppes any more.

  HIDEAWAY

  The steppes went on for ever. Nothing moved, nothing lived. Stormwind was lost. There was a series of bleak, geometric lines cradled away in the hills ahead of him. Apart from that there was grass and rock and tree and sky. Smoke threaded a thin line across the wild country behind him and obscured the horizon. He was cut off on an alien world, a long way from his ships. His small force was very vulnerable, and there was nothing he could do to alter the situation.

  As soon as he saw the buildings nestling in the hills, he began to direc
t his feet toward it. It was different, and somewhere to go to. Stormwind was tired of running with nowhere to go. He decided to wait in the group of buildings at least until nightfall.

  It had once been a mine. Most of the machinery had gone, and what was left had been smashed and scattered into the brick and metal litter which was piled high inside the skeletal buildings.

  Stormwind and his men worked their way into the center of the cluster: a large square in the shadow of the largest buildings. They rested for a while, inspecting their surroundings before exploring them more closely.

  Dirt had piled up everywhere. Grass had carpeted the tarmac and the concrete. All that had remained aloof from the invasion of the steppes was the winding, climbing system of metal tracks on which the ore trucks had run. The wooden supports bearing the ascending trackways into the second and third stories of the buildings had long ago collapsed, but the metal lines themselves, bolted together and cross-linked by eroded sleepers, still hung grotesquely in midair.

  Stormwind and his men fanned out to poke cautiously around in the old buildings. Many had no floors, and the long, low ones had no longer any roofs.

  But some were constructed of strong grey stone—like the rock of the steppes itself—and would stand for another ten thousand years if given the chance. They were tasteless, square things, but they rode high and steady while the others were crumbling away and hardly safe to put a step inside.

  Stormwind entered one of these buildings and climbed the stone stairs slowly. His footstep echoed oddly and brought light showers of dust from the ceilings and the walls as he ascended. At every floor he paused to look out of the square holes that had once been glazed.

  From the lower windows he could see nothing except the neighboring edifices, the desolate alleys and concourses between them, and the quantities of rubble which spilled out of them. When he got higher up he could see above the limits of the mine workings, and when he reached the highest window of all, he could see a long way out over the gently slanting slopes of the moorland.

  There was nothing to be seen beyond a few miles to the west and southwest because of the spreading line of smoke. But much closer than that there were groups of men—many different groups of men—moving systematically, with a common purpose.

  They knew exactly where he was, and they were surrounding him.

  There was no hope of escape. He made a quick mental assessment of his position. Even with the fifty or so men who were left with him, he felt reasonably sure that he could hold a building such as this one against any sort of an attack for a short time. But he was bound to lose men, and every man he lost enhanced the chances of the invaders. Only if help came quickly could he hope to survive.

  He tried to work out how long it would take help to come, if it was to come at all. He had seen little of the battle after the Human attack and could not guess how it might have gone. By simple logic of numbers and deployment the Beasts ought to have won. On the other hand, the concentration of Human troops in the area suggested there was no longer any danger from the Beasts. And there was the purpose of the fired grass to consider: to drive the Beasts or cover the Human retreat? Or both?

  He watched the closing circle of men. The Humans certainly did not seem to be in the grip of panic. They were very methodical in their manner, and they knew what they were doing.

  He ran downstairs quickly, and hailed his companions. They assembled slowly and stood before him in a ragged mob. While they were gathering, he studied them closely. They were tired and cold, but not despairing. They still rode high on their tide of victory and glory. They looked at Stormwind with more than simple respect or admiration. He was not merely a leader to them, he was a hero.

  The filthy, degrading futility of war was simply not getting through to them. They had fought and withdrawn, fought and pursued, won and lost intangible advantages for weeks on inadequate food and inadequate rest. Yet they still carried their illusions around with them. Storm-wind supposed that it was a side effect of the chivalry-based existence Adam December had planned for them and construct surgeons had built into them. Every one of the Beasts was an honest, courageous individual, and not in the least like a good soldier. Each one of them should have resented discipline and regimentation to the point at which they should be useless as a fighting force. That was what the Humans had planned. But somehow, their plan had gone wrong. They had overlooked something.

  Perhaps they had been wrong in their basic assessment of “human” nature. Perhaps it was the nature of the beast that had misled them. But whatever the reason, the Beasts had individualities tailored to a world of heroism and personal valor; they had individual price and fragile vanity, and yet they were not self-obsessed. They recognized the things which they admired in others as well as, or instead of, themselves. They were all too willing to latch their own identities on to the train of another—a better man. Heroes had their followers: fanatical, devoted followers who preserved their own identities while living under the star of another man.

  The Beasts were far too easily led by their ideals. They not only recognized what the Human genetic engineers had programmed into them, they evaluated and followed them. That was the secret of Eagleheart’s charisma and the incredible power of the legend and image of Stormwind. It was the flaw in Adam December’s dream of a perfect civilization.

  Stormwind spoke to his followers and they obeyed. He took them all into the building which he had explored and arranged them in groups to cover the four sides of the building at various floors. It was difficult to cover all means of entrance when there were so many regularly spaced windows, and the building was excessively vulnerable at one side where it was a mere dozen feet from the next, a crumbling brick ruin. But it was the best that could be done under the circumstances.

  Stormwind watched from the top floor as the Humans moved in amongst the mine buildings with a calm certainty and an arrogant air of assumed victory.

  LAST STAND

  As soon as the firing began, Stormwind knew that it was hopeless. There were too many Humans. Their fire was too accurate and too heavy. They advanced in ones and twos under the cover of a blanket of fire which splashed into the empty windows and made effective retaliation impossible.

  They forced back the gunners on the ground floor with insulting ease, but once inside the building the Humans found much more difficulty. They were no longer protected by the heavy fire, and they had the disadvantage of having to look around for makeshift cover from which to fire at the entrenched Beasts. But as they began to command the windows and fire into the rooms, they gradually got the upper hand. They crawled through the windows and saturated the ground floor. The Ursides were slowly and deliberately swept back. They took their toll as they fell back, but the retreat was forced upon them nevertheless.

  Stormwind gave them the next floor, and the next. On the fourth he made a new stand. This time he was far less vulnerable from the windows. A few attempts were made to throw hooks from the ground and from the nearby brick building; but the hooks were improvised and inefficient, and the Beasts had little difficulty in disposing of the ones which did contrive to catch on the window sills.

  Attempts to scale the outer wall had more success. They had a long way to come, but the climbers clambered slowly up the wall in positions where they could be covered from the ruined brick building. They chipped handholds and drove in spikes. It was slow work, but it was sure to accomplish something eventually unless Stormwind could find a way of putting a stop to it. He lost three riflemen who leaned out of the windows to get clear shots at the climbers.

  It was apparent by how that if help ever came it would be far too late.

  Stormwind was forced to concentrate his men on the side of the building which was covered from the brick ruin because this was where the attack was most dangerous; but he dared not relax his vigilance with regard to the other walls. Every man he lost represented another threat to the continued safety of the survivors.

  Men from higher f
loors than the level of the roof of the brick building managed to get in long bursts of fire at the men in the building and even at the climbers whose assault they covered. Even that looked as though it might prove ineffective for a time, but it transpired that the Humans had apparently given too little thought to the safety of their coign of vantage. Wooden debris inside the building flared and wood-covered floors burst into sheets of flame under the rifle fire. Whole floors began to give way, and the Humans ran for the safety of the ground. Many of them did not make it as the interior of the building fell apart and became a mass of flame, smoke, and flying dust.

  But the inhibition of the covering fire did not guarantee an automatic victory over the climbers. They were still there and still difficult to dislodge. Several more men died getting rid of the troublesome threat. Covering fire from the ground got some, the climbers themselves got others. But slowly the menace was dealt with permanently.

  But the second stage of the Human attack was well under way and had gone totally unnoticed. Before the brick building had become impossible to use for anything, the Humans had contrived to get some of their hooks lodged in the roof. One or two of the Humans had managed to scramble up before the fire from above became prohibitive.

  Stormwind had failed to find an exit to the roof and so would have been able to do little about the invaders even if he had realized that they were there.

  The Humans found the way in which the Beasts had not. They came down the inside of the lift shaft, on the steel-runged ladder which ran from roof to ground inside the building. The Beasts had blocked it at the ground but had failed to anticipate attack from above. The invaders bypassed the floors from which the Beast gunners had destroyed the brick building and descended to the floor Storm-wind was trying desperately to hold against attack from below.

  Before they fully realized that they were under attack, the Ursides covering the staircase had been blasted back. The Humans swelled up from the floor below and Storm-wind was pinned back into the corridors. He had less than twenty men with him, and a further dozen on higher floors who could not help him. The Humans who had come down the lift shaft had all died, but they had done all that they had tried to do.