Land and Overland - Omnibus (110 page)

The Dussarran opened the sack and Toller felt a surge of fierce gladness as he saw that it contained seven swords of the distinctive late Kolcorronian pattern. He dropped to his knees and eagerly reached for the familiar weapons.

Be careful!
Greturk warned.
In particular, do not touch the blades with your bare hands
—
they now have monomolecular edges which can never be blunted, and they will penetrate your flesh as easily as they would sink into fresh snow.

"Swords!" Jerene's rounded features bore an angry expression as she stepped forward. "What do we want with a collection of antiques? Could you not have copied our pistols?"

Greturk shook his head again.
There was no time … their interior mechanisms were not readily visible to us … all we could do in the limited time available was to produce five scaled-down versions of the sword for use by the smaller and weaker females of your race.

"That was most considerate of you," Jerene exclaimed sarcastically, "but you may be interested to learn that any woman here could…"

"The enemy has taken to the field!" Toller put all the power of his lungs into the shout. "Are we to squabble among ourselves or go out and do battle?"

He pointed to where the gleaming white motes which represented the Vadavaks were spreading across the field of view, becoming larger collectively and individually, each advancing speck developing arms and legs, a face, the capability of inflicting death. On the horizon behind the Vadavaks the sun was appearing as a needle-spray of blinding fire, casting a fateful and melodramatic glow over the natural arena in which the fates of three worlds were to be decided.

Toller took the sword of his fancy from the sack and tried it in his hand to make sure that the balance had not been disturbed by alien machinations. The feel of the familiar weapon was comforting—the spirit of his grandfather was with him again—but it was less reassuring than he had hoped and expected. Seven humans, only one of whom was trained with the sword, were going against at least fifty well-armed aliens. By all accounts, his fabled namesake would have gloried in such a situation—but, no matter how many versions of the forthcoming battle the present-day Toller conjured up in his mind, he could not find one in which there were no deaths among his companions. Some of them, if not all, were bound to die—and Toller could see no glory in that fact. It was degrading, brutal, depressing, obscene, terrifying…

But, even as the adjectives paraded through his mind, he was forced to acknowledge another diamond-hard fact. Unless the Dussarran machine was successfully defended for another three to four minutes, until it performed its vital task, every man, woman and child on Overland would be annihilated in an unimaginable pulse of energy.
That
—above all else—had to be the single truth which governed his actions in the trial which lay ahead.

He looked around his little group of warriors, wondering if his face was as pale as theirs. They had taken their swords in hand and were gazing at him with expressions which seemed to convey complete faith in his leadership. Their trust was probably a legacy from all those times when he had swaggered and boasted of his prowess in combat—and now he was appalled by the responsibility he had taken upon himself. These people knew they were facing death, and they were afraid, and in the moment of ultimate tribulation they were turning to the only source of hope they could find. It was quite likely that they now regarded Toller as a pillar of strength, and he was numbed with guilt and regret as he realized the extent of his unworthiness to play that role.

"If we advance too far to meet the enemy they will be able to outflank us and overturn the machine," he heard himself say in a firm, clear voice. "We must form a defensive line outside the radius of safety—and take a solemn vow that
none
of the Vadavaks shall pass.

"There are many more things I would like to say—" Toller's eyes locked fleetingly with Vantara's and he repressed an urge to reach out and touch her face—"but now is not the time. We have important work to do first."

Toller turned and ran on a curving path to a point which placed him exactly between the impeller and the oncoming force of Vadavaks. Within a few seconds the other humans had taken up stations on either side of him, at spacings which they instinctively felt could be protected by the sword. The Vadavaks were now only a hundred yards or so away, running fast, and the sound of their feet swishing through the grass could easily be heard by the defenders. Pinpoints of red light danced before them in a horizontal swarm.

Toller tightened his grip on his sword as he saw that the Vadavaks, in place of the rag-like garments of the ordinary Dussarran citizen, wore white helmets and armour. The latter was of a glistening material which seemed to have no effect on the wearer's mobility in spite of covering torso and limbs. The livid, black-holed faces glaring from under the rims of the alien helmets gave the attackers the semblance of an army of corpses, indefatigable because they were already dead.

Toller raised his sword to the first readiness position and waited.
I beg of you, Beloved Creator,
the Xa's words threaded down from the remoteness of the sky,
do not kill me.

One of the Vadavaks outdistanced the others, nominating himself as Toller's first individual opponent, and dived forward with twin black rods outstretched like stings. The alien must have been totally accustomed to routing docile and unarmed civilians, because he came at Toller with head and torso quite unprotected. Toller struck down into his thin neck and the alien went down and backwards in a fountain of blood, his head connected to his body by only a narrow strip of tissue. The rods he had been holding fell close beside each other at Toller's feet.

Toller stamped on them, extinguishing the crimson glow at their tips, and his momentum took him into immediate conflict with two more Vadavaks. The pair apparently had not enough time to learn anything from the fate of their companion, because they remained close together and lunged at Toller with enervator rods held only a few inches apart. He took their arms off below the elbows with two transverse strokes which sheared the white armour as if it were paper. The aliens dropped to their knees, their mouths black circles of silent agony, and doubled over the stumps of their forearms.

Toller paid them no further attention—they had ceased to be combatants—and ran his gaze along the line of battle. The Vadavaks were throwing themselves into the fray with undiminished vigour and ferocity, but Toller was heartened to notice that not one Kolcorronian had been laid low. Their lack of experience in handling swords was being more than compensated for by the incredible sharpness of the blades, and the Vadavaks were being cut down as quickly as they advanced. The defence line had lost its regularity, but it was remaining intact, and the white wave of alien attackers was now liberally stained with red as its members collided with and stumbled over their wounded.

Can it be possible?
Toller wondered.
Are we all to be spared, after all? There can be very little time left before the impeller does its work, and if the Vadavaks are stupid enough not to change their tactics…

From the corner of his eye Toller saw a flicker of white as an alien appeared beyond one end of the battle line and ran towards the rectangular shape of the impeller. Toller broke free and ran on a course which enabled him to intercept the Vadavak about halfway across the margin of safety. The alien slid to a halt in the grass and turned on Toller, the milky marbles of his eyes gleaming beneath the rim of his helmet. He was holding one of his enervator rods as though it were a sword, darting and slicing with the glowing tip, striving to make contact with the skin of Toller's sword arm.

Toller dealt with him by making a sideways flick of his blade which lopped the end off the menacing rod. The alien threw it down, transferred his remaining rod into his right hand and resumed the duel, apparently quite unafraid. Toller—acutely aware that he was within the impeller's radius of death—decided to end the matter speedily in a rain of unstoppable blows. He was on the point of lunging forward when he heard a sound close behind him. He spun around just in time to see a second Vadavak thrusting an enervator rod into his midriff. Toller did his utmost to twist clear of the spitefully gleaming tip, but it made contact with him and pain fountained up through his chest. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, and his two opponents—now moving at a much more leisurely pace, apparently relishing their moment of victory—closed in on him with black rods upraised.

A second touch from one of the red tips would bring about his death, Toller had been warned, and it was obvious that the Vadavaks intended to make sure of him by administering multiple contacts. But he had no intention of accepting death so easily, not with so much at stake. In spite of the debilitating pain which was washing through his body, he made a despairing effort to raise his sword to fend off the descending rods—and was thrilled to find his arms responding with close to normal speed and control.

The Vadavaks, abruptly realizing their peril, stabbed at him with their enervators, but his sword was now moving swiftly in a near-visible defensive arc. The black rods were destroyed and scattered in an instant as Toller rose to his feet. One of the aliens got away from him by sprinting off to safety; the other was transfixed as he turned to flee. Toller withdrew his sword from the twitching body and ran back to rejoin the main battle. He noticed a soreness in his legs for the first few paces, but it quickly faded and he deduced that a Dussarran enervator was a fairly inadequate weapon when used against a large and healthy human.

That seemed a favourable omen, but when Toller reappraised the continuing struggle he saw the situation had altered for the worse in the brief time that he had been sidetracked. One of the women was on the ground and surrounded by Vadavaks who were jabbing at her with red-glowing enervators. Fearing that the inert figure might be Vantara, Toller pounded his way towards her attackers with a hoarse cry of rage. He reached them simultaneously with Steenameert, taking them unawares, and in an impossibly short space of time—a time of raging red mists speckled with seething bright-rimmed corpuscles—the two humans had reduced at least five of the enemy to a bloody mass of carrion.

The woman on the ground was revealed as Corporal Tradlo. An enervator had been driven down her throat, her blonde hair was matted with blood, and it was obvious that she was dead.

Toller raised his eyes from her and saw that the remaining four women had split into pairs, each of which was busily engaged in close combat. To his left, Jerene and Mistekka had taken on four Vadavaks and were giving every appearance of being able to deal with the threat; to his right, Vantara and Arvand were almost hidden by a larger group of aliens who were pressing in on them from all sides.

Marvelling at the aliens' carelessness over the essential matter of guarding their flanks, Toller nodded to Steenameert and they flung themselves at the milling group of white-clad figures. Again they wrought a fearful slaughter in the space of a few heartbeats, inflicting terrible gouting wounds which either levelled the recipients at once or sent them staggering blindly away to sink down and expire in pools of blood.

Other aliens were coming forward to take their places, but Toller was beginning to sense a change in the overall situation. The Vadavaks, possessing not even a rudimentary battle sense, were pressing their attack with undiminished fervour in spite of conspicuous lack of success—and their forces were rapidly being depleted. Snatching a quick glance around the complex scene, Toller guessed that less than half of the Vadavaks were still on their feet, and a proportion of those were becoming slow and uncertain in their movements.

It had to be less than a minute until the impeller unleashed the energies which would displace the planet, and from that time onward Director Zunnunun's warriors would—presumably—have no reason to continue the struggle. They should be well content to withdraw at that stage and limit the number of their dead. Feeling a resurgence of optimism, Toller risked looking in the direction of Greturk and his fellow Dussarrans, hoping for an indication that the machine was about to function. He felt a dull shock when he saw that his allies had disappeared—the only sign that they had ever been present being a fast-fading tinge of green in the morning air.

An instant later Toller paid the price for allowing himself to be distracted from the deadly conflict all about him. Pain exploded through him as something touched his left shoulder, and an instant later the sensation was repeated again in the region of his left hip. He had twice been hit from behind by enervators, but this time—miraculously—the effect was less devastating than before and he was able to remain on his feet. His attacker, who had clearly expected a quick and easy kill, was still gaping at him in astonishment when Toller swung an ill-controlled blow which was intended to sever the alien's neck. The strike was slightly lacking in reach, because of Toller's partial immobility, and the sword tip reached no further than the Vadavak's throat, slicing cleanly through his windpipe. He clapped a hand to his throat and backed rapidly away, only to be impaled from behind by a sword held by the tall, dark-haired figure of Mistekka.

"These large bodkins are quite fun," she called out to Toller, her brown eyes glinting as she casually pushed the dying alien away. "I'm beginning to see why you always carried one."

"Just don't get careless!" No sooner had Toller spoken than he heard Steenameert give a bellow of pain. He turned and saw that his friend was surrounded by four Vadavaks who were jabbing at him with their enervators, at least one of which had found its mark.

"Stay on your feet, Baten!" Toller shouted. He threw himself forward, closely followed by Mistekka and the stockier figure of Jerene. They descended on Steenameert's attackers in a murderous swoop which, again in what seemed the blink of an eye, had a significant effect on the balance of forces. Steenameert had been hit with enervators several times and was sinking to the ground in spite of Arvand's attempts to hold him up. But when Toller took a broader view he was uplifted to see that the humans were running out of live opponents. Of the original attacking force only two were on their feet in the immediate vicinity, and they were being competently dealt with by Jerene and Mistekka.