Land and Overland - Omnibus (82 page)

One of the Farlanders had disappeared with the timber, but the other had leapt on to the paving and his arms were circling as he strove to regain his balance. Wraker, still on his feet in spite of being transfixed, disposed of him by driving the point of his sword into the alien's face, sending him backwards over the edge.

Bartan, looking pale and introspective, was standing close by, clutching a wound in his left shoulder. Blood was flowing copiously through his fingers. Berise was on her knees, her diminutive figure bowed over the muskets, fingers flying as she changed pressure spheres.

Toller looked beyond the milling group of Farlanders on the far side of the moat and saw a much greater force of them pouring through the gateway on the crater's rim. The action at the bridge had bought the defenders some time, but a miserly amount, a period which could conveniently be measured in seconds—and they were going to be at their most vulnerable while trying to enter the ship.

Toller turned his attention to Wraker, wondering if the soft-spoken young pilot understood that he was dying, that his history book would never be written. Bloodstains were spreading swiftly in his rain-soaked clothing, from around the protruding handle of the Farlander sword, and he was becoming unsteady on his feet, but he managed to speak clearly.

"Toller, why are you wasting valuable time?" he said. "Go while the going is good. I'm sorry I am unable to join you—but I have some unfinished business with our unprepossessing little friends."

He turned at once and sank to his knees at the edge of the moat, placing his sword in readiness on the masonry beside him. Berise stood up, carried three loaded and charged muskets to Wraker and laid them with his sword. He looked around as if to say something to her, his eyes seeking hers, but she had already retrieved the fourth musket and had run to Bartan. She pushed Bartan, rousing him from his bemused state, and they both ran towards the waiting ship.

Toller hesitated. He saw two Farlanders leap out from the other side of the moat, their short legs pedalling the air as they strove for maximum distance. Even if the aliens were inept swimmers they would soon be able to make use of the strewn timbers of the bridge to cross the water barrier—all the more reason to abandon Wraker, who was already doomed, and get on board the spacecraft. Still unable to shake off the feeling that he was betraying a comrade, Toller turned and ran to where Berise and Bartan were waiting for him below the huge, enigmatic sphere.

"There aren't any ropes," Sondeweere cried from the darkness of the doorway overhead. "What can you do?"

"As before," Toller replied. "I can lift Berise and Bartan."

"But what about
you?
How will you get in?"

Battle fever inflamed Toller's mind as he heard Wraker fire a musket. "Lower a sword belt—I'll be able to reach." He sheathed his sword and extended his hands to Berise. "Come!"

She shook her head. "Bartan is hurt and he needs help even to reach your shoulders. He must go first."

"Very well," Toller said, reaching for Bartan, who was swaying drunkenly. Bartan made as if to evade him, but there came the sound of another musket shot and Toller's forbearance deserted him. Growling with rage and frustration, he encircled Bartan's thighs with his arms and hoisted him upwards. Berise joined in, steadying Bartan and getting a shoulder beneath one of his feet, and from above Sondeweere lent her own strength to pull the protesting man over the rim of the doorway.

The entire operation had been completed in a few seconds, but in that sliver of time Toller had heard two more musket shots. He glanced towards the moat and saw that Wraker had his sword in hand and was chopping downwards at Farlanders who must have been threatening him from the angled timbers of the bridge. Toller's heartbeat became a series of dull internal explosions as he realised that his precious store of hard-won seconds was spilling away at a prodigious rate.

Berise had slung her musket on her back and was reaching out to him. He caught her by the waist and raised her to his shoulders in one movement. Even then she was not tall enough to reach the sill of the doorway, and she swayed precariously for a moment before Sondeweere and Bartan reached down, found her hands and drew her up into the ship.

During that moment Wraker was snatched out of sight, down to join Zavotle in the pit of death, and the white-gleaming heads of four Farlanders appeared above the moat's nearer edge. They threw weapons in front of them and began to squirm up on to the pavement. The slope beyond them was now massed with Farlander reinforcements, swarming like a field of brown insects.

Toller looked up into the mysterious interior of the ship, which now seemed as remote as the stars to which it was to carry him, and after a subjective lifetime saw Bartan's leather belt being reached to him. It had been re-buckled to form a loop, and the three inside the doorway each had a hand on it.

Two Farlanders, more agile than their fellows, were on their feet and running, swords at the ready.

Toller estimated the time left to him and knew he could expect only one chance to reach safety. Sondeweere's voice rang in his head:
Hurry, Toller, hurry!
He tensed himself—aware of the snorting approach of the Farlanders, hearing the slap of their feet—then sprang upwards and caught the belt with his right hand. The sudden manifestation of his weight on the belt was too much for those above, dragging them downwards and away from whatever purchase they had on the inside of the hull. Berise, lightest of the three, was pulled halfway through the opening and would have fallen had she not released the belt and grabbed the rim of the doorway.

Toller let go in the same instant.

He had his sword half-drawn when he hit the ground between the two Farlanders, but there was little he could do to compensate for the terrible disadvantage of his position. He turned the withdrawal of the weapon from its sheath into a cross-stroke which deflected a thrust from the alien in front, and at the same time leaped sideways to evade danger from behind—but he was slowed by his recovery from the drop.

The delay was only a fraction of a second, but it felt like an age in the fevered entropy of close combat. Toller grunted as the Farlander blade stabbed upwards into his lower back. He spun around, his sword singing in a horizontal sweep which caught his attacker on the side of the neck and all but decapitated him. The alien went down in pulsing gouts of crimson.

Toller continued his spin to face the other one, but the truncated warrior was backing away, knowing that time was on his side—at least ten of his fellows were racing across the paving stones and would be around Toller in the space of a few heartbeats. A smile of triumph appeared on the alien's fat-enfolded face, but almost at once it was transformed into an expression of blank astonishment as Berise—who was directly above him—fired a shot into the top of his head. He sat down abruptly in a vertical fountain of blood.

"Grab the musket, Toller!" Bartan shouted from the ship's entrance. "We can still bring you in!"

But Toller knew it was too late.

The bounding Farlanders were almost upon him, and even if he could be supported by the down-reaching musket his undefended body would be run through a dozen or more times while he tried to pull himself upwards. Experiencing a peculiar reticence, a desire to prevent his friends witnessing what had to come next, he retreated out of their sight towards the centre of the spherical hull.

But, although there was little pain from the wound in his back, his legs were weak and strangely difficult to control. He halted with the lowest point of the metal curvature almost brushing his head, and tried to make a final stand which would cost the enemy dearly, but his legs failed him and he went down under a concerted onslaught.

Sondeweere,
he called as the grey light was blocked out by dripping brown forms and alien blades began to find their marks,
don't allow the pygmies to have the satisfaction. Please fly the ship … for me…

We love you, Toller,
she said inside his head.
Goodbye.

Unexpectedly, in the seconds remaining to him—before his body was sheared into atoms by a conflict of natural and artificial geometries—Toller achieved a final triumph.

He found he was genuinely sorry to die.

And there was gladness in the discovery.

The full measure of his humanity was restored to him by the realisation that it was far worse for a man to live when he would rather die, than to die when he would rather live.

And there's another consolation,
he thought as the ultimate deepnight closed around him.
Nobody could ever say mine had been a commonplace dea—

Bartan and Berise kept looking back over their shoulders as they walked, and they were almost two furlongs from the ship when it abruptly disappeared.

In one second it was there—a dull grey sphere perched on the crest of a low hill; and in the next second there was a complex of globes of radiance, expanding and contracting through each other. There was no sound, but even the foreday sun was dimmed in comparison to the fierce light which washed out of the spectacle. It rose vertically into the sky, gaining speed, changing shape. For a moment Bartan saw a four-pointed star with in-curved sides, each point emitting a spray of prismatic colour. There was a core which seethed with multi-hued specks of brilliance, but even as he was trying to focus his eyes on it the beautiful star was dwindling out of sight, swinging clear of the great disk of Land before finally vanishing into the blue.

The emotional turmoil within Bartan intensified into an ache which swamped the pain from his wounded shoulder. Less than an hour earlier he had been on rain-swept Farland, watching his friends die one by one—Zavotle, Wraker, and finally Toller Maraquine. Somehow, even in those last terrible seconds, Bartan had not expected the big man to die. He had seemed unkillable, an imperturbable giant destined to go on fighting his wars for ever. It was not until he had asked Sondeweere to take him with her into the bleakness of infinity—an unthinkable prospect which withered Bartan's soul—that he had realised Toller was more than just a gladiator. Now it was too late to get to know him, too late even to offer his thanks for the gift of life.

In addition to his grief over Toller, Bartan had been forced to accept that his wife could no longer be his wife, that she had become another kind of a giant, an intellectual colossus with whom he was unfit to share the man-woman relationship. He knew that Sondeweere had not yet flown off into the galaxy—she would spend some days guiding Tipp Gotlon safely home—but in a way she was already more remote from him than the faintest stars. His personal Gola had winked out of existence, leaving him with no direction to his life.

"I don't think we need to walk any farther," Berise said. "It looks as though we will have transport into the city."

Bartan shaded his eyes and looked towards Prad, the outskirts of which were about two miles away. He was peering through a shifting screen of after-images, but was able to discern dust clouds being thrown up by wagons and riders on a winding road. Some agricultural workers, no doubt drawn by the spectacle of the symbonite ship, were approaching at a run through nearby fields.

"I'm glad we have plenty of witnesses," Berise went on, "otherwise the King would have difficulty in swallowing all we have to report to him."

"Witnesses," Bartan said humbly. "Yes, witnesses."

Berise looked closely into his face. "I don't think you could go much farther, anyway. You'd better sit down and let me check that bandage."

"I'll be all right—I still have some of my excellent cure-all." Bartan untied the skin of brandy from his belt and was pulling out the stopper when he felt Berise's restraining hand on his own.

"You don't really need that kind of medicine, do you?" she said.

"What's it got to do with…?" He paused, blinking down into Berise's face, noting that her expression was one of concern more than anger. "No, I don't actually
need
the drink."

"Then throw it away."

"What?"

"Throw it away, Bartan."

It came to him that it had been a long time since anybody had shown concern about what he did, but it was with some reluctance that he let the leather container fall to the ground.

"Anyway, it was nearly empty," he muttered. "Why are you smiling?"

"For no reason." Berise's smile grew wider. "For no reason at all."